Family Alive

This is our third posting with pictures, but before I get to the pictures – let me give a brief rundown of the day

5:15AM – Josiah wakes up unexpectedly and pretty wide awake, but we manage to convince him to lay back down and sleep a little longer.

5:45AM – Josiah is up for good at about the time Analise comes trotting over to our room.

6:30AM – We wake up after letting the kids watch the Spanish version of Playhouse Disney for 45 minutes while we get a few much needed minutes of sleep.

7:20AM – We make our way to the patio area downstairs where our breakfast of toast, jelly, and a small fruit plate is prepared. Everyone gathers around the small table and enjoy the breakfast.

7:45AM – Kristine and Abigail take the kids to the Nicaraguan preschool where they will be leading a craft today. (The craft was a hit, and the kids had fun today. Josiah played most of the time with a little Nicaraguan boy who was maybe just a little bit older than him).

8:00AM – I leave for a bike ride towards Chinandega to get close-up pictures of Vulcan Casitas and Vulcan San Cristobal.

10:15AM – I arrive back from a longer than expected ride a bit sun-burned in the face but exhilirated at having been able to do a 35 mile ride and getting good pictures (see below).

10:30AM – I arrive at Nuevas Esperanzas to work in the office today on the website. I work on getting a demo site up to show Andrew the capabilities of WordPress and find out if it is something he wants to switch to for the management of the Nuevas Esperanzas website.

12:00PM – Kristine and Abigail arrive with the kids who are happy to show off their craft and eat lunch.

1:15PM – I walk everyone back to the hotel for the kids naptime during the afternoon siesta and then head back to Nuevas Esperanzas via “La Union” – the local supermercardo owned by Walmart Centroamerica and the coffee shop to get a few groceries and a $1 Americano espresso drink.

3:45PM – Kristine arrives back at Nuevas Esperanzas with the kids for an afternoon playdate with Anna and Emily. We get a picture of them playing dress-up with the princess clothes that we brought.

4:45PM – I finish my website work for the day and begin working on a broken laptop which has intermittent display problem where the screen remains entirely blank from boot-up. We pretty much completely disassemble the laptop to remove the part necessary to access the video cable connector between the motherboard and the display. We disconnect and reconnect it in the hope that this fixes the problem. After reassembling everything, we boot up the laptop and it works perfectly – but because the problem is intermittent, this is no guarantee that the problem is actually fixed. Let’s cross our fingers!

6:00PM – I head over to “Pizza Hot” complete with motorcycle delivery vehicles and join Kristine, Abigail, and the kids for dinner (they had left early). The restaurant is very cool in that it has an outdoor playground in the back  part of the restaurant next to covered patio seating. The kids eat a little bit and then play with other kids already there.

7:00PM – Bucket baths for Analise and Josiah – we have a shower but with really low water pressure the kids are better off climbing into the buckets provided and filling up the bucket with water. Analise just has to stand in it, but Josiah can squat down so that only his head is above the water — which is cold water too – the hot water that we have is heated by an electrical mechanism in the shower head (I bet that sounds pretty safe, huh) and it would take too long to fill up the bucket with it so we use cold water from the lower spicket.

8:00PM – I sit down to write this blog – as a gecko just runs by my computer!!!

Ok – that was our day – here are the pictures!