Long Overdue....Sorry

Okay, so why would I want to blog when I could be sitting on the beach.........So I have asked myself this question and although my desire to share our adventures has crossed my mind, it just hasn´t won out over sitting on the beach or hanging out with my hubby and kids. Believe it or not the few times that I have wanted to blog the internet was down, plus I forgot the USB cable to my camera so I can´t post any pics for you to enjoy.
So setting all this aside, the kids are knocked out and it is too dark to be outside and we didn´t swim today so I´m not dead tired so I´ll give you some highlights of the past few weeks.

The boys caught 82 oysters the other day with Manuel. We thought we wanted to cook them but the boys felt bad killing them and none of us, except Katie and Isaac, like to eat them. They thought that was super fun and had a healthy competition going, I think Alex won.

The house we rented has been great. There is a pool in the yard and as soon as the grass ends there are stairs to the sand below. It´s really fun to have the ocean for a backyard, and it is actually fairly loud so it´s really neat to hear the waves crashing against the sand. I hope we will be able to leave here, I think there may have to be some beach property in this families future.

The kids are getting to know Manuel´s side of the family better, they have come to the house to spend time so we have had lots of fun swimming, eating and playing with cousins and aunts and uncles.

We spent a weekend at the Pearl Islands', for all you Survivor fans they filmed a season there. We stayed at Contadora Island but there are 7 islands in total so they had the Survivor people on a different island. The support crews would come to the resort everyday to eat so that was sort of neat. They are filming a new show to air in Central America and another on to air in Israel. We met a lady from Colombia that had just been voted off so it was fun to talk to her.
While we were there we swam, drank lots of Pina Coladas, swam some more, ate way too much food, found an eel, rode a boat out to see some whales and visit an uninhabited island, collected lots of shells, found lots of crabs and found a baby octopus.
The whales were the absolute coolest experience we could have had, I´ll go into more detail after we get home but they seemed like prehistoric creatures coming up out of the water. It was such a fun privilege to share those times with my kids.

We visited the Panama Canal and watched a ship go through the locks, really a neat thing to watch even though it was raining like crazy.

We took the kids to the Open House for the temple, it has the biggest chandelier I have ever seen and the boys were so amazed at what the inside of the temple looks like. Manuel and Isaac went to the dedication today and had some really powerful experiences there, we had babysitting issues so I stayed back with the kids. Carole Mikita was there for KSL news and she interviewed them so they thought that was pretty fun.

This week we are visiting the Atlantic Ocean, which is much more clear than the Pacific. This is actually my favorite beach that we are going to where the kids can see all the colorful fish, no whales here but plenty of new fun stuff to check out.

I´m sure I´ve missed some things so when we get home and download all the pictures I´ll post those and do some elaborating. We miss everyone and are anxious to come home but at the same time feel like we could stay here for a long time. See you all soon!!!!!!!!!!!