August 21, 2008

More Panama pictures- CLICK "VIEW ALL IMAGES"

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August 20, 2008

Pictures





These are some of my favorites from over 400 pictures. We are so happy to share them with everyone- it truly was the most spectacular 3 weeks of all of our lives. We feel so blessed to be able to have the time together as a family and are Grateful that we have been given the means to be able to make this happen!!!!

August 18, 2008

Pictures Soon!

I promise pictures are coming soon, my computer was having issues trying to download over 400 pictures but it's finally done. There are so many of them now I need to put a few of them into a slide show. Give me a few more days and I will have them done.

School started today...... Ahhhhhhh!!!!!! Now I have less fighting children to referee for half of the day and hopefully when they come home they will have missed each other and will find it in their sweet little hearts to be kind and nice to each other. Okay- let me dream for a moment!!!!! Okay hopefully when they are big they will be kind and nice to each other... that's not to much to hope for, is it?

I was super excited this year to not have to get up super early to drive them to their old school, they are going to a school right close to home, but I still have to drive them. Anyway, we left early today to get them there before 9:15- track 2 start time- since we missed the open house the other night. Alex teacher informs me that is in fact on track 1 and should be arriving at 8:00 am. What, you must be joking right. So I go up to the office to "clear" up this confusion and find out that there are no 2nd grade classes with track 2 openings so they have to put us on Track 1. Oh no, all my little visions of sleeping in and not having to get up early have just gone out the window. I know, poor me, I'll actually have to be on a better schedule. This means not only do the boys have to get to bed on time, but Manuel and I have to go to bed a little earlier. We are such night owls, we'll have to see how this goes. It is almost midnight so I'd better get to bed!
Goodnight!

August 10, 2008

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!!!!!!!!!!!