Feliz Navidad!

Last Friday, the eleventh of November, the kids at their Christmas program. It was a big deal. They have been practices for months. We had to have the kids at the auditorium an hour before it started. There were tons of people there so they rented out a big auditorium since the Kinder (what they call preschool here) is so small. They have a day care there too so there were tons of little kids in costumes. Everyone had at least one costume and the stage was decorated with a Christmas tree and lots of cute houses and snow. Laney had a few things she had to do. First she had a saying while her classl stood on stage spelling out Feliz Navidad.

She had another little saying before her dance. Last and certainly not least she had to dance the meringue with David. They were so cute and she was shaking her shoulders and hips like a tica. She was worried he was not going to show up and then what would she do. After running into David's mom in the bathroom, he was really worried last week when we were in Nicaragua and Laney was not in school for the rehearsal. He told her she had gone back to the States. Here are some pictures of them after the show. They re-enacted their dance for us afterward since we could not get good pictures of them doing it on the stage.

We are not sure what Creed was. He was dressed in a little German outfit and walked on stage with his class and did some choreography with a song with the rest of his class. They knew better than to give him some lines. Every time we pick him up his teacher tries to make him repeat something, usually about how cute he is, and he refuses every time. Of course, he is more than capable and comes home a chats us up in Spanish. I do not think they know how much he can talk. He was on stage for ten minutes.

 The show was an hour and a half and it was SO loud. The music they danced to was insanely loud. I just hope the speakers were only going out toward us or my kids might be deaf. They said it was not too bad, but I had to plug my ears a bit. Laney has sensitive ears like I do so she either was so use to it or it was not as loud on stage. The kids were ridiculously cute. I had a hard time understanding them though as they shouted into the mike. They sure know how to throw a production or any festivity for that matter. I am continually surprised by it. They are just little kids, but everyone (except a small number of little kids) seemed to enjoy themselves. The parents, grandparents and bucket loads of families seemed to enjoy themselves too.

I think it was a success. Unfortunately a lot of the teachers are sick this week and so is Creed.
And this is afterward waiting for a cab. I think I will see this look a lot in the future.

Loving the Weather

Oh how a couple weeks can really change things around here. The weather is amazing. It is perfect and why we moved here. It is sunny and 75. There is a slight breeze and some clouds move in in the afternoon. It is beautiful. I think it is even more amazing because October was so miserable. Apparently it was worse than usual as far as how much rain we had and that the sun did not come out. I cannot live in a climate that does not see the sun. Which is why I like Colorado even though it gets cold. The sun and blue skies trick my mind into not going crazy. I guess this is how it is suppose to be through December (in case anyone needs to make some plans) and then it gets a little warmer in January and every month afterward until May when the rainy season starts. We are moving February first so we are only concerned about the weather until then.

The kids and I had a wonderful afternoon at the library. It was a nice 15 minute walk away and had a little play room inside and a great park outside. They are at such a great age and really enjoy playground equipment and for the most part do not hurt themselves on it. They love all the climbing stuff and of course the slides too. It is fun watching them play together. I even got a chance to work on my memorizing verbs while they played. I sat in the warm sun and soaked in the vitamin D.

Lake Nicaragua

We woke up early...shocker. It was beautiful outside so we decided to take a boat tour of the lake. We had discussed it with Orvan the day before and he said we would be the only people on the boat so could cut it short if need be (things to ask when you have small children). He came with us and was our wonderful tour guide. He is bilingual but was gracious enough to talk to us in Spanish and help us out when we did not know a word. He spoke clearly and slowly. There are 365 islands on the lake, many of them are pretty small. There are a ton of cool houses on them and the scenery was gorgeous. We also went to the monkeyś island and threw cookies at them. We saw some little bats, some cool birds and some fish. Creed started to get cranky so we headed home. We learned a lot of history of the area and some gossip about those that owned houses on the islands. Oh and we had some cookies too. You could not ask for a better tour.

Creed fell asleep on me in the car. I ended up rocking him for over an hour in the lobby. It has been ages since he has fallen asleep on me and for so long. He looked so cute. After awhile I figured I better wake him up or I would be up even earlier the next morning.

We went to lunch and he could not stop crying and you guessed it he felt warm. I took him back to the room and found out he had a fever (we never leave home without the thermometer) of a 102. So we watched TV and rocked. I love that there were so many rocking chairs. We just chilled in the room the rest of the day. Jason took Laney swimming so they got to have a little excursion. His fever went down for several hours before the medicine wore off. We gave him more and sent him to bed. Amazingly, he only woke up once in the night and went right back to sleep. He even woke up without a fever. He still was pretty clingy and tired though.

We decided to take a horse drawn carriage tour of Granada. The kids had been wanting to do since we arrived. All the carriages are parked in front of our hotel and Laney wanted to the one with the most ribbons. Lucky for her it was the one we ended up taking. The tour was fun and we had a great guide who spoke clearly and slowly. We saw forts, many churches, and tons of colonial houses. I love history and that kind of stuff so it was really interesting. We were able to climb to the top of one of the churches bell towers. Laney was a touch frightened being carried up a tiny spiral staircase. Creed was all for it. We had some great views from the top. I loved it!! It reminded me of all those churches in Europe I was able to climb on my trips.

We enjoyed some ice cream and chilled most of the day. The kids had been sick and seemed to be getting better so we did not want to take any chances of them getting something else. Jason and I took turns going out and checking the city out. He went on a cigar tour and enjoyed walking around the market. All in all it was a fun trip. Our only issue seems to be the kids getting sick. They are becoming better travelers and hopefully over time their immune systems will improve so we can enjoy our vacations even more. I would love to go back to Nicaragua and check it out even more.

Creed and Jason got their hair cut. I did not take any pictures of Jason getting his done, but I went along with Creed. Here is my cute Nico.

Granada, Nicaragua

We decided to leave the beach and head out to Granada on the first. Needless to say I was pooped with being up with Laney in the night and then early with Creed. Luckily we had rented a car so we could go at our own pace. We wanted to check out Leon a bit on our way out of town, but only seemed to get ourselves lost for an hour. We finally made it out. I could go on and on about how bad the maps are and how there are hardly any addresses. Granted Leon actually had some street signs. It is the same in Costa Rica where no one has an address. You have to tell people you are a 100 meters from this thing or that thing. Finding places and roads can be challenging. It is kind of hard for me to get use to. No point in continuing that rant since it does no good.

We actually made it to Granada without getting lost. It is such a cute city. We just drove to the town square and found something to eat. I promise I will insert pictures here of the beautiful yellow church and other fun places.

We did not have a place to stay so Jason started asking at hotels. We noticed right away that there were tourists and English speakers. We attempted to stick with our Spanish. Jason did a great job having Spanish conversations and I did a good job listening and inserting random sentences. Anyway, we found this great hotel across the street from the town square. Manuel showed us a room and we fell in love with it even though it smelled, was extremely dark and you could hear loud construction going on underneath. It had two large rooms with a door in between. We were so excited to have a little room. The kids started playing right away. Laney was still recovering and a little chill time in the hotel was good for her.

Views from in front of our hotel.

Manuel went to the pharmacy and got us some more medicine and told us some fun things to do. He was very helpful and fun. Plus, he did not speak English. He helped us set up a boat tour with Orvon for the next morning. Granada is on an enormous lake, Lake Nicaragua. It has 365 islands on it from Volcano Mombacho exploded numerous years ago. We relaxed the rest of the day and went to bed early.

The Beaches of Nicaragua

We came to Nicaragua on our visa run. I cannot believe we left Colorado 90 days ago. Where does the time go? We flew on a tiny airplane with six other people.

The flight went well, but Jason had some big ear issues during the landing. Laney, Jason, and I had colds and when we landed he could not hear very well. Not great when you are speaking English, but horrible when you are trying to understand Spanish. Laney had some pain in hers as well and cried every time she yawned. Which she kept doing since we had to get up at four thirty in the morning. Then I realized I forgot to bring the rental car reservation and could not remember which rental car agency I had reserved it with. We asked them all and none seemed to have it so we had to start from scratch. We finally made it out of the airport with our car. I decided to drive b/c I have been missing it. We went straight to Leon which is about ninety kilometers from Managua. The drive was pretty with lots of green stuff and a few volcanoes. We decided to eat lunch in Leon and found a bad pizza place. They had a couple of old playground things in it so the kids were happy, which goes a long way. We had not made any reservations b/c we could not decide if we would stay there or go on to the beach another twenty minutes away. It was not raining and the city seemed a little challenging to navigate with small children so we moved on. We found this tiny place. Too small to be a town b/c there were no stores, just a few hostel like places and houses along the beach. We found the place we saw on line and they had a room for us. It was cheap and they had a pool. Granted the room was incredibly small.

We made our way to the beach to play in the sand. The water was too rough to swim in but the waves were beautiful to watch. There were some rocks near by that they crashed on too. The kids got themselves covered in sand pretty quickly. Glad Laney is over her fear of sand from a few years ago. It is messier now, but a lot more fun. We then went for a swim in the pool. It is nice that they are comfortable in the water now and just float around on their floaties happily. We have come a long way to making vacation more enjoyable with the beach and swimming thing being fun now.

We had a nice dinner over looking the beach and this is what I had. It was delicious.

We however have not figured out how to stay healthy on trips. This is a killer. At dinner Laney was super exhausted and would not even eat french fries.

We took her back and she had a 102 temperature. We are always a little worried about her when she is sick and coughing b/c of how it effects her breathing. We put them down for the night and prayed she would not have an asthma attack. We put Creed on the floor. The good thing about the night is that she did not have an attack. The bad thing is that she cried out every half hour. She gets a little crazy with fevers too. Creed kept rolling all over the place. One time he was half under our bed and then he fell asleep off his blanket onto the tile floor infront of the bathroom. He was up at five thirty. I tried to get him out of the tiny, tiny room as soon as possible so he would not wake up Laney or Jason (who still had his cold). Creed and I went to hang out at the beach. It was beautiful. I sat and watched the waves while Creed rolled around in the sand. We went for a little walk and dipped our toes in the water.

Two hours later Laney and Jason joined us for breakfast. So glad they got a little extra sleep that they needed. Her fever was down. That ends our first night in Nicaragua. Traveling with toddlers is an adventure. We decided to leave the next day and move on to Granada.