Low-Key Weekend

This post will probably be short and sweet which will probably be a relief to most of you since the last one ran a little long. Our weekend was pretty low key. Troy hasn't been feeling well, so we took it easy yesterday. That gave me a chance to start organizing and packing our stuff. Today, José stopped by with his six-month-old son Juan José and then came back in the afternoon to get us and take us out to the mall for a bit. The boys got to expend some of their energy at the arcade/play-place which was great for all of us.

The highlight of my afternoon was watching Samuel in the play-place (the twins are too young to go in alone and we couldn't accompany them). We had to pay for him to go in and he only got 15 minutes which he spent most of on the trampoline (surprise, surprise). But then he discovered he could climb the towers to the slides. They had two towers, one that went to the wavy slides which he did twice and then a much taller tower that went to a spiral slide. The look of pure joy and excitement when he came out of that spiral slide is indescribable. He was so happy. It is really neat to watch our kids experience these things for the first time that most of the other kids in there were taking for granted. The real highlight though is when the 15 minutes were up, the staff working the play-place wouldn’t let the kids exit until their parent claimed them, and Samuel and I were pointing at each other, claiming each other. That was really cool. Oh, and now is a good time to mention that when we first got there, I lost Luis. I went to throw something away and, without realizing it, he followed me. We looked all around only to find him in a sea of people, bawling his eyes out. As Troy ran towards him and scooped him up, he was still crying, but you could see the look of relief on his face - the best part, he wasn't looking to just anyone for help, he was looking for us. Troy's highlight was playing air hockey with Daniel. He didn't want to ride on any of the little cars or do anything else, but he really seemed to want to play air hockey. Guess we are going to have to get an air hockey table...Isn't that terrible?

Tomorrow will hopefully be packing and passports!


When I started packing the boys decided they wanted to wear their raincoats...inside...all day. The irony, it rains here everyday, but we have never actually worn our raincoats outside in the rain. I am not sure how that happened.


These are the gifts that "Tia" Rosario and the staff of El Cortijo gave the boys at their fiesta the other night. These are carros they are not allowed to play with.


Don't let our boys fool you. They don't actually read their books, but they do love to look at them. They also won't sit still long enough to let us read to them. I think they have never really been read to.


José and his son Juan José. What a cutie! The boys were so curious and weren't really sure of what to do with him. When José came back to get us later in the afternoon, Luis looked all over the car for the baby and was genuinely upset that José didn't bring him back.


Samuel will occasionally hold the twins hands when they walk down the stairs. He is very helpful when he wants to be which is great. We really want him to understand that he is the older brother and not four. We suspect that he was treated like a four year old, and we hope to help him feel more like an older brother.


OK, so Luis didn't cry on any of the little rides and actually wanted to go on everything that Samuel did. I guess that little push car at Parque del Café was a great jump start in getting him over whatever fears he had about amusement rides. Very weird, but encouraging.


Troy and I's public debut of Dance Dance Revolution. We thought that an international tour would be best. As you can see by the looks on our faces we pretty much sucked, and of course we not only had an audience but help from the twins. I guess we will have to keep practicing at home.