Watch Out for the Monkeys!

On Tuesday this week Mitchell took the morning off work and we went for a hike together while the big kids were at school. Hiking may just be one of my favorite activities in life! I could really hike everyday and love it every time! This was definitely an experience to remember! We went to a privately owned nature reserve called Montibelli. It's owned by an Italian immigrant family, hence the Italian name. We hired a guide to come along with us and he pointed out many of the beautiful birds, plants and other wildlife in the area. 

This is a rubber tree! If you cut into the tree (we didn't cut the tree, this was already there) the sap that comes out is natural rubber. Rubber was a booming industry in the 1800s up through about WWII. Now more synthetic rubbers are used in manufacturing. 

This was our closest encounter with monkeys here! It was pretty cool! These are Howler Monkeys, they call them Congo Monkeys here, and there was a group of about 10 of them just above us in the trees. They were clearly animated at seeing us in the forest and yelled at us for quite some time! Watch the video to hear their yells.

Apparently the monkeys did NOT want us there observing their family and they ran us right out of there! One of their defense mechanisms is to throw poop bombs at would be predators. We didn't really realize what was happening at first but it didn't take long for us to get out of there quick! Poor Mitchell didn't escape unscathed. HAHA!

Aside from the Monkey attack it was a beautiful morning and we very much enjoyed the hike! Layne is always up for a new adventure and is really good at being happy with whatever activity we drag him on.

Redick wrote my name all by himself! He has been working on learning his letters at school and asked me how to spell my name. This is his Pokeball masterpiece.

The Pokemon Go craze is alive and well in Nicaragua! Over the summer we played a bit on my phone and the kids really enjoyed it. That kicked off a Pokemon fascination and though we rarely play Pokemon Go anymore they do enjoy watching Pokemon videos. We would probably play a lot more but the closest Pokemon Gym is all the way at the mall and we would have to drive there in order to stock up on Pokeballs. Never fear though, we can play in "offline mode" at home! We made these foam Pokeballs and the big kids earned little Pokemon stuffed characters to play with. This has been a hit! 

Why wouldn't November be swimsuit weather? 

Layne and Reid watching for Mitchell to come home from work

 Saturday we ran a few errands in the late morning and then we took the kids to Pizza Hut for a late lunch. This is Layne's cute little shoulder shrug face he makes now. Audrey put a straw on each of her front teeth and laughed telling me it was a walrus impression. Kids are so silly and fun!

Saturday in the late afternoon we went to a really fun theater show! It was a puppet show with a live actor. The plot was quite simple but the main part of the show was getting the kids involved and participating. It was held in a house that has been converted into a yoga studio/cafe. The "stage" was in the front living room and you can see that the kids were all sitting right there on stage. It was so well done for the kids! They were roaring with laughter, screaming with fright and jumping up to join the girl on her journey. 

Once again, Audrey impressed us all with how much Spanish she is learning! You can see on the puppet stage a fabric flower in the center. When the flower appeared on the stage, Audrey confidently shouted out in Spanish "That's a flower! It's orange, green and blue!" Woo! Go girl!