El Chocoyero Nature Reserve

Last Wednesday we got a last minute babysitter for Layne and took the big kids to a soccer game! It was the Nicaragua national team playing against St. Kitts, which is a Caribbean island. The game itself was uneventful with no score but it was really fun to be in the stadium! There were SO MANY people milling around the stadium selling stuff. Everything from horns and Nica flags, food, water, drinks and cotton candy. We bought the kids horns and immediately regretted it. Thankfully they were super cheap little things and within 15 minutes R&R had broken theirs. Haha!  

The kids were thirsty so we got some water. They were amazed that the water came in a plastic bag rather than a bottle! Rather ingenious I think!

See previous post about the Refiner's Fire for more details but, last Thursday I had a bit of a melt down feeling so much struggle and discouragement. Mitchell is so good to me and he took the day off work on Friday to help me in hopes that I could feel less overwhelmed. He is so amazing! After we got the big kids to school he helped me get a few things in order at home and then we set off to enjoy a hike in a nearby nature reserve. It was about a 40 minute drive out to Chocoyero Nature Reserve and it was a beautiful drive! There are green rolling hills that are used as farm lands. We found out later that the main crops in this area are Central American pineapples which have a white flesh rather than the yellow fruit from Hawaii. Also Dragon Fruit or Pithaya as it's called here. Both plants are pictured.

Pineapple farm out on the rolling hills

Pineapple plants in the distance

I had no idea that Pithaya grew on a cactus! No wonder it's called Dragon Fruit! I also learned that the Dragon Fruit flower only blooms for one night and is most commonly pollenated by bats. Interesting!

Yummy Pithaya!

This was an absolute paradise! Mitchell and I both agreed that this is the thickest rainforest we've seen so far, and it's so close to our house! Layne was a trooper hiking much of the trail. I love hiking. It is a beautiful way to enjoy the incredible earth and to get exercise and feel great! 

We came across this GIANT spider! The body alone was as long as a house key! There were a few babies on the web also learning how to haunt to forest! Speaking of haunting.... Honestly, the rainforest was kind of creepy! We were the only humans on the trail that morning but there were so many sounds! Monkeys howling, birds screeching, lizzards rustling through the brush. Branches snap in the distance and I kept expecting a jaguar leap out at me! It was an absolutely gorgeous morning.

These trees are breathtaking. They have a smooth wood and their branches and the trunk cascade around like ribbons.

La Cascada

Layne has learned how to smile for pictures now. What a cutie!

Isn't the bark on this palm so neat??!

This tree is called "El Anciano del Bosque" or the oldest tree in the forest. It was massive and majestic.

This butterfly was as big as my hand. Here is his looking at you.

More pineapple plants

A baby pineapple!

On Saturday we wanted to go check out a neat spot in Managua that we heard about. That plan didn't work out so Audrey and I headed off to our local open air market, Huembes. She and the boys needed traditional folklore costumes so off we went for some mommy daughter time. It was great fun! We needed a smoothie to cool off after, of course. Yum!

This week we had the inside of our house painted! It turned out so nice! We are renting but the custom here is that renters paint the walls fresh before returning the house to the owner as they move out. As a result, renters of course choose the cheapest paint that will do the job. Our house was previously completely pained with cheap, flat white paint. The flat texture is impossible to clean and after a very short time I had dirty handprints all over the walls! Not only did I get a satin paint that will clean up easier, I got some color to splash around. I think it turned out lovely!

This bookcase was delivered today! I found a metal worker and commissioned this shelf! It is super solid and quite heavy of course, being made of solid metal. His price was very good too! A fifth of the price of what the woodworkers were quoting. 

The Refiner's Fire is Still Fire

"The Refiner's Fire is Still Fire." That was the answer to my prayers this week. I want to write this experience down.

Our weekends here in Nicaragua are absolutely incredible! Really a dream. Every week is an exotic vacation to see, smell, taste and experience new and exciting parts of the world with the most wonderful people. The week days though are much less glamorous. In fact, it's really, really hard a lot of the time. I'm not one to dwell on negativity but this is all part of the experience and I want to be able to look back on the good and the bad. I miss my social network so much! I have the most amazing friends and I'm realizing now how much I took for granted the value of great girl friends! In Utah I had my freezer meal group once a month that I looked forward to, neighborhood babysitting co-op that made kid free time a regular occurrence, the Young Women and YW leaders that I miss so much that there's a lump in my throat now! That doesn't even begin to mention my amazing neighbors who would do anything from give me a cup of sugar when I'm out to run over a steam cleaner when kids painted the carpet or laugh instead of call the police when naked toddlers are climbing out of bedroom windows! A good supportive social network is invaluable, and I had the very best!

I've begun to make some friendships here but for the most part I feel very isolated and lonely. The kids also have gone through an "adjustment period." That's a euphemism for, near constant fighting. They miss their friends too. The absence of other social outlets means they only have each other to interact with and that, combined with so many endless changes, has led to too much contention at home.

My kids have always been energetic and active. They are the kind of kids that belong roaming around on a farm all day. In Lehi they enjoyed a lot of freedom once they proved they could be trusted within certain boundaries. Once again, we live in much different circumstances here. Our house is half the size and our back yard is about the size of our Utah driveway. It's also very hot here so outside play is fairly limited during the heat of the day. Most of the other kids in the neighborhood have full time nannies that supervise their every movement. It's not as socially accepted to let my kids ride their bikes around the neighborhood. When they do play outside for a while without being directly under my thumb inevitably one of the neighborhood guards takes it upon herself to act as their nanny then give me a report of their comings and goings when I go out to check on them. That makes me very uncomfortable, not to mention I think it's good for my kids to have independence at times.

A week ago I got a phone call from the preschool teachers asking me to come to a parent teacher meeting that afternoon. It was clearly a call for correction since it was just me and was called for the same day. They explained that one of my boys has had problems with hitting other students at school. Both of the boys continue to run in the classroom even after repeatedly being asked not to. They have a hard time remembering to follow the rules and are causing distractions in class. Also, their uniform shirts have stains and don't I wash their clothes before they come to school? Being a Montessori preschool one of their core tenets is self-care and when they come to school in dirty clothes it makes it impossible to teach about self care. The teachers even loaned them clean shirts and had one of the school's housekeepers try to scrub out stains by hand. Oh wow. This made me feel so bad. Yes, I absolutely wash my children's clothes. The uniforms they are wearing happen to be hand me downs, plus they are 4 year old boys! After this meeting I felt like a complete failure. My kids are the filthy wild ones that hit girls. Great.

I won't go on complaining but living life in a foreign country without friends, extended family or familiar comforts is in many ways very hard. I knew this would be hard. I anticipated that my greatest struggle would be loneliness and isolation. I tried to prepare for this inevitability by setting goals for myself. I feel a strong desire to utilize this experience to make some positive changes in myself and improve myself in certain ways. I have prayed that after we have completed our time here in Nicaragua and it's time to move back to the USA that I will have progressed and be an improved version of myself with new good habits and having left old bad habits behind.

This week some of these struggles came to a head. I was feeling that this is all too hard and I don't want to live here anymore. Logically I know that I'll be able to make more and closer friends here and that in time I'll acquire additional responsibilities that will help me feel needed and more satisfied. Emotionally I didn't want to wait that long and suffer through the challenges to get to that point. As I was tearfully talking this all through with Mitchell on Tuesday night I was inspired with the phrase "The Refiner's Fire is Still Fire." I truly have a desire to take the opportunity now to improve myself and become refined according to what Heavenly Father wants for me. How could I ever do that without experiencing struggles and challenges. I am being stretched in new ways and I am thankful for the growth I have already seen in just a few short (well they feel long) months. I'm thankful for a loving Father in Heaven and His gentle reminder to adjust my perspective while facing challenging experiences. Not only did that phrase help me to change my attitude it also showed me that Heavenly Father understands that things are hard, it's fire! It's not going to be comfortable or easy but He will be at my side. The last couple of days I have had a better attitude and have been blessed as I've remembered "that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good." D&C 122:7

One of my most favorite scriptures comes to mind, Isaiah 64:8:

"But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand."

I'm just passing through a few flames, spinning dizzy on the potter's wheel hoping to become a beautiful vase, or even just a useful water jug. We'll see.

Nit-Picky

Yahoo! After more than 2 months our stuff that we put on a ship from Utah finally arrived! It traveled by truck from Salt Lake City to Miami then on a container ship to Managua. That trip took less than a week but then the whole palette got held up by the bureaucracy in the customs department. What a hassle! Fortunately we had Mitchell's office manager acting as our agent and she handled most of the communication there. She was in daily contact by phone and email with the customs department but they still did crazy things like declare our shipment "abandoned" 15 minutes before their office closed. Then, they charged us $100 to restart the process! Ugh, it's all about the bribes and fees. The good news is, it's here now.

One of the first items I dug out of the boxes is my beloved Bosch stand mixer! Now my kitchen feels more like home! Chocolate chip cookies were first on the list of delicious foods to make! Mmmm.

Redick and Reid dressed up as cowboys for a special day at school. Aren't they adorable?! Silly me. In a brief lapse of common sense and knowledge of my own children, I bought genuine leather horse crops to go with their costumes. That was a mistake! No one was whipped but it would have only been a matter of time! The whips are no longer with us. Haha! 

For our customary Saturday excursion we had planned on going to a city named León, it's about an hour north of Managua. We even had a guided tour scheduled at 9am. Saturday morning I went in to wake Audrey and as I was gently stroking her hair to wake her up I noticed a bunch of brown dots on her hair. Looking a little closer I immediately realized those were lice nits! Ugh! Gross! What a bummer too because from one moment to the next or plans for the day all went out the window. I got right to work combing out the nits and picking out anything suspicious from her scalp, trying not to gag. It took 5.5 hours but I was quite confident that I got them all. Thankfully, I did. All week I've been checking and she's been clean. Whew. But still, yuck! I now have a much better appreciation for the phrase, sorting with a fine toothed comb! 

Later in the afternoon we needed to get out so we went to downtown Managua for some street food and sight seeing. This is a obelisk monument from when Pope John Paul II visited Nicaragua. 

These colorful tree sculptures are all over Managua. I love them! They are so iconic Managua. Each one is 60 feet tall and they are all around town on the roads and large parks etc. You can see them from the air as you're coming in to land at the airport. This row of trees and flags are downtown right at the edge of Lake Managua. 

The kids even got to meet this hideous rendition of Minnie Mouse. This Minnie spoke in a gruff manly voice and had to hold her nose so her head didn't fall off! I laughed so hard! The kids were delighted though. Haha! 

Pico de Garza

My diligent little students continue to LOVE school! This last week they also started after school swimming lessons twice a week which has been fabulous. Audrey is officially a swimmer and is gaining confidence all the time. Reid also swims and is able to kick his legs and travel short distances in the pool. Redick is making great progress and will catch up in no time. He's a bit more of a perfectionist and I think he's taking his time learning the skills so that he will be able to swim well when he goes for it. They all have wonderful teachers and Mitchell and I are looking forward to our first parent teacher conferences this week. 

Right about the time we moved Redick's artistic ability began to explode! Right now some of his favorite activities are drawing Pokemon characters and coloring in the lines. He is very careful and loves the feeling of satisfaction when he takes his time and is proud of the result. 

This week was the 3rd anniversary of the founding of the Nicaragua office with the company Mitchell works for. Of course we had to celebrate! Most of the employees and their families were able to spend the day on Saturday at a resort called Pico de Garza. It was a fabulous time!

At the base of the volcano Mombacho is the city Granada. Granada was founded in 1524 making it the oldest city in Nicaragua and one of the first settlements in the Americas! We didn't spend any time looking around Granada this trip so I'll talk more about that in another post. We did, however, go straight to Lake Nicaragua. Lake Nicaragua is the largest lake in Central America, it even has fresh water sharks! Out in the lake off the coast of Granada are over 360 tiny islands that were formed as a result of a massive landslide off of Mombacho. Many of the islands are privately owned. Some are built as residences, resorts, stores, hotels and even a school! We boarded a small motor boat called a Lancha and headed for the island resort Pico de Garza.

Layne is learning the smile for the camera. I think he is just the cutest!

Aboard the Lancha!

This is half of our crew for the day.

On the Lancha! *Reid applied his sunscreen all by himself!*

It's hard to see (I was trying to take pictures while also making sure that my 3 curious little boys didn't fall overboard) but that mountain in the distance with clouds around it is Volcan Mombacho.

When we boarded the Lancha we were able to have a 1 hour tour of the islands. This blue building is a school for the kids who live on these islands! Our lancha captain lives on an island and his son rows himself to school and back every day! According to our guide this is the only school in the world on it's own island!

Ready for adventure!

Pico de Garza!

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We were greeted with a fresh coconut as we stepped on to the island. Coconuts are hollow in the center and grow filled with clean water that is naturally sweetened by the coconut meat. One coconut palm produces between 8-15 coconuts a month year round! They are abundant to say the least!

It was a really tiny island but there were plenty of places to explore!

The boat ride wore this sweet baby out! He took a 2 hour nap in this comfy hammock while we swam at the nearby pool. There were 4 pools at the resort!

Mitchell and the kids took kayaks out on the lake. 

This was our pavilion for the day. Lunch was catered by the resort and was delicious.

We stayed the perfect amount of time on the island! No one was ready to go and we all left feeling happy and excited about the adventures of the day! We can't wait to go back!

BIG NEWS!! On the boat ride back to the port Audrey lost her first tooth! She has been eagerly waiting for this day for several years since one of her best friends started losing teeth when they were in Joy School together. She was on cloud 9 singing and smiling and exploring the new hole in her smile all the way home!