A little of everything...

Bugs of the Week
Below are two strange bugs. The first one is one that we found today while working on the water tanks. It looks like a rather large ant and the picture did not come out very clear, because I had to zoom in with my camera too much. The second bug is one that my friend saw in front of her house. I have no idea what either of the bugs are called, but I think they are both interesting. So, if anyone knows what they are, leave a comment below!

Fruit
Our mango tree is loaded with fruit. The mangoes are still small, close to the size of an apple, but we are anxious to start eating them. There are going to be too many for Rick and I to eat alone, but we have friends that are very willing to come get some, so they will not go to waste.

The second picture is one of the guanabanas. I have posted pictures of this fruit before, but they did not make it through the wet season. I think these are doing great and the tree has 6 or 7 of them right now and they can grow to be 15 lbs. each. I also have friends that are willing to help me eat these too. :)

Wikipedia: The flavour of the fruit has been described as a combination of strawberry and pineapple, with sour citrus flavour notes contrasting with an underlying creamy texture reminiscent of coconut or banana. Soursop is widely promoted (sometimes as "graviola") as an alternative cancer treatment.

Bathtub
​There are 2 things that I really wanted to change to our house. 1 was a bathroom with a bathtub and the other was a dishwasher. Well....here is my new blow-up bathtub. It actually fits in our shower and I finally got to take a bath in our Panama house! I ordered this back in January, but it never arrived from the dealer off of Amazon. Amazon was amazing and immediately refunded my money. So this one was my second attempt and yay, we picked it up today. Best bath ever! Okay, maybe not the best, but the best one in I have had in Panama! Plus, it was cheaper than remodeling the bathroom and with our to-do list as long as it is, the bathroom remodel would not have happened this year if ever. So, I am happy to have found a solution that works that only required 1 leg cramp while using the manual air pump to blow it up. :)

So, if you ever ran across one of these blow up tubs and wondered who would buy such a thing....well, that person would be me and I don't care who laughs at me and my blow up tub. :)

​(It even has a drink holder!)

Water Tanks
To get to my goal of having a dishwasher, we have been working hard on re-doing the water system. We need to regulate the water pressure and we need to make sure we have water reserves in case a water line breaks, which happens frequently around here. Last year there was so much water from all of the rain that the city infrastructure could not keep up. The fittings kept blowing out at the main station from all of the water pressure. It also created breaks in parts of the water lines that eventually would lead to our house and would leave us without water or drizzles until the water company fixed it. Thankfully, it was not long before water was restored, but after this happened a few times a month, we realized that we needed the tanks and a water pump to maintain a regular flow of water.

Today, the tanks were finally ready to go to higher ground and get ready for the plumbing to be installed. We had repaired the broken plastic from when one of the tanks went for a ride down the canyon. The fix is not pretty, but it is functional and luckily we had a plastic welder to do the job. I am not sure if they sell plastic welders here and if they did, it might have been more expensive than buying a new tank.

Prep for Painting
With all of the free time that we have, we are also getting ready to paint the house. Now that the new roof is up and there are spots where it is grey stucco/cement showing near the roof line, we decided it was time to paint too. We have to get all of these outdoor projects done before the dry season is over, so there is not a ton of time to waste. We used the pressure washer and removed the old flaking paint. He also went around the house and put silicone on the cracks in the cement.  We have all of the supplies and a 5 gallon bucket of reddish paint that was in the clearance bin, so we are ready to go next week.

Breaktime
We do take a few breaks from work to have fun. I was lucky enough to go with a few friends to a local play, The Dixie Swim Club. And this weekend we have some activities that have nothing to do with work, so maybe we can get energized again to finish the plumbing and painting.

Coffee
I am in the process of sorting and bagging the freshly roasted batch of coffee. The house smelled like coffee all day and I realized just how lucky we are to be able to drink such fresh coffee all the time. It comes with a ton of work, but at least it is something we enjoy!

I guess this post is getting a little long, so I will save the rest for another time.