We went to the beach and had the pool to ourselves for most of the time. The weather was perfect, the ocean was warmer than the pool, but even the pool felt nice. Was nice to relax and not have any chores for a little bit!

This was our first time going to the Coffee and Flower Festival. Each section of flowers made some sort of design. It was very colorful! There were some rides, food vendors, other vendors....lots of sandal vendors!

I included a picture of the guy that was making shaved ice cups, he actually shaves some ice from a big block for each person. I just kept thinking how tired his right arm must be by the end of the day.

One difference between this fair and one in the States is that the fair here is really setup for people to come in the evenings. Even the children's rides did not start until after 2pm. A couple of people that went to the fair one evening did not get back to the hostel next to our house until close to 5am. A few of the nights, it was even hard to sleep with all of the noise from the fair. The bands or DJ music traveled for miles and I was glad that I did not live any closer to the town central than I already do.:)

​Boquete does not have a ton of parking in the city central and they estimated that 200,000+ people would attend. This led to traffic being backed up for miles as people were trying to find a place to park. At one point there was even a 3 hour traffic jam. We wanted to beat all of the traffic and go early, which worked out great, but that is how we found out that our child would not be able to do the rides and some of the other items were not available. So, we ate, had cotton candy, shaved ice, did silly pictures all over and put our child on the only operating semi-ride there was. It just happened to be a mechanical bull...haha....but they put it on super slow and he got to try it out. He even tried it twice!

The latest cool caterpillar:

There are 2 things that I miss here, eventually we will get around to getting them someday though. The first is a dishwasher and the second is a bathtub. The dishwasher is a huge project, because it requires us moving a gas line for the stove to make room for the dishwasher and then there is the drilling holes through cement to get water and electricity....bigger project than we have time for.

The bathtub....again, it will be a huge project. We have 2 large tiled walk-in showers, but it was just not designed for a bathtub.

Thankfully, my husband takes me out for dinner sometimes, to make up for his ridiculous ideas. Recently, we went to the Panamonte for dinner. Wow! The smoked pork chops had a pineapple sauce, and the ceviche had mango tossed in, Great dinner! We even had fancy imported water from a glass container. :)  I think my dinner was better than Rick's prawns, but they were both very good. This dinner was a gift from our neighbor and it was a restaurant we had never been to before, but I bet we will be back!

The clean-up work around the farm never seems to end. We started going through the coffee field and cleaning up the big broken limbs that have fallen from the shade trees and cutting up fallen banana trees, that kind of thing....when we find a little fort. We think it is where the pickers eat lunch, there is a little bench and it is under a shade tree. Our child is very excited at this discovery! It is sad that we have not yet explored the entire inside of the coffee field, who knows what else we will find!!!

With all of the projects we have to do during this dry season, we have successfully figured out how to have supplies delivered to our farm. With the tilt-bed truck that came, it meant no shoveling gravel and sand for me yet!!!!

I will end this post with a picture of a bug that we have not seen before and a picture of our backyard. My grandmother recently asked me if we can grow a lawn here. The our lawn is a grass often used in Florida and it is more like a carpet of grass that stays pretty low to the ground. We do have to mow once in awhile, but nothing like if we were living in the Northwest.

Last night was very stormy with loud wind and some rain thrown in. The wind was throwing everything that was not secured down all around and needless to say, we did not get tons of sleep. This morning was not much better. So, my story starts with my neighbor and his rock wall.

Our neighbor came by this morning and we talking about how not much was going to get done today due to the holiday and many shops being closed. After a nice discussion, he went off to work on his rock wall. I am not sure exactly what happened, but I think a rock fell and broke a water line. On his way down our hill to get supplies to fix the water line, he runs across a tree that just fell and broke the power line to our hill.

So, the messages start coming in from our other neighbor and a "fix-it" party is formed. First objective is to clear the road and remove the tree. Rick says it was just like any rescue mission. 6 workers, 3 of them want to be chiefs and a total of 7 different plans on how to remove the tree.

The tree was bleeding sticky white sap. Which by the way, after it was all over, my husband had to bathe in oil to remove it from his hair and body.

There was even an effort to save the orchids from the tree. One of the wives on the hill is going to attempt to replant them, or at least that is the plan.

With chainsaws, machetes, an axe and a winch, the tree has been removed from the road. :)

I left before they finished cutting up all of the wood, but it was a quite a few hours of work.

With so many houses that had similar problems, the power company is no longer answering the phone. Eventually, we will get on the list to have them come repair the line, but we expect it to be a few days until they make it up here. It will not be a quick fix. :(  Thankfully, we all have back-up generators. The bad news, we just learned that the gas stations in town are not able to pump gas, because they too are out of power. So, we will use the generator sparingly until they can start restoring power around town and we can get more gas.

​Happy Monday!!!

Katydids
Can you find the Katydid in our lawn? Katydids blend into the grass, but they are everywhere! Our cat and sometimes the dogs will be running around the yard chasing things, looking like they are crazy. It was not until recently that I had to go investigate what it was, because they were making me laugh so hard. 

Bugs that eat tree-limbs?
I see tree limbs on the ground and often will hear a limb fall down in the jungle. It turns out that there are insects that chew around the limb until it falls. I am not sure what they are called, but when I tried looking it up on Google, I found a picture of a bug that is found in Oklahoma, Twig Girdler, that does the same thing. The picture on the left is a limb from the farm. The picture on the right is the picture of the bug in Oklahoma. I think it is the same thing, just probably called something else here.

Caterpillars that would be great for fly-fishing
I see many fuzzy caterpillars here, but this was the first time that I thought about the time that I took classes to learn how to tie flies for fishing. And no, I do not fly fish, I just wanted to see if I could make the flies. :)

Rainbows and Dogs - Adding some cuteness here too
My dog keeps watching the horse next door eat the leaves off of the trees. I am convinced that he is now trying to eat the leaves to grow bigger like the horse. The dog is obsessed with the horse, he is both scared of it, but fascinated. 

The rainbows in the afternoon here are a common sight this time of year and it makes the afternoon scenery fun.

There are tons of other cool bugs here, like the neon blue and green caterpillar, but they will have to wait until I get more pictures. :)