Arrived!

Here we are on our 2nd full day in Boquete. The travel from FL was uneventful but tiring - cassidy fell asleep on the taxi ride to our hotel in Alujela CR. I am on a short break from spanish class so wont write much and this keyboard stinks. Spent the night in CR then took the morning flight to David Panama - HOT!! Big bus shuttle took us to Boquete (Cass immediately fell asleep) arrived midday. The temp here is great - there is usually a cool breeze or light mist. It is encircled by mountains, fruit trees everywhere. We are living in a litle cabana with an upstairs sleeping loft (spiral staircase) and downstairs bedroom. Very light and clean with a nice small yard. It is a 30 min walk down into town or taxi or bus ride. I have taken 2 days of spanish and the kids start one hour a day today! Town is loud but nice, glad we are living up the hill though it will be a bit of a pain. Gardens everywhere that Cass loves. I will try to post photos soon. Kids are being great travelers despite all the upheaval. >love to all!

MAP

We will be staying in Boquete and Isla Colon in Bocas del Toro - all at the west end of Panama. Check it out on this map!

Headed South

Well this is it folks! Dave and the kids headed to Tampa FL yesterday for some extra time with Susannah, Brad, Allison and Timmer and grandpa Bill. I needed to put in one more week of work so Im going to miss out on Busch Gardens, the zoo, beach etc :(. Poor me!
I arrive in Florida Friday, we head to Miami Saturday and Sunday morning we're on a plane to San Jose Costa Rica. We spend one night there and then fly on Monday to David Panama. From there we head up to Boquete in the Chiriqui Highlands for 4 weeks of spanish school. We have rented a small apartment right in town and all four of us will take classes in the morning and then have the afternoons free to explore. There is an internet cafe downstairs from our school so I imagine we will be online several times a day. We will be anxious to hear from folks while we are traveling and the kids in particular would love emails from friends if parents are able to get there kids to dicate a few messages!
Dec 17th we head to the islands to meet up with Dave's dad for Christmas. We have rented a house on Bocas del Toro right on the beach and Toby has high hopes of learning to surf from his grandpa!! The day after Christmas we head to Costa Rica overland through Puerta Viejo and eventually end up in Monteverde for the month of January. We are renting a small house there and volunteering with the Cloud Forest School (http://www.cloudforestschool.org/ ), a bi-lingual preK-12 environmental education school. After Monteverde we stop through Florida again for 5 days before heading to Chile and Argentina on Feb 7th and finally return to the states June 2, spend a few more weeks in New England then drive back to Colorado by July 1. So that is the overview of our next whirlwind 7 months. Wish us luck!! We will miss you all!!

Contacting us: Email is going to be the best way to reach us the whole time. Mail to Panama supposedly takes forever so I wont bother giving you an address there. We can get mail c/o the Cloud Forest School in Monteverde and it should take only 10-15 days (dont send boxes, only envelope packages and letters). That address is: c/o Andrea Paltzer, Program Coordinator Centro de Educacion Creativa Apartado 23-5655 Monteverde, Puntarenas, COSTA RICA

Halloween in VT

After a month of decorating Meme's house for trick or treaters (to fully understand the irony of this you need to try to find E. Barnard on a map - it is in the middle of NOWHERE!) Toby and Cassidy were VERY ready for Halloween. Thanks to my aunt Gale's amazing forsight both kids have had costumes since August. Toby was a blue M&M and Cassidy a cheetah. Since the Village of E. Barnyard (as the kids call it) only has 9 kids (including ours) and the houses are few and far between we decided to head to the realtive metropolis of Woodstock with their friend Hannah for the big candy haul. Woodstock focuses all of its trick or treating energy on one street which is closed off to traffic. The town Rec Dept. buys candy for the residents to give out and they really go all out decorating for the onslaught of kids. I have never seen more creatively carved pumpkins in one place (did you know you can hang pumpkins in string hammocks from your trees for a great effect?!) and skeletons, spider webs, ghosts, graveyard - they take this holiday seriously!! Supposedly the headless horseman comes out later in the evening but we missed him.
The extra special treat for us all for Halloween was that Heather L (Cassidy's godmother) was able to join us for the night as a side visit on a recruiting trip for CRMS. She was very impressed by the quintessential vermontness of the whole scene and we all had a blast. No one even threw up from all the candy they collected!!
(PHOTOS TO FOLLOW)

October Visitors Park 3-Grad School Friends

The second to last week in October was Missoula week for us. We got to see 3 different sets of friends from our time at graduate school in Missoula. Meg and Sidney were visiting the lower 48 from their home in Alaska, Kathryn and Carl were visiting from Idaho and Katy who lives in Burlington VT! Carl had just gotten back from fly-fishing guiding in Mongolia (for trout like fish that are as big as Cassidy) and they were visiting Kathryn's mom in Cornwall VT. Kathryn and Dave actually went to 5th grade together in Woodstock and realized their shared history when we met up thru the EVST program in Msla! Meg and Sidney spent a nice sunny day with us hiking around the woods near Penny's house trying to find Olivers Cave (unsuccessfully) and then we all met up with Katy (Toby's godmother) and her awesome fiance John (congrats guys!!!) to see a great bluegrass show in Montpelier. Katy and John spent the next day with us which unfortunately was pouring rain! Of course, all of our visitors got to either press cider or eat a heavily apple focused meal :) We feel so fortunate to have such great friends from our MT years that we stay in touch with!!

October Visitors Part 2 - Bowdoin Reunion

Our great friends from Bowdoin College, Pam and Eric Loeb and Matt and Jen Samuelson and their 2 and 3 kids respectively all gathered in E. Barnard Oct 20th weekend for a mini-reunion of sorts. Toby and Eli (9) were outnumbered by girls pretty heavily but they weathered the girl drama very well by burying their heads in legos and periodically coming up to run around outside. It was our first chilly weekend of the fall so the Baltimore (Loeb) contingent looked a bit cold but we all had a blast. We picked apples and made cider (of course!) and did a short hike on the Appalachian Trail and otherwise hung out at our friends the Woodwards house just over the hill who so generously lent their house for the weekend. It is so fabulous to see the kids of our good friends becoming good friends themselves. We got to see the Samuelson family (Matt, Jen, Emily (6), Hannah (4) and Paige (2)) again last weekend at their house in Manchester and the kids had a blast. We think Cassidy is ready to secede from our family and join theirs – they have the girl thing down perfect. Cassidy came out of the girls rooms and said in a dreamy voice “those girls have some really PINK rooms!”. I think she probably wore 10 different princess gown, ballerina, fairy combinations in an 8 hour visit! Toby and Emily had a great time and he introduced a new level of testosterone in the house. We taught Matt how to do the mentos and diet coke experiment in preparation for Emily’s birthday party with 9 girls and 2 boys!! Good clean (I mean messy) fun!

October Visitors Part 1 - COUSINS!

October was our month of visitors – perfect because we were all really starting to miss our Colorado friends. (I will break this up into several posts to get the photos to work)

Dave’s sister Susannah and her kids Allison (4) and Timmer (2) (Martz) came for the first week of October from Florida. We were a bit worried about that many kids in Penny’s small house particularly because the girls (9 weeks apart) had a serious love hate thing going last year when they were three and Toby struggled with his boy cousin in his toddler years but turns our all our worries were for naught. The kids got along amazingly! Cassidy and Allison were inseparable from the start and were so happy hanging out with each other. They were even roomies for a few nights. Timmer absolutely adored his big boy cousin and his uncle Dave and Toby put up very well with being followed around by an admirer. He learned to tell Timmer that he wasn’t ready to talk yet in the morning (since he normally wakes up 2 hours after T and T would be pretty wound up by the time he came downstairs for breakfast). Then Timmer learned to turn that language around on us when HE woke up from his nap and would say “I not ready for talkin’, I gouchy (=grouchy)”. We had two visits with the Middlebury cousins while the Florida crew was here which was fun. Unfortunately I had to work that week so Suz and Dave did major kid duty and Suz in particular had the littles for a lot of the time. Toby and Dave had boys night out and saw the opening of the new Chris Sharma climbing movie in Hanover – Toby loved it!