Ballet Class

The girls were blessed with the opportunity to learn ballet! They loved getting to dance (and dress up :)

Self Portraits

In preschool this week we learned Genesis 1:27 as our memory verse. Its says: "So God created man in His own image." To go along with our activity, we created self portraits. I was so impressed and proud of my little ones! Except they aren't so much 'little ones' any more, they're getting so big and grown up!

Project Food: Day hodge-podge

So a couple days I didn't manage to take pictures of all three meals, so here are four meals that we ate over the weekend.

Dinner: Rice with veggies and boiled chicken with Tajadas. Broccoli is a very rare addition to our menu. The kids don't love it (some things are universal) so they are probably quite content that it is not generally included in our meals, but I love the chance to have a little bit. Tajadas are also a traditional food down here. They are fried green plantains. Normally we eat a lot of plantains cooked in a variety of ways, we just happen to be almost out right now.

 

 

Breakfast: This was a breakfast of left overs the next day. Rice (with a couple of the remaining veggies just for my plate), tajadas and cheese (the same cheese we use to fry, but just fresh this time) With orange tang to drink.

 

 

Dinner: Pupusas! So pupusas aren't actually a Nicaraguan food. They are considered from El Salvador. They are corn tortillas with cheese baked inside of them. They form the tortilla dough in little pot like things, stuff them with cheese and then pat them flat. The brown parts coming out on the bottom and side are cheese that oozed out while it was cooking. Its served with a cabbage salad on top. (and some mango thrown in just because we had it!)

Sunday lunch: Sunday morning is always cereal, or at least most of the time. It's just easier! Especially because we're all busy getting ready at the same time for church, and we don't have any hired staff that comes that day. But this isn't your cereal of fruit loops, this is lunch. Lunch was rice and beans, left over pupusas, carne asado, (grilled beef) and left over cabbage salad from the night before. Mmmmm that's a lunch of champions there. This meal was even more special because as we were cooking we ran out of gas and the electricity went out a couple times, but in the end. . . SUCCESS! Sunday nights we eat dinner at church, so I didn't manage to get a picture of it either, maybe next time.

Talents

So my kids have some major skills. You might make some judgments about culture down here, but I'm pretty jealous :)

That's some real talent: balancing a book on your head while rocking in a chair and putting lip gloss on! haha

Now Jhoselin is the real pro. She can carry just about anything of any size, any shape, or any weight on top of her head. She just keeps stacking.

The real talent here is getting all of them to stop walking around with the books on their head, to turn the same direction, to maintain the balance , and to smile so I can take the picture. Impressive huh :)

Project Food: Day 9

Breakfast: SUNDAY- Sunday breakfast is almost always cereal (like say 98% of the time). It's easy! and there are a couple of reasons that is specifically helpful on Sunday:

1. Everyone is getting ready at the same time/everyone is eating at the same time. (During the week we eat more in shifts due to school starting at different times)

2. There is no 'hired' staff that comes on Sunday.

3. All big people are helping the little people get ready and therefore no one has a lot of extra time to cook something real.

4. It's not too messy if you spill.

5. There are essentially no dirty dishes (just the 20 bowls and 20 spoons ;) but really, no pots, no pans and no intense washing is needed on the bowls, just a soapy rinse!

6. It's a special treat. (Incentives always make a getting ready process run smoother)

So Breakfast: Nicaraguan version of Fruit Loops (that actually taste pretty much the same) (mine are dry but the kids eat them with milk)

Lunch: SUNDAY- This is again a somewhat typical Sunday lunch. . . Some days Yicza and Oscar will cook and then we have something good and Nicaragua, but on the days I'm in charge of getting lunch ready its usually either American or left overs! (Remember it needs to be quick and easy because no professional cook will be assisting and we get back from church around lunch time so there's not a whole lot of stalling time!)

Anyways, lunch: Hot dog, chips, and Strawberry Tang

 



 

Dinner: This is not a Sunday dinner. . . We always eat dinner at church, but this was another random evening dinner that I forgot to include, so I thought I would stick it in here!

Dinner: Fried tortillas (chips) with beans ground up (refried beans) and cabbage salad with mango sliced into it! With Grape Tang to drink!

 

The PARK

Friday there was no school, you know just one of those days. I couldn't tell you exactly why, but that's okay because we were totally able to take advantage of it! We went to the new park in Managua- Luis Alfonso Velasquez! It was AWESOME! Really with all caps! Who knew Managua had something so high quality and big! We left about 10 in the morning and my plan was to eat lunch there and be back like 3 in the afternoon but we ended up getting home closer to 5pm! Lunch was an extra bonus treat too, we got pizza from Pricemart (sooo good!) and brought it into the park.

I always assumed the park was just the corner section that I could see from the road as we passed, but as we entered I was incredibly impressed by the massive size. There were soccer fields and volleyball courts and basketball courts and probably 10 different playground areas some even age specific. The complex was surprisingly clean, there were a couple of different bathroom buildings that were clean and had running water, and there were a large number of security guards walking around. The only downfall was that it was HOT obviously, but otherwise the kids had a blast. There were even mango trees in the park that you could pick from and eat. There were little concession stands too selling all sorts of treats (it was really nice that there were no street vendors allowed inside so we didn't have to be bothered by people selling food or other things).

So in the end I would definitely call this adventure a success!

 

 

Birthday Celebration(s) Cont.

So when you're not sure what else you can do to celebrate birthdays. . . when you've eaten cake, you've eaten banana bread and you've had banana pudding. . . what other options should you try? Let me tell you- DONUTS!

I may actually like the ideas of donuts better than cake! Here are my reasons:

1. it already comes cut apart so no estimating sizes to make it stretch

2. when you are celebrating multiple birthdays each person gets their own individual 'cake'

3. The candles we have (big thick ones) fit perfectly in the middle hole of the donut :)

 

 

Happy birthday!!!!

Birthday Celebration(s)

So like I said, we've had quite a few birthdays, and its not really looking to slow down in the next week either!
Just mentioning us here we had:
Debonney May 9th (it was her quinceanera, and we are just now starting to get things all put together for her party)
Luviana May 18th
Ofelia May 18th
Alejandra May 23rd
Samari May 30th
Yorbany June 1st
Leo June 2nd
Ana Cristal June 5th
Frankie June 6th
Joely June 13

That's a lot of birthdays in a one month span!
Here is a photo summary of the ones that have been celebrated so far.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you have multiple birthdays in a short time, its nice to have a little variety in the 'special treat' so we celebrated Ofelia's and Luviana's together and they each got to blow out their own candle. Alejandra had a special banana bread invention (that actually turned out quite well) and Samari got Banana pudding! A treat we all love. We'll have to see if any other creative ideas come to mind as we go through the rest of the month.

Mother's Day!

Nicaragua knows how to celebrate Mother's Day much better than what we do in the US. I mean to think that we give an entire Sunday to the celebration of moms is great, but then when you compare it to the entire week long celebration that is put on here. . . it looks pathetic! Sorry mom, I love you!

So Mother's Day is May 30th. But last Sunday (the 26th) we celebrated in the church in Managua. The kids sang a cute little song, and then all of us "moms" got little clutches and the gift bag was almost as great of a present!

 

awesome, right! So Day 1 of Mother's Day, complete.

 

The next day, Monday, Day 2 of Mothers Day was the activity in the school. So well put together, I really enjoyed it! Plus the decorations were beautiful.

 

 

Don't you agree? Gorgeous! And the students made all those flowers and everything :) There were about 10 acts (like dances, or students singing, reciting poems etc. and some games) and I received numerous cards and gifts from all my girls.

 

Now we have to jump to Thursday, Day 3 of Mothers Day, and the ACTUAL Mother's Day. So because this day is a federal holiday. . . there's no school. You know that's just how important it is. So we slept in, and ate some tasty food, the power was out all afternoon because of the massive monsooning rains we had so that kept everyone inside and in the dark, but overall it was a pretty nice day.

 

Mother's Day 4: Devotions celebration! This was just our own personal celebration of Mothers day on Friday night. The kids sang us another song, (us being Yicza, Vanessa, Alejandra, Lily and I) and the big girls made us monogramed towels! How cool is that! I am one blessed mama.

 

 

AND, I got some b.e.a.u.t.i.f.u.l roses! :) they make my entire room smell wonderful.

 

 

So that sounds like quite a week of celebrations huh. . . but wait, it's not over yet! We still have one more church celebration!

 

Mother's Day, Day 5:

 

 

 That Sunday we celebrated again at our other church in Masatepe. The service included lots of fun tributes (songs, dramas etc.) to moms too.

Anyways, it was a great way to celebrate the week.  Maybe later I will write about the emotional side of it all, but as for now, I will leave you with just the fun of this post :)

 

Project Food: Day 8

Breakfast: a reprise of dinner from the night before, Chinese rice with a slice of bread :) And oatmeal to drink.

 

 

Lunch: This was a special birthday lunch last Saturday for Yorbany's birthday :) Rice and beans with ground beef patties (hamburgers), French fries and salad. We did lunch to celebrate her birthday because all the big kids were going to church in the evening and we weren't going to be able to all sit together otherwise.

 

Dinner: Kind of a mixture of leftovers with add-ins. Rice and beans with spaghetti and French fries with a maduro stuck in there too. We have been out of plantains the last few days so you haven't seen them much in the food but usually they are a bigger staple. When the plantains are ripe they are fried and become sweet and caramelized and when they are green they are fried in two ways to make tajadas and tostones. Tajadas are maybe my favorite- sliced thinly the plantains are fried and made into chips.