Egan about 3 hours after Pica Pica incident.
  Tommy preparing the fire for the fish.
  Fish wrapped in banana leaves taken from the banana tree in our yard.
  Our super fancy grill. Also our paper-trash burner.

Pica Pica

Yesterday Egan and I were wading in the water on the beach not far from our house. Egan decided to take a swim and found himself a deeper little pool to submerge in. All of a sudden he was grabbing his crotch with a pained look on his face and not quite screaming. I pulled his suit off and saw there was a blade of sea grass, so I thought maybe he was just weirded out by the feeling of the grass in there. I removed it and pulled his shorts back up. 30 seconds later he was doing the same thing but more urgent this time so I caught a clue, took his shorts off, rinsed the area off and ran to the clinic, which was a block away.

I realized he had probably been stung by Pica Pica ("peek-a, peek-a") those invisible jellyfish-like things that locals talk about, as he was already getting raised mosquito-bite-sized bumps on his (way) inner thigh/bottom/very important parts. Poor buddy! He was uncomfortable but quite impressively stoic and the doctor said that she had a much older boy in this week with the same injury and he was making a huge fuss. Brave Egan! Anyhow, she just swiped it with alcohol and put some hydrocortisone cream on it (and gave us the whole new tube at no cost). The visit was also free of charge, but I'll stop back by and give them a donation.

The best part: We were in the water. Egan got hurt. I picked him up and 5 minutes (literally!) a doctor was examining him. Can't beat that!

Here is some Pica Pica info: http://dermnetnz.org/arthropods/sea-bathers.html and http://ambergriscaye.com/pages/town/picapica.html

Update: as soon as we put the cream on it, he forgot all about the sting. This morning it was barely visible and he seemed unaware of it. After reading up on it, I think the trick was that it was treated so quickly.

Tommy caught dinner!

  Here is Tommy with the biggest one of the day's catch. He caught this standing on the pier with just a fishing line on a spool. And with Egan as a good luck charm! He always catches the big ones when he brings Egan along...
  Here is Egan with the bigun.
  The two smaller ones he brought home.

Not so stormy

So it turns out that had we never left our little wooden house, we wouldn't have known that Tropical Storm Matthew had any effect on Caye Caulker at all. It didn't rain and all we could see at our home was the wind in the trees...but not such wind as to make us go inside to get out of it. It was more the kind of wind to get us to bring out the camera. Fun wind! The only damage we are aware of was from the high water tossing around loose boards on piers and pushing rocks and sea grass up onto the beach and peoples' property. Those with beachfront property had a day or two of cleanup.

If it ever got up to 50+ mph, we didn't notice.

Big Water

  We went out walking and here is a dock I was taking a picture of because the water was up so high. So I wasn't expecting what happened literally 10 seconds later...
  Whoa!
  Here is the dock at Morgan's Inn on a peaceful, normal morning.
  Here it is today! Look at what happened to the planks.

This morning around 10...

  Whoa! wasn't expecting that...
  this is normally a beach for walking.
  stormy pretty
  yay puddles!

Some recent pics of the family

  Egan and Jesse on our street.
  Mama and baby
  Zac came to visit on a weekend special September 11th. Here he is at sunset at Iguana Reef Inn. A huge ray just swam by.
  Papa, Mama, Baby aka Tommy, Sara, Egan

Stormy storm storm

On Thursday night (9/23) we were hearing that a hurricane the likes of the super devastating Keith was headed directly for us. We decided we'd go inland and sent lodging inquiries out to several places in Cayo, woke up Friday morning and started making plans to get out off the island sooner rather than later. Within a couple of hours we saw that the path had changed and the hurricane had been downgraded to a tropical storm. Now here we are a day later and we are not technically in the path of Matthew but we are getting the winds and soon it will be pretty darn loud and scary and rainy. But not dangerous. Southern Belize and Honduras, not so lucky. But it is not a hurricane....yay! So we have learned that there is a lot of excitement around this stuff and that you kinda just gotta chill and make back-up plans and wait and see.

I'll update later and let you know how "chill" I feel after the 50+mph winds.

Tommy on his birthday

  Good morning!
  Making Pina Coladas
  At Lennie and Bill's pool!
  Egan loves this. Again Papa! Again!

Happy Birthday Tommy!

We're back! Okay, we've been here the whole time but haven't been blogging because my computer went blah on me like 2 days after my previous post in June. We finally received a new motherboard, Tommy put it together and now I'm back in business.

Today is Tommy's birthday! The celebration so far has included homemade (by me!) fluffy pancakes, signing documents in front of a Justice of the Peace (at his house 4 doors down from us) and doing laundry and hanging it on the line. Pina Coladas soon to be mixed.

Egan and I figured out a way to get the land crabs to come out of their holes.....poke a delicious piece of grass near the edge. Fun!

Documents? Oh, that. Something big is afoot. Something good. I'll tell you soon...