Kids!

  Action shot
  Awwww...
  3yo Daniel plays with Egan whenever we eat at Glenda's.
  Anouk from Germany stayed next door for us for a few days.

Kids!

  Lupita!
  Egan supervises Brittany and Whitley's sandcastle contest.
  Whitley and Brittany built Egan a sand chair!
  Some kids from the caye came over and entertained Egan for hours.

Belizeans love children

One of my favorite things about Belize is how much they love children and babies. A normal happening: When we are out at restaurants, Egan often can't sit still and will keep running into the kitchen. The staff will pick him up and take him around and play with him! Feed him ice, introduce him around, give him oranges, treats...

One night we were eating dinner at Bamboo Grill and Egan was just not into it. The waitress getting off duty took him off on a golf cart ride to play with her little girl. Then she brought him back and sung him almost to sleep in a hammock. Imagine if a waitress in the States whisked your baby off while you were eating! Hello Amber Alert!

Even the kids like to play with the little ones. The older children don't run off and try to ditch the younger ones, they take them along and are so darn sweet with them. Egan has regular playmates from 3 year olds to 12 year olds. They come over and build him sandcastles or play ball. So cool!

People everywhere know Egan---many of whom WE don't even know. We will be walking to the store or someplace and will here "Hello Egan!"

The culture here is just extremely family oriented and baby-friendly. We feel lucky to be around it.

more Feb. 14th

Valentine's Day

  Egan the Rock Star posing with his valentine. Yes, I mean the heavy equipment.
  Sara and her neighbor friend Cindy in their new dresses.
  Tommy and Egan at dinner. Yay Rose's Grill! Yay Tommy's new You Better Belize It shirt!
  Egan and his new friend Caroline.

Our last day in Placencia

Egan in Placencia

  Egan in Papa's swim cap.
  Egan as a hot tamale nun.
  Egan in Papa's flips.
  Egan and Mama on the beach.

Placencia continued

  Ahhhh....dinner at Da Tatch.
  What is Egan's expression?
  Placencia has deep sand comprised of quartz crystals.
  Breakfast at Cozy Corner under a palm tree. All the palm trees on the peninsula are young because the hurricane in 2002 took out all the amazing and beautiful super tall palms. And the mango trees as well...

We're in Placencia!

  Tommy took this from our little plane (Tropic Air). Placencia is on a peninsula and boasts the best beach in Belize. No surf, just miles and miles of deep sandy beach.
  Swanky Miramar Apartments where we are livin' it up!
  view to the left off our balcony.
  Egan walking down the path next to our digs.

Passport Stamping

Every 30 days we have to get our passports stamped and pay $25US to immigration. We heard from a friend that we could just pop over to nearby San Pedro on Ambergris Caye to take care of it with little wait. We decided to stay the night and check out the island when we went in January.

San Pedro is much bigger and much busier than Caye Caulker. The roads are paved, there is traffic (mostly golf carts but they move FAST) and the island seems to attract a different type of tourist. More all-inclusive resort type places here. The beach seems to be a bit nicer here because they clean it every day. Also nice are the fresh veggies and other grocery items that are difficult to get on Caye Caulker.

San Pedro, Ambergris Caye January 6th

  Alleyway leading to Mayan Princess, where we stayed the night.
  Kids playing with Egan. This happens all the time!
  San Pedro Front Street
  Egan in our rented golf cart.

Catching up

Due to major slacking on the blog, I have come up with a plan to catch up these last couple of weeks. I'll do a real-time post every day, as well as a post I meant to do when it actually happened.

Today we are feeling annoyed with our housing. We have a rat in the house. Possibly ratS. We have seen her and heard her and she is too smart for our trap. We set up a live trap and were told to give any caught rats to our neighbor, who feeds them to the iguanas. Ehhhhh! Tommy doesnt' know this, but I am all about taking the rat to an uninhabited part of the island and letting it go. The rats apparently drop down onto the roof from the coconut trees and crawl in the open space of the eaves.

On top of the rat situation, our hot showers are gone again. And we hate our kitchen faucet.

However....we live on the beach and aren't working. Things could be worse.

Jan 3, 2010

  Back on Caye Caulker, Egan enjoys his morning "coffee" and bakery treat.
 
 
 

Cayo continued (New Year's weekend)

  We spent New Year's Day in Santa Elena over at Tony and Lourdes' house. Such welcoming people! Such hospitality! We brought Darren and Amanda (who Tommy met in Tikal) with us and had much fun.

  Here is the view from their front door.

  Tommy with Tony and his son and their across-the-street neighbor.

  Here are Amanda and Sara at Rosie's house (relative of Lourdes) where we all crashed for the night.