My Black Friday Shopping Spree.,,

Best Deal in Town = All Free!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  I took a long walk on the beach this morning to walk off some of last night's feast and scored this huge basket of shells.  I'm addicted to shelling!  Gotta go~ time to go back to the beach for dinner.  (Life is rough down here!)  Love to all.

Feliz Dia del Pavo!

I've neglected all of you eager readers the last two days because I've been extremely busy.  Yes, I do get busy in NicaLand.  We met some new friends vacationing here this week and their sons absolutely adore Ryder, so that's added on some playdates.  I'm also busy making lots and lots of jewelry (I've sold six pieces so far!) and trying to be ultra organized on the business side of it via Excel, Outlook and Facebook.  So there's all of my excuses! 

I wanted to wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving!  I already have some things to be thankful for today:  6 am surf session, a walk alone on the beach, and the yoga class I'm about to go to.  (Trying to burn those calories so I can truly feast on the turkey feast!)  The only thing that would make today better would be if all of my family and friends were here, but there probably wouldn't be enough homes here to put them in anyway!  Holiday Love to all! 

Here's a few things I'm thankful for:

Mommyhood & my Ry Ry

My loving hubby & good music!

My lil Rio

A beautiful sunset in Nicaragua!

Oh Crap!

So we decided to wait until today to start potty training little Rio.  That didn't stop him from taking off his diaper all weekend long and pooping on the floor TWICE!  Gotta love potty training toddlers~ about as much love as I have for the spare tire I was left with from having him!  Anyway, today hasn't been very successful:  one poop in his plastic pants and NADA on the toilet so far.  Every time he sneaks away, he comes back naked!  Oh well, say a little prayer for me that I don't go insane trying to get him trained. 

Our weekend ended up being great, though.  The short description would be:  new four-wheeler, freshly stocked fridge and pantry, beach and football!  The kids played with some local kids in the river at Playa Santana yesterday.  I love that even though they don't speak the same language, fun always equals fun when it comes to kids! 

Ry Ry & Rio on the riverbank

Rio in the rio

Stopping the yellow River...

"I don't want to wear diapers anymore!"

Speaking of banos, see my post yesterday, my two year old has taken his diaper off every night in his room for the past week.  One morning, my husband found him peeing on the floor of his room in the morning.  Today, I stepped right into a piss puddle upon entering his room.  I wonder if he's just marking his territory or do you think he's ready for potty training?!?  Last night I put p.j. bottoms on him and said, "Do not take your diaper off tonight!"  As you can see above, that didn't work out too well.  So now I ask my friends in the blogosphere, is he ready?  He will be exactly 2 1/2 on the 28th of this month.  I've never really known a boy who was trained this early, but I'm sure there are plenty out there.  He told me this morning, "Go potty like Ry Ry!".  Is this a common thing for a younger sibling to revolt against pampers because their big brother doesn't wear them?  Diapers are very inexpensive in Nicaragua (around $7 for a generic pack of 36.  Yes, the generic brand down here works great!).  Therefore, this mission will be pretty frustrating for not a lot of savings, but I'm sure worth it in the long run.  What do you think?  Should we begin operation potty on River to stop the yellow rio in his room???

Ahhh, the joys of an ecolodge...

Ever stayed at an ecolodge?  Me neither.  We stayed in one on Ometepe Island.  My first thoughts were ofcourse about how good the food would be.  (think really fresh fruits and veggies!)  Everything is grown right on their farm.  I'm definitely a re-user, but I'll have to admit I'm really bad at recycling.  They don't even know what that means in Nicaragua.  As soon as trash hits the dump here, they start to burn it.  (I know, pretty gross!)  When we stayed at Totoco Ecolodge a couple of weeks ago, I was pretty impressed with the work they are doing to reduce, reuse and recycle down here in Nicaragua.  (See my earlier post here:  http://mellow-dramatic2010.blogspot.com/2010/11/gotta-love-chillaxin.html)  The food was really good, too, just a little overpriced, but I guess organic always is!  Here's what took some getting used to:

But at least it came with this:

At least composting toilets don't overflow!  And you can put the toilet paper in the "toilet".  We can't flush any paper in the banos in our house because they will overflow.  (You get used to it.  Although, I can't seem to get my five year old to remember this!)  Ahhhh, the joys of third world living!

Introducing...

Sol Rojo Jewelry!  This passion of mine has been dormant and collecting dust under motherhood.  I love it so much that I'm surprised how long I've been able to suppress it.  But here goes:

How fun are these?!  The name for my line came from two of my favorite things:  the color red and the sun.  Just the other day we had a red sunset here in Nicaragua.  I will also use a lot of shell and earthly type materials, so I think it all fits.  Not sure if I'll sell a thing, but I know I'll have fun trying!

Gotta love chillaxin'...

After my Olympic training yesterday, I decided to pretty much take it easy today with a short walk to school and back with Ryder.  The interweb says I burned over 1,300 calories yesterday exercising!  Holy cow!  Not sure what got into me.  Oh yeah, I remember, all of that food!

Today's chill vibe has me reminiscing about my recent girls trip with my best friend of over 22 years.  We had a blast and one of the uber chill places we hung our sombreros was Ometepe.  It's an island in Lake Nicaragua (the largest in the world on a lake) formed by two volcanoes.  We were coming from Granada, so we had to take about an hour long cab ride to San Jorge and then hop on a ferry that takes about an hour.  Once there, we took another taxi for about an hour high up on the Maderas volcano.  Here:  http://totoco.com.ni/   So worth all the transporting!  This island had Steph & I remembering our days on Maui, as it looks very similar in many ways.  Like here:

Oh, and a little bit of this:

Top it all off with THIS and you feel like you're in paradise no matter where you are in the world:

There's me trying to suck in the chicken fried belly!

Attacking the chicken fried belly

This little kindergartner lost his 1st 2 teeth last week!

So today started off amazing with a little surf sesh with a friend.  The water was the perfect temp and I caught several little (okay, barely visible) waves.  I didn't lose too much skill in my two month hiatus (probably because I didn't have much to start!) and was so glad to start the day this way.  I say start the day because it was 6:30am, but sooooo worth it!  I then got home in time to pack Ryder's lunch for school.  Today was the first official day of Kindergarten for him.  Chris & I walked him down and then proceeded to go on a 4 mile hike/run.  I leave for yoga in 20 minutes, so I would say today was a good attack on the old chicken fried belly I developed while traveling around the East Coast!  Most people who know me would say, "But you're so skinny!"  Well, it's genes my friends and nothing more because I am a pig when it comes to food.  Luckily, they don't have all the fried, processed deliciousness down here like we have in the states.  If you want fried chicken, you actually have to fry it yourself!  Imagine that!  I wonder how many calories you burn while frying chicken?!!! 

I'm Baaaackkkk!!!

I have so many fun stories to tell!  From escaping the flooding in Department of Rivas, Nicaragua to Hilton Head, DC, Charleston, the Bahamas, a girl's trip through parts of Nica and back, I have soooo many things to share.  Being that it's the weekend, I'll just say hello for now from Nicaragua and share more tales very soon.  I had an awesome time in the States, but very happy to be back in this most amazingly beautiful country that is now out of its rainy season.  Until next time, I'll leave you  with a photo...

My makeshift sun shade