Curacao-Part 3

Lots more pictures still...

DAY 8 Saturday: Saturday was a bit of a lazy morning. (Sidenote: I find that trips with boys require more time for sleeping, lol.) We headed back into town to try to do a bit of souvenir shopping and got lunch at El Gordo Grill again (town was quieter with no cruise ships in port). Nathan also managed to watch the end of the World Cup third place game and I found a number of murals...

Yup, the artwork was impressive (and this is just a small sample...some I didn't get pictures of because it was dark and some we didn't make it to but I've seen in photos so know we missed them).

After that, we headed to the north end of the island to Shete Boka national park, which we enjoyed right up until their closing time at 4:30. We stopped at three of the bokas...pocket bays with waves pounding against coral rock formations...

The pictures really don't do justice to the awe and beauty.

From there, we drove to Playa Jeremi...a nice little beach south of Grote Knip (where we went on Tuesday). It was basically empty and we enjoyed some time there while Nathan snorkeled, I beachcombed, Noah photographed, Asher flipped, and Micah meditated. 

At sunset, we continued on and stopped at the Bahia Beach Restaurant overlooking Playa Lagun for dinner.

That top left photo is just a beach we stopped at along the way (Playa Kalki or Playa Piscado maybe??). We didn't even walk down but I thought it was pretty. :) Next is a cat Micah found at Playa Jeremi...my cocktail at dinner...Playa Lagun...and Asher and Micah enjoying the Christmas decoration at dinner. 

Okay...almost done...

Curacao-Part 2

Continuing...

DAY 5 Wednesday: We woke to rain and wind and decided to rearrange our plans (which turned out to be not entirely necessary...though the forecast said rain some days, it never rained past about 9 in the morning but we didn't know that then). We headed back to Willemstad and to Plasa Bieu for lunch. It's a market/cafeteria style place with multiple vendors and is where the locals eat so had been heavily recommended. We ended up too overwhelmed there (couldn't choose, lol) so ventured back toward the area we'd been before and found El Gordo Grill which was fabulous (large portions, great food, long line of locals). Yum.

At this point we realized that Micah hadn't taken his medication so drove back to our villa to do that. By then, the distillery tours for the day were sold out. (There were three huge cruise ships docked in Willemstad today and you could see the difference!) So, we played some pinochle then went to a nearby mall we'd discovered and watched Violent Night at the theater. It wasn't a great movie by any means but it was still fun...interesting to watch a movie in English but with subtitles and appreciated the air conditioning, lol. 

After that, we headed back to town and found Bario Urban Food in Otrobanda (literally "the other side"...the more residential district of Willemstad on the other side of the bridge). From our seats, we could see one of the huge cruise ships docked in the bay (it had to have gone through the Queen Emma bridge). And, I'm still not positive what was on the top of my yummy blue drink but it was delicious. 

We then walked back across the bridge for some gelato before heading home. 

DAY 6 Thursday: Those of us who were legal to drink in Curacao (meaning everyone except Micah...who would have been able to still join us but opted not to) headed out in the morning. We first scouted where we needed to go Friday morning (which was useful, as it wasn't entirely clear) and then continued on to the Landhuis Chobolobo distillery to learn all about Curacao liquor. It wasn't a complex tour but we learned some interesting things...like the ingredients and process for making Curacao, how to tell authentic Curacao from imitation products, and some of the back story about this distillery itself. Our tour included tastings of some of their products and also one cocktail per person, and we all enjoyed our awesome selections while we chatted with a lovely family from Virginia in our tour group. 

We followed that with lunch at a nearby place then went back to the villa for some games and downtime. We walked down to the beach hoping to catch the sunset but there was cloud cover. :( We then tried one of the other restaurants at the beach--the Bayside Restaurant--and thoroughly enjoyed a local dish called karni stoba.

On our walk back to our villa, one of the numerous stray cats started following us. Micah befriended it and named her Michael Jackson and desperately wanted to let her in and feed her and bring her home with us...

She was surprisingly persistent and pushed on our sliding doors trying to get inside for awhile. The instructions for our AirBNB, though, very clearly stated *not* to feed the stray cats or let them inside, so we obeyed. 

DAY 7 Friday: Friday was our main planned experience in Curacao...a snorkeling catamaran tour with BlueFinn Charters. We made it to our launch site on time and boarded the lovely catamaran in somewhat choppy waters. At our first stop, the crew extended a line with buoys and we all spaced ourselves out along it. Then the nearby aquarium brought out a couple of their dolphins to do some tricks and swim alongside us multiple times! 

We were strongly instructed not to touch the dolphins but some of us got grazed by the dolphins once or twice...they were that close! Many, many thanks to the awesome lady in the green swimsuit from Kansas who was on the line just in front of Micah!! She had a case for her phone and managed to get some photos and videos that she generously shared with us. (Also, hooray for iPhones and airdropping! We'd tried a couple different methods of taking underwater pictures when we went to Belize and decided this time not to bother.) In that last photo, that's actually Micah and I getting passed by the dolphin!

From there, we went to another couple snorkeling spots (Tugboat Beach and Caracas Bay??) and also had a delicious lunch that they grilled right there on the catamaran. We enjoyed the sunshine (thankfully, the choppy waters and overcast skies cleared up after the dolphin stop), lazing on the catamaran, being entertained by the crew (particularly Jorge...who sneaked into that first photo with us and loved to dance), doing flips off the side of the boat (well, just Asher), chatting with others onboard, and sailing around to drop off some people at their resort and the rest of us back at the launch site...

It was a fabulous day! (Did I mention, too, that the crew ran an open bar the entire time as well? Yay!) 

We stopped at the grocery store on our way to our villa, Nathan walked down to the Blue Bay beach to snorkel a bit more on his own and we just did sandwiches for dinner since everyone was pretty wiped. :)

Curacao-Part 1

For Christmas this year, we opted for time together (especially since we know we have a limited number of winter breaks left with all three boys). We went to Curacao...because of a combination of Micah's desire for some place warm, my desire to try to get to a new to us continent (Curacao is just north of Venezuela so is part of South America), and our preference for not too crowded or blatantly touristy places. It was good. :)

Thankfully, we made our plans far enough in advance that we knew Micah's finals would be over (thankful that they were relatively early!), and both older boys were able to request the time off when they first started their jobs in the fall. We were able to go early enough in December to avoid the bulk of the holiday travel rush and cost. And now we've been home a couple days and are mostly caught up. Whew.

I know people are wanting to hear about it and see pictures. Working on it... :)

Um, this will take a bit. If you don't want to read all the details (which I will record here for the sake of having it recorded), feel free to just browse the photos. There are plenty. 

DAYS 1 & 2 Saturday & Sunday: We finished our packing and got out the door on time then drove to a parking lot near the airport and caught the shuttle to the terminal, breezed through security and camped out near our gate while finding lunch and watching some of a World Cup game.

At this point, interject an annoying travel story...we'd originally booked a flight from Denver to Miami, a hotel near the airport to stay the night in Miami, and then a flight from Miami to Curacao. American Airlines changed our flight to Miami to have a short (less than an hour) connection through Dallas. While we were waiting at the gate, American announced a delay to our flight due to weather in Dallas. The gate attendant was rather rude and unhelpful, telling us that the connecting flight out of Dallas would "probably" also be delayed but unable to give any satisfactory information and unwilling to help people rearrange connections. (She flat out told everyone that she wouldn't help with connections and not to ask her after basically insulting us for asking for clarification on her initial, unclear announcement.) Unwilling to risk it and at the prompting of American Airlines' email and text messages, we used their app (as instructed) to rebook our flight to a direct flight from Denver to Miami leaving just after midnight and still arriving in time for our connection from Miami to Curacao. We cancelled our hotel room and accepted that we'd just try to sleep some on the flight. Somehow, though, in rebooking our Denver to Miami leg, American lost our Miami to Curacao leg...which was no longer showing up in our reservation. So. We went to a different gate attendant who was much more helpful then the one at our gate and managed to get the Miami to Curacao portion added back in. But. The system wouldn't allow us to re-check in for that flight (which we'd already done prior to all the changes) or get boarding passes and told us we'd need to see someone in Miami. Fine.

So, we hung out at the Denver airport for the afternoon and evening, finding ourselves a quiet spot, learning a new game that we'd brought with us (Dutch Blitz...on account of the fact that Curacao was a Dutch colony), and enjoying the food offerings in the C terminal before returning to the A terminal for our flight. (First four pictures below)

We arrived safely in Miami and found the gate and some of us crashed for a bit more. (We arrived in the 6am hour and were due to leave around noon.) We were very unimpressed by the Miami airport's level of cleanliness and service (and definitely appreciate Denver's airport even more now) and ended up also having to move to another terminal altogether when our flight got changed to a different gate. In the meantime, I tried to find someone to check us in...had to wait for staff to show up and then got redirected a couple times. I ended up at the American "service" desk...waiting forever and then finally getting to the counter only to have the woman chastise me for using the app, ignore me when I said that's what American told me to do and when I explained that we'd also gone to an actual attendant as she insisted we should have done, not say a kind word at all (or apologize for chastising me wrongly), take forever, but finally hand me new boarding passes (without so much as a "have a good day" or any parting words).

So. We finally boarded our plane and made it to Curacao, picked up our rental car, and found our AirBNB. Yay!! We settled in then walked down to the beach (2 minutes) to get some dinner at one of the restaurants there before crashing for the night.  

DAY 3 Monday: We got a slow start Monday as people needed extra sleep. Spent the morning and afternoon exploring our place (an AirBNB villa at the Blue Bay resort area...a gated area with villas, hotels and a golf course...that came with access to the beach and a pool along with the area's three restaurants)...

...and then we found the nearby grocery store for supplies and had lunch in our villa before heading into the capital (Willemstad) to explore there a bit. We found the main tourist area, the Queen Emma pedestrian bridge (which opens on a pivot to allow boats through) and plenty of Christmas decorations...

We had dinner there before heading back to our villa. Nathan and Asher took the snorkel gear stocked at our villa down to the pool to test things out, we played more Dutch Blitz, and we called it a day.

DAY 4 Tuesday: We managed to get an earlier start and headed out around 8:30. We stopped along the 40 minute drive to find some additional snorkel gear to supplement what was available at our villa and continued on to Grote Knip beach...and were in the water by 10:15. :) 

We'd gotten to the beach early enough to stake out a claim to some shade at the far end of the beach. We set up our stuff and Noah mostly stayed with it, taking pictures and preferring to stay dry for the day. Nathan and Asher set off to snorkel around the area (Micah having decided that snorkeling was not for him). Micah and I just enjoyed the gorgeous beach and people watching (he also did some limited bouldering at one point). And Asher discovered a spot for some cliff jumping...and jumped twice. Nathan joined him once. 

We left there about 1 and drove just north to eat at the Blue View Restaurant, which had a lovely view of Playa Forti and the restaurant on the opposite cliff where you could cliff jump down to the beach. (Our lunch entertainment was watching some people jump and some people chicken out, lol.) Though we'd thought we'd stop at more beaches, we decided to not overdo it so headed back to our villa for showers and some of us venturing down to the beach bar to watch some of the World Cup game. Nathan and I made a quick trip to the grocery store and we had a low key dinner in at our villa...baking up some "Big Americans" frozen pizzas because the name just made us laugh. We learned that using the oven in our villa in the tropical climate was not ideal, lol. While our bedrooms were thankfully air conditioned, the rest of the living area and kitchen in our villa (and most villas from what we could tell) were not. The lovely open porches and ceiling fans helped but we ended up keeping things closed up on account of the many, many bites we were getting. (Pretty sure it was a mix of mosquitoes and noseeums. We knew it was rainy season but had been told that it didn't generally make a difference...but, unfortunately, this year was more rainy than normal so there were more bugs. Sigh. Apparently, Micah is delicious (his words). Poor kid counted 40 bites just on his left foot at one point.)

Okay, that's already a lot. Much more to come... 

Thankful Thursday

Went missing there for a couple weeks...sorry. We've just been busy. :) Lots to catch up on and be thankful for today...

1. That Asher likes "Hamilton." Asher and I painted more rocks just for fun after Thanksgiving. While we sat and painted, Asher chose "Hamilton" for us to watch while we painted. It had been quite awhile since we'd watched it, but I loved that Asher still knew most of the words and that he totally gets me...that I like to watch things I've already seen so that I can just listen in the background. :) (Yes, instead of listening to music, I generally watch shows. "Hamilton" happens to be both.)

2. That we have water pressure. Just before Thanksgiving, our neighbors' had a burst water pipe under their front yard. They'd realized it when their water pressure disappeared and got the city out to figure out the issue. Unfortunately, this isn't new in our neighborhood. Apparently some of the houses have less than ideal pipe running from the street to the house and they've been failing lately. It's problematic and very inconvenient. I'm thankful, though, that we didn't have to deal with that over Thanksgiving...that a couple years ago (when our neighbors across the street had the same issue) we all made sure we have the rider on our home insurance to cover this particular issue...and that the city told us that our pipe is probably not the sub-par pipe (when they had to come out to locate a valve in our front yard awhile ago). Fingers crossed!

3. That this was the first year I had to fill out the CSS profile form. So, I have a lot of experience with filling out the FAFSA for myself and for now all three boys. I know many have trouble with that but, so far, I haven't had any significant issues. This year, though, I also had to fill out the CSS profile form since one of the schools Micah applied to also requires it (in addition to the FAFSA) for financial aid. Oy. That CSS form is no joke, people. It's so annoying...much more detailed questions and an uber frustrating user interface that makes you start over every single time. Ugh. So thankful that's done for now. (If he ends up at that school, I think I have to do it every year. But who knows which college he'll end up at so that's not something to worry about today, lol.)

4. That dairy-free has become so much more common. I was doing some shopping recently and treated myself to a hot chai tea. I ordered mine with coconut milk and enjoyed it immensely. While I was enjoying it, I had to stop and be thankful. I can remember not long ago that I couldn't reliably get drinks with non-dairy milks so am thankful when I can.

5. That my dad was born. Last week my dad would have celebrated his 73rd birthday. I still miss him like crazy and wish he could be here to enjoy all his grandkids but am so thankful that he was born and that he had the 57 years he had. 

6. That Micah decided to experiment with a new recipe. Micah made steamed bao last weekend and they were delicious!

(This picture was before they went in the steamer baskets. Once they came out they were eaten so quickly that I didn't get any pictures, lol.)

7. That boot camp ladies are amazing. We tried a new to us distillery in Old Town earlier this week and had a terrific evening of catching up (it's hard to talk during boot camp while we're huffing and exercising, lol) and eating and drinking. Unfortunately, we forgot to take a picture until two had already left but here's three of us and the Old Town holiday lights.

So thankful for these women and the camaraderie we share!!

8. That we have most of our Christmas decorations up. Nathan and Asher hung our new outdoor lights just after Thanksgiving and earlier this week we all put up the indoor decorations. (We're going with our lights in the shape of a tree on the climbing wall again this year. Pictures later.) After the decorations were up, we watched the new Apple TV movie "Spirited" and thoroughly enjoyed it. Thankful for the time together!

9. That Micah finished fall semester earlier today. Yay! So proud of my boy and how self-sufficient he is. This entire experience with CEC and the boys taking college classes in high school has been so beneficial. Very thankful to know that at least academically he's prepared and utterly capable when he leaves home. 

10. That I'm mostly ready for Christmas. Yup, pretty proud of myself. My shopping is all done...some gifts have already been delivered...about half of what's left is even wrapped. Right now, I'm just waiting on a few packages that have been delayed (ordered weeks ago...grrr). Also, NOTE, I deliberately have not ordered Christmas cards and will be doing New Year's cards instead this year. I have reasons. :) 

So. That's some of what's been going on here. Hope you're all enjoying your December so far!!

Thanksgiving

Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving! Ours was pretty low-key, as my guys requested and prefer. While I miss the boisterous and busy family gatherings I experienced growing up, there's definitely something to be said for sitting around totally comfy and enjoying time with just your favorite people. :)

As we've done the past couple years, we tried to support local restaurants in our Thanksgiving feasting. Asher picked The Original Pancake House for brunch on Wednesday. I picked a yummy charcuterie platter from The Fox & The Crow for lunch on Thursday. Nathan wanted a more traditional meal for dinner Thursday so made mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts and cornbread to go with the turkey breast (we opted for the easy route, lol) and pumpkin pie and ice cream that we bought. Noah picked Waltzing Kangaroo Australian meat pies and sausage rolls for takeout dinner on Friday. And Micah picked Kujira Ramen for dinner on Saturday. Yeah...we spread out our feasting over a few days, lol. It was all delicious!

And, throughout it all, I did a really poor job of taking pictures. I'm sad about that but thankful to have been truly enjoying the time together. We watched shows and played games and did some shopping (both online and local) and hung outside Christmas lights (on Friday when it was near 60 degrees...before the snow on Saturday night, lol). Also, on Thursday, we spent some time painting rocks as part of some Christmas gifts. 

I wasn't going to post about that given the surprise of gifts, but ultimately decided to do so...so that I can tell you how entertaining it was, watching each boy stay pretty true to form and personality. Noah picked a minimalist theme and went with it. Asher, like me, found images and replicated them. Micah just dove in with absolutely no plan and each rock turned out completely different. And the rocks all came out awesome. :) 

And apparently we missed the finger painting stage with Micah (true fact...I have no recollection or pictures of Micah ever finger painting...we definitely did with the older two boys but Noah so disliked it I think we just never did it again, lol). So, Micah had fun realizing that he could paint with his fingers. And then he decided to make a handprint...which was great for the rock...and then, obviously, he slapped himself...

...and then he started painting himself even more. Yes. Micah generally just doesn't wear a shirt at home, so at least there wasn't a shirt to clean. (His work space was considerably more messy than his brothers' lol.) Sadly, I didn't get a picture at the end when he'd added quite a bit to the last picture above...chest, shoulder, abs. He couldn't get his right side as well with his left hand and implored a brother to help but didn't get any takers. Such entertainment. :) 

And that's how our Thanksgiving went. Very thankful for our life and these people. Thankful, too, that Thanksgiving is on a Thursday...the long weekend was much appreciated for getting things done on our to do lists as we're now heading into the holiday season. 

So, happy belated Thanksgiving to you all and here's to a productive and joyful December!