It's Five O'clock Somewhere . . .

For all of you avid readers out there, I just wanted to let you know that we'll be on vacation - 'on holiday' as all of our British/Irish friends say- until the end of the month, so there will be no posts until then. We are headed to Costa Rica, and I promise plenty of pics and good times to relate! Ciao!

Feeding the Addiction

Our 5th Anniversary is August 16th, so several weeks ago I asked Seth what he wanted: a surf board - of course. After discussing the dimensions, color, style, etc. I didn't mention it again. The board had to be ordered and special made, so Seth assumed I would have to get him in on the deal. Well, me being the sneaky girl that I am, I worked with another guy on site; he ordered it and made arrangements to pick it up. I gave him a key to our place and he put it in our living room so when Seth came home last night.

Seth was quite excited to say the least. He 'inspected' it for about an hour, even eating dinner standing over it. He's so cute.

Anyway, he's proud of it and I'm proud that I pulled it off so here are some pictures . . .

The Gazebo That Got Away

We had some friends who wanted to get rid of their gazebo, and since we have a huge rooftop terrace, we decided to buy it from them.  Their house is only about 15 minutes from ours, but we had to go through a huge ordeal to get it considering we have no vehicle, and we live in the middle of nowhere, (It really is hard to express just how literal I am being when I say that.) but we eventually got it over to our place.  

We also borrowed a truck and went to a close town, Mala, to buy some plants to make our very own 'jungle'.  We bought so many plants, we had to take the plants home then go back and buy pots for them to go in because it wouldn't all fit in the truck.  The large pots are made of concrete, are super heave, and are no fun carrying up 2 flights of stairs to the roof; then I had to pot them all.  All of this takes a couple of minutes to type, 30 seconds to read and 3 WEEKS to do!

Anyway, we finally have all the materials we need to make our own little rooftop getaway, so we spend Saturday afternoon putting together the gazebo, without directions of course, which is a test of true love.  Then we spend Sunday finishing off planting the plants and placing them around the terrace so that it's nice and cozy.  When we finished, it was beautiful.  We faced the gazebo so that when we sat in it we could see the ocean, but it was secluded enough that we felt like we had our own little oasis.  We thoroughly enjoyed it on Sunday evening.  I had bought some candles, so it was nice and romantic with the waves crashing in the background.  

So we get up and go to work on Monday morning, and the guy who is in charge of all the offsite housing, Tony, comes up to us first thing and says, "I hear you guys put a gazebo on your terrace this weekend and that it's really nice."  We say, "Yeah, it's fantastic."  He says, "That's nice.  You have to take it down.  It's against community rules."  I'll end the dialogue there because what comes next isn't too nice.  Let's just say that Tony and I aren't the best of friends anymore.  Kidding, but needless to say I was not a happy little camper.  

Since we don't get home until well after dark during the week, we decided that it would have to wait until Saturday to be taken down again.  (and hopefully we get at least one week to enjoy it)  Well, on Wednesday, apparently there was a formal complaint sent to the corporation who owns our complex (in Colombia) about our gazebo!  I guess when you're good, you're good.  Anyway, we took it down and put a table there instead, but I took some pictures, so that we'd remember the week that we had our own little oasis in the middle of the desert.

And if anybody is looking for a gazebo . . .   

Coming Soon!

Since I know that now that I've posted pictures and a story about my terrace, many will have the overwhelming desire to see pictures of our place.  I have a few more things I'd like to do, like hang some artwork, then I'll post before and after pics of when we moved in almost a year ago (crazy!) and now.  So check back later!

My New Bikini

So I thought I’d start off with an amusing story.

As most of you know, Seth is quickly becoming a surf-aholic. Having last week off hasn’t helped things, but that’s another story. Anyway, being the loving wife that I am, I noticed that he needed wax for his board and decided to go to the store and buy some for him. So I stopped by the Rip Curl store (which is a popular surf brand for all of my land locked friends) and asked for wax (in Spanish I might add ~ it is coming along slowly but surely). The guy told me that they didn’t have any, but that all the bikinis were 50% off. Now just to clarify I was standing next to the rack of bikinis; the guy didn’t say that just because he wanted to see me in a bikini or maybe he did . . . I’m not sure at this point.

Since they were on sale, I definitely needed a new one, so I looked through and found a few that I was interested in and asked a different sales guy to let me into the dressing room. He let me in, shut the door behind me; I hear the door click and, I start to try them on. Now as the ladies know, one must keep their underwear on when trying on bikinis, luckily for me.

In general, Latin American bathing suits are tiny (which brings to mind how their culture views and treats women, but that’s for another day as well); the first bathing suit I tried on was true Latin American style and not going to happen, so I take off the top, put it back on the hanger (because I’m tidy like that) then bend over to take off the bottoms, in the process of bending over, my butt hits the door and the door swings wide open.

So I’m standing there in nothing but my underwear, and as I turn around to try to catch the door, I look up and see the first sales guy standing right there, but as fate would have it, he happened to be looking down. I was so relieved, until he looked up as I was trying to get the door closed. I saw him look up, so I’m assuming he saw me, but you never know, and one can hope.

After I got the door closed, horrified and laughing hysterically, I lock the door (!) then continue trying on bikinis, at the same time I’m trying to figure out how best to handle the situation. I also notice that it got ridiculously hot all of a sudden. So I’m thinking, Should I pretend it didn’t happen? Should I try to make a funny joke? Should I just throw my clothes back on and run out of the store? I could do that, but I found a bathing suit that I like, and IT’S ON SALE!

I decide to play it cool and see what happens. Maybe he didn’t see me after all . . .

I come out of the dressing room, and he’s no where in sight, (insert major sigh of relief here) so I get brave and start looking around. What else could be on sale? As I’m looking at some purses, my man shows up to assist, of course. He doesn’t seem uncomfortable, like he just saw me naked, so I’m thinking that he didn’t see anything.

But then he starts asking me lots of questions like where are you from, where do you live, why are you in Peru, how much longer are you going to be here, at that point, I cut him off before he could ask the American Flasher out on a date. I paid for my half- price bikini and got my (covered) tush out of that store.

So that’s how I got my new bikini; when we go on vacation in a couple of weeks, I’ll make sure I get a picture of it, and you can let me know if it was worth showing that much skin to get it!

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The Beginning

Some people think that mine and Seth's life might be interesting to read about and keep up with, so I've decided to join the new century and start a blog. I will try to keep it as current as possible, there are no guarentees in life though. Let anyone who you think might be interested as well, and I'll keep you posted!