weekend getaway to the mountains!

Since this coming Monday is my first day of school and this week has been extremely hectic due to all my responsibilities as High School English Coordinator (eek!), we took advantage of a free weekend last weekend to go spend the night in the mountains in this cute little town that we actually went to spend a day in over vacation week (the pictures from the last post are from there too). We stayed at a real cute cabin tucked away among tons of flowers and trees and had the best time just drinking coffee picked and roasted right there in that town, eating good food, and enjoying the cool air and flowers. here are a ton of pictures of the flowers around our cabin and other sights in town, but to start off, here is this week's belly shot! our baby girl is growing every week!

our cabin:

coffee beans:

breakfast on the porch of our cabin:

dinner:

coffee beans being roasted:

IT'S A.....

GIRL!!!

We are soooooo excited to finally know that our little baby is a girl! we have all been convinced the whole time that it was a boy, and we were happy with that, but know that i know it's a girl, i can tell that deep down i really wanted a girl!! we had lots of obstacles to overcome to finally get the ultrasound today (including having to find another place to have it done because the woman i had an appointment with was on vacation...go figure! and also having to go to 5 different atm machines to find one that worked) She weighs exactly one pound right now, and everything looks great!

We tried to keep ourselves busy this week to make it go faster, we were so anxious about the ultrasound! We had several fun adventures, and several days just completely relaxing and watching our new obsession, Prison Break! Someone loaned us the first season, which we devoured this week. It's definitely a show that is best to watch from the very beginning, and on DVD so you don't have to wait a week to find out what happens next!

We spent one day up in the mountains with friends, and yesterday several of us went out to the Hippy Hideout at the lake. We also went to the Sheraton hotel one day just to hang out by their cool pool all day, and had a fun picnic with Lulu (David and Lucy also!). Here are some pictures from the week:

pictures from the mountain trip:

i'm reallly enjoying my chocolate mint frappacino here...the most caffeine ive allowed myself to have in the past 5 months, but totally worth it!

Picnic:

And now, lake pictures:

Lulu is getting to know the puppy Lulu sharing her cookie with the puppy (which Lulu continued to eat later!)
Can you find Elvis??

So, we took a boat ride all the way across the lake (which is about 6 miles) in a little bitty boat, and the skies were blue and beautiful. however, on the way back, as soon as we reached the middle of the lake, we realized we were the only boat on the whole lake, and we could see the thunderstorm slowly overcoming the lake! we were soon tossed from side to side, and completely soaked to the bone by the waves and rain. we were laughing so hard and were so scared (i just kept thinking about the fact that dad has been struck by lightning twice and it could run in the family), we didn't get pictures of the mayhem out in the middle of the lake. but can you believe we took this picture literally 5 minutes before the storm starting, while we were already heading back to the other side of the lake??

here, is everyone is starting to get worried about the clouds, the lightning in the distance, and the fact we are in a tiny boat with metal rods sticking up...

We made it across safely however! Now, back to the real world on monday after 2 weeks of vacation!

cravings

So, you may remember an earlier post about our new love for sushi, thanks to our friends Cristina and Charlie for introducing us to it! Turns out, the week they first took us, and we fell in love with it, was also the week I got pregnant, and really it's not such a good idea to eat raw fish while pregnant, nor have your food prepared in a place where they do work with raw fish. So, we had put our sushi cravings on hold until recently, when Marty and Sara sent us a package of all the stuff so we can make our own sushi at home, without raw fish anywhere near!

So this week we got out our sushi book, and gave it a try. As we were preparing it, I got a real pregnancy craving for this crab dip that Tyler used to make, and we already had most of the ingredients, since we were going to use cream cheese and crab in our sushi. Luckily for my cravings, we only live one block from the grocery store, so I sent Elvis out to get the other stuff for the crab dip appetizer, while I started on the sushi. I don't have a picture of the crab dip because it got gone so fast, but thanks Tyler for helping me out in my time of need! =) This was only the second craving i've had while pregnant...the first one was for a tomato sandwich at like 11pm. They have several sayings down here...like, if you don't eat what you are craving when you are pregnant, your baby will be born with its mouth open, wanting that food. or something like that. anyways, here are some pictures of the sushi, which turned out pretty well i would say, for it being our first time.

in other news, all schools and colleges in the country have been closed this past week, due to swine flu. i haven't really heard of that many people getting it, at least no one close to us, but they don't want many people gathering so as to not spread it more. and, this week, the whole country has vacation. so, we both ended up getting 2 weeks of vacation from work and school! you see, each town in el salvador has a patron saint, whom they celebrate once a year with festivals. turns out, here in the capital, we don't have a patron saint, but rather we celebrate Jesus, which is pretty cool. so this week, everybody gets vacation to celebrate the "Saviour of the World", which in spanish literally translates to "El Salvador del mundo". i like that our country is named after Jesus, the Saviour.