Father's Day, Football, and the Dinosaur Circus

We started our Father's Day celebrations a day early, because Sunday was also the Colombian presidential election day, which meant no alcohol for sale.  Also, Elena couldn't wait for Jeff to open the present she'd made for him.  She drew a picture of her and daddy, and then her teachers put it on a coffee mug.

We decided to go out for an early lunch and try the French restaurant, Balzac, over near Andino.  We got a nice table outside, and they had mango juice and strawberry juice, so we were off to a good start.

Jeff and I split the pate, which was pretty good.  I got mussels in white wine sauce which was a nice treat, since the other French restaurant we like doesn't have them.  I had to share quite a few with Elena though.  She loves mussels, which I find hilarious.  Dessert was also a big hit with the girls, since they had Nutella crepe for Vivian and chocolate ice cream for Elena.

Jeff tried the chocolate mousse, and I tried the creme brulee.  It was all good, but we were so full, we couldn't finish anything.  Our overall verdict is that this French restaurant is more family friendly, but we like the food at the other one better if it's just Jeff and me.

We also had a shopping mission, we needed Colombia team jerseys to wear for Colombia's World Cup game.  They were selling knock off ones all over the neighborhood, and, as far as I could tell, they were perfectly good shirts.  We were walking around checking sizes and prices, but what I hadn't bargained on was the fact that the Adidas store is in the neighborhood too.  Adidas sponsors the team and sells the official jerseys.  Well, of course, Jeff wanted to go in.  We ended up getting the jerseys there, which may have been for the best, since I don't know if the street vendors had the size range we needed, XS to XL.  I also don't have to worry that the jerseys will fall apart or bleed in the wash.  I did find it hilarious though, that the street vendors were selling knock offs directly outside the Adidas store.  So much for trademarking.

We made another unplanned purchase.  There are people who walk around with handfuls of Disney helium balloons (also illegal, I'm sure), and one of them had been standing outside the restaurant the whole time we had been eating lunch.  Elena had her eye on the Baymax balloon.  We got charged gringo price, but it still wasn't too expensive, so Elena proudly carried it home through the mall.

We stopped at the mall, so that Jeff and Vivian could get tickets for Incredibles 2.  Vivian's Father's Day present was a movie date.

We started the official Father's Day off with breakfast from Bagatelle.

Then Jeff and Vivian headed off for the movie.

While they were gone, Elena may have over hugged her Baymax balloon.  He started losing air pretty quickly.

She was pretty upset.  In looking for things to distract her, I discovered that there's a new Big Hero 6 TV series, so I put that on, and she cheered up.  She also settled Baymax in to convalesce while she watched. 

The next day, the girls and I headed off for the last Monday of the school year.

It was also the last relatively normal day of the week.  Tuesday was all about football.  Colombia played Japan at 7:00 am Colombia time.  All classes stopped, and various viewing stations were set up all over the school.  We came prepared in our yellow jerseys.

The girls even got a little practice in before the game started.

The school was a sea of yellow, and our Colombian friends were all grateful for the support.  We said that since the U.S. isn't in this year's World Cup, Colombia is our team.  Unfortunately, the game got off to rough start with a Colombian player getting a red card, and Japan scoring a penalty goal all within the first ten minutes.  I stayed and watched the game with Elena's group.  They didn't really understand what was going on, but thoroughly enjoyed chanting Co-lom-bia!  During half time the teachers put on Shakira's two World Cup songs, and the kids had a dance party.

So now, in addition to chanting, Elena occasionally starts singing, la-la-la-la-la or waka waka.  Colombia ended up losing, but it was a great World Cup experience to be a part of.  They're playing again tomorrow, and we're hoping it goes a bit better.

Wednesday was our last flag raising of the year, and they managed to get it done in under an hour which was fabulous.  We had had another 20th birthday celebration the Friday before, and while we all enjoy celebrating, I think everyone was feeling about done.  Although, the cupcake display the previous week had been pretty impressive.

Our house, Minotaur, ended up coming in second for house points this year, so hopefully next year will be our year.

Thursday was Vivian's exit point project.  They have been doing a big science unit on Mars, and her final project was to design a livable settlement.  She proudly presented it to me and explained all of the features.  It was pretty cool.

Thursday was also the Nursery's trip to the Dinosaur Circus.  One of the parent's companies had free weekday tickets to the Dinosaur Circus, and they invited the class to join them for the circus and pizza afterwards.  Elena really wanted to go, so I said sure.  The dad with the tickets came with his car to pick up me and the six kids who were going.  Luckily, we picked up another mom along the way, so the adults weren't completely outnumbered.  Since we had quite a bit of time between when school ended and the circus started, we decided to play a bit at the pizza place first, since it had a big indoor play area.

This was Elena's favorite part, but there was a larger climbing area which several of her friends were trying.  Eventually, she worked up the courage to try it too.

She was super proud of herself for about ten seconds, and then she freaked out and started screaming for me to come get her down.  Sigh.  I got in and got her down, but it was quite the contortion exercise.  She stuck with the little play area after that.  We let the kids play for about 40 minutes, and then it was time to head to the Dinosaur Circus.

We really weren't sure what to expect.  What is a Dinosaur Circus anyway??  When we got there, there was a big circus tent with two dinosaurs in front.  Inside the entrance tent, they had an animatronic dinosaur set up in each corner.  Only two of them were actually working, and that was pretty much the theme of the circus.  It was a so-so circus with occasional dinosaurs.  The kids had a great time though.  Even though the triceratops didn't move, it was a kid favorite.

The circus wasn't full, so we put the kids in the row in front of us and spread the adults out behind them.

There were some dinosaurs at the beginning, and there was a big dinosaur egg that sat around during most of the show.

The first act was trapeze artists who fell almost as many times as they got caught.  This let to me being terrified for the rest of the acts.

I enjoyed the superflexible lady with all the hoops and the dancers.

But I was terrified someone would get gravely injured for most of the rest of the acts.

After about an hour, the egg began to crack and some more dinosaurs showed up.

By that point it was almost 6:30.  The announcer said they would have a brief intermission and then more acts.  The parents came to the consensus that an hour of excitement was plenty, and we should probably take the kids to get pizza and skip the second half.  By this point, several other families had joined our original group, and even more were planning to meet us for pizza.

Even though the kids were getting a bit tired, they had a great time playing together.  Elena even braved the shaky bridge up high above the play area and didn't get terrified.

Just as they were starting to get really hungry, pizza and juice boxes showed up.

Elena and I didn't get home until around 8:30, which is a super late night for her, but she talked the whole way home in the car about how much fun she'd had.  It was a great way for her to end her school year.

Yesterday was the last day of school, and the kids left at 12.  I had to stay until 2:30, and I'll go back next week, but we are starting to feel like summer is here.

Anapoima Natura

There are lots of "puentes" or three day weekends in Colombia, and we haven't really been taking advantage of them to explore as much as we should, so when I saw that we had two puentes in a row in June, I figured we had to go somewhere.  Luckily, our neighbors felt the same way.  We decided to go in together on a three bedroom house with its own pool at a little resort called Anapoima Natura.  Anapoima is a two to three hour drive south west from Bogota.  It's down the mountain enough that instead of being in the 60s all the time, it's in the 80s, which sounded pretty perfect,

The Anapoima Natura resort seemed like a good fit for an easy trip, since we could have our own house, but there was a restaurant with breakfast included, plus some other fun outdoor activities.  The houses and apartments were all along one little road.  The houses themselves were very open with lots of windows, but the greenery was all strategically planted to ensure privacy.  For example, this was the walkway up to our house.

The pool was on the left and the bedrooms were on the right.

A bunch of the trees were mango trees, and we had fun spotting the fruit.  We grabbed a quick lunch at the restaurant and then hopped in the pool.

To make the afternoon even more fun, there was rum for the adults and spray jets for the kids.

After a few hours of general silliness we pulled the girls out and cleaned them up.

I made pasta for dinner, but managed to catch some pictures of the sunset in the process.

Once it got dark, the girls decided to have a dance party.

Elena had a really hard time falling asleep.  She didn't settle until almost midnight, so that was rough.  Luckily, the sun rose on a new day.  The breakfast spread was simple but good, and Elena was thrilled to discover that they had Minion plasticware for the kiddos.  She and Viv had orange juice, croissants, and "hot dogs" as we call breakfast sausages here.  The real fun though came after breakfast.  There were a series of games set up near the open air restaurant.  Jeff and Viv went to try out the foosball table, while Elena and I played a round of minigolf. 

By the time we got down the hill, Jeff and Vivian had switched to ping pong.

It didn't go very well, so they decided to try badminton, which is a bit slower moving.

Not much better . . . The general consensus was that it was time to try out the common area kids' pool.  It was a cute set up with shallow water, a couple waterslides and other spray and splash features.

Viv loved it, but Elena never quite worked up the courage to go down the slide.  She wanted to go back to our pool and float around with her circle, so that's what we did.  Eventually, we ventured out again, but we let the girls stay in their bathing suits.  Elena went on a lizard hunt,

and Jeff and Vivian discovered that tennis was their sport.  They actually succeeded in sustaining a volley or two!

We were in and out of the pool for the rest of the afternoon.

Elena fell asleep on one of the lounge chairs, and the rest of us played Exploding Kittens, which took some getting used to.  Elena woke up a bit for dinner and a shower, but then she went right back to sleep.  We let Viv stay up and watch some basketball, but it was an early night all around.  

It rained both nights, which made for nice background "music".  It also meant that the pool was quite chilly the next morning, but Jeff and Vivian were determined to get one more swim in.  Well, Jeff may have been more determined than Vivian.

Elena got a bit sunburned, and she's been sleepy/sluggish all day today.  Hopefully she didn't have too much fun in the sun, but we shall see.  Overall we agreed that it was a fun and easy outing, and it was lovely to spend the day outside in the nice warm weather.  We may have to plan another Anapoima excursion soon.