We are so thankful this year for many things. The main thing that comes to mind is that Jackson is a healthy, running little boy. We are so thankful that God spared his life! We have experienced loss and hard times since his cancer scare but we have experienced great joy in the fact that he is with us, healthy and strong.

Helping Daddy carve the 15 lb turkey!

“This turkey is making me sleepy..they are drugging me..I can feeeell iiiittt seeeeettttiiinnngg iiinnn.” This was just before a fabulous nap! We are thinking of cooking a weekly turkey to have around at all times for Jackson’s staple food!

We didn’t get organized enough to get pictures of the turkey or a family picture but we got one of the Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake and the Apple Pie!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Time flies! Here is our big boy lounging on the couch today! He makes life so much fun! I’m really not sure what we did before we had him! He keeps us on our toes!  We love him to pieces!

A bout of tummy trouble in our house has kept us from keeping up with blogging. There really isn’t a whole lot to report since we are kind of plugging along with daily life.

Jackson is almost 16 months old and seems to be learning new things all the time. His favorite past time currently is to carry around his phone (or anything that might have the potential shape of a phone) and talk as he walks. He says “hola, mm hmmm, yeah, bye bye”. He even adds in the appropriate pauses! Jackson is speaking in Spanish and English so that has been amazing to watch him develop both! He is talking a lot and running everywhere. I am having a hard time keeping up!   Last week we went to the park and tried out his “leash”. It is much more innocent than it sounds. It is a cute little bear back pack that happens to have an attachment so we can keep him close. Seth was a bit embarrassed to be seen holding the leash so he quickly was running with a cute back pack and no leash.

Seth is still enjoying his job and has been put on a variety of projects lately. He will be overseeing the Embassy 4th of July festivities this year so that will be fun! And a ton of work for him!

We are busy getting ready for Christmas, making plans and buying gifts. Colombians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving so their trees have been up now for a while. It is a bit tempting to give in and put ours up before Thanksgiving! Peer pressure! Of course we know that this will be a challenging Christmas tree year with a 16 month old! I am going to savor these pre-tree days of not saying “no”! And then we will enjoy it while it’s up!We have already gotten the jingle bells out and Jackson has worked hard to make sure we hear the bells throughout the day to remind us that Christmas is coming!

We are anxiously awaiting our trip home to see family and friends! We are hoping for snow in Dallas and lots of Tex-Mex food!

And on to something random..

This is just a link for a happy song we just heard last weekend, (we are way behind so most of your have heard it) it was our friends first dance at their wedding on Sat and we really liked it…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPUJIbXN0WY]

That’s about it from here! Hope you are all well!

Seth and I had a fabulous trip to Aruba over the weekend. We had been planning it for months and were so excited! We had a few hiccups in the airport when we got kicked out of a restaurant (Crepes and Waffles) because Seth insisted on bringing in McDonald’s to eat while I ate there. That was against policy! We made our way to immigration and security and learned that Colombia has adopted the liquid rules and almost lost about $100 worth of toilitries and makeup. (The day before I realized I was out of contact solution…here in Bogota it was $20 USD!) I could not lose that! Anyhow, they saw our diplomatic passports and quickly returned everything to the bag that they had spread out on the counter. Phew.  We also got dip privileges of getting to wait in the VIP lounge which they pronounce (VEEP).

We made it to our hotel and had a great weekend! We ate lots of yummy meals complete with full conversations uninterrupted by an enthusiastic boy, soaked up the sun by the pool and went on a snorkeling excursion. We ate in outdoor cafes which we can’t do here and walked freely around without worrying about security! It was very relaxing and much needed after a few huge life events over the past few years that have been less than easy…the main things being Jackson’s cancer diagnosis and 2 moves! Our only complaint was that our hotel room was so noisy because of the room above ours.  Sounded like they were moving furniture and doing construction all the time. Seth called down to the desk and they lied and said it was a vacant room. After 2 nights of 24 hour noise Seth went upstairs to find a kitchen. Hardly vacant. The floor above us had a 24 hour buffet for elite customers so they never stopped chopping, blending, etc! They knocked off the cost of one of our nights when they realized the tiny white lie about a vacant room hadn’t been true enough to trick us! In addition they had added new fire alarms and we had a few false alarms, one at 2 am!

We missed Jackson but he had a blast at home with his Mia. He was very excited to have us back and closely watches when we leave the room to ensure we don’t try to sneak away again anytime soon!

On our way to the airport we went to Taco Bell. We had both been looking forward to it since we can’t get it in Bogota. When we walked in we both looked at each other like “this isn’t exactly the cleanest place…”, we proceeded to say over our food “gosh, I sure hope we don’t get sick.” We ate, rushed to the airport and I got hit with the worst food poisoning ever at about 8 pm. I am just now starting to feel a little bit better. If you ever have those gut feelings (pun intended) about a restaurant do not eat it!!!! I won’t be eating Taco Bell again for quite some time!

Despite the few hiccups we had a great time together! Here are a few pictures!

Texas de Brazil! We highly recommend it but maybe not before wearing a bikini!  You really want to get the most out of the “all you can eat.”

the beachfront

Crystal clear water

One of the iguanas we met running freely

Guns up the day Texas Tech beat OSU!

watching our last Aruban sunset

Look at that white beard…we pretend we are still young! 30 is creeping up on this guy!

Overall a fabulous trip! A nice break from bleak Bogota!