This past weekend we took a road trip to a town outside of Bogota.  It was nice to get out of the city one last time. The city is famous for their crafts and town square. To be honest there wasn’t much to see but we filled our time by going to the local Sat produce market, walking around through the cobblestone streets and just relaxing.It was probably our first trip with realistic expectations in terms of accommodations. We always like to say now that they might have a star system in Colombia for hotels but the starts just don’t shine as bright. We came home with a few bed bug bites and it was quite rustic for the price you pay but overall it was peaceful and a good time away in the fresh air.

Our funniest memory was Jackson trying to order his own food at the hotel. He would call for the waitress in Spanish and continue to tell her exactly what he wanted with a sweet “por favor” and followed up by a boisterous “gracias”. They loved it and he obviously ate up the attention. We discouraged it knowing that in the US this would be seen as super disrespectful. One of the mornings there the waitress answered his request for milk but brought warm milk. Word of warning, warm milk in a sippy cup equals and spraying geyser.  As soon as the lid was tightened it flipped on it’s side and spun around as it shot out warm milk. Luckily the hotel restaurant was almost empty at 6:45 AM so we enjoyed our own milk show without disrupting other guests!

On our way home we got behind a bike race which took forever to get around. Jackson decided not to nap and talked about the cows and animals along the road the whole way home! We are not sure if we can talk about cows from TX to DC when we do our move in Oct. Thank goodness by then we will have a car with a CD player.

Here are a few pictures from the weekend…

Our hotel had beautiful flowers

checking out the ducklings at the market

is this not the biggest zucchini you have ever seen?

this was strawberry country! we got a lb for about a dollar and they were the best we have had in a long time!

this basket was super noisy! we asked the lady to open the bag for us to peek…

it was full of little chicks!

5 mins into our walk on the cobblestone Jackson was finding places to plop down!

town square where people came out in the evenings to fly kites

poor little guy…after another good run around he plopped down again!

back at our hotel…Jackson was standing in his crib with the window open peering out

this was what we had in front of us on part of the ride home…we think it must mean that Jesus’s second coming will somehow involve a cruise ship. How exciting!

We are a little behind on getting this posted. I sat down to finally get the pictures up and announce the name and the pictures won’t load…grrrr.  So, Seth will once again have to work on them! We promise we will post some good stuff soon!

We are down to the final countdown! Sometimes it feels like our move is coming quickly and sometimes it feels like it is taking forever!We have someone coming on Monday to do a “packout assessment”- basically they determine how much stuff we have, how many boxes they need and how many days it will take. It is so nice having someone pack but truly we end up doing so much of it before they arrive because everything has to be in categories of a small air shipment to DC temp housing, Bern and storage.  When we finish the Foreign Service it will be fun to say “take it all to our home!”

Sept 1-3 we will have our pack out! Once the pack out is over we will have about a week in our apt with our suitcases of clothes and the embassy couch, beds, etc. It will be pretty empty!!!

5 weeks from yesterday (Sept 11th)  we fly to Houston, followed by Oregon, Ft Worth and then on to our cross country road trip to DC with a stop to visit our dear friends in Louisville!

On the 15th of Oct Seth will take the plunge into learning German! And we will be living close to family and friends! We will have about 10 weeks to get ready for our second little guy to arrive!

In the meantime, I have been working on big sorting projects to prevent us from making a move with so many things we don’t need. Unfortunately, I think I am using my nesting energy on this end of things. I hope I have some energy left to prepare for the baby when we arrive in DC!

You can continue to pray for the quick sale of our car. As well as health and energy as we wrap up our final weeks here. We are so anxious to be with family and friends for a time of being rejuvinated before starting yet another adventure.  Thank you for your prayers and encouragement!!

Our first move…Dallas to DC. Pregnant with Jackson. We have added Jackson and soon another. Moved from DC to Bogota, soon Bogota to DC, then DC to Bern. All in 4 yrs!