We’re at the tail end of our summer vacation over here in the Midwest.

Noah’s been having a ton of fun on the beach playing with Mimi and Popo, and Mama and Papa.

The first few days, the water was bathwater warm and felt amazing, but after a storm it cooled off significantly, and pretty much the only person swimming was Noah. He didn’t seem to mind the chilly water at all. He just went right in like it was warm and started squeeling with glee.

Noah has taken a liking to playing Bocci, marble roll game, and he also loves all of the little firemen, motorcycle guys, and the kayak guy that everyone has gotten him for his birthday, which is in a few days.

Below are some pics from the first part of the beach chapter of our vacation.

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We’re off on our yearly big adventure to see Bubby Sue, Grampa Jeff, Mim, Popo, Gigi, Uncle Bruce, and Uncle John!

We’ve been in Chicago for the first part of our trip for a few days now, and we’ll be leaving in a couple days to head over to the other side of the lake to play on the beach for a few days.

The other night we all headed down to Millenium Park in downtown Chicago and Bubby Sue and Grampa Jeff led us to a super gigantic, interactive, giant tower, fountain, huge face, crazy water light show thingy. Very hard to describe what this thing is, but it was amazing, and huge, and beautiful. And because it involved water, there was NO way we could keep him out of it.

There are two gigantic towers made of glass block. Each tower is about 100 feet tall and water falls down on all sides of them. The towers are lit from inside, and the two inside faces of the towers have giant moving faces…like very large TV screens.

The faces on the towers look at each other and every 5 minutes, the faces pucker up and water squirts out of their mouths. Kids wait beneath where the water sprays out and get completely drenched.

In between the two towers is a couple inches of water on the ground. They two towers are about 200 feet apart, and kids run back and forth between the two towers as the face images change into other moving images.

To be there at 9 pm with so many people on a warm summer night was really quite something. Noah had a blast running around and getting drenched, and kicking water on Mama, Bubby Sue, and Grampa Jeff, who were standing just past the edge of the water in between the towers.

Check out photos from the event below. Such a beautiful night in Chicago…

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Well, it’s a little hard to believe, but little Noah Linden is 2 years old!

We had a great trip out to Chicago and Michigan for 2 birthday parties out there, and then came back to have a 3rd party with all of his friends here in Boulder. Lots of cake and candles…times 3

Below is a gallery of photos from the vacation in Chicago and Michigan, as well as his birthday party here in Boulder. If you’re reading this in your email inbox, you may want to go to Noah’s blog site to see the gallery, since I’m not sure that the gallery photos will appear properly in the email version of this post. (To get there, click on the blog post title in this email, and then click on the small preview images in the gallery that’s in this post to see the photos full size. Use the arrows at the bottom of the photos to get to the next photo.)

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We don’t have many photos from our time with Bubby Sue and Gampa Jeff in Chicago because we used the video camera more than the camera while we were there. I’ll be putting up a video of our trip as soon as I can.

Noah had a great time everywhere he went during our vacation, and also on the day after we got back at his party.

While in Chicago, we got to ride a BIG bus and go to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is only a mile or so from Bubby Sue and Gampa Jeff’s new lovely condo on Lake Shore Drive.

There was lots of playing and walking in the park across the street from their condo, and a lovely birthday party way up high on the 27th floor, where they live.

From there we drove around the lake to the cottage in Michigan, where much fun was had every day, as much as possible, in the waves and warm water. It was nearly impossible to keep him out of the water, and I think he drank 2 or 3 gallons of lake water trying to figure out that you’re supposed to keep your mouth shut when you go under.

Noah had a great time playing with Mimi, Popo, Gigi, and Uncle John on the beach and in the cottage. He’s also at the stage where he’s figured out that he can tell other people “No!”, and he’s been doing that for many weeks now. Ohhhh, the joys of being 2!

From the beach we came home and had a lovely party with 30 or so people, kids and adults, who came to give Noah some love and happy birthday wishes. Bubbles and helmets and inflatable baseball bats and balls…tons of fun and laughter all around.

We also had a face painter come to the party to paint any kids or adults who wanted to get painted. Noah picked out a lion and a Nemo fish for each arm and was pretty psyched with them.

Everyone lasted a really long time before melting down, and we said good bye to everyone and enjoyed the new toys and leftover, delicious cupcakes and brownies that Mama baked for the party.

So we’re off into year two with our little monkey boy! Yipee!!

His language is really starting to take off. Every day he seems to figure something new out about our odd English language. A few days ago he figured out how to use past tense and present tense correctly in all kinds of sentences that he’s putting together.

The ABC song and Twinkle Twinkle are his favorite songs currently, and whenever we go shopping at the grocery store, he sings either or both throughout the isles while we’re getting food. He only stops to say hi to people passing by, or to ask for “one chocolate,” which is how he asks for treats that Mama gives him (little chocolate balls wrapped in tinfoil that looks like a little globe of the Earth.)

“One chocate peeez?”

We hope everyone is doing well!

Hi friends. Here’s a video to give you more of a taste of what’s it’s like in Antigua. I have to say that it doesn’t really do the experience justice. The colors and warmth and smells and interaction with the people…that’s all hard to convey in a video, but this will give a little better idea than the photos.

Enjoy!

Today we dove back in to a market in town that has many booths of local people selling goods, mostly hand-made goods from the Mayans.

The people in the booths are the used car salesman of this place. The sell you things more aggressively than I’ve seen anywhere else. They also play games with you…haggling games. You can almost always work them down to half of the price they start out with, and if you don’t feel like haggling, you can simply ask them how much for something, pause, then say you’re going to go look around and think about it…and they drop the price right in front of you….

The closer you get to leaving their booth, the lower they go. Not my favorite kind of shopping.

The weather was lovely, lovely today. Right around 80 degrees with a slight breeze.

The three of us strolled around town, found an open air market of local Mayans (no salesman at this market…just the Mayans who make things with their hands.)

We also found our way to the biggest church in town, San Francisco. It looked quite old, though I’m not sure of the exact age. It was likely built in the 1600′s though.

We had a chance to listen to some Bolivian music in the central park, and then made our way home to eat and pack.

Noah’s just gone to sleep now, and we’re going to follow right behind him, as we have to get up at 4:30 am to catch our airport shuttle at 5 am. Going to be a long day tomorrow, and will probably be a bit jolting to travel right back in to winter, with a fresh blanket of snow on the ground back home.

Noah got to say goodbye to all of his friends here today, the staff who work here. He’s become quite close with Cupertino, the maintenance worker here, as well as Maya, one of the masseuses. As he was saying goodbye to Cupertino (who he called “dorgee” for some reason), he gave him two very big, sweet hugs. It just melts your heart.

Here’s a link to the photo set to see the latest batch of pics from today:

Click here to see the Antigua photo set

Hope you’ve all enjoyed the travel updates. I’ll be posting a video soon, hopefully, of some footage from the trip.

Cheers,
Papa Forest

The hardest part of it all was not being able to help Bari with Noah, and to not be able to be with them while they went out and about in town. But I did what I could after the meetings ended each day, and got to spend a little time with them during lunch each day.

Yesterday, for lunch, the whole Joomlashack team went up to a coffee plantation to have lunch at the restaurant there and to take a tour of the coffee fields and the processing plant. It was pretty interesting, actually. I had no idea that coffee was so work intensive to create.

Unfortunately, Bari and Noah couldn’t come with us because it happened right at his afternoon nap time. Noah would have been bored out of his mind anyway.

Now that the meetings are over, the three of us have two more days here in Antigua before we head home, and I’m looking forward to having a little more time to relax before getting back home, where I’ll jump back in to another month or two of 65 hour work weeks while I finish up some remaining websites in addition to working full time for Joomlashack.

Bari wanted to add some things from her adventures with Noah during the past few days while I’ve been in meetings:

Yesterday, Noah and I ventured out into town (him on my back for part of the time) and did some shopping in the market, sipping mochas/drinking mango and eating pasta at a cafe and then went swimming in the pool of a big hotel.

Noah had a great time! Today we visited an old friend’s relatives who retired in antigua and we got to see inside the courtyards and home (which is very cool because everything is behind walls here). And both days noah has been playing with the guatemalan people that work at the bed and breakfast and helping them sweep and rake. He is very serious about his work and in helping everyone. They love him and love to play with him all of the time – soccer and hide n seek.

Noah keeps trying to say ‘hola’ (spanish for “hello”) as we are walking in town because everyone is so friendly and he is saying ‘ohee’, but he is trying to say it over and over in all different ways…it is very cute, can’t get it yet, but trying so hard…and in general, lots of new words this trip and now 2 words at a time

Here’s a link to some pics from the past few days:

Click here to see the Flickr photo set with the latest pics and photo comments on top.

Best to you all,
Forest, Bari, and Noah

Today we went to see a hotel that is also a living museum…they are both intertwined.

The hotel is called Casa de Santo Domingo, I believe, and it’s been built in and around a very old convent and church that was built in 1500.

They’ve got a big rubber roof over what’s left of the main church area, and many of the ruins are very well preserved, as you’ll see in the photos.

Enjoy

Here’s the link to the flickr set again. I haven’t found a photo gallery plugin for WordPress that I like yet, so I’ll just keep using the flickr gallery for now.

Comments are just below the photos:

Click here to see the photos on flickr

Day two in Antigua has come to an end.

Here’s some new pics…just double click on the first one to bring up a slide show that you can move through. To close the slideshow, just click once on any image in the slideshow:

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If you’re having any trouble seeing those photos, you can also see them in the flickr set here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25359449@N05/sets/72157623476868468/

Pretty simple day today, mostly focused on getting in to town for various meals and adventures.

We have a window between when Noah wakes up in the morning (around 7:00 or 7:30 am) and when he needs to go down for a nap (around noon or 1 pm) where we can head out and do some exploring of the town.

Today we went up and down some new streets, checked out many new restaurants and bakeries, and bought Noah a great little marimba set (we’ve been wanting to get him one for a long time.)

Papa has learned how to count in spanish better now, so buying things is a little easier. I still barely know spanish though, so it’s making things challenging for me.

More of today’s story after the read more break:

I have Google translate open on my iPhone all the time and I type in a sentence when I want to ask someone something in a restaurant or store. Then I speak it to them…and they think I know spanish. They then answer back with a long sentence of spanish words that I don’t understand at all. Frustrating.

Next year I will be fluent in Spanish when we come back (if next year’s trip happens as planned.)

At any rate, Noah loved the toy store…it was full of handmade local toys. Bari wanted to take home tons of them (they are pretty inexpensive).

We ordered some good lunch to go from a restaurant across the street from the toy store and took a tuk-tuk taxi home. If you’re not familiar with what these are, they are small three wheeled taxis with barely enough room for two people in the back and the driver up front, who steers with handlebars similar to a motorcycle.

The roads are all extremely bumpy…cobble stones made from lava rock from the local volcanoes that surround the town.

The tuk-tuk rides are quite and adventure in themselves. We speed our way down the streets, bump-bumping along, weaving in and out of traffic (no one pays any attention to traffic rules here) and arrive at our hotel.

So far, both days of the trip have seen Noah taking long, 4 hour naps. Today, Moma joined him for three hours of his nap, and Papa got to do something he hasn’t gotten to do in a year and a half: sit down and read a book for an hour and a half.

I sat in a t-shirt and shorts in 74 degrees, with a moist, gentle breeze passing through the covered balcony outside our room. Quite amazing. Happy Papa.

We went back out in to town to get some dinner after Noah woke up. Hopped in a tuk-tuk and bump-bumped our way to the north end of town to try out a new restaurant.

There was a large gathering of locals and travelers on the street where we ended up. There was a religious procession of some sort that we missed by about 15 minutes. We could see it heading in the other direction two blocks away. Hundreds of people walked the street where we were.

Most people we have met and talked with here have been very, very friendly, despite my horrible spanish. The Antiguans are a very friendly, kind people it seems.

Noah took his first shower ever tonight. He squeeled with glee and laughed with his whole body the entire time. The boy loves water.

Mama and Noah are laying in bed and beginning to drift off now.

Time for sleep now. Another day of exploring awaits us in the morning.

Two trips walking around this beautiful town. Riding in a tuk tuk taxi. Dinner at a great italian restaurant. Nooey had tons and tons of noo-noos with parmesean tree. 4 hour nap for Noah. Marriachi band at night at the bed and breakfast in the courtyard. 72 degrees most of the day. Lots of people here. Papa can’t remember how to count in Spanish…had some trouble paying for lunch.

Dancing Noah (loves Mariachi music.) Dipped his finger in mama’s wine and like it. Had three or four dips. Lots of truck, motorcycles, horses and carts. All the roads are bumpy cobble stones. Slower pace in this town. Amazing, amazing doors and walls everywhere you look. Ancient ruins of old churches and convents from the 1500′s.

Here’s a link to some pics from the first day:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25359449@N05/

Love to all…

We’re back home now from our vacation with Noah out to Linden Hills and have been busy getting back to work.

I’ve finally had a wee bit of time to create a little collection of video clips from the trip, which was a wonderful one.

Thank you to everyone who traveled to see Noah and visit with everyone. He loved meeting and spending time with you all! We look forward to having Noah meet the rest of his relatives who weren’t there, and for him to be able to spend time with folks in the family he has met, but who weren’t there for this trip. He’s a very extroverted little fellow and loves to meet and play with all kinds of people, so we can’t wait for him to meet everyone in the family.

Hope you enjoy the video.