settling into a routine

the day to day "adventures in belize" have settled into more of a routine. cooking, cleaning, laundry (drying clothes the natural way...on the clothesline...can you believe it, mom?), walks, swimming in the lagoon and shopping in orange walk town 30 minutes down the gravel/dirt road for everything from milk (in a box) to paint, tile, faucets and lighting for the new house. the weather has been hot and humid and we even had our first thunderstorm the other night!

dee and ed continue to be wonderful hosts. since the guest house has only a gas burner and refrigerator, dee continues to provide us with delicious dinners every night, often followed by cards or dominoes (depending on how tired Ed is after his day of supervising construction). speaking of construction, the power house is almost complete, the guest house slab has been poured and the plumbing connected to the septic tank, and they have started on the block for the house. things are coming together much faster than i anticipated. after hearing some of the horror stories from others building here, we were cautiously optimistic. it appears we made a good decision on the location and builder for our dream, tropical vacation home.

we continue to put together the requirements for the QRP incentive program and will be returning to belize city sometime later this week to submit the paperwork. bank of america screwed up and deleted janessa from our safe deposit box contract, so jason had to fly to phoenix this past weekend to collect copies of certificates that are required (thanks for trying, janessa and thanks for successful completion, jason!)

gracies puppies turned 3 weeks old yesterday, are growing like weeds and are developing their own individual personalities. their eyes opened last week and they are teetering around on tiny legs that can barely hold their chunky bodies :) gracie is a wonderful mother, but enjoys being able to return to her routine also. she patrols the property at night for security, swims in the lagoon and chases the birds who invade her territory. Ed and Dee have convinced us to avoid the lagoon after dark because of crocodiles...according to them, gracie has had several encounters with the crocs and has only been successful in these encounters because she thought it was playtime. she pulled the intruders out of the lagoon by their tails and then ran around them barking and encouraging them to wrestle. gracie is no worse for the wear. yesterday afternoon while we were up at the construction site, we heard shotgun fire from a property well south of us. the work crew told us that there must have been a croc intruder during daylight hours...now maybe dinner?

we continue to document our progress with photos and will be updating those soon. thanks for following our "adventures" and stay tuned!