Tonight, Luciana thought that we should go exploring and see if we could find Fritter and her kittens. We know that she has them stashed somewhere, but we have no idea where. So we did some exploring and when we did, we stumbled on four more kittens hiding in the pile of metal on the far side of our garage! How have these kittens been hidden for so long? They aren’t as old as the kittens that are in the house, but they are reasonably close to them in age.

Our best guess is that Cruller is actually a mom and not the father of our other kittens and that she just helped to watch over them for Fritter. We took out food and water for these “new” kittens and Cruller was with them. They are living very close to where she spends her days. I can only imagine that she stays close enough to get to them in seconds, but around the corner of the garage so that they can’t see her so that she can teach them to be independent. We’ve been seeing her for months and never saw her pregnant. We are so confused.

So now we have even more kittens to watch over. Four is so many, and we are certain that Fritter had hers in the last three days. So there are likely three or four more newborns still hidden somewhere as well.

We watched some of the second season of H2O Just Add Water tonight. We are increasingly frustrated with the show. It started off acceptable, but it really goes down hill and the main characters start to become offensive caricatures over time. It has a lot of potential, but in reality, it isn’t good at all. The girls liked it when they were little and watched it with Clara. But now seeing it as older teenagers, they see that the “protagonists” are cruel and offensive stereotypes. Not a good show for children. It’s definitely a show targeting young girls and provides a message that girls are dumb, only care about boys, and need boys to provide everything for them. By the end of the second season, not one of the girls was able to maintain a job without her high school boyfriend either getting her a job, being her boss so hiring her, or just paying her family’s rent so that she doesn’t have to work. Not one is self sufficient or have any utility, while every boy on the show is gainfully employed and constantly there to “save them”. It’s really over the top.

This morning started off with rounding up the kittens (Orange Juice and Chemæra) and getting them off to the beach for their sterilization. Liesl forgot that she was going this morning and wasn’t awake and ready. So we had to get her up and moving so we were running quite late. Once we got her ready and the kittens packed into the backpack, we drove to Marcela’s house in San Mateo to get Happy and we were off to Gigi’s on the beach for the clinic. Happy is visiting everyone that he already knows, but for our kittens this is their first real trip. Chemæra has gotten lost for a few days and once went to Dr. Jorge’s vet clinic so she’s left the grounds before, but this is Orange Juice’s first time outside of the estate walls in his entire life.

Both Fritter (very pregnant) and Cruller, the parents, were there as we took the kittens to the clinic, watching us leave from the garage. Hopefully both of them can be sterilized soon as well. No need for more batches of fur babies.

Felipe is at Marcela’s house today doing a day of work on her garden. She’s been in the house for over a year and a half now and has never had the time or energy for any real projects. But she has so much nice space there that she can do something with. She’s been cleaning like crazy the last few days trying to figure out if something in the house is contributing to how sick she feels. She is always worse when at home. Now they are working on her front garden area. She doesn’t have a car so the “driveway” is a perfect spot for a big garden. And there is ground all the way around her front patio, so her seating space could be contained in a surrounding wall of plants.

Once back home I’m back to work, calls and programming. At one point I went out to the garage to visit with the cats, Fritter and Cruller, and ended up laying down on the garage floor and napping with Fritter. She really appreciated that and actually came and snuggled. She’s so sweet.

Our babies came out of surgery a little after noon and were doing just fine. But we were unable to get them as early as we should have because a powerline came down on the Poneloya Road and started a house fire. They had to shut off the power and close the highway so that they could work on it. So we were unable to return to the beach this afternoon and the house got very hot. We really wanted AC today, it’s a warm day.

The power was off about two hours while they dealt with the downed power lines. Then Dominica and Luciana went out to the beach and picked up OJ, Chemæra, and Happy and brought them home. Since Marcela went to church and is going to be in Managua tomorrow he needs to be here. So he is in my office (and yay, he puked on my desk while I was working.)

Tonight Luciana and Dominica baked me two apple pies for my birthday, and Luciana did decorations to make a fox (my favourite animal) and Happy 50th on the pies along with lots of autumn leaves in different colours. They turned out so well, both in how good they looked and in how good they tasted. These were “just like back home” pies! Really successful. Best I’ve had in many, many years.

Marcela and Happy went home around eleven. Happy was doing well once he was back in his own house. Marcela has to leave at 5:30 in the morning tomorrow to go to Managua for three medical appointments and to get her kids and bring them back to Leon for the weekend.

Once I was hope, Liesl, Luciana & I moved into the game room with the two little kittens who had had surgery this morning and we watched the final few episodes of H2O Just Add Water which has all of the makings of a simple, feel good, cute show but is saddles with some truly epically terrible writing that leaves you truly hating every single one of the characters and upset that the show deals with really traumatic child mental abuse and plays it off as silly and not important. It’s certainly not a good promo for Australia to have their best known children’s show portray child abuse, toxic parents, abducting children, threatening the lives of children, attempting to enslave children, illegal seizure of public lands, etc. as problems. They show things like children being abducted and their lives being threatened and not one character in the show considers it a problem or reason to say, involve the police or coast guard. It portrays Australian society in such a horrible light, it’s amazing that the government didn’t do anything to limit its release. In nearly every scene we’re all yelling at the screen like “Why are you staying with these terrible people?” and “Why is no one involving the police?” And basically no character is even slightly innocent. All the parents openly hate their children, all the protagonists lie to everyone around them and behave totally awful and create all their own problems, everyone is beyond dumb and forgets the entire context of the show every few minutes, even SeaWorld who seems to have sponsored the show is often shown specifically as not knowing how to care for animals and being an abusive employer.

At the end of the night, the kittens seem to be all in good shape.

I did manage to record a few videos today for YouTube, so feel productive about that. Worked on a lot of software development stuff all day.

Overall today was not too bad. The show did well today, the team worked well, I was productive.

Marcela is super sick again today. She was very good yesterday, it seemed like we had made real progress. We had changed her mattress and she seemed almost good as new. But today she is super sick again, almost to the point of going to the hospital.

Areyson came by to use my studio to record some audio for some social media production work that he is doing. Everyone wants to use my Rode XLR Podmic.

Liesl and I worked on her math classes tonight. She’s making really good progress. In fact she flew through her classes and is done! She still has the final exam, but only the exam. This is huge. Nothing has hindered her life more than her math classes. She is already done with science. Just the final exam and math is done, forever.

This evening the girls and I watched some more H2O Just Add Water until about two in the morning.

This afternoon I went to a studio downtown to do a photoshoot with The Bernies. We did photos in the studio, then went to my house and did photos in the garden as well.

This evening the girls decided that they wanted to go to Puesta del Sol in Las Peñitas for dinner since I needed to run down there anyway to pay some bills. So at 7:30 the four of us drove down there and had dinner. Their menu is much smaller now so not the selection that we miss. Lots of menu items we want are gone so that is sad. But it was nice to be there again. Luciana doesn’t think that she’s physically eaten in the restaurant (as opposed to take away) for four years, not since we lived on the beach!

After dinner we came home. Liesl and I watched Some Like it Hot for her cinema studies class. I have to say, that is not a good movie at all. Very bad, in fact. I can’t how badly written it was. The story is dumb, the dialogue is downright painful. The acting mostly seems like people just walked on to set and flatly said a line without context; which makes sense as the dialogue is so jilting and awkward, how could you act through it? So far this is the biggest loser movie in her classes. I’m truly shocked that this is considered a classic. It’s neither good, nor artistic, nor watchable. It’s a terrible performance from nearly everyone involved, not a good example of the works of any of the people. Even Joe Brown absolutely sucked in this after decades of being a big player in Hollywood; and I’m a huge Tony Curtis fan, but this was not something for him to be proud of.

Luciana joined us after the movie and we all watched two episodes of H2O Just Add Water which isn’t a great show, but is more entertaining than the movie. Then it was time for bed.

I ran into fans of the show while at the hotel, of course. That never fails. So I was busy talking to one group of guests or another for about two hours. Then in the late afternoon it was a trip back to Leon and just about to drop Marcela off when we got an emergency call that a cat needed to be rescued in Zaragoza and the only cat trap was at the beach. So we turned right around and drove back to the beach, got the trap, came back, got the girls to go shopping, went to Zaragoza and dropped off the trap and then went to La Colonia to do some late grocery shopping.

While at La Colonia I got recognized by two fans of the that had spoken to me but had not yet met me in person; and then while there Janet arrived, too. The girls hid with Marcela in a different aisle to avoid meeting people.

Once we were done at La Colonia we dropped Marcela off at home and the girls and I came back to the house with our new groceries. We had a good haul and found the fish patties that we really like that are hard to find and I made those for our dinner.

The girls and I watched more of season one of H2O Just Add Water before going to bed.

Dominica was running late and it was nearly nine when the “definitely before eight” trip was out the door. They stopped to get Marcela (but only after I reminded her – she was already zipping straight by without stopping) and all went out to Managua. Just Luciana and I (and Aida) in the house today with the menagerie.

It was a long day of work for me. Luciana was sick last night. She coughed so much that, like Marcela, it made her sick to her stomach. But overall she’s not feeling that much worse.

I had to run out to the beach to deliver some money today. So that cut into my afternoon. But I managed to record today’s video out on the beach, so that was a nice change of pace. We have Canal 8 out filming on the beach again tomorrow, too.

I just worked this evening. Liesl got home from Managua and just crashed, having had zero sleep last night. Luciana is tired from being so sick and needs to work on school. I was in meetings until very late and was tired as well. So we just decided to all go to bed early tonight instead of hanging out.

Liesl had an appointment at her toe doctor in Altamira in the morning. So we got up and drove to Managua early. Dominica doesn’t trust how fast I drive and things I’m ridiculously slow so even with her being ready late, we were an hour early for the appointment. We found a new cafe called Cha Cha Matcha that is right next to her doctor and quite fancy. So we went there and hung out for two hours. It’s a great find. We really like the place. They have Dubai Chocolate Croissants, too. Very recommended.

Luciana and I stayed in the cafe while Dominica took Liesl to the doctor. Then we drove across town to Molino at Plaza La Fe and we had a quick lunch there. I love their cæser salad and basil hummus.

The secret to going to the embassy is parking at Plaza La Fe and taking an InDrive from there. Just C$220 for the whole family to zip down there at peak hours. There is no parking whatsoever at the embassy so having a driver is a necessity. This process made it so easy.

The entire experience at the embassy itself was great, too. All of the staff was very friendly, efficient, and helpful. Things were easy and moved quickly. Of course we were well prepared, but that wasn’t what did it. The staff there were just really good and it was all handled really well. I was so impressed.

After the passport paperwork was filed we went outside, grabbed an InDrive, and returned to Plaza La Fe. We were going to head straight back home, but Luciana wanted to use the bathroom and we stumbled on another cafe there called Latte Latte and so popped in and checked it out, too.

We were headed home at a very reasonable time. So I was able to get home and work all evening. Customers were, of course, looking for me all day. So it was a busy night for me. Plus I had to do an emergency run to Palí because we were out of toilet paper in the house.

Dominica and Liesl are going back to Managua tomorrow for blood work and to stop at PriceSmart. Luciana and I will stay home with the dogs and cats.

The dad cat that we call Cruller is slowly getting braver. He comes closer and closer and meows at us all of the time. Fritter, the very pregnant mother, is still here daily for her supply of kibble. She remains very affectionate. She’s a very good cat.

Tomorrow we have to spend the day in Managua getting the girls’ passports renewed. It’s our first time going to the embassy. We had to do lots of paperwork today to make sure that we were ready and I spoke with the embassy on the phone: they call to check that we’ve done all of our paperwork ahead of time.

I recorded several videos today getting ready for the time away. No live stream tomorrow as we will be traveling all day.

I ended up with the time to do a live stream tonight so just did one. We talked a bit about the forum. I’m very excited about that. I didn’t get a chance to talk about it a week ago, it went live just a few hours before the Chocolate Milk incident happened. But I built the open source forum package A Parliament of Owls last week and we’ve been using it for an Expats of Nicaragua forum group that replaced our WhatsApp group that we’ve had most of the last year. So far, I like it so much better. It’s so much more chill. People can’t just hop on and spam and cause problems with the community the way that they could before.

We used it to replace MangoLassi / Republic of IT as well. Those have been running on NodeBB since March, 2014 and it has served us well, but recently its MongoDB database has become untenable and the application has gotten so slow and it needs a lot of maintenance. It seemed problematic to try to keep maintaining, so we moved that entire platform with 800,000 posts, millions of users per month, hundreds of millions of object requests and twelve years of activity over to APOO and so far, it is working great. It’s got better spam control, everything renders so much faster and while there are fewer features, things are far better tuned for our real world needs. The site is busy again and fun to use.

We’ve got about fifty people on the new Expats forum already which is a lot considering it is so new. The old ML site we eliminated as many accounts as we could and have about 1,550 remaining. It’s hard to believe that MangoCon was ten years ago, too!

I actually was up decently early considering how late I was out last night. I got up around seven and got right to work. There is so much to do. I’m very busy with work and it’s feeling a bit overwhelming. I had been looking forward to an evening of hanging out with Liesl and Luciana last night as we had planned, but I had to drive to Managua instead so a night of relaxing turned into a very exhausting night instead.

Today I pretty much had to camp out in the office. I’m working on several projects in parallel. It’s exhausting, but I got a lot of good work done today at least.

The girls hung out all afternoon playing video games together. We are really hoping to get a Steam Machine this year. We’ve been limping as far as video game machines here for a long time now.

Luciana has not felt that she could handle watching The Expanse again, because it is so heavy, or playing Dungeons & Dragons all week because she’s so sad about Chocolate Milk.

I worked until very late.

Very busy work day today. I’ve got so many projects in motion, it’s absolutely crazy. I’m feeling a bit exhausted.

The girls moved into the game room this afternoon and hung out together all afternoon. Liesl played Hades on the computer while Luciana used the Nintendo Switch to play Animal Crossing while they snuggled with the dogs.

Marcela was feeling really sick today, as she has been for weeks. I went down to check on her and to bring some food down. We tried to watch a movie but only made it about ten minutes before she needed to go to the hospital. She basically has a cough so strong that she coughs until she vomits and because that’s been going on for three weeks it’s just become a pattern and she can’t keep food or liquids down for any length of time. So she is just getting weaker and weaker from lack of nutrients. She’s not sleeping great, either.

So we finally got out the door around eleven and run to Managua to get her to her hospital at Militar. Thankfully that is on our side of the capital. Roads were clear and traffic was really moving so it took just over an hour and a half to drive her to the hospital. I went it and got her checked in and made sure that she got through triage and then left her and got back in the car and raced back home so that I could arrive before I fall asleep.

It was just a little after two or two thirty in the morning when I pulled into the house. The girls couldn’t believe that I was back already and thought that I hadn’t even gone. They thought that I would be gone all night. I made great time.

I’ve been reading “So You Want to Be a Dungeon Master” via Audible while driving, which really helps to keep me awake.

The kittens ended up staying all day. They mostly sleep in the daytime so it was easy for them to just nap away in the extreme comfort of Liesl’s room with giant cat tree, comfy bed, extra dog bed on the floor, and air conditioning. They’ve never had it so good.

I worked most of the day, there is a lot to be done. I drove Marcela to her church to pick up a care package, and then we stopped by La Colonia and I got the cheese that Luciana and I need to make our homemade mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner tonight.

The girls came out to run errands tonight. We stopped by Marcela’s house and they played with Happy (her kitten.) Then we went over to April and Ava’s house and hung out for most of an hour. We talked D&D, Mothership, and played a little Family Feud. Then we stopped by the pharmacy and I stocked up on expectorant (Luciana and I are both still quite sick.) Then we swung back to Marcela’s and dropped off some medicine for her.

Back home, Luciana and I cooked up mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner. It turned out pretty well. Then the girls and I settled in to watch Disney’s Zootopia and Zootopia 2 back to back. Not my favourate movies, but they are watchable.

It was a full day of the little kittens living in the house and it went well. They seem to be happy and have no interest in leaving. They are safe in there and we are planning on installing catios for them, there are spaces where the old air conditioning units were (before we installed the modern ones) so those old rebar cages should work just fine.

It’s going to be a challenge, but these are awesome cats. We are hopeful that they will work out.

It was a decently quiet day, but we are so concerned about the safety of the kittens that we basically have the dogs on continuous lockdown and we are scouting the yard all of the time to make sure the cats aren’t out there.

It was a very hard day. Not only is everyone still super sad, of course, and Luciana and I are still quite sick, but trying to keep the dogs and cats apart is exhausting and clearly isn’t a solution. The cats show zero fear of Clive, even after what happened, and freely came into the yard seemingly to see him! Thank goodness I had him on a leash, they came right up to him. He was terrified, as he had been every time that they were in the yard. I’m convinced he sees them as a threat that he doesn’t understand and only killed Chocolate Milk to “protect the perimeter and the family.” Because that’s what he does. Not because he’s hunting them or anything.

So we have a major issue trying to keep the yard free of kittens. By late evening, we had to lock the dogs up completely as the kittens not only invaded the yard for an hour or two before sunset, but once it was dark they just came into the house and took it over. They went all over the house all evening playing all over and having a great time. We couldn’t let the dogs out in their own house all night!

We didn’t play with the kittens in the house, but they wanted to be there. Even when we’d leave and go into a room with the dogs for hours, when we’d come out they’d be lurking somewhere. They have declared it their new home.

Knowing that there was zero possibility now of keeping the dogs and kittens apart, we took to drastic measures and moved the kittens into Liesl’s room. We made a make-shift cat litter box out of a cardboard box and we set them up with food, water, and toys. They are super happy and played and played until exhausted. Then they climbed into bed with Liesl and spent the night near her feet in a little kitten pile. It’s so good to see them happy and together as siblings, but also a heart breaking reminder that the third is gone and they will always seem to be incomplete to us.

It looks like we have more housecats now. These cats took to being in the house with zero prompting. It’s wild how much they just wanted to live indoors.

And they have been such a part of planning. The three buñuelos are so close we were struggling with the idea of separating them and were trying to figure out how to move them with us in the future. The girls were dreaming of future two decades with these three siblings living with them. We’ve been watching over them since they were so tiny and we failed this one. This is one we saved from drowning in such a panic.

Now it is going to be so hard to look at Orange Juice and ‘Mæra without seeing the ghost missing between them. Calling them the buñuelos will always remind us that the other little buñuela isn’t there. Chocolate Milk was the mirror image of her dad, who sits in the garage watching over them at night from afar. She had one white leg and one sleeved tabby leg reversing his own markings. He went to her when she was hurt and we think she was with him when she collapsed; he likely only left when we gathered around her. He called for her long into the night last night, it’s heartbreaking. He did come into the kitchen at one point, something we’ve not seen him do in many months.

Liesl was up early and still crying. She sat out on the veranda with Dominica and played Animal Crossing on her Nintendo Switch to try to keep occupied.

Luciana didn’t get up until the afternoon. She was feeling a little less sad than last night. But she was sad enough that it seemed to have induced an anxiety attack or something akin to it and she was unable to eat for most of the day.

I was mostly able to stay busy today and not have to think about it too much. This morning I was very sad. I went out several times and spent some time with the remaining kittens. I’ve not seen either of the parents today.

She fled and went to the neighbors. We searched for a while and finally found her. She seemed okay, scared for sure, but moving okay. Her dad came to watch over her, but she kept disappearing. After an hour Liesl came running to get me, they had found her laying in the grass behind the garage. She was barely able to move. Barely able to breath. It was clear he had punctured internal organs. We had already scheduled a vet for the morning, thinking that she seemed just fine or maybe a little limp. We weren’t able to catch her and she didn’t seem injured at first. But once Luciana had found her out back, it was bad.

We called every emergency vet that we could find and got one that started heading towards us, but it was too late. We got Dr. Jorge on the phone eventually too, but he mostly just was able to tell us how to check for vitals. We spent probably thirty minutes all standing around her crying watching her shallow breathes, the occasional cough or gasp, but there was no hope. Long before the vet arrived, her heart and breathing stopped. It was heart-wrenching. Not just losing such a sweet little baby, but also the timing. Just last night she had gone from timid and always avoiding us to playing with the girls like a comfortable house cat. She had totally changed and loved playing with us. Liesl had been sending me so many videos of her playing in the house last night. Exactly twenty four hours before she died. She had come into our yard tonight to get to the girls in the house to play like last night, but last night the dogs had been locked up. Tonight they were loose and found the kitten in the yard.

The girls were petting her and talking to her as she passed. Dominica and I stood with them in the darkness with flashlights as she passed away. This is so hard, the girls don’t remember Oreo dying. We weren’t with him at the time. We were in Italy, having been away for months and he was with my dad. He was old and died of heart failure that we knew would take him one day. And the girls were very little, Luciana barely over a year! Luciana has no memory of Oreo, Liesl only a tiny bit. He was old and blind for them and they had been away from him for so long when he died that it wasn’t so painful. But it kept Dominica and I from having another pet for much of the girls’ childhoods.

But this, this is the first death of a pet for both of the girls. This is going to be hard. This is going to be a searing memory for the rest of their lives. I remember so many cats that died back on the farm. This is so much easier to remember. They are older, and they spent so much time with Chocolate Milk. They are really struggling with processing this. They’ve been shielded from this kind of pain for so long. It’s so awful.

Luis, the night guard, and I (but almost entirely Luis) buried Chocolate Milk in a grave on the north side of the bitter orange tree that provided shade on the garage where Chocolate Milk spent her life. She’s buried just two meters from where she spent her life, just on the other side of the garage wall where she will likely never be disturbed. Right by the French drain where we first discovered the three little kittens huddled together for safety.

This will be one of the hardest days in my daughters’ memories. Sixty years from now, they will remember this clearly. This is going to be a pain they never lose. It’s so hard seeing them feel that pain that I remember from so long ago, and feel again today. It’s never easier losing a pet, a life you loved and cared for and tried to protect.

Marcela is very sad too. She was so excited to be getting Chocolate Milk. She loves cats and she had this one picked out for many months and had just played with her yesterday and was ready to take her home.

Tonight, all three kittens, Orange Juice, Chocolate Milk, and Chemæra came into the yard and made their way into the house and spent HOURS playing with Liesl and Luciana in the house. They had so much fun: both the girls and the kittens. It was a huge breakthrough. We are hoping to be able to make them house cats. They really want to be with us. They come running to us anytime we go outside. And the three of them are inseparable. We have decided to try to keep all three, they are such a team and all want to be with us all of the time.

We check on them all day long. We see them first thing in the morning, check on them throughout the day, often sit in the garage and play with them, and we always see them just before going to bed. Sometimes their mother, Fritter, is around, especially in the morning. And their dad normally sits at the far end of the garage and watches them from afar (mostly to avoid us, he is very skittish.)

The girls were so excited to have the night with the kittens tonight. They’ve never had cats that would play like this and they’ve been taking care of these kittens for so long now. To have them suddenly leap from stand-offish to full on snuggly, pettable, playing in the house was a really big deal.

As always, ended up being a decently busy day, but not terribly. But due to lots of problems with my tooling today, it was not very productive.

I continue to be really happy with my as-of-yet unnamed Chat application. We’ve had it in production for an entire week now and it is really getting smooth. Having it installed on mobile is making all of the difference, we really are back to parity with RocketChat which we were generally happy with previously. That’s very excited to have one of my software platforms get put into production so quickly and to be working so well.

This afternoon after some toxic troll got a little too much community sympathy I decided that my time spent on the Expat forum on WhatsApp just wasn’t good for my mental health and while I definitely feel that a lot of people appreciate my time on there, the amount of time and work that it takes to keep the group moderated and to deal with the inevitable, and often paid, trolls who are sent to make it unpleasant just isn’t worth it. I hate that I can’t be there to assist people, but they can post on my YouTube channel and there are other people to help them. It’s unfortunate that a tiny few had to ruin it for everyone, but the other option is heavy moderation and that would make me feel bad and people to be upset with me. So the only good answer was to recuse myself. And much like leaving Facebook and Twitter, it’s a weight lifted.

Tonight Luciana and I finished making the peanut butter ice cream and jelly custard that we prepped last night. This is definitely our best success yet. We’ve made ice cream before but we weren’t too impressed. And we’ve gotten making frozen yoghurt (froyo) down pretty well and make that regularly. But the peanut butter ice cream was very good, better than any ice cream we’ve managed to buy in the country thus far. And the jelly custard was, acceptable but weird. Jelly is just a bizarre concept for ice cream and it didn’t work that well. When mixed with the peanut butter, it was okay. But I feel that the custard aspect of it was very good. The texture was excellent. I want to try that with vanilla.

The girls played Hades (Liesl) and Animal Crossing (Luciana) while I did some work late night on Freehold before finally going to bed around one in the morning.

Unfortunately Luciana got to be the one that was sick today. She thinks that it came from eating too much pizza yesterday because she was so excited about having made her own pizza that she had five pieces and focaccia pizza is quite big.

It was a very busy day for me today. Since I got sick while working yesterday I was extra backed up on work today. Plus I slept through all of the morning. So today was focused on trying to get caught up on work since I lost so much time yesterday and this morning.

I did get to eat some more of Luciana’s pizza from yesterday today.

This evening the girls and I got a little time to watch The Expanse and they are loving it. We are well into the second season now.

My morning started with a power outage at the office in Belize City, so I had to hop out of bed to deal with that a little early in the morning.

Most of my day was spent in my office working away on the new chat application that we are building this week. I’m feeling so good about this one, it is amazing that we’ve gotten so far, so fast.

In the early afternoon Luciana and I spent an hour or so together in the kitchen prepping our dough for our pizza plans tonight. We are making focaccia pizza

All day I was feeling a little under the weather. This morning it was a little cough and phlegm. But in the evening, probably around five, I was in a meeting and it turned into a serious migraine (there was never a fever so it seems that that was all that it was) and it was so bad by six that I couldn’t continue the meeting and was getting nauseous from the pain. So I had to jump out of the meeting, took the dogs, cranked the air conditioning and went to bed.

I slept for two hours before Luciana woke me up to have some of the pizza. It turned out really well. I had two pieces and then returned right to bed. Luciana ate five pieces, which will be a bit much for her by tomorrow.

I slept the rest of the night in quite a bit of pain. We were unable to find any Ibuprofen around the house so I had to endure without any medication.

The search went very quickly. After looking at a few houses today, there was a clear winner that should have enough space for us. We hope to have things locked up by tomorrow and in no time we should have a new place to be living near the center of Leon, Nicaragua.

And we like being able to go out in Leon. Going from the beach is expensive and tiring. So we have started to look at having a place in Leon to use part of the time.

Saturday. We went into Leon today for food. Did some testing with Filmic DoubleTake and a neat idea but ultimately, useless.

Today was Sasha’s 12th birthday party and my first ever time going to Coco Calala the vegetarian restaurant in Leon, Nicaragua. The kids went swimming today, they don’t get to a swimming pool very often.

Tonight was our big night out with Allen, Ana, Ivonne, Paul, Dominica and I at Jalisco in Reparto Fatima north of downtown Leon. We like the food from there, but they had slow service, all food was wrong, they were out of nearly everything. A very disappointing experience.

We tried going out dancing tonight for a rumored 80s night, but it was not.

Puesta del Sol opens a new restaurant and cocktail bar today, and a pool just for guests. Looks interesting.

Our “new” security gate has been installed at the Simple Beach Lodge. The old one just fell down. Not very secure.

Dominica made advent calendars for the girls. Ciana is enjoying opening hers.

Allen is back from his trip abroad. He’s been in Costa Rica and came up by bus.

Big work day for me overall.

I’m really wanting a Fuji XT-4, but an Olympus EM1 MK2 would make more financial sense. Trying to decide what professional camera to get for the future of my filming.

Liesl and I have been binging Brooklyn Nine Nine.

Really starting to love using Final Cut Pro X. I’m learning it quickly and it runs so well on my M1 Mac desktop in the office at the hotel. It really makes my editing life so easy.

I’m taking a break from GoPro videos to play with my iPhone 13 with the DJI Osmo Mobile 3 gimbal, which is awesome. But I am not thinking that it is great as a vlogging solution so much as for filming more generally.

Dominica is out Christmas shopping in Leon, Nicaragua.

Today we had to make the really tough decision to forego returning to the United States for Christmas. If we were going to go we would have to have our tickets already and the cost and risk of doing it is just not plausible. This is going to be really hard on the kids, but with the omicron variant of COVID surging in the USA it is extremely dangerous for us to return. Not only is there the health risk of exposure, of course, which is the first variant that really puts the kids at risk; but the bigger realistic risk to us is the cancellation of flights. There’s so many countries closing borders right now, flights being cancelled and so forth. If we came home we easily would get stuck unable to leave Nicaragua, or stuck partway back, or in the USA unable to get home.

It’s is Sunday and our Internet is out again. A bit frustrating. But lots of dog walking today. Lots of video editing today including a new DriveWarp is done.

Happy thirteenth birthday to Liesl! It is so hard to believe that we have a teenage daughter now. How did we get so old?

The idea of birthday presents is pretty hard in Nicaragua. There is essentially nothing that the kids want and what they do want they get all of the time, like new video games and such. Liesl just got a brand new Asus laptop while we were in the USA and so for her birthday today she got the hand-me-down Nikon D90 DSLR with the Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens that she loves so much. She has always wanted that camera and now it is hers.

It is a lot like the Canon SLR of my dad’s that I grew up with. It is the camera that I used as a child and always wished that I could have one of my own. And I did buy my own but not until I was about seventeen and then I bought my first Nikon, the N5005. The D90 is still a super capable camera producing outstanding images and the 18-200 lens, while nothing ground breaking, does an amazing job. That camera and lens have been my workhorse camera since Liesl was born, including my solo trip to Germany and The Netherlands in 2009.

Today is our first real day of just getting out to road trip in our new country of Nicaragua. We drove from Las Peñitas to León to Matagalpa today and visited the mirador, the cathedral, met up with Nohemi, and then drove back. We took the GoPro and recorded a new episode of DriveWarp that will be coming out in a month or so and we did some filming up at the mirador.

We had one of the biggest Thanksgiving parties that I can remember and we weren’t even in the United States this year!

It started off as a casual, simple flight of just two hours from Miami to Managua. What could go wrong? We’ve done all of our paperwork, we are vaccinated, our COVID tests are negative, we have our shuttle scheduled a day ahead, we have left ourselves more than four hours at the airport so that we do not have to worry about anything. Today should be a really easy travel day.

The plan today is to fly early in the afternoon, arrive in Managua, and meet up with Paul and Ivonne who have a van headed to Managua to meet us as we get there and deal with some paperwork with the lawyers when we arrive.

Was about to get in some videos while waiting on the shuttle which forgot to get us today. So we lost about forty five minutes waiting for them to come get us.

We were very lucky that everything fit into the little Nisson Rogue. We were pushing our limits pretty heavily. We used every last inch of the car and if the girls were any bigger they would not have fit with one of the big suitcases between them in the back seat and smaller carry-ons under their feet! As it was, everyone had to hold their backpacks.

The drive from Friendswood to the IAH airport was absolutely insane. We allowed ourselves a lot of time to make the drive and it was not enough. More than two hours of driving just to cross the city and the traffic was very scary the whole way.

We did arrive safely in Miami.

My day started at three in the morning when I had to get up and drive Diane to IAH airport so that she could get her flight back to Syracuse. It was almost five thirty when I got back home, bringing some Whataburger with me for the family knocking off essentially everything on Luciana’s “must eat” list from America.

I managed to catch a quick half hour nap before having to get up to drive the family into Houston to get our COVID test done with Auspicious Labs who were totally fantastic. We will be using them every time from now on. Not only was their price good, but the kids’ insurance covered their testing completely and our insurance partially covered ours. That saved us so much money and worry.

The testing was quick and easy and time for the long drive back to Friendswood. It is amazing how far apart COVID testing centers are. If you live anywhere but right in the city, you have nothing.

Today is our big packing day. Tomorrow we are headed for Miami.

Finally got a sub from Aunt Cookies, my number one food item that I miss when I am away from New York. This is the only food that I got on this entire trip that was not a huge disappointment.

Walking the dogs this morning was hard because of how messy everything was. They were pretty tired and not looking for the longest of walks since they had such a long and stressful night last night. They truly hate storms. Mia shakes and runs around and just cannot sit still. Clive hides and plays dead when he is not shaking like crazy.

After the morning walk I joined everyone for breakfast. Amos comes down early to hang out. Ivonne sleeps several hours longer than he does. She does not normally make an appearance until nine thirty or ten. But he comes down closer to seven. We had our coffee. For breakfast I had fresh fruit like papaya, pineapple, and mango, some yoghurt and a little granola.

Paul and Dominica went into León today to do party shopping. The dogs were more than happy to come into the office and just collapse. They are feeling the stress and need more sleep. They are so funny, their routine is so set in stone. Up at five thirty. Talk two to three miles. Come back and hang out with everyone in the restaurant for two hours. Be restless for a while. Then settle down. Then Clive will bark that it is time for real naps. Then I take them into the office and they both just climb on the bed and totally pass out until about two o’clock unless they get disturbed.

So I actually had a decently productive day it being nice and quiet in the office. I really enjoy the quiet and lack of interruptions. The hardest part is that the dogs need me quite a lot of the time.

It is hard to believe that Dominica’s big party is in just two days. And Allen arrives in Nicaragua in just four.

Tonight we just all hung out in the hotel lobby. We had dinner and visited before calling it an early night. The restaurant was quite busy. It is a Monday night on a post-holiday week and we had a very good turnout. The word has gotten out, we are the place to go.