Honeymoon #4 - Part 1

Jonathan and I took a 12 day trip without the girls to Honduras from 15-26 May. So far, this has been the best "sans kids" trip yet!

We left early the morning of May 15th and flew to Miami where we spent the night at the Sofitel hotel near the airport. We had a beautiful suite, enjoyed room service and a movie without any interruptions! This hotel served as the "bookends" to our trip since we were unable to fly directly to Honduras in 1 day.

Coffee at the San Diego airport while checking email/FB.
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Here is our suite~room 1015 on the front end and 615 at the end. They looked the exact same and we had a view of the runways.


We had the BEST Nutella Crepes in this bed! :)

On the 16th we boarded our plane headed to Honduras. It was a mere 2 hour flight and we flew over the Florida Keys, Cuba and the "Islas de Bahia" (Bay Islands) of Honduras before landing at San Pedro Sula international airport.

You can barely see the island of Utila (touching the wing, clouds above it).


Almost there! The pilot said it was 95 degrees-yum.


Northern coast of Honduras.

We then quickly got through customs and saw a sign reading "Mr. Jonathan Kassebaum" and Lima and Brenda were waiting to take us to The Lodge at Pico Bonito. We had a 3 hour drive and wanted to stop to eat at Tio Dolmo (we didn't take any pix but I found this video on YouTube). Some friends of ours from Panama City were Honduran (well, she was) and we had dinner with her family prior to leaving Florida and they told us about this restaurant. We originally forgot the name of the restaurant, but when we told Brenda we wanted to eat at "Tio Something" she knew what we were talking about. After some delish authentic Honduran grub and a thunderstorm, we continued our drive to the rain forest.

Waiting to continue our drive after lunch...and yes I was a tad worried since it just started down pouring! For those of you in the southeast...you think Florida is hot and muggy! This place has it beat!

Our drive to the lodge was rainy so we didn't get many photos, but we did snap these on our way back to the airport at the end of our trip. We quickly noticed how prevalent Coke and Pepsi are along side the road. We learned that these companies will provide paint for people's "pulperias" (basically a convenience store) or signs for the cities, but they paint them to look like a Coke or Pepsi can.

Signs for the town of La Masica


Someone's store/home.



Signs for the town of El Boquete

Its amazing traveling outside of the US. We immediately said "wow" and realized how blessed and fortunate we are to live in America.

Honduras' economy is agricultural and the majority of what we saw were pineapples, coconuts and bananas.

Dole Pineapple field (not just grown in Hawaii).
We learned from an employee at the Lodge that workers get paid $60 a week to pull 1,250 pineapples. He did that job for about 2 years before he had had enough!

~Other things we saw while driving~

Taxi


Lots of colorful homes. Laundry is hung out to dry. We saw this in Costa Rica too.


A cart and someones home.


Women really DO do this. We saw this a few times.

A car wash.
You can see that you drive your car up onto the yellow risers and men wash your car.


Carneceria. That's meat hanging there.

The Florida friend I mentioned before who is from Honduras...her maiden name is "Handal" and her family has department stores in Honduras similar to Macy's here in the US. We saw billboards and a few of the stores on our drive. Brenda was shocked when we told her we knew that family! I guess they are a big deal down there. :)

Here is one at the mall in the town of "El Progreso".

There was an earthquake about a year ago that took out a bridge. We drove on the new one, but here are photos of the old one broken in half!


West side of the bridge.


East side of the bridge.

~Stay tuned for part 2~

Kylie turns 6

I don't even have words for how fast my princesses are growing up. Kylie turned 6 on May 13th at 5:46am. She's about 40 pounds heavier and 23 inches taller than she was on the day she was born.

Our day began with, or course, pancakes and Kylie wanted to make them.

Reading off the ingredients.

Cracking eggs while daddy watches for shell fragments.

Stir it up!

Pouring them in. She did it by herself. Daddy was there to lend a hand just in case.

Her sweet self helped make these for her sister. She waited to eat until the end, but that is partly because she knew daddy had a special pancake coming.

I wondered if she'd be in a coma after eating all this sugar (there isn't even syrup on it yet here!).

We all then headed to a local miniature golf/go kart/bumper boats place and had so much fun! Thankfully there weren't a lot of people there because it took about 20 minutes to calculate which of their packages would be the best deal...we ended up with unlimited everything. If people had been in line behind us they would have been ticked! Nama, Bopa, Grammy and Grandpa joined in on the fun.

Kylie goes first.


Then Ava.


I love my camera!


Juliet's turn. You'll notice where the top of the club is on her cheek...she got schwacked a few times.


Just snappin' shots of my beauties.


It was a beautiful day in southern California...of course!

After a few holes of golf, we headed inside for video games.

Fun with race cars.


Juliet needed help reaching the pedals and crashed a lot.


Jonathan and Kylie on a motor cycle. I just LOVE their faces here.


Jonathan and Ava doing a little skiing.


"Don't touch my cotton candy" face.


Ski ball-a classic!


Juliet liked the rides you stick a token in and they go back and forth. She rode this motorcycle and a horse probably 30 times.


Deal or No Deal.


Go kart time!


Jonathan is such a bad driver he scares himself!

No one is safe!

Kylie drove the boat better than some of the teenagers!

We then headed home for a nice quiet evening in with our immediate families. In addition to the grandparents, GG and Aunt Heather joined us all for dinner, presents and cake.

Reading her cards.


Dresses and jewelry always produce a smile!


Dangling earrings from Aunt Heather.


Uncle Jeffery always finds the cool gifts.


More earrings. Ava is so surprised!


Juliet being her silly self.


Lovin' on Aunt Heather.


Ice cream cake. Nope, I didn't do anything fancy this year. Thank you Baskin & Robins!


My sister and my big girls.


I envision many a birthdays and all holidays near family since we are barely a 5 hour drive away! No more taking all day to travel on $500 plane tickets into a po-dunk airport and hoping your luggage is on the baggage claim carousel when you depart the plane in one of the two gates...for the next 3 years anyway.

Kassebaum PCS #6

Here are some highlights of our 6th move across the US, the second move for the big girls and Juliet's very first move. It took us 5 days and 4 nights to drive about 2000 miles.

Leaving town...driving day #1. The big girls had their last soccer game so we hit the road immediately after that (with a stop at Starbucks of course).

Little Miss Coolness riding in daddy's truck. That is the girls favorite thing to do!

We hit the pool at every hotel (except for the hole of a hotel in Van Horn, TX). Here the girls are yelling at Jonathan who is down at the truck bringing in more of our JUNK.

By junk I mean our animals.

Juliet checking herself out in the mirror.

Sunday was Mother's Day. Since we spent the day driving, my only request was that Jonathan take all the girls in the van and I get to drive the truck with Alby and Bailey. Here they are snuggled in the back.

And I'm sad to say that Alby has since disappeared since we arrived in California. He's been an outdoor cat for about 5 1/2 years and when we let him out at Grammy and Grandpas house, he never came back. Its been over 3 weeks and I've lost hope he'll return. I think he was a bit mad at how much we had him inside during our stay on base in Florida, in hotels, and in the car. Sorry son! Bailey really misses you!!

Jonathan teaching the girls bad things to do in hotels.

Mother's Day margarita at some hole in the wall Mexican food joint in San Antonio.

Snugs!


The animals got to hang out in the beds at the hotels.

We did use the potty a few times on the drive. We are at a rest stop here, but those are just plain nasty!

Juliet smooching on her big sister.

PF Chang's in Tucson. I wanted it for Mother's Day, but we knew all those restaurants would have long waits so we hit it a few days later.

Our drive was uneventful. Texas was boring as usual. We of course ate out a lot and that got old after about 2 days.

When we finally drove into southern California and headed up the 15, Kylie shouted to me "MOMMY, LOOK!!" I said "what honey". She said "up there" and pointed to the foot hills. I said "what do you mean?". She said "there are houses on that hill!". It took me a second to realize...there are no hills in Florida and she's never seen that before.