Quincy was supposed to keep a journal while on his trip. He was pretty sporadic about it (basically mostly blew it off) but he did do some work. Here is a transcription from his journal (complete with misspellings).

{Written in the Houston airport during layover}
I had a new flavor icee. It was coca cola.

{second day on the farm}
I rode a horse.
I saw 9 squealing pigs geting fed.
I got to pet an ox.
We saw a dog we named him Box.
We were out on the lake.
I lassoed a few times.

Friday.
At 6 o'clock am we watched the oxen pull the cart up the hill. The cart was filled with stones. At the bottom of the hill some men pounded the stones with sledge hammers. We went to see the pigs get fed wen ther food came they squeal over it then at Lunch time my mom said "lats wate like 1 pig waits for another.

horse cliping
horse nail
{collected from the ground after the horses nails were trimmed - a chunk of nail is taped into the journal}

At arenal hotel we uesd a masady. {machete}.
We went zip lineing. We saw lots of Agua (water). It was all fun.

{at Doubletree resort in Punterenas}
We saw Edie, Bob but not there dogs. Punterenas had 2 swim up bars. and my favrit dring is (Miramar.) {pina colado topped with strawberry daiqueri} We had some holota. (ice crem) I lernd how to speke some spinis like Mas agua por favor. It mens more water pleas.

We went to Manuel Antonio.
We went on a bote toore to Damas Island.
We went on a crokdile boot toore.
We went in the pool.
We liked the pool
We sew a man feed a crocadile!!!
a moncy stod on my hed!!

The plane is boring.
On the plane there is nothing to do.
On the plane ther is a move.
On the plane my dad slapde.
On the plane my mom did sdoko.

We missed our plane. And had a fined of 150$ witch was a rip off. Then we got a hotal. We went to the bech and saw lots of crabs.

Aidan was willing to do a journal too at first.

Wensday - at 12:35 am as our first plane took off we saw so many colorful lights on the run way. As we neared Houston airpoort we could see so many trees in big patches.

Thursday I went horse back riding for the first time to actally control to horse with the raines and the stirrup. We think we will go riding again Friday.

Friday we saw the dog that followed us on our horse. We saw him sleeping on our portch.

a clipping from a horses nail {huge piece taped in the journal}

At 6:30 am we walked up and saw pigs cages being cleaned an pigs being fed. When he was feeding the baby pigs, they all piled on top of eath outher. At lunch that day my dad was late because he was cleaning our caben so we could leave. When he finally got to lunch, we had all ready started eating. "We wait like one pig waits for anoughter! my mom pointed out. Saterday we also took a row boat out on a lake 1 km from our caben. (La Carolina Lodge) Finally we got to the driveway of our next place - Nuevo Arenal. We started up the long driveway to the house. After 3 min we got to a gate. My mom told me the code to a padalock on the gate. I opened the padalock and found two keys inside. I used one of the keys to open anouther lock witch opened the gate. After sealing the gate we used the other key to open the downstairs door. Serprizingly the downstairs was not coneted to the upstairs. On the table there were the keys to the upstairs. When I got inside, we saw a loft. I climbed up the ladder, on the loft there was one double-bed. Wuincy and me slept there. Quincy on the left, and me on the right. {cute picture illustrating the house}

I can't see you
you can't see me
it's a bad day ovedesly

A poem by Aidan he came up with in Costa Rica while he was off by himself.

If I can see you
but you can't see me
it's a bad day -
obviously.

later he said he thought of a way to turn it around

If I can see you
and you can see me
it's a good day -
obviously!

Aidan and I were waiting in the car for Pete and Quincy to finish up baseball practice. Bored. Grabbed my camera and snapped these - see how the one on the right is brighter? That is the result of holding up a piece of paper under his face on the right side of the pic. Amazing how reflective skin is. You can see the reflection of the paper in his eyes. I have a snap of him from this weekend where he is positively glowing green from surrounding grass. Fortunately I know how to correct for that...

I thought this was a pretty sweet image. The boys like to sleep together (in the small bed no less!) and read for a bit when they wake up. Quincy's reading has continued to improve in leaps and bounds and he is surprised to realize that he can now read chapter books.

The last pics of mouse. This was from 2 days ago. He had rapidly gotten extremely decrepit and was tottering around unsteadily. It was clearly only a matter of time. Today was his time. He is laying legs up in his tank awaiting discovery by the kids. They've been home a couple hours and passed by his cage numerous times. I for one will miss him.

Chess club! Aged 7 & 9. Who knew how fun it could be? Wed eve we decided to enroll the kids in "Academic Chess" after school once a week starting the next day. Both of their best friends apparently are doing it and did the previous session. I picked them up at 4.30 they were bubbling over with excitement. Huh? They learned the "fried liver" attack. Huh? They also both got to play chess with their buddies after the beginning of the class learning stuff from the instructor (they both know how to play so they didn't have to spend time with the intro instructor). After dinner they took on Pete. He parried the fried liver attack. But then... Aidan made a move, Pete made a move, Aidan went to move but Quincy stopped him - move here and you'll checkmate Daddy! Yup. The kids beat ole dad. Q is sometimes freaky good at games. I was skeptical about chess club (since they already knew how to play) but anything that they can get so excited about is well worth doing.

some snaps from our recent escape to Hawaii sans youngins. We left behind us rain and 2 boys very happy to be hanging with Uncle Chuck - burgers, pizza, ice cream nightly and lots of fun. This was our 5th trip to the islands (to our amazement). The first 3 times we recall as quite warm and balmy. The past 2 trips (both in Feb) were delightful for hiking but not exactly beach lounging weather. Supposedly we had 82 degree temps in Hawaii and 78 or so in Maui but very strong trade winds made it feel more like 65 as far as I could tell. We did go snorkeling a couple times and took some good hikes and visited 2 volcanos. Pete did excellent trip planning down to places to check out for our meals. We had a couple of stellar dinners in Maui - Mama's Fish House and Lahaina Grill are definitely worth the splurge if you are in the area. More pics on fotki of course.