Boricua en la Lima

...for end of year parties and Christmas productions and most importantly Christmas and Summer! Here´s Sebas´ Christmas show from school this morning...

I’m sitting here on the airplane coming back from New York to Lima wondering how all the events that transpired to my being here right now came about. I just ran (and finished), my first marathon, the NYC Marathon 2013, which was especially meaningful for the city of New York given Hurricane Sandy last year and the bombings in the Boston Marathon this year.  As I sat in the seemingly endless waiting pattern to begin the race I wondered “Why this one? Why now?”… See, last year I basically trained for a whole marathon without actually doing it.  Some family members were training for the Chicago marathon and while I couldn’t make it because I had a trip to Puerto Rico previously planned I decided I would do the training as a way to keep them company while they trained and getting some good workouts in after having moved to Lima.  While I didn’t do the middle of the week runs I ran almost every long run with them and felt like I was in good physical shape from all the wor...

We're on our way back to the train station from Machu Picchu and I am so happy that I've gotten to enjoy a well deserved couple of days off as well as seeing the kids enjoy themselves in Cuzco so much when I get am email from the school administration that a kid in pre-kinder has passed away. No name, no explanation, just a note saying that they have rallied all the counseling support they can to deal with this thing on Monday morning when the kids go back to school. First thing I wonder is if the kid was in my kid's classroom, were they friends? How will they explain this to my kid, how will I explain this to my kid? Will all the kids react as if it was a non-event or will their little worlds be shattered? Obviously this is nothing compared to Newton but I find myself at a loss here too, not understanding how God can let something so tragic and sad happen. It's Father's Day tomorrow and I feel so horrible for the parents of this kid, what they must be going throu...

This is the first Easter we ever spend in Peru.  There was so much activity going on this weekend I'm pretty exhausted, especially trying to move at the same time!  But the kids had a blast.  First of all we had the whole family down here on Jose's side - his brother and their whole family as well as Jose's Dad.  We couldn't fit all those people in the beach house so we had to rent a beach house just for the weekend.  We drove down on Wednesday night after work since Thursday and Friday were holidays down here (no work!).  Thursday started with family tennis between all the cousins and Friday started the same way followed by volleyball and football. It was also Jose's brother's birthday on Friday and Jose's sister birthday on Saturday. Saturday was jam packed with activities.  First the running of the bulls (where hubby got poked on his side by a bull with a pretty mean streak, but I hurt him even more after the whole thing was over!), then a...

I am hoping '13 is my lucky number.  I hope so for everyone out there too! We had a nice relaxing (and long) beach weekend for NYE and while the kids are almost saying "the sun is too much" at this point (and it's only the beginning of the summer!), they are definitely enjoying the water more and more this year.  Last year Sebas wouldn't even go in the water because it's so cold (he takes after me in that respect, preferring the warm waters of the Caribbean to the icy Pacific).  But this year they have found joy in beach toys, floaties and boogie boards!  Not to mention ice cream.  I hope this last weekend is a sign of how fun this summer will be for them.  And I hope sunblock makers really know what they're doing, especially with Sebas beacuse he's so pale! Gabi's already got the most enviable tan ever.

We've been taking advantage of the beach at the Regatas ever since we got in!  What's not to love? Some days have been nicer than others but I think we're on track to be super tanned by the end of the summer.  In fact, I'm not quite sure how we're supposed to be in the sun for the next 12 weekends or so! We also had a really nice Christmas at "home" (our temporary home) with the whole family.  Here's a couple of pictures of the kids and Dad around the Christmas tree at family's house. Now we're looking forward to 2013 with lots of changes, maybe even more than 2012!  New house, new job, new nanny for the kids, new school for Sebas, a very busy summer in the middle of trying to do all that.  I think I'm setting myself up for a slight nervous breakdown but everything just collided time-wise! I wish I could find the 2012 horoscope I read at the beginning of the year which turned out to be soooo right -- it predicted the m...