How Rafa Plays Fetch

This morning while in the bathroom, the ever-curious Rafa surprised me by leaping from the sink to the top of the bathroom door for no apparent reason. I guess he just wanted to see what was up there, or possibly have a better vantage point for hunting me. I let him stay up there a while so I could get some pictures, and then I helped him down. But wanting to catch him on video making the jump, I figured I could lure him back with one of Beth's hair ties--his absolute favorite toy. He loves to play fetch with these, and when he's not playing with them, he hoards them in his food and water bowls. So, sure enough, after visibly placing the hair tie on top of the door, it was just a matter of seconds before he went after it. He surprised me again by making the leap back down to the floor and then later back across to the sink. Rafa went up and down five times before I thought he ought to take a rest. What a cool cat!

If you want to see more leaps, check out our YouTube page HERE.

p.s. Today is our 4-year wedding anniversary! I love you, Beth!

Let Me Entertain You

While we haven't been up to anything of importance lately, we have been doing and seeing lots of fun little things with our spare time! Such as....

Competitions...

Dance Off

Leg Off

Beer Off
(don't worry - just a blind beer tasting of Brahva, Gallo, and Dorada Ice...James was only sipping on these! He won, by the way!)

Game Night


Being Active...

Zip Lining

Measuring the height of volcanoes


Being Lazy

Stop! Hammock Time!

U Can't Touch This

Nap time

Central American Celebrations

Cuban music with Franco!

Cuban Contraband

Antigua Religious Processional

Watching Rafa Grow!

He's getting so big!

New Apartment, New Kitty!

Rafa, our new Kitty!!

Before going into the more exciting part of the blog (scroll down if you just can't wait for Cute Overload-worthy photos) we moved into a new apartment over the summer, and boy do we like it!

It may not be as fancy or bright as our first apartment which we definitely definitely miss, but it has several benefits that make it worth the move:

• It is on the ground floor, diminishing the constant shaking feeling from any and all earthquakes!
• It is in a safer area of the zone we live in, and there is even a neighborhood watch! This is not your typical small-town watch, either. There are guys with guns who drive around on motorcycles and stand on street corners to make sure everything stays safe. Nice!
• We have a patio that we can hang out on!
  
• It came with three incredibly comfortable couches that beg you to be lazy :)
• Rent is lower here, so we are able to save some money as well.

The Living Room area

The Entrance area and Dining area

The very spacious bedroom


The Kitchen

The Spare Bedroom/Office with a huge window looking out to the patio

A bathroom

The Patio!
Complete with an avocado tree growing into our area

Second (and much more importantly) we temporarily adopted a kitten! He is from our friend Patricia's friend, Manolo, and we got him when he was only 4 weeks old. He's so small and adorable, and we have certainly missed the companionship of a pet. We are pretty sure we are going to name him Rafael ("Rafa" for short) after our favorite tennis player, the Spanish Rafael Nadal. We like the name also because when we call his name we get to roll our R's -- "Rrrrrrrrrrafa!"