only one month until I am on holidays! wheee-hah!



What a strange fast year it has been this year. Very busy. good? bad? a little of both. kind of indifferent-y, very busy and very fast.
most definitely better than last year. a recovery year


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Elias is now as tall as I am - there is less than a half inch of difference in any case

here he is with his aunt Marta.



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- and Bela has suddenly shot up to be only half a head shorter than me too. She starts high school next year.
 

Did you read that book by Garcia Marquez - with Rosa the beautiful or something, who just struck people dumb with her beauty - who had green hair - (or was it pink?) and didn't Isabel Allende, rip off a really similar character, also called Someone the Beautiful, also with green  -or pink - hair?  - and didn't you eventually get really sick of the sameishness of magical realism, repeated themes of labyrinths and mystical butterfly plagues and staggeringly beautiful green--or-pink-haired women, then the giant black shaggy dogs - or pumas! - and prostitutes with hearts of gold, priests with power complexes, coronels with no one to write to, and didn't all those books and all those characters eventually merge into your mind?

but don't you find, anyway and even so, every now and then,
something of magical realism ringing true with the sometimes bizarro-world place that is latin america?

 



and





here she is,  minus green hair,
*with* white gloves,
marching on the 15 of September, Independence Day,
with two of her best friends.




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meanwhile Lily, Goddess bless her, is still my little girl.



She was also in the Independence Day parade, as a cheerleader.
With her best friend, Monica:





and here with her Aunt/Great Aunt Dominga,
(who is kind of wil's extra-officially adopted sister who then went on to marry his uncle so becoming his aunt.)


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meanwhile, as the children grow up and older, wilson grows a little crazier each day.  
also taken to imitating oft-overused comical characters from a magical realist novels.



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we are all fairly well sick of the wet season,
in process of winding up to a soggy end.
Not that it's been very wet this year. but the drizzle does interfere with weekend plans, and getting clothes dry. 

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and a final picture of a final long-lost member of the family we came across in the supermarket and couldn't restrain ourselves from taking home for a joyful family reunion (you need to know our surnames and have an australian accent to get this one sorry. even then you probably wouldn't think it's funny. but I do.)


  
 

I was recently in Liberia for work. Liberia, Costa Rica of course.

even so the costumes were very elaborate and there was a lot of colour and movement and music and dancing


 . . .celebrating local wildlife . . .











 

tomorrow is costarican independence day!