Carlos and Samantha

Carlos and Samantha on this month are celebrating thier birthday. Samantha is now 4 and Carlos on the 29th will be 8. Courious this is the only time in thier lives where Carlos will double Samantha's age. Here are some photos of them and thier cakes.

US Reunion Brainstorming

OK, I have recovered from the Honduras reunion exhaustion and am ready to tackle phase 2 of the EILL/LAS reunion. The 2 key elements to decide are date and location.

I suggest the end of October through the middle of November. This should allow for enough planning time w/o losing the enthusiasm that has been building.

I also suggest Houston, given this is Adrian and Aldo's home and it is close for Joseph, Shanon, and myself. It would also be an easy flight for anyone wanting to join us from Honduras and other parts of the country.

Everything else can start coming together once we decide on these 2 ideas. We just need input from everyone who wishes to attend. We can then start mapping out activities, accomodations, etc.

I am certainly open to other dates and locations if this is inconvenient for anyone. Any other thoughts?

Alaska trip photos #2

These pictures are on the glacier and sailing down the inside passage towards Vancouver.

Alaska trip photos

Hi guys! It it great to be back on the EILL blog. I still haven't quite recovered from the trip down to Honduras. We left the following Friday for Anchorage and I am still stuck on AK time. Anyway, at the risk of posting too many pictures, I wanted to show y'all how unbelievably beautiful this part of the world is. There are several ships that cruise in this area and it is very easy to do (after that long 7 hour flight, that is).

My son Andrew and I took a helicopter to the top of a glacier outside of Juneau and got to explore on ice that is slowly moving and almost a mile deep! The blue color of the ice was breathtaking. We also rode some off-rode vehicles to the top of a mountain and saw a grizzly bear and a large black bear. There were bear dropping all along the trail which made everyone a little nervous, but we didn't have any real close encounters. Bald eagles soar like buzzards do here in Texas; they were everywhere!

I would also highly recommend a stay in Vancouver, BC. It reminds me of San Francisco, only cleaner and with flowers, sequoias, and parks on every other block. Water taxis are the preferred method of travel across the city and the people could not have been nicer.

It seems Catrachos are hard to escape. On the ship I met about 6 people from La Lima, San Pedro, La Ceiba, Roatan, Santa Rosa de Copan, and Yoro. Too weird!! They work for 7 months at a time and then go home for 2 months. We had some good laughs. One guy graduated from "El Patria" and his uncle works at FHIA. Go figure...

I hope everyone is well. We need to get busy and set the date for reunion #2. Cuidense, Mark

MY pain in the ass...

Well, Yvette, I have to admit your puppy is darn cute, but since we are now officially cat people, I thought I'd post a picture of my pain in the ass, Chessie. She's been with us 11 years, which really is longer than we knew to expect. Sometimes we just want to grab her by the tail and fling her into the neighbor's yard, because she's so demanding. In spite of her demands, we have become quite attached to her. Ty really didn't like cats until this one came into the picture. Now he bends over backwards for this creature....