Hey all,
Sorry it has been so long, it is hard to get to town do our shopping and errands and catch a mototaxi by 4:00, so sometimes our blog suffers (more often than not). A lot has happenend in the last month, including a much needed vacation with my parents to Tela, on the north coast. They rented a truck and spent Wednesday and Thursday night in Gracias, and got to see our house and school (my dad saw me teach the 6th graders about planets). Friday afternoon we quickly packed up and headed to Tela! It was a crazy ride, but by 11:00 we got to our hotel where all rooms have a view of the ocean! The next day we went to a botanical garden, 2nd biggest in the world, and got to see cool plants, trees, birds and insects.
We went to the beach after that, which was amazing! Then my parents treated us to a lobster dinner (it's really cheap there). Sunday we went to a Garifuna village. Garifuna people are descended from shipwrecked slaves and they have a very distinct culture, language and food. We spent the whole day there playing dominoes with the locals, eating fried fish and collecting shells and sand dollars. Monday was rainy so we explored the town a bit and then Leah and I finished our thank you notes from the wedding, so my parents could take them home and mail them. Tuesday was a whole day of traveling by a pick up, taxi, 2 buses and a mototaxi. On Wednesday, it was really hard to go back to school!

Last weekend I got to talk to by brothers for a while and it occured to me that I haven't said anything about catching butterflies on here. There are a ton of butterflies here in both number and type, so I got to thinking how I could catch them. I went around our yard and found some things I could make a net with. I found some stiff black tubing, fishing line, a piece of stiff but flexible plastic (that you take off a 5 gallon bucket of paint to open it) and a plastic shopping bag. I attachd the plastic bag to a loop of the long piece of plastic. I tied fishing line to the end of the loop and put it through the black tubing, then tied a wooden handle to the end, tadaa! a draw-string butterfly net! Here is some proof that it works wonderfully.

I folded them up in paper envelopes and put them in my freezer until I can do something with them when I get home. If anyone has tips on how to keep them and mount them, please let me know! I have been finding the species on neotropicalbutterflies.com if you want to help me identify them (the thing in the middle is a toenail clippers to hold the wings down so I could take a picture).

Yesterday was Halloween, which we celebrated by carving an overgrown acorn squash, lighting "harvest scented" candles and putting around the leaves and candy that Leah's parents sent.

Thanks for all of your prayers and encouragement, it's very much needed and we really appreciate it!