Iguanas in the House and Birthday Cake

            Good day today. Very good indeed.  Mom and Dad had a very early morning stand-up paddle board lesson this morning (they called it “old people surfing”) and after they left I took Luke’s bike that he had left for me and biked down to his house.  I had really been wanting to bake a cake for Arden and my birthday so when I had biked over I took along with me a backpack of cake baking supplies. I got there even before Anna had left for school (about 7:15) and got to talk with her a bit before she left.  Haven’t been seeing much of her these days as she has normally been super swamped with school!

             Arden was still asleep so after Anna left Luke and I just sat around and hung out for a while, eating a very relaxed breakfast together.  After Arden woke up we decided to go about baking that cake and while I held Arden and read the recipe off the computer, Luke threw all the ingredients together.  There were a number of things we didn’t have and had to substitute for or omit entirely so was certainly a very interesting cake. While we were waiting for it to bake, we decided to take a walk down the beach and look for those coconut venders that I have been trying to find since I got here.  We had no such luck finding them but still had a great time collecting shells before we headed back.  Mom and Dad were waiting for us at the house when we got there and the cake still wasn’t done so we just hung out for a while hearing about their super fun time paddle boarding.

            Once it did finish, Mom and I went about making our respective frostings. She was going to frost half of it using her famous chocolate frosting and I wanted to frost half using a fondant idea I wanted to try.  Turned out alright if I might say so myself! At least, considering the utensils I was using; a glass cup for a rolling pin and a serrated knife instead of a straight edge…

            We also had a bit of an incident with an iguana getting in the house and that was a super short, but super funny, ordeal getting it out of the house! It was scrambling all over the place and at one point we had a human barricade made up of my dad and it ran right over the top of him! We finally got it outside though and I’m sure it will think twice before walking inside another building anytime soon…

            With the cakes done, we decided to head down the road and try and feed the local crocodiles down the way that we were told always hung out under this specific bridge.  We had bought some hot dogs as recommended and acquired some string from Luke’s very friendly neighbors.

            After I had spent a short time holding the hotdog into the water over the bridge with no success, a young couple from Germany came by and said they had seen the crocodiles yesterday.  They said a local had helped them and he had tied a coconut to a string and splashed it in the water continuously to make a lot of noise and attract the crocodiles

            We decided to give it a try and sure enough a crocodile showed up shortly thereafter!

            After that we decided to head back for an early dinner as Luke was planning to go with Anna to a school function later in the evening.  On our drive back past Carillo beach what should we see passing our way but a coconut vendor! We stopped the car right there and he happily came over to let us choose a coconut.  I got the 500 colonies one (about $1) and watch as he pulled it out of the bucket of water, whacked it with a machete a couple of times to get the top off and handed it to us with a straw. It honestly tasted a lot saltier than I was expecting but boy Arden sure loved it! We passed it around the car to begin with and gave her a sip. When I got it back she did all she possibly could to get me to give it back! She was waving her arms all over the place, screeching up a storm and trying to crawl over the front seat to get it! It was actually pretty funny.

Ardens first birthday party!

             Dinner with the family was pretty fun as well, complete with a birthday cake and presents for Arden. She had a lot of fun ripping into the wrapping paper and digging her hands into some chocolate cake J.

Digging into that birthday cake :)