Little House in the Jungle

In preparation to buy the cabin that is on our jungle property, we've been spending a lot of time cleaning and clearing on that end of the property lately.  The cabin has 3 rooms; a main room and 2 bedrooms. We're excited to have a roof! Having a dry spot will make spending significant time out there a lot easier. We've picked up a lot of trash and cut a lot of weeds. (My project was mopping the floor, which besides being used as a place to work on chain saws and weed eaters, had previously been mopped with diesel. (Apparently, bugs don't like it, and it dries faster than mopping with water. However, it somehow misses the mark as a "cleaning" product, if the dirt sticks to it, and it smells worse than it did before you "cleaned"? But that's just my opinion.) Mopping, however, was not nearly as photo worthy as Taylor's project...

...He got the swing hung! 

Concerning the proper way to eat a birthday cake...

Our kids are slowly getting accustomed to the Ecuadorian way of doing birthday cake. 

Here's how it's done....

First, you get sung to and blow out candles, just like one would expect.

 Ok...here is where it gets tricky... If you have no friends, (or siblings) you daintily lean over and get the first bite of cake. Though, on second thought, a birthday party without friends or siblings, isn't much of a party, now is it?

If you do have friends and/or siblings, you will most likely get you face pushed into the icing... 

...just to show you're loved. ;)

Happy Birthday, dear.....

...everybody? No, not quite everybody. Just to Taylor, and then to Dan, and then to Glory, 

within the space of 8 days. :)

Papa and his cookie mountain.

 Daniel's fiddle cake was fun!

 ...and following Ecuadorian tradition, he got the first bite. :) (More about this later...:)

...and two days later, Glory's turn!