Downstairs is soooo close to being done. We need to go to San Juan and buy two windows and french doors. Once we have those, we’ll be able to take down the steel cage we have down there now, empenatar the block and install tile. Then we’re done (except for the tile, baby proofing, the back porch, garage with granny flat, swimming pool, decorative rock walls, waterfalls, yard stairs, trails, landscaping).

Going to San Juan to go shopping used to be an easy task, we just needed to motivate enough to just go. Get there in the morning, spend the day and then drive back. Well, that is no longer an option. Summer and I now have our little Sydney to think about. It would be really tough on her to sit in the car and go from store to store with no exercise, no time to try to practice standing, no high chair for meal time, no nap time etc. You guys get the idea.

When Summer, Sydney and I finally make it to San Juan to buy the remaining items to finish downstairs, we are going to rent a hotel room and do it over 2 days. No more need to rush around and hurry up, Sydney keeps us focused on what is important, enjoying the moment.

Tourist season is coming to a close and the prices at the nice hotels are going to start dropping soon. Once they do, our family is going on its first road trip. Destination, San Juan and hopefully the El San Juan Hotel and Casino!

Here is a screenshot of what we used to look like:

Summer and I have been blogging about our move to Rincon (and Puerto Rico in general) for a couple of years now and we been meaning to update our look for a while. The problem is that Summer and I have different tastes when it comes to websites, so it took about a year for us to finally find something we both liked.

Any how, hope you like the new look! We’re going to be tweaking the site during the next few days and adding all sorts of fun new goodies, so let us know if you find anything weird or not functioning properly.

Our banana trees have been producing a lot of banana’s for us this year. Once the first few bananas turn yellow, we chop off the entire bunch and hang it on the front porch for easy picking. Sydney eats at least one banana a day and it feels good to know that WE grew her breakfast (part of it).

Our papaya tree’s are also enjoying the dry weather. We had about 15 papayas growing out of each tree. I sure wish everything we planted grew as fast as the papayas. It took less than a year for these little non-grafted papayas to grow up and give us fruit. Amazing.

The moisture issue also creeps into our closets and things that have been in there for more then a week or two smell funky and mildewy. I actually have mildew growing on all of the leather high heeled shoes that I don’t ever wear.

But I recently found a SOLUTION to these two little moisture/humidity problems! For the kitchen we ordered a set of OXO Pop Containers. We actually found one of these containers at the local Kmart, but they were $22 a piece! Once we tried it and found that they work great to keep the humidity out of our food, I went online and found that Macys.com (who ships to PR), had a 10 piece set for $100. These containers really do work so well at keeping our food fresh as they have a type of pop seal that uses suction to seal. We can keep cereal in the cabinet again…YAY!

Next, I tackled the mildewy closets with Space Bags. We have way too many clothes that we NEVER wear now that we live in Puerto Rico. This includes my collection of vintage fur coats, high heel shoes, Stefan’s designer suits, ties and dress clothes, snowboarding gear, etc. These items have been literally rotting in our closets. So the other day I finally busted out the Space Bags that we bought well over a year ago and I LOVE THEM! They are so incredibly perfect for Puerto Rico, or any place that has high humidity. I just ordered 10 more…haha.

Look! My shoes are shrink wrapped!

Does anyone know what kind of plant this is that Sydney and Summer and standing next to? It is really cool looking, almost prehistoric. Is this the plant that killed off the dinosaurs?

We made another trip out to the nursery and spent a couple hundred dollars on a new batch on injertado (grafted) fruit trees and this time, we are protecting our investment! Stefan came up with a plan of using PVC pipe to create little tree jackets to protect our trees from wayward weedwackers. While this is a great plan, it’s kind of a pain in the butt to go buy PVC and cut it to fit each tree, so I made a trip down to the $1 store and bought a bunch of plastic hair curlers. They are much easier to cut then PVC, and you can just add more curlers if the tree is taller. Hopefully this will work!

Our new batch of fruit trees:

Our trees wear fashionable light blue “armor”:

Summer, Sydney and I were walking around the square a few weeks ago and I took a closer look at how the municipality hung and powered the holiday lights. Now, maybe it’s just because Brian Henry (aka: The Mad Electrician) is so talented and is certified in all the necessary codes to run safe power and I dip my feet in the civil litigation pool for a living, but the holiday lighting in Rincon is absolutely insane. Instead of planning ahead and putting in power outlets at each section of trees (separated by concrete sidewalks), they simply spliced into the power of the gazebo and ran 3 wire taped together from tree to tree. There are no boxes and the wires are low enough to the ground to touch. Completely rigged. Check out this picture. Felicidades Rincon!

We have been cooking a lot at home; Indian food (plain yogurt marinade for the chicken), Mexican Baja style fish tacos, pasta, lasagna, grilled chicken, spicy stir fries. We have been having a lot of fun, eating great food, spending time together cooking and saving a lot of money because every $15 meal we cook lasts two days. Going out all the time was getting expensive in our little tourist town and we were getting tired of the same old-same old. Unlike Ocean City where I grew up, there is no back door with different pricing for the locals versus the tourist on a travel budget. We all pay the same prices.

One of our regular spots over the past year or two has been the sushi served over at The Pool Bar in Barrio Puntas (that’s the neighborhood on the windward side of Rincon). They have a great fresh salad (served with shrimp or ahi), delicious and creative sushi (coconut wasabi drizzled over the tuna roll) and an awesome seared tuna with beurre blanc sauce. Dennis and Carol, the owners, have been in Rincon for thirty plus years, raised their own family here and now have their adult daughter working the bar and their grandson keeping them in board games, skateboards and days at the beach. If it’s a hot night, go for a swim in the pool while waiting for your sushi or to wash off the strong buzz you tacked on with the Saki bombs you were doing. For Summer and I, soon enough it will probably be a combination of the above along with our daughter begging us to go for another swim.

Thursday Nights in Rincon

Jazz Night and Sushi at Pool Bar

I went over to get take out sushi for Summer and I last night. I didn’t call my order in ahead of time because I wanted to have a cold Presidente or two and listen to some live jazz while waiting. There was a good crowd with all the tables taken at 7:30 and a few people waiting at the bar to be seated. They started a new hibachi menu, but I didn’t go for any of those items, we stuck with sushi and salad (our usual). The Jazz was a refreshing change to the reggaeton, house music and nursery rhymes I am subjected to on the daily. I really like the live jazz, the band is a colorful bunch of guys and girls…and they make me tap my foot. I recorded some of a song so you could have a listen before you head over next Thursday for your sushi jazz experience.

- Clean. There was annoying construction crap (spackle/drywall dust that took more then 4 floor scrubbings, stray concrete, etc) that I had to clean up.

- Paint. I painted the ceilings and soffits white, the walls light blue and one wall a bright blue.

- Install stripper pole. It might seem strange that I have a ’stripper pole’, but it really is the best excersize and it’s super duper fun. Like playing on the monkey bars when you were a kid!

- Install entertainment center. 32″ TV mounted on the wall, hooked up to a Mac Mini so we have internet access, DVD player, Wii Fit and stereo system.

So, there are all sorts of fun things to do in our gym now! We have a treadmill, stripper pole, Wii Fit balance board, Tai Bo/Dance/Fitness DVD’s, yoga ball, free weights and jump ropes. And most importantly, we have air conditioning in the gym (This may seem like a given for a house in Puerto Rico, but most of our house does not have A/C.)!

While I would consider the gym as being done, these are a couple of little things that will be done in the near future:

- Trim out the windows. But I havn’t figured out how we are going to do that yet.

- Organize/hide all the cords hanging from the entertainment center.

- Install grande mirrors on the back wall.

And one last thing that we will eventually do:

- Install Brazilian teak hardwood flooring. We have just enough left over from when we did the upstairs, so whenever we get around to doing the floors downstairs we will install that in the gym. But we are pretty burned out on construction, so the polished concrete floors are just fine with me until we decide to open that can of worms .

Here is a walk through of our gym today: