I love this kid!  He got a fun surprise today – Guess what today is Willie?  What?  It is your birthday!  It is?  He was happy.  He knew it was coming but it is hard to keep track of days here.  We always have to look at an electronic device to figure out what day of the week it is.  I love that – it feels so good to have a totally different relationship with time. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOhEwa0K6BQ]

I love this kid.  If he can help it, he’ll have a frog in his hand or be trying to catch one.  He took a break from frog and toad catching in Belize and decided we needed some pet geckos to eat the bugs in our trailer.  We now have about 4 of them that live with us.  Last week in Guatemala I saw him walking into the trailer with his hand closed.  I said, “What’s in your hand?”  “A firefly,” Willie replied, “to feed the geckos.”  “No way,” I said!  I stopped that never ending cycle of critters that would be moving in with us! 🙂

Willie is super inquisitive – he is constantly asking questions about everything and the gears are always turning in his brain.  He is a persistent one; Willie goes after what he wants until he gets it. He really knows how to stick to something.

And the adorable little guy . . .

In Guatemala and Mexico we usually get discounts for kids under age 12.  The kids here are tiny compared to Americans.  And Willie is tall for his age.  I haven’t had to get out his passport yet to prove he was 10 but thought I might a few times.  At Tikal, when we were paying for the campground a guy there kept insisting we had more adults and older kids than we did.  We went through the ages several times and finally I wrote down all the kids ages from both families for them.  Check out this picture of this cute 9 year old Guatemalan boy standing between Castle, age 4, and Noah, age 12. . . see the problem?  No wonder the guy thought we were making up our kids ages!

Castle (4), cute Guatemalan boy (9), Noah (12) at Tikal.  This boys mama made yummy banana bread - we bought about 12 mini loaves between our two families!

Castle (4), cute Guatemalan boy (9), Noah (12) at Tikal. This boys mama made yummy banana bread – we bought about 12 mini loaves between our two families!

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I put this pic on with the tall pics. Willie was barely 6 here. He is the only one of our kids that got kicked out of kiddie land at Lagoon, our amusement park, cuz he was too tall. He was still little and couldn’t ride the little kid rides anymore! All the other kids couldn’t wait to get tall enough to ride the big rides.

 

Happy birthday Willie!  We love you.