smiling in south carolina

We have been so busy enjoying the lovely fall weather this October. Each weekend here has offered plenty of opportunities to be outside. The Harvest Festival and the State Fair were the photo highlights. We hope your October is happy, too!

*The writing is great, but I love the ninja-outfit-googley-eyes self-portrait complete with "the" Robin signature ...note the converse sneakers.

We all had a great summer filled with sun and fun, friends, family, good food, and quite a few birthday parties! The best part is that it's not over yet!

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there....i am so happy that this year i get to celebrate this day WITH my mother. that makes it extra special. i guess this means i'll have to come up with a better gift than my usual long distance phone call... robin made this picture for me last week. no special reason-he just hearts me. have a wonderful weekend! love, steph

we are back! sabalito no more, we are now officially "SMILING IN SOUTH CAROLINA"! to reflect our new whereabouts. same exact blog, different state. just be sure and change your bookmarks or feeds if you need to so you can keep up with us. it's been a busy couple of months here in south carolina for robin and me. mostly we have been enjoying lots and lots of family time. the weather is finally springtime warm and we've found plenty of opportunities to get outside-golfing, strawberry picking, the striped bass festival, fishing and even some swimming. mix that with some scooby doo cartoons and a few trips to wal-mart. life goes on.....robin is thrilled to be attending the third grade here, (in english! he understands everything, he says) and even more excited that it lets out for the summer next month! visions of more fishing, robot camp, whatever we can arrange by then. below are some pics of our happy times the last 7 weeks. we'll keep you posted on how the summer...

yes, it's a mini mohawk. i am sorry i don't have a "before" picture to show you. over the christmas break from school, i told robin that he could grow out his hair. he did and 2 1/2 months later it was all long, blond and wavy, beautiful actually. the costa rican ladies can't keep their eyes off of it. of course it was mostly uncombed and all in his eyes. 2 weeks after returning to school, the teacher requested that he cut it. it's in the school rule book that the boys keep hair short. on monday i took him to the hair "stylist", not the barber, because he loves to have his hair washed in those salon sinks! what a princess. our stylist, patricia, cut it according to the picture we found in the haircuts book, but the final result wasn't really as cool as robin wanted it to look. he was sad. only after a few tears (his) did she understand his disappointment. she then took out the COOL MEN'S HAIRCUTS book out from behind the counter. w...

this is rex. he is robin's new pet rooster. he's very young. robin bought him from a neighbor for $2, a whole week's allowance. the latest trend here is for all the boys in the neighborhood to buy pet roosters. that's alot of crowing! the first morning we had him locked inside a cardboard box in robin's bedroom (!) and he started crowing at 5:30am. oh my god. then he escaped the box into the house. we eat chickens, don't we? hmm. robin had to get up for school anyways, but that's too early for me to hear "cockadoodledoo" EVERY DAY. besides, the rooster is NOT going to live in the house. that was a temporary thing until we had other arrangements. we have no chicken house. well, we did, but it was rotten and i knocked it down last year. rex spent the afternoon enjoying the back yard. as of last night, rex is living up the street in a friend's chicken house. there he has his own little private section in a chicken house with ot...

we have sky tv satellite at our house. however, robin and i are not huge tv watchers. with the exception of the occasional cartoon, "amazing animal videos", "drake and josh", and "mythbusters", we don't have much quality programming to choose from! take away the sleeze, the violence, the bad language, excessive commercials and anything re-run and what do you have left? top chef! every wednesday night at 8 robin and i have been watching (what is probably last season's) top chef. if you don't already know it, top chef is the reality competition show about cooking. every week, after a few fun and grueling tests of skill and/or creativity one of the top chef hopefuls is asked to "pack your knives and go". they are now down to the last 4. it is a fun show for robin and i to watch together because we both get to learn alot about cooking and food: meal preparation, food combinations, cooking techniques. plus, there is the side benefit of the...

wow, it's alread january 13th! happy new year! it's been a busy few weeks here for us: christmas came and went. we had a great couple of days together here at home. on christmas eve robin, bobby and i ate m&m's and lasagna and salad for dinner. we also kicked off our new holiday tradition of hot fudge sundaes on christmas eve. yum. i think that went over pretty well! later we laughed our way through the movie "a christmas story" (which we now own in 2 DVD 20th anniversary version). on christmas day we opened our presents! under our tree we had a very repectable pile of gifts from each other and family. robin had the most, of course. he got some great new books, a wierd animals calendar, knit cotton boxers, a quilted tennis racket cover, a new watch, a toy hummer, a boy's-only diary, a make-your-own bird house kit, a jump rope, a che guevara t-shirt direct from cuba-and more. the pictures are of my cupid charm from bob and robin's t-shirt. unfortunately...