A New Park & Mas Baile!

Today we decided to venture out and look for a new park close to Hotel Paris. As I mentioned before, there are many parks around, so pretty much no matter what direction you head in you're going to eventually run into one. So today, on Valeria's recommendation, we headed out in the direction of Calle 19 (street 19). There is a smaller park close to us here, but it doesn't have all the cool things a 4 year old needs to play on. Somehow it worked just fine when we took her there at 4-1/2 months. My, how needs change. So we decided to take a long walk (longer than needed- when we got to the street, instead of going across it like Valeria told us to do, we turned to the right down Calle 19 and walked about a mile before we realized we were going the wrong direction. I really need to get Rosetta Stone) and headed to the park. One of the great things about Bogota is that even when you're going the wrong way, the view is always beautiful:

Plus, as you can see from the picture above, they have Cyclovia on holidays and Sundays, which means that they shut one side of the road down so that bikes, roller bladers, runners, and double-stroller-pushing-olympians-in-training can walk down the road. It's really quieted down here the last day or two, and we expect it to get even more so as we approach Easter. Many businesses are closed for the rest of the week. Huh- maybe they're on to something there- could they be called "priorities"??

Once we arrived at the park, it was pretty cool- plenty of things for Ally to play on, and Monster (my new nickname for Will) loved to just hang out and sit on the grass. Here's a pic of my 2 cuties on a bridge today:

After the park, we headed back in for lunch and had some rest time. We also had some strip-Will-down-to-his-diaper time (he loves being naked), and Ally decided she wanted to try out his crib here:

Will is always smiling when Ally's around:

And when she's not, he has the "who, me?" look on his face:

So tonight before dinner Ally decided to push Will around in the walker that's here at the hotel. Did I say push? I meant run:

And before dinner, the musica started back up from last night, and before we knew it, Juanita, Guillermo, and Valeria were out on the "dance floor":

And toward the end, Beck and Ally joined in:

Ally wasn't her usual dancing self, but I would expect that over the next few days we'll have some great video of her being herself. She's been a little shy, but I think that's just because things are still somewhat new (especially the new hotel, since we only moved a couple days ago). Tonight after dinner, Ally and Monster got into the tub and had it out with a splash-o-war. Ally lost. Will is an absolute maniac in the tub (see the video from a couple days ago), and Ally is always glad when I clean him up first so that she gets some alone time in there. He's already a man's man- watch out, world!

Tomorrow we don't have too much planned. I hope we can slow down a little bit to reflect on the meaning of Good Friday and what it means to us as Christians. I hate to admit it, and it is just an excuse, but there aren't a whole lot of English-speaking churches around here (there's one that we know of about 45 minutes away), so we feel somewhat disconnected from Easter (we had the same thing 4 years ago). I do know that on Sunday we're going on a local church tour, which should be awesome- the churches around here are just beautiful. But we're thankful for what our savior has done for us, and hope you all take some time this weekend to reflect on what it means for all of us. Without His sacrifice, we have no hope, no future. Thanks to God for the gift of His son!

Love to all!

Scott, Beck, Ally, and Will (aka Squirmy or Monster)