It's not what you think.  This isn't a super early blog about the upcoming holiday season. We've never been organized enough to post about events in the future! Instead we'd like to share some pics of the holiday festivities we've enjoyed over the past month.

​First, All Hallow's Eve.

We moseyed over to the neighborhood near our school, just across the toll highway from our house.  There are a decent number of families there from ISP so our kiddos were able to hit a few houses with the large group of kids and then binge in the gated community's common room. 

Afterwards, the best pics were of The Big O, who took off his zombie coat and lazed around looking like a 1950s method actor.

After October 31st comes, surprisingly enough, November. In Panama, November is Mes de la Patria, or Patriotic Month. Flags are everywhere, and each division of ISP  goes all out for the school's Mes de la Patria celebration - students and staff, decked out in local garb, dancing regional dances. Most of the school participates, probably because the national ministry of education decrees it so.

​But the kiddos did look pretty cute.

Some teachers and I  also got in on the action.

The Eldest was not forced to participate (this year...!).
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And then there was the 4th Thursday in November. Our lovely friends hosted a Thanksgiving potluck that was practically perfect in every way. We're grateful to be able to spend the holidays with our Family-Away-From-Family!  

Happy Thanksgiving weekend, everyone!  December is right around the corner!  

Living in The Hub of the Americas®, close to so many exotic locales, where would we choose to go for our first sizable vacation of the school year?  Back to our own country, oddly, but nowhere near home.

Since Sarah was going to a conference in North Carolina, we decided that it made sense to head up to DC before Sarah popped down the street to The Carolinas.  Fall weather was another big draw, although we had to head to Target to get coats for all of our kids.  For real!

Sarah set up an awesome, historic Airbnb in the Capitol Hill neighborhood a mere ten minute walk to the capitol.  

Our first day out we drove to the 'burbs where Mr. Washington owned a bit of land.  

It was also an opportunity for us to meet up with our old friends Sam and Megan, and their kiddo who is a little younger than ours.

Shake Shack in Union Station to top it all off.

Did I mention that we successfully convinced two of our favorite coworkers, Eduardo & Luis Carlos, to explore The District with us?  Whelp, we did.  We didn't have quite as much excitement as they did (no trapeze lessons or day trips to NYC for us this time), but it was so much fun seeing the sights with them.

What's that in the background? Some museum or something.

Do you think The Little Lady or Eduardo makes a more convincing president? (I mean compared to each other, not the actual president. We all know the answer to that.)

Next we took advantage of the ol' DC bikeshare to interact with some monuments!

In all we saw eight museums (some more than others, and that's counting a sculpture garden as one, which is actually cheating), the National Archives, the Capitol, the Supreme Court (we saw a 15 minute session with all the justices!), the biggest library in the world, and quite a lot of each other.

We are certainly thankful that we're lucky and blessed enough to be able to have this kind of adventure.  Perhaps the children will be inspired by this visit to someday serve their country and invent an actual two-person jacket.