Joshua turns 4.

Joshua celebrated his fourth birthday April 19. He enjoyed a party with several of his friends. It was a fun-filled day with lots of activity, balloons, and of course, cake and ice cream. You can see the photo album by clicking here.

Now that's a hole!

Due to the rains in Quito, a huge sink-hole opened up at the Trebol. The Trebol is a major traffic interchange in south of Quito.

Incredibly, no one was hurt. Apparently a couple of policemen heard some rumbling so they blocked traffic and moved people away from the area. The hole measures about 40m across and is about 60m deep.

A river runs underneath this area through a viaduct, but it appears that with so much rain lately that part of the viaduct was weakened enough to cause this huge hole.

The civil engineers are saying it could take upto one year to complete repairs and have traffic moving normally through the area again.

Hermann Schirmacher took the photo at left which shows some of the work being done to repair the tunnel under the Trebol.

The floods...

Here are some photos of the flood areas in Ecuador. It really is incredible to see the amount of water in some areas. HCJB Global has sent several large trucks full of food and other supplies to the affected areas. These items are the result of the generosity of many organizations but the most telling was the participation of Ecuadorians in support of their affected countrymen.

A very large number of people arrived at HCJB over the weeks, walking, with taxis or their own vehicles to drop off food to send down to the flooded areas.

A very humbling scene.

Rid'm Cowboy!

The other day Marlene heard Joshua calling out, "Come, Joel, come." She was curious as to what they were upto and went to see. Joshua wanted Joel to ride the horse with him. Joshua likes the idea of cowboys with guns. If it's a small stick that he finds, it's a gun. If it's much bigger, then it's a sword.

No guns?

This is one of those signs that tends to catch the eye so I took a picture of it. The sign in on the glass door of the parking area entrance to Mi Kasa, a department store here in Quito. I had to do a double-take to make sure that I was seeing things correctly!

The sign is a drawing of a gun with a line through it inside a red circle, like the kind you see for No Smoking or No Drinks.

Requirements for a good office chair

My boss is checking out a new office chair to see if it meets one of his requirements: it must be comfortable enough to sleep in. Ok, I'm not sure that this is an actual requirement of his but it does help for those warm sunny afternoons after a good lunch.

I'm now working out of my new office in the Administration building (where my boss' office is) so I'm more removed from operations. It is good as it gives me some time to work on the many administrative tasks which have been suffering because of my direct involvment in managing the day-to-day.

Future drivers

We went to Parque Carolina the other weekend. After riding his bike around for quite a bit, Joshua spotted these cars that were being rented by the lap (a small lap for a small price). Seeing them, he wanted to drive them.

When we go grocery shopping, many times we'll take the boys to Jugueton where they can climb into these cars and pretend to drive them. Seeing them out in the open where he actually could drive them was something new.

Joshua did quite a good job of driving, although I had to correct his steering several times. The good news is that the cars don't go very fast and I was able to walk alongside them.

Joel was quite content to sit next to his brother and play with the radio...