First Day of School

                                Andrew's last first day of school in 12th grade or 4th (cuatro) medio and Thomas's first first day of school in 3rd (tercero) basico or 3rd grade

Yes, friends, my homeschooling days are over! Yoo hoo! and that is a big one after 18 years!
 Samuel will be attending the PreUniversity Pedro de Valdivia in Osorno to study for the PSU which is the Chilean equivalent of the SAT.  And then Thomas and Andrew at the Colegio San Vicente. This is just a school not a college that goes from K-4 to 12th. We decided to end our homeschooling days as living in Chile is just not conducive to that lifestyle and we have access to a free catholic school. In South Carolina, we were part of 2 large and active homeschool co-ops. Now I have one little boy all by himself and no support group with all its activities. And Thomas needs to learn Spanish and make friends here so we decided to put him in while Andrew was still attending. Having big brother upstairs will make the transition easier, we hope! BTW, Thomas speaks little to no spanish so it will be interesting to see how he gets on. And with his dyslexia he can't read english so the special ed teacher will have an interesting challenge to teach a little boy who speaks english and can't read it to speak and read spanish. And I will post more about the Chilean school system as far as I know about it, anyway!
Update on March 10- All is well at school. Thomas loves it and I have noticed a new confidence in him. He is not cowering behind my apron strings anymore. Though it has been only a week, he already has picked up a sore throat. Jim and I are loving the new found freedom and our peaceful days as we just enjoy being together without kids.

Family update and what's been going on for the past 3 months

It has been a while since I last posted but moving and no internet for over a month is a pretty good excuse, I think!
As you may know for the past 2 years we have been living in a friend's house. It was great but they decided to sell the house right after we bought our farm. That sounds like good timing but it proved to have a few difficulties! :) life always does We have a great little cabin on our farm which we had to remodel to make it livable but it is not large enough for all 5 of us. A generous friend offered a spare room for our teens. It is only 5 minutes from school and 10 from our farm. It's worked out well and we get high speed internet which we don't have at the farm and aren't likely to get soon.
Samuel and Andrew are doing well at school. Picking up spanish very quickly and making lots of friends. Samuel is taking violin lessons at the beautiful Teatro del Lago in Frutillar. See the link for this awesome theater.
http://www.teatrodellago.cl/web2/
 The boys also joined the teen chorus at the Teatro and get to travel around southern Chile giving concerts. It's been a lot of fun for them.

And we also joined the adult chorus- all 4 of us. It's a lot of fun singing together and we are having our first concert on August 22 in Chiloe, an island about 2 hours south of us.

We have made some nice friends at church and between chorus practice, Mass, and a bible study we attend weekly, our spanish is coming along! We have friends now who don't speak english which really pushes us to learn the spanish. I love spanish. It's a much prettier language than english but I must say it hasn't been as easy as I thought it would. My 50 year old brain just doesn't learn as fast as it used to.

On the farm, we have our first 2 lambs of the season, a male and a female, from 2 different ewes. We have a hen with 4 chicks which has just been darling. Jim bought three piglets for meat and breeding. He has really enjoyed them. They are cute and have interesting personalities. Minnie, Winnie, and Pearl are their names. We cut down around 8 trees and are in the process of sawing the wood with a friend's sawmill to make posts for the fence we need to put up.

We are also building a loft in the cabin to put our bed up so we have more room for a couch and table. Right now it is very challenging living in such a small space. I'll give a tour of the cabin when we are done with the loft. Soon we will start a post and beam barn if we have any wood left after building the fence.

We know it is spring when the falcons start gathering wool for nest building with the plentiful sheep wool available
How soft and cozy for the little chicks!
This ewe is the fattest I have ever seen. She has looked like she is having triplets for a year now!

This is Rosemary with 3 of her 5 chicks. Isn't she pretty? And such a protecting mother. She is fierce and even the cats are scared of her!

I have never been a cat lover due to my allergies but they have gone or diminished any way and I am now a cat lover!
On the left is Nubecita, that is little cloud in spanish..She was Andrew's kitten but she loves me better now! And Higgins is our new kitty gifted to us from a friend. He was found as a kitten on the streets of Santiago and now he is an awesome mouser on our little farm!

Summer on the farm

Ah, the sweet days of summer are almost over! And it was quite an adventurous and busy summer.
Living out on the farm was bliss despite the lack of water and power but we did manage to get all that going before the summer's end. We got our water tower up, solar panels electrifying, septic draining, bathroom tiled, and the wood floors of the cabin will soon be layed so we can move in. We are living part time in Quilanto and part in Chiriuco. The big boys are now full time students of Colegio San Vicente de Paul in Puerto Octay. We are  officially in process for permanent residency. Still waiting on the title for our property even though we signed almost 3 months ago. 
Here are a few stories and pictures.

Our big helper

Our cabin with the siding removed. We had to remove it all to get rid of the bats who were nesting under it. It is insulated with styrofoam sheets. It is a popular way to insulate here as it is so cheap and easy to install but the problem is that when you cut it the little bits fall everywhere and make a real mess and the other problem we had is that the ducks and chickens wouldn't stop eating it! Doesn't seem to bother them though as I've not had any deaths. Our hot tub is in the middle and our container on the right that we just had moved from Quilanto in March.

Our long awaited water tower
It has 5000 liter tank and our local buddy welded the tower about 20 feet tall
The tank is strapped to the tower and the tower legs are welded to concrete pads making it earthquake proof, we hope!
The spring we are pumping from is about 60 feet below it  in the woods
Andrew had to climb the tower and lower himself into the tank so we could connect the piping
He was a little freaked out but got the job done!

Our summer kitchen under the laurel tree
Our picnic table which Jim built last year and behind it is the fire pit with a grill and bar for hanging pots over the fire
Jim's grill is our work area where we prepare food and keep our Coleman camp stove
To the right is a table and dish washing area

Our tents
Samuel & Thomas slept in the small tent on the left and Jim and I had the big tent which has a full size bed in it
Camping in comfort!
We had to put the plastic over because it got a little drippy when it rained
Andrew slept in his tent hammock hanging from the trees until we had a good rainstorm and then he move to the loft of the cabin

Bo, Andrew's duck, is the worst of the styrofoam eaters
One day she was quacking so hoarsely I thought for sure she had eaten too much styrofoam but after a few days her voice returned to normal

The tragedy of the summer
Our $600 septic tank was run over by the backhoe
Jim thought we'd save some money by getting the local road crew working on our road to come over and earn a few extra bucks on  their lunch break. At first, it went great and we got the water and septic lines dug in a flash but then in covering up the septic lines, the dummy ran over the plastic tank
So in order to save money, we just fixed it
Samuel had to climb inside the tank and push it back up with boards and jacks and then we are going to pour concrete over it like a cap

The outhouse in the woods came with the property and it was a real life saver as we did not get the bathroom installed in the cabin for 2 months

Our first beehives
Jim brought a lot of his beekeeping equipment with him but we were having a hard time finding bees
One day last January we were driving down the highway and I looked over and saw this guy in a truck wearing a bee suit parallel to us on the frontage road so we got off the next exit and Jim chased him down. Super nice guy with 200 hives in the Frutillar area.
Jonathan speaks some english and has been very helpful in getting us set up with 2 hives. Each country has specific types of bees suited to the climate and its own particular problems.

Caught in the act!
Adventure Chick (named by Thomas) decided the coop just wasn't good enough for her and our bed was much more comfortable
The zipper on our tent is broken and it was very hard to keep them out so each evening we had to check the bed for eggs before we jumped in!

The triumph of the summer
Solar panels
We had been searching and searching for the means to power our house
We got a solar quote that was outrageous
We got a power hook up quote from the local power company of $5000
So we waited and looked and asked around
Got another quote which was more reasonable but still too high and we even got quotes from the US until we finally ran across a guy recommended by a friend of a friend
His quote to power the cabin and water pump was $4000
The set up was so simple and we had power the same day
6 panels and 6 batteries and it has payed itself off the day we turned it on since it was cheaper than hooking up to the power grid which by the way charges more than the US- 20-30 cents per kilowatt hour and rates are going up. We paid only 12 cents per kilowatt hour with Duke Power in the US

The boys snuck out one night to the neighbor's field and rearranged his hay bales for him
They almost got caught in the act as the farmers were out working late in the dark
I imagine they were a little puzzled to find this the next morning!

Trapped!
Thomas got himself stuck behind this root in the water line ditch!
We had to lift him out

Lori Bought the Farm Today!

Today is January 13th 2015, and my wife, Lori, and I have finally reached our dream of having a small farm debt free (and tax free) to call our own. THIS IS WHY WE CAME TO CHILE!
25 years of marriage and we made it come true here in Chile. The new name of our farm is "La Campanilla". It is not really that big but it is all ours at 6.5 acres of land that has a lot of potential and a lot of work to be done.

The Campanilla flower grows wild on our farm and is called Foxglove in english. It is very poisonous and is used in making the drug Digitalis which is a potent heart medication. 

Here is a view of the farm and Thomas's Cabin, which will soon be our new home.

We just applied for permanent residency so we will be posting more about that and opening a business in Chile which is not hard but just different. We will be living out on the farm with no power for the summer (thru the end of February) and we will be posting about homesteading in Chile. You can also follow our homesteading efforts on our youtube channel - ChileExpatFamily.

Ciao for now!

Feliz Navidad!

The beautiful side altar of San Francisco church in Castro, Chiloe

Merry Christmas to all our family & friends
One of the downfalls of moving to a remote foreign country is the ability to be with family & friends during the holiday times. Sure it's hard and family & friends are important to us but everything has it's good and bad sides. We just have to be content with seeing our 2 older children at other times during the year and not always at Christmas but it's like that when the kids grow up and the parents move away!
Christmas here in Chile is not as overly commercialized as it is in the States and I find it refreshing though I am having a hard time getting used to making strawberry jam at Thanksgiving and making peach jam at Christmas! We are rolling ever so slowly into summer and the garden is coming along and the canning season is already very busy as well as getting our farm going.
We will be spending most of our summer on the farm with no running water and no electricity and no internet though we are working at making those things happen so I won't be posting much for the next few months though I will be checking my email a few times a week when we go into Puerto Octay for the wi-fi. Jim will be posting his farm videos on Youtube so you can check those out here

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiLbaEPlfgrpPZo0w_JRADQ

Andrew is Sweet 16!

It's hard to believe my freckle face little boy is 16. He has grown tremendously this year - several inches - taller and thinner and he's 6' 2" - the tallest in the family!
He's a great kid with a charming personality and never stops talking! He is his Dad's boy for sure.
And the quickest way to his heart is through his tummy! He loves good food and makes a great cinnamon roll.

2009 or 2010 at Caesar's Head in NC

2011 at the Columbia Zoo feeding the lorikeets (my favorite bird!)

 2012 Washington DC

2012 at the South Carolina Military Museum 

2013 in Santiago
Muy guapo!

Snow Sledding on a VOLCANO

Lori wanted to get out of the house and take the boys snow sledding. It is winter here but we typically do not get snow so we went up to the Volcan Osorno which has a ski lift / resort and sled trails. So here is our little day trip with the boys. (NOTE: you will hear my two sons Samuel and Andrew, nit picking and splitting hairs as guest comment providers from the back seat! I know you are......... what am I............ )

and video #2:.............. please comment.

Ok Lori is all better now from Pneumonia

I wanted to drop you all a line to let you know that Lori is doing really well and has almost totally recovered from the pneumonia that plagued her for 5 weeks. She still has a little cough and she has been out to visit our friends and to go to Church and the grocery.

Also thank goodness she is also cooking and keeping house again, for which I am very happy.

Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes and rest assured that we have all come through this better off and now have experienced the Chilean health care system!

Here is a little run down on the costs for her whole treatment:
After 3 weeks sick in bed.......
1. A visit to the local hospital emergency room. $24.00 and $1.00 for the medicine. We were there a total of less than 2 hours.

2. After 7 Days a second visit to the local hospital. $24.00 and $2.00 for the medicine. Lori went to have an Xray but it was broken. We were there a total of less than 2 hours.

3. After another 7 Days we went to a specialist at a private clinic in Osorno.  The doctor cost $80.00. An Xray cost $75.00 and the medicine cost $75.00. We were there less than 2 hours.

Now for comparison.....................

Our daughter Emily went to the emergency room in Anderson SC. She was there over 8 hours and saw the doctor tops 5 minutes. She had an Xray and went to the hospital pharmacy and it only cost her........

$1,800.00

Anniversaries

A sad anniversary

This Sunday, June 8, we remember the life of our little Joshua. Hard to believe it's been 7 years since his drowning in Lake Jocassee.  Our lives are richer for having known him and now having him as our intercessor in heaven but we sure do miss him.

Here is at 1 1/2 yrs. dressed up for a Revolutionary War Living History day at Walnut Grove Plantation in Spartanburg,SC.

Super boy at 3 yrs. 

Our little saint with his halo already on!
Taken a few weeks before his death

And a happy anniversary
as we celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary a few weeks ago. Life hasn't always been happy or easy but our love for each other and Jim's sense of humor has brought us to this point more in love than the day we married! Life is grand together!

Chile Expat Family Introduction #2

Lori made this video and I did the voice over since the sound was so poor. It was real bumpy going down the drive (even in the car) to get these shots of the view from the rise in the hill, but it is a awesome view, probably one of the best views on earth.

A special thanks to Flambeaux for the help with embedding the above video.

Melon Head

I was running through some of our photos of Thomas and this was too cute not to put on the blog. Have you ever wanted to call your kids a melon head?

He had a small technical problem with the tape but no worries

A boy has to get his peep holes just right, ya know?

Here you can plainly see that he is ready to fight in the most fierce melon battle. 

These are the type of things that little boys do when they are not caught up in computers, team sports for little boys (pee wee sports which I never understood), or watching TV.

I remember my brother Joe and I making dams in the creek, chasing the cows and swimming in the cattle troughs in the pasture. We would take playing cards and clothes pins (to my mother's dismay) and make our bicycles into motorized Harleys. We would make huge piles of hay and jump out of the top door of the barn, hoping we do not break our leg. Hey, it is only 12 feet (you go first, no you). We would go bareback horse riding and swimming in the pond and creek. We would make rope swings, oh, and tree forts and forts in the woods and barn as well. Man, we lost a lot of our dad's tools building those forts, and go carts too!

We would do what boys do, which is having fun with what is at hand. It made us the men we are today. Me, I am not much to speak of but I have had a fun life, and my brother, Joe, is a Doctor twice over. I think having to work out the best way to spend a day makes you use your melon! 

Google Glasses Country Style

Going public and about us

Up to this point the blog has been private. It did not show up on search engines and you could only find it by typing in the address. It was written so family and friends could keep up with our travels.
This blog has been successful in that we still get a bit of traffic and it has a lot of very useful information especially for someone who might be interested in moving to Chile or just to see what Chile is like. There is not a whole lot of info out there on this topic so we have decided to go public and all comments will be moderated so you may not see your comment pop up instantly.

Volcan Yates from the island of Chiloe

And now for new visitors, here is a bit about us.
We moved down to Chile in July of 2013 at the invitation of some friends to use their vacation home as long as we need. Five of us came down, Jim and Lori plus kids Samuel, 17 and Andrew, 15 and Thomas, 6. We left 2 grown children in the US. We are catholic homeschoolers and entrepreneurs. Fed up with the economy, over regulation, corruption, and cultural sespool, we decided to pursue our dream of living in a remote location and off the grid. We are currently looking for our dream property here in southern Chile where we can homestead and live off the land.
Tomorrow, Friday April 25, Jim is going to Concepcion to meet with customs agents to check our container.
Please pray it goes well and we dont have any extra fees! Jim will be posting more about this venture next week.
Update Since we are going to be so busy unpacking our container, I thought I would let you know that our customs check went great and the container should be pulling into our yard by Saturday, April 26, afternoon. When we get settled, we will have an informative post about the process with pictures and maybe even a video!

Father L Visits Chile

Father L at thr river near Petrohue Chile

We have a good friend who is a Catholic Priest and pastor of a large parish in South Carolina, Father L. who came down to visit with us for 8 days. He was kind enough to say Mass for us at Puerto Octay and hear our confessions.

On way to Las Cascadas on our favoirite road

We were able to take him to see the sights and do a little touring. It is always wonderful to have any excuse to go see these beautiful places. Who are we to complain. Of course we can always just look out the window of the house..... it never gets old.

On Volcano Osorno

Lori was able to make a Panorama from the top CLICK ON THE PICTURE

Of course we are on top of the volcano in these pictures about 3/4 of the way to the top. So the pictures show the view from the mountain. Notice the black ash at our feet, The last time Osorno erupted was in 1860. We can see the volcano from our house in Quilanto which is 24.8 miles away as the crow flies. To get to the volcano we have to drive around Lago Llanquihue which rests between our house and the snow capped volcano. This is a day trip when you add the other sights that simply must be seen along the way.

We were able to go to Chiloe for the day which is a large costal Island south of Puerto Mont. You have to take a ferry for 30 min accross the channel to the island which costs about $40 for a car.

Here we are on ferry to Chiloe

On Chiloe there is a tour of the historic Churches that were built by the Jesuits in the 1700s to 1800s. Many are still in use today but they are all very beautiful to see as they have really intricate and beautiful wood work that survives today.

One of the churches in Chiloe we saw

Several of the churches were restored and below is one of them. Unfortunately we were not able to get into many of the churches as they were closed. The tour site says that all the churches are open all day, well they are not open!

Another Chiloe Church

It was such,  a nice time we had having Father L as our guest, and in may ways he started us on our journey to Chile back in 1995 in Gaffney ,South Carolina. When we went to a Mass where he was the pastor it was like a breath of fresh air. We have remained all these years friends and we loved having him visit. Now we need to schedule him to come back. You know I think he needed and found a good peaceful rest here in Chile.

Today is Joshua Xavier's Birthday

Today is our little Joshua Xavier's birthday.

These days are always hard for Lori and I, but they do get easier as time goes by.
He would have been 10 today and we can only wonder what type of little boy he would have been.
I am sure he would have loved Chile as much as we all do...

We sure do miss him.

Here is his picture from my phone

also here is a wonderful article that a friend wrote about us and Joshua.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/abbott/140313

Gone fishin' Part 1

Today we walked out to the point to go fishing. There seems to be better fishing here than in the cove.
The walk is pretty nice - first we walk through a big field with grass taller than Thomas.

The field is bordered with brambles that are covered with berries

You can just stand there and gorge yourself on succulent blackberries

Look how big they are!

Then a walk through the woods on a trail that looks like it used to be a road
It's pretty steep at the end when you come down to the lake

This is on the island

This is the island - you can easily walk over when the lake is low in the summer

See Gone fishin' Part 2 for a close up look at the island and cool rock formations.