Pura Vida

After church yesterday, Staci told me there are a couple of families in our branch that the gringo families are going to sponsor and get presents, groceries, and make dinner for this Christmas. Staci decided to be in charge of grabbing Christmas presents and I got put in charge of getting groceries. We had to stay late after church because we'd been invited to a family in the branch's home for dinner and they live near the church. There were 4 baptisms after church today, so the plan was to attend those and then follow them to their home. Sadie and Tessa were tapped out on church time, so I was sitting in the car with them while they had some down time.  Now, here's the problem with the location of our church building. Costa Rica is full of 7 Eleven type convenience stores. Grocery stores are pretty spread out and everything is expensive. But, in Santa Cruz where the church is, there is a store called the Maxi Pali right across the street. It's as close as you're

Saturday, December 14 On Saturday I drove four hours to the San Jose Temple with Pres. Duran and Dianaise -- it was the youth temple trip. I stayed at the house Friday night to maximize sleeping time. To save on energy costs, Pres has his water heater disconnected which made for a quick wake-up.  The night before we had a young men's activity. It was my first time playing soccer down here. I was stronger but I can't compete with the style that the Ticos play with. It was really fun, in spite of my bright red face from over-exertion/humidity.  The drive was great. I loaded up on junk food and some fruit the night before for the trip. Pres and I made ourselves sick. Stopping at McDonald's on the way in to grab cheeseburgers for the youth didn't help. The young women were on their final day of young women's camp and we met them at the temple to do baptisms. The temple is right off of a normal road and offers a stark contrast to the city around it. Interesting t

Monday, December 9th Jack cutting open a coconut with a machete. Yes, he's in heaven. Tuesday, December 10th   Sadie and Tess with their new friend Jaylee at Playa Flamingo Sadie, Tessa, and Jacko playing in the waves The love of my life Lesson Learned: Watch for waves when posing for a picture Dinner at Coco Loco (Playa Flamingo) with the Blanchards, Johnsons, and our new friends Mel and Jay (Mel is Daphne's sister, Jay is Mel's husband) Jack finally got to be buried in the sand (he's been wanting to do this since we got here) Friday, December 13th  Tessa heads down to the beach to play with Sadie at Playa Danta (we love this place!) Jack and Teegan boogie boarding (Playa Danta) Tessa on the big, wood swing Lunch at Playa Danta with Jay and Mel, right before they left to go home -- we tried to convince them to move here :)

Well, last week was my official low point so far. I was in a funk all week and poor Kevin took the brunt of it. At one point he had about all he could take and finally gave it back to me a bit. After I had a little time to absorb it, I told him I'd had it coming and I was sorry. But, this week has been much, much better. We got on a better schedule with school. Instead of just giving the kids the daily schedule and nagging them about what they've gotten done, we start all together at the same time. Then we go through the schedule together so everyone's on the same page and some of the subjects they're able to do all together. It went a lot more smoothly. They took Thursday and Friday off, though, because Ash and Tegan were staying with us while their parents went to girl's camp. Cute baby Crosby got to come over a few times too, which is super fun for all the kids and they all fight over him. Friday night and Saturday, I got to spend a bunch of time with the Pri

So, apparently I'm a legitimate home schooling mom because I got invited on a field trip with some other home school families in the area. Don't ask me how I discovered them. I don't even remember how. I think it was a friend of a friend through some facebook post. So, this one mom organized this field trip to take the kids to a sustainable goat farm, about 40 minutes south of us. The guy sells his goat milk and makes cheese and yogurt from it. He grows the food that he feeds the goats. Then, he uses the manure from the animals for the soil for the plants. So almost everything he uses for his farm, he grows or produces on the farm itself. He was also teaching the kids about how he got pigs because the cheese making process produces a whey byproduct that he can't use. So, he got pigs because they can eat it and he doesn't have to throw it away. He also told them about how he planted all the trees on his farm and then waited for them to grow tall, chopped off the t

 We finally saw a monkey. Everybody talks about all the monkeys here and we never see them. Finally, on our way to the baptism, we saw a few up in the trees above our car.  The baptism was at Playa Conchal, one of my absolute favorite beaches. The water is crystal clear and the sand is made up of tiny pieces of seashells. We hadn't ever been to this really secluded part of the beach, though. We had it all to ourselves for the baptism. I offered Sadie $100 if she'd get baptized here. She said, "no way." She does not go out very far in the water, and definitely not without floaties and a kickboard. It also didn't help that one of her friends got stung by something in the water earlier that left welts on his arm.  Playing in the sand after the baptism...and during the baptism. I tried to get them to stop, but it's kind of impossible when you're standing in a giant sandbox. We had a BBQ on the beach for our Elder's Quorum

Today, it has officially been one month since we left Utah. And, I finally miss Walmart. Honestly, until this point it had been kind of refreshing not having anything I could ever want in one mega, super store, 15 minutes away in any direction you can drive. It made me stop thinking I need so much stuff or that I even want any of it. But now, I'd really like to be able to find some tape or some string and maybe some construction paper so we can make some dadgum snowflakes to hang up for Christmas. Or any kind of Christmas decorations to get us into the spirit when there's no snow around. I was trying to figure out how to make little mini Christmas trees out of seashells and then I realized I have no glue gun to stick it all together. I'm feeling a little scroogish about Costa Rican Christmas at the moment. Yesterday, on our way to Stake Conference, there was a police road block and they were pulling everyone over and checking their cars. I'm not sure why. Anyhow, Sadi

Late this afternoon we went with Cesar (our branch president) to the beach. We signed the kids up for lessons and Jodi and rented boards. Jacko, of course, picked it up immediately. Autumn was doing awesome and really starting to get the hang of it. Sadie and Tessa did great by riding the surfboards like boogie boards. Jodi and I struggled to catch the waves and, when we did, ate a lot of salt water. I was already sore upon leaving the water. A strict daily regimen of push-ups is definitely in order. But we all loved every second of it. Autumn almost catching a wave Jacko and Autumn with Cesar Me missing another one. Or maybe this is the one I caught for a second but ended up landing on top of a bunch of rocks. :) Autumn catching one Cute Tessa Sweet Sadie  (She lost us for awhile and we had no idea -- we could see her just fine and knew exactly where she was but she had lost us, so very sad for us once we found out) After surfing, Cesar, Dianais (Cesa

Yesterday I went kayaking and paddle boarding with our cousins and friends in the ocean. We (by we I mean me some my friends, I was on a paddle and my friends and there mom were on a double kayak) made an attempted to travel to an island. We got about 75% there and then my friends mom said she thought she saw a fish jump out of the water (I believed here mainly because I had seen a group of fish jump out of the water but then she saw a fin and then WE started to see started to see more fins and then dolphins WHOLE DOLPHINS started jumping out of the water and got really close to us and started heading toward a beach and they got really close to a different beach and then disappeared and we didn't see them again. But later at I saw a sting ray I though it was a piece of garbage because a little bit earlier but when my friend told me that one of the 5th grade teachers got stung by a sting ray that looked the same I knew it was a sting ray.

We got up this morning and the kids had started on their school work and Kevin decided to tell them they didn't have to do school today since it's Thanksgiving. Now, mind you, yesterday was the first real day of school the kids have done in the month since we got here. But, Kevin, being the softy he always is, let them have today off anyways. Stinker. So, we got up and going for the day, got our swimsuits on--because that's what you do on Thanksgiving, right?...and set off for the beach. However, when we got in our car, we realized our gas tank was on empty. In Costa Rica, there aren't nearly as many cars as in the U.S. So, gas stations are a little hard to come by. We realized there were no gas stations on the way to the beach we were heading to, so we had to head 25 minutes in the opposite direction to the nearest gas station, 3 towns over. :) Kevin dropped the kids and I off at a restaurant on the way to order some food while he went and grabbed the gas. Then he me