Pura Vida

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

We were able to spend the afternoon and evening with Shel and Trent today. We met at their family's hotel (the JW Marriott), it is so sweet! We went swimming, played volleyball, Shel and I had a neat little spiritual experience, and we went to dinner in Tamarindo (Las Baulas) -- really good pizza, great atmosphere (open-air), and it had a fun restaurant for the kids. There's nothing like spending time with family. It felt so great to be with them today.

Fun day this afternoon at Playa Grande. It was crazy to see how much our perspective has changed since being here only three weeks. As we drove up to Playa Grande, the towns felt like they were a decent size and the beach seemed like an actual destination. Playa Grande was one of the first beaches we found our first week here. In our first week, the location seemed to be tucked away into the back corner of nowhere. It seemed like there was nothing in the vicinity of the beach and that we'd just happened upon some random, backroads beach entrance -- not a top destination by any stretch. Crazy how your mind adjusts and re-calibrates to its surroundings so quickly. I forgot to take pictures but we ended the night with the Pinas (Jose and Neida) at dinner in Tamarindo (Restaurante Patagonia), it was pricey ($120 for the eight of us) but really good.

Trent,  Shel, and their kids arrived Saturday for their family vacation. We drove to the airport to greet them with smiling faces, fruit juice, Coke “Light” for Trent, cookies, and chocolate truffle mints (Milan’s, our new favorite candy) in-hand, just to find out their flight had arrived early and we’d missed them. Not to be outdone, we ran back to the car and starting driving toward their rental car company building (a place we’d just happened to catch a glimpse of a week earlier), hoping we still remembered where it was. We found the rental car company. Success! Or… maybe not. Grrr! We’d just missed them, “by maybe one minute” according to the guy at the front desk. So I ran back to the car and starting driving like a madman. We did not drive an hour to the airport just to miss them. They were going to eat our snacks. Jodi texted and left voicemails on both their phones, .20 cents a minute be darned, to tell them to pull over if they got it. Problem was, I hadn’t as