Getting tired of living out of suitcases, by Jodi

We've spent the last week crashing at the Blanchard's. They saved us from spending an extra $1000 for another week at our vacation rental and made room for us at their house. We moved in last Saturday and they left for their visa run to Nicaragua on Tuesday. So, we've been house and pet sitting while they're gone and will move into our semi-long term home on Sunday, just around the corner. That house will be our home for the next 6 weeks and we get to pet sit a Weimaraner, a Black Lab, and cat while we stay there for the family we're subletting from. Our kids are super excited about that part.

This week has been a bit less eventful. We've been trying to figure out how to transition from vacation mode to living here mode and haven't quite figured it out. I think getting unpacked at our next house will really help. Plus, Shel is bringing a couple more laptops down for us that Kevin ordered as well as my laptop that was getting fixed at Dell. So, now each of the kids will have their own computer for home school time each morning. I'm hoping that will help us get into a more structured routine, which I totally need in order to function.

I also went and checked out a public school in Huacas that's supposed to be good. I think it's one of the few schools around here that has enough space to accomodate separate classrooms for each grade.The funny thing is, each class only has 14-18 students in it, compared to Utah where a full size classroom is closer to 30. However, the public schools in Costa Rica run two different sessions of school each day in order to accomodate everyone. So, half the kids come in the morning from 7-11:30 a.m. and the other half come in the afternoon from 12-4:30 p.m.. That's one of my biggest motivations (besides the spanish immersion and the fact that it's free) for having my kids go--they only have to go for half the day. It'll be like Kindergarten again!

The kids who go to the private school, go all day. So by the time they get home, there's only an hour or two of daylight left to go play at the beach. We want more time to go play and explore while we're here. I'm ready for them to start right now so they can start really learning spanish (and because they hate homeschool), but I found out that I can't register them until December and it will be for the next school year since their summer break starts in a week. So, looks like we're homeschooling until Feb. 14th. boo.

We went to a new beach we heard about that is a little trickier to find called Playa la Penca. No idea what that means. The kids, as usual, had a great time. Although, the wave crashing was a bit too intense for the boogie boarding, as you can see from Jack's pictures. The beach was steep enough where the tide came in that the water would recede all the way to where the waves crashed. So the waves would end up crashing on dry sand. I've never seen that before.

 Autumn chasing Cheeto across the beach. Cheeto won.

 Jack's boogie boarding adventures. I can't believe Kevin caught this shot on his phone.

And, crashing into the sand.

 And, ready for more, despite the sand covering his face.

Autumn.

 Sadie, the trend setter. Yes, her board shorts are on under her swimsuit. She pretty much lives in a swimsuit these days. In fact, she snuck one on under her dress to church last Sunday.

Love this cute girl. This is a totally genuine pose. She's not trying to be funny. We were at a different beach last week and they had staff from the hotel across the street out taking pictures. Sadie and Tess thought they were taking pictures of them for a magazine or something. Tessa came over to me totally serious and asked me which of her poses I thought they'd like the best. Each pose consisted of different variations of this pose. It was so incredibly hard not to laugh, because that would have crushed my cute, sensitive Tessa. So, I picked a pose and then watched her run to the lady with the camera and tell her she was ready. She and Sadie also attempted the jumping in the air pose that everyone loves. I'm not sure it worked, since their air time lasted about a tenth of a second. But, they were pretty proud of themselves.

 Still can't believe we live here.

Watch Tess in the background. Poor girl. She got right back up, though. :)

We went to Rincon de la Vieja volcano with some of the other American families in the area today. It was really fun, although once again, we still didn't really see the volcano. The cloud cover around the cone is so heavy that you can barely see past the base. I guess we need to get up a little earlier to see much more. We heard that during the dry season the cloud cover isn't nearly as thick, so we'll have to go check it out then.

We did however, hike to a really cool waterfall, where the kids got to cliff jump and swim in some pretty frigid water. Sadie and Tessa weren't too interested in that. I'm not sure Sadie got more than her feet wet, but Kevin, Autumn, Jack and I had a good time jumping in and gasping from the cold when our heads popped back up. The water was an amazing color of blue and the waterfall with the moss covered cliffs and surrounding jungle made it absolutely picturesque.

That's a big spider.

The color of the water was an intense blue, unlike anything Kevin and I had ever seen.

Dinner after the hike at a great restaurant outside of Liberia. I love how almost all the restaurants here have all outdoor seating and it's really nothing more than tables under a big, bamboo roof. And the food is always amazing!

I got to talk with one of the mom's that came on the hike who I just met. She has homeschooled her 3 boys from the start and she was able to give me a bunch of new ideas for how she makes it work. I'm really excited to try out her methods. Her family is actually planning on touring the coasts, from here all the way around the perimeter of South America and back up again. So cool!