Giving up on cooking, by Jodi

Tessa asked me tonight when we're going home. I guess this move hasn't quite sunk in yet.

Jack got stuck in the sand today at the beach. Autumn dug out a big hole in the sand and then let Jack take over. But, the tide started coming in, so the walls started caving in around him. Somehow, his legs got buried vertically and when I told them it was time to go, he told me he couldn't get out. I assumed he was messing around and went to lift him out and even pulling my hardest, I couldn't pull him out. We ended up having to dig him out. That was definitely a first.

Tessa and Sadie decided to collect drift wood and garbage to play with at the beach today. They found a stroller wheel and used it to decorate their sand castles. Tessa tried to get me to bring a giant tree trunk piece of drift wood home but I could barely pick it up, so it didn't make the cut. We did come home with a flat piece of wood for Jack to carve our name on and this hollow piece of wood that the girls thought was really cool.

Tessa and Sadie also discovered skinny dipping today and have decided that's their preferred method of swimming in our pool. Luckily, the trees around us give enough privacy that I don't think anyone can see them.

I decided today that I'm giving up on trying to live like a Costa Rican until someone comes and teaches me how. I really thought I could just pick up on how to cook, which is funny because I'm not even a good cook, so I don't know what made me think that. But I talked to Daphne today and she mentioned someone in the ward who's a really good cook that might be interested in giving me lessons. So until then, I'm not going to feel bad about feeding my kids pasta or scrambled eggs for every meal.

Sadie gave us a scare this morning. We didn't realize she was outside alone, running around the pool while pulling Cheeto on the boogie board through the water. She slipped and fell in the pool. She got all scraped up on the edge of the pool and started screaming hysterically and Kevin ran out to help her and realized just how bad it could have been if she'd hit her head on her way in and gotten knocked out. We wouldn't have even known she'd fallen in. It really scared us.

We found a new restaurant tonight (as part of my giving up on cooking) called The Shack. It was pretty touristy and had stuff we're trying to wean the kids off of like nachos and quesadillas and cheeseburgers--not very authentic Costa Rican food. They had the best nachos I've ever tasted though. They made the chips themselves and it made them taste sooo good. The only problem was they had this giant painting of a woman on the wall that had normal proportions for the top half of her body and then this giant naked bum for the bottom half. Of course, the younger kids kept staring at it and Autumn kept telling them to stop it. Kevin got a picture of it in his selfie. He was mad because no one would take a picture with him because he was taking too long to take it. So he took a picture of just himself and there's the big booty, too.