We have a home, by Jodi

 Last day at our Panama house.

 The pan of fish the house owner brought us. He went out and caught these and then brought them over prepped and ready to go in the oven. Only Jack was brave enough out of the kids to try them after seeing them like this.

 Starfish beach

 Not sure if we were actually allowed to pick them up. I've never been very good at following rules, though.

We made it back from Panama on Tuesday. We set out from our house in Bocas Del Toro at about 7:30 a.m. to catch the water taxi back to the mainland at 8:30 a.m. We did all our border crossing in reverse, but the lines coming back were about 2-3 times longer and we got the luck of having one quirky official We were at the end of the line and when he got to us, he sat there and just stared out the window with our last passport in hand. It was so weird. He just kept glancing at the passport, glancing at his computer screen and then craning his neck to look out the window between us. Finally, a new group of people arrived and got in line and he stamped our passport and handed it back. I wonder if he had to do other work if he didn't have someone at his window. So, he just sat there for about 10 minutes with one of our our passports in hand until more people arrived.

The bridge was just as sketchy and the bus taxis were stinky and crammed. We got to push start our car again when we got back to it, but this time a couple of people at the resort where we'd parked it jumped behind and helped us. Ticos are so funny. When your car doesn't start, you don't feel the least bit self conscious. No one looks at you like you're a loser with a cheap car. They just jog over and start pushing and cheer when it starts and then go back to whatever they were doing.

Visiting Panama made us extremely grateful to live in Costa Rica. Our house was beautiful and the water was gorgeous, but it just wasn't as comfortable or nearly as clean as CR. When you pull into the port towns from your water taxi, there's garbage floating on the shore everywhere. The town we visited was run down and dirty and just didn't seem nearly as nice as where we live. When we pulled in with our water taxi for the last time, I looked down in the garbage filled water and there was a dead dog floating in the water. Autumn got mad at me for blocking her peripheral vision on that side, but I didn't want to tell her until we were past it because I knew she'd look if I told her not to. They just can't seem to help themselves.

We drove 3 hours from there to a Marriott in San Jose across the street from Price Smart (Costa Rica's version of Costco). The Marriott was way to comfortable and after being in dirty Panama, made us really wonder what we're doing down here so far from the U.S. We went and stocked up on everything we can't find and everything that costs way too much out where we live, and shoved it all in around and on top of our kids and on the roof. Then, we met our first official landlord the next morning before we left, to get our keys and to sign one final piece of paperwork and set off for home. Except, that we discovered a Walmart as we were heading to the freeway and couldn't help ourselves. So, two hours later, we got back on the road with more crap stuffed into our car and headed home.

Four hours later, we unloaded that car load, went and got two more car and roof loads from where we'd stored it all at Johnson's and Blanchards and spent the evening unpacking. In the midst of all of it, Jack said, "mom, can I call this place our home?" It hadn't occurred to me until that moment just how transient we've been. In the last 3 1/2 months since we sold our house, we've lived in 5 different homes. We've traveled non stop since we got here, looking for a long term house rental, buying a car, getting that car fixed repeatedly, and driving to stinking Panama and back. When you type an address into your GPS, it will pop up with a distance like 60 km and then the estimated time of arrival is 2 hours later. So, we're staying put for the next 3 months until we're forced to go anywhere again in order to not get kicked out of the country.

When we went to pick up Cheeto at Blanchard's (since the kennel we'd been planning on leaving her at turned out to be infested with fleas), we found out that their neighbor's had saved us once again. The same neighbors who kept Argos all day when we were dog sitting for Pres, saved Cheeto while Blanchard's were at church. Apparently, she slipped out of the upstairs balcony and onto the roof and then got stuck. So, she sat and barked for an hour and a half until these neighbors used their ladder to climb the 8 foot fence between the two houses and then up the roof to rescue our dog. Dumb dog. I need to make them brownies.

This morning, after a leisurly 9 1/2 hours of sleep last night, I got up, ate breakfast, loaded 2 surfboards on our roof, and set off to the beach with Jack for some morning surfing. While we were out there getting pummeled by waves and my swim suit was full of sand and it fell off 3 times when the waves smacked me really hard, I thought, it doesn't get any better than this. There's nothing that makes me happier than being out in the water, under a beautiful sun. We ran into the grocery store on the way home, still dripping, with frizzy, wind blown hair and I thought again how much I love it here, not caring at all about how I looked when we go out. I hate being in an environment where I feel like I'm supposed to look perfect to open my front door. So, living here is the best thing I could have ever asked for. When I unpacked all the clothes I brought for the 4th time, I just laughed at all these clothes I brought that I haven't worn once. We live in swimsuits and whatever clothes are the lightest and thinnest.

The house we're in right now appealed to me because it's small, so it won't be as expensive to air condition. Our friends that live here just don't use their A/C because it's so expensive. But, I get really irritable when I'm hot and that, combined with kids who are home all day, doesn't add up to a pleasant scenario pretty frequently. So, I wanted a home where I could air condition whatever room I'm in, 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, when we started to unpack and looked around for the remote for the A/C on the main level, I realized there's no A/C unit downstairs...just in the upstairs bedrooms. So sad. Guess we'll save money on air conditioning after all. Or, we'll turn the A/C on full blast upstairs and use a fan at the top of the stairs to funnel it downstairs.

Here are a few pics I just downloaded from our Christmas sub for Santa and surfing on Christmas day with our new boards.