Simple Joys

Now this is what I call a party. A little taste of play dough and a little sip of glue, does it get any better than this? This kid is still at the age that he eats any and everything he can get hold of, including play dough and glue ;)

Happy Birthday Senior Guapo!

Isn't it hard to believe this fine looking young'un is 54 today? I agree he is certainly guapo and very happy to be one year older and wiser!

Swimming and Patience

Apparently here in Costa Rica they don't observe lane lines in the pool anymore than they observe lane lines on the road. O.k. maybe they do observe them, they just choose not to act on them. As in they just cross right over the little suckers and swim right in front of you! It is so difficult to get into a swimming zone when you keep running into people. At least I don't have to drive here, I just sit on the bus or in the taxi and watch the driver cuss people out when they ignore the lane line :)

For the first time today I saw a lady yell at a couple of kids. Usually they are just ignored, but these kids really pushed it. In that they were trying to piss her off I believe. I'm just glad she yelled at them so I did not have to do it in English and they would just stare at me and say "no entiendo".

All that aside it was a beautiful day for a swim and the water has actually warmed up a bit. Must have something to do with the fact that it has been really hot for the past few days.

And (drum roll please) baby has finished all her school books! I mean we are truly excited, as well as scrambling for something to keep her going here. She loves doing "schoolwork" every day and I am trying to keep up with her. I am sure getting slow in my old age. Speaking of old age.

So Rick and I were walking down the sidewalk in San Jaun, just minding our own business as usual. We were on our nightly adventure to snag some ice-cream at the Eskimo store on the beach. Anyhoo so here we are going along and a old hippie comes up along side us. He was like old as in sixtyish, long gray ponytail and the works. He has a kid with him that looks half gringo half nica and he's about nine or ten. Well the guy had had a few too many and was yelling at the kid to get out of the street. The kid of course is just ignoring his old man.

The old man gets next to Rick and I and starts complaining about kids this and that. We are both just staring at him and suddenly he looks me right in the face and says, "I guess you're past all that though." Wham, why not just slug me in the nose! I wanted to yell at him that as a matter of fact I am on my period at the minute and I have a six year old at home, and NO I AM NOT PAST ALL THAT! In fact I am working very hard to not be past all that ever!

Home Sweet Home

Be it ever so humble there's no place like home! We are always very happy after a leave to return to kith and kin, and of course our own house. Always a little anxious about whether all is well, especially when we leave the 21 yr. old here alone. I swear you would think he was a 21 month old, in fact that would probably be better. Looks like we will have to hire a babysitter next time :)

I never thought when we moved to Costa Rica three and a half years ago that I would ever feel so at home here. I have the same feeling I used to get when we returned home to Flagstaff from the Valley. We would feel so good to get out of the oppressive heat and get into the clean cool air of Flagstaff. Now we are in the same boat. In San Rafael where we live it is about ten degrees cooler than the beach. It feels literally like "a breath of fresh air" when we return to our mountain home.

Not to mention cooking our own healthy foods and the hot instead of cold shower! Early this morning as we were driving through Nicaragua back to the border on the bus, I spotted an old lady taking a cold shower outside her house! She lived in a shack and was dumping a tub of cold water over her head! They are actually used to that here and think we are the crazy ones because we like hot showers.

Christus Climb

We did not bring the camera so I can´t show the cool hill we hiked up to see the Christus statue here in San Jaun. It was a fun hike, and we could rationalize that was our going to church for the day, since there is not one here. We thought about attending mass, but were not really dressed for that after doing the hike. The statue is beautiful though and built on the peninsula overlooking the whole bay. The bummer was they wanted a dollar each to go into the gate and actually ¨be¨there. Since we don´t usually hike around Nica with money on us we settled for seeing it and hiking around to see all the mansions up there. When we were climbing hubby kept saying ¨where do these people get all this money?¨ Once we got up there we saw that most of the places were for sale, guess they didn´t have the money after all. Manana is off to home, glad to go, and thankful for the break! Pura Vida!