The Day After

Our family has a tradition of decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. I believe that we should give thanks before we start worrying about what we may be getting! This year Thanksgiving was a little later, so we won't have to worry about that beautiful grandson of ours taking the decorations down too often.

I do hope everyone had as enjoyable a Thanksgiving as we did. My great friend here, Sally invited our family over for dinner and great conversation. Most people shush me when I start talking politics, it is great to hang with people who can, and will talk back.

The only rival for the company was of course the great food. More roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, vegees, and pies than anyone could ever eat. But we all tried our hardest and made a bit of a dent in it for sure.

Of course the fact that Obama declared, with the power invested in him that is, that it was a national day of Thanksgiving. Whew I am glad I had his permission to celebrate!

DEBT

I love being completely out of debt and really do not look forward to going into debt again. The problem is these days it is very hard to get an education without going into debt. Unless you are one of the rich and famous of course.

We hear about friends who are taking out second mortgages on their homes to send kids to college. I really could not quite even think about this, but I guess to them it is worth it. I just hope their kids make enough money and are willing to take care of them when they get old and still owe money on their homes.

Hubby got quite a discount on school for being a Vet. but it is still lots of money for the next eighteen months. I keep waiting for Obama to come forward and pay his school loans. I think he was the one telling all of us to return to school if I am not remembering wrong?

At any rate I guess until he comes forward we will just bite the bullet and take responsibility for our own family and ourselves, now that is a novel idea ha?

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEARS !

Can you tell who has the chopsticks in the genes? Isn't it amazing, we don't eat with chopsticks at home, but when Maleah gets a pair she eats like an old pro with them. Breyssi on the other hand has a bit of a struggle with them. She barely eats with a fork though so not a problem. We enjoyed celebrating New Years at our favorite Chinese restaurant Tin Ho, in downtown San Jose, it was great as always and surprisingly not busy at all.

This year will be the year of the Ox, oh yeah! Obama is not the only Ox around you know. There a few more of us worker Oxes around trying to keep the world alive and kicking. It looks to be a good year for the Ox in general, and especially financially woo hoo! Thousands of years of Chinese astrology can't be too wrong can it?

We do want to wish one and all a great Chinese New Year and best wishes for a good hard working Ox year to all. You know hard work is like the trade mark of the Ox which would explain why Obama keeps suggesting all of us should just work a little harder :)

EXPAT FOR AMERICA !!!!

Today is a national holiday for all the U.S. We thought of taking the day off but decided it would be hard to rationalize. Rick worked for the Post Office for so long it is hard to recondition our thinking to the fact that we do not get at least one day off a month!

We took this picture when we went to visit our son in Oct. so you can ignore the Sheriffs Office logo in the background :) It just goes to show how patriotic we are as a family.

There seems to be a myth around these days that expats are a bit soured so to speak on the U.S. That really is not true. In fact I have met more true patriots here than I usually meet in my travels in the U.S.. We have a big 4th of July celebration that is very well attended. They have the marines come from the Embassy to do the flag raising and it makes us all teary eyed.

As we all look forward to the inaugaration tomorrow of a new President our prayers are with him. I really don't care what color he is, or anything else about him for that matter. What I care about is will he get our country out of the mess it is in? All I can hope for is if we all pray and send really good juju vibes to him maybe he can do something to improve the situation.

I love America and we spend much of our time there still, even though we live here in Costa Rica most of the time. We have kids and grandkids there and would love to see things go easier for them. In the present situation we despair of our children ever even buying a house or being able to put our grandkids in college.

One thing that Obama says that I really like is that only sacrifice and hard work are going to get us out of the present situation. What I really hope for is that it is not only the working class he is talking to but the country total!

Just my dos colones from an expat that truly loves America!