What a super fun week we all had! Nana stayed a whole week and it just flew by. Sophie was saying NANA all week and loved hanging out and playing all sorts of quirky Sosi games. She loved to hide behind the curtain and then run into Nana’s arms, she loved making Nana hide in her tent, and my all time favorite, throwing rocks at Nana’s feet in the ocean- lol. When Nana boarded the plane to leave, Sophie was yelling Nana, Nana, Nana, and even as i type this it makes my eyes well up.

We spent most of the days at the beach or pool or just playing outside. Sosi went into the ocean for the first time and anytime she sees it or knows she is going to the beach she gets all excited and starts shouting “WA-WA. WA-WA (this mean water)”. We def. have a little beach bum on our hands. She is like a little frog in the pool and thinks she can swim already. She started saying “eye” and it is the cutest little “eye” I have ever heard. She is also big on “no-no-no” while waving her little pointer finger. Each day she is picking up more and more words and it is just so amazing to watch. Also amazing to watch is her hair getting blonder and her skin getting browner. In just one week her hair has all crazy shades of blonde and she is like a little bronze baby. Total beach bum.

We are going to miss Nana!! It really couldn’t have been a more perfect trip. We just went through the photos and whenever Sosi saw Nana in a photo she shouted out NANA! Ugh, breaks my heart. Nana best be planning her next trip. I have a cute video of Nana and Soph playing but the internet is running slow here so i think i’m going to have to upload when we go to the cafe. I’ll try to do that this week. In the meantime, below are a bunch of photos from the trip and this album is the double edited version. I literally have a gazillion pictures and it was so hard to edit because they were all so precious! My fave is the series of Nana and Sosi with the sunglasses. We love you Nana and had such an amazing time. Hope you come back sooooooon! XO

Adios San Ramon, Hola Santa Teresa!! Three months have flown by and the car has been packed up and on to the beach we go! Here are some pics from our journey to Santa Teresa and our first day in the new house. Playing a bit of catch up now since Nana came to town and we were busy busy busy. We are actually settled in now and really loving our new town. Sophie is a complete beach bum and bedtime is a non-issue now (thank you mr. sun). I’m sure there are going to be a gazillion photos to follow and i need to do her big 20 month update- ahhh!! Time is going way to fast. Hopefully i get all caught up on the site this week. Love u all!

Our housekeeper, Maritza, and her husband, Alexis, could possibly be the most genuine, selfless, and caring people we have met in life. Though I am excited for our new adventure in Santa Teresa, I will def. miss the friends we have made here and their whole family most of all. Words cannot describe how highly we think of them and how much they have taught us and given us. We spent one of our favorite New Year’s eve with there enormous family and got to experience the simple happiness of life and love.

They have 8 people living in one small house and will still gladly give you the shirt off their back wanting nothing in return. From our first week here we just bonded with one another and our friendship (and spanish) has only grown stronger over the past 3 months. I feel blessed to have met them and will def. try my hardest to stay in touch with them forever. They hold a dear place in our hearts and always will. Just to know them truly is a blessing.

They invited us over for lunch/dinner this saturday and we ended up staying there from 3-8pm. We hung out in the yard and then walked over to Alexis’s mom’s house where they were having a celebration called “Rosario del Niño”. It is a Costa Rican tradition to close the holiday season and give thanks for friends/family, health, etc. from the previous year. The house was full of family and friends and they had a whole church like set up in the front yard where they had rows of chairs and everyone was singing and praying for about an hour. After that, they had tons of food, coffee, tea and some eggnog tasting stuff (rum popo- not sure how u spell it) that was all getting passed around. There is something about a grandma’s kitchen that is just comforting no matter where you are in the world. Will and I were laughing b/c she had the typical grandma magnets on the fridge and the grandma housecoat on…ah, gotta love grandma’s! Anyway, it was just a great day and again just feel blessed to be in the presence of their family and able to experience their traditions with them.

Below are some pics from hanging out at Maritza/Alexis’s house. We didnt get pics at Grandma’s house b/c it was dark and we left our camera in the car.

Also notice Will’s new hottie shaven look. We finally bought a new clipper here since we forgot his in Chicago or lost it somewhere along the way.

Well our first visitor arrived in CR and Sosi just got over being sick and mommy was downright ill. Luckily I was ill upon PaPa’s arrival but felt significantly better the next morning so we were able to go take a trip to Grecia and spend the day out on my bday. Unluckily that significantly better feeling subsided a day later and I was bed ridden a full day with a headache like I have never experienced in my life! Luckily this only lasted a day so we really only missed out on one full day while Papa was in town. Some highlights and lowlights below…

Highlights:

Sosi wanted to follow Papa around and loved having him in town. She wanted to sit on his lap and he even got a front row seat to an arm fart performance.

We had one bad meal but several decent ones (this is a highlight if you know PaPa)

We had beautiful weather every single day and got to sit outside on the rocking chairs and chat and Sosi got to play in her pool and hang out a bunch outside.

We are able to devour tons of treats that Papa brought from NY and they were worth every single calorie.

Papa ate guacamole and nachos and i got to hear him say that he actually likes guacamole after 60 somewhat years of never tasting it.

We went to the farmers market and got two kick ass pineapples that were as delicious as they looked.

Will fed a squirrel (this may have been a secret lifelong dream of his)

PaPa got to taste the coffee that officially turned me into a coffee prude a few years ago.

I got a classic pic of PaPa and some bulls…in fact several classics.

PaPa didnt sweat once that i saw…this may be a first.

LOWLIGHTS:

I got doodied on by little nugget on my birthday. I had to walk around the whole afternoon with doodie down my dress (thanks nuggs)

I could have done without the violent illness that took over my body for a few days and left me with no appetite, a fever, and a pounding headache.

Our water stopped working that last day PaPa was here so they are here now trying to fix the pump and we havent showered.

Papa fed the darn cats milk in the morning so they thanked him with a lovely dead mouse on our porch.

Papa had a bit a wheezing issue and had to take a lasiks (spelling) but luckily that corrected it and he was feeling better.

All in all it was a great trip and this morning Sosi woke up and went right downstairs to Papa’s room to look for him :(. We love you and will miss you Papa! Thanks for being our first visitor. Next up Nana 🙂

Well we completed our first Visa run this week and we were granted another 90 days in Costa Rica- yippie! We took the Tica Bus to Granada, Nicaragua and had an amazing time. We met some great people, as well as, funny characters along the way. We got to sit 3 hours at the Nicaragua border on the way in (fun times) and then ride home for the last hour and 1/2 with two Jehovah’s witnesses on the way back (our bus driver decided he wasnt going to stop at our stop). It was an adventurous journey and took way longer than we expected (about 10 hours each way when you factor in border crossing, etc) but we absolutely had a blast! Sophie was such an incredible little travel partner. She didnt make a peep on any of the bus ride and really only fussed a little when waiting in the sun to go cross the border and have our bags checked. This little diva does not like waiting around. She managed to entertain herself with collecting rocks and throwing them and when all else failed the boob was a savior. She also ate prob 3 apples on the way there and 3 again on the way back. Apples are def. a great travel treat since they take a baby a long time to eat and kept lil nugget occupied for a portion of the journey. Luckily our trip each way started at about 6am so since miss thing doesnt usually wake up until around 9am she slept for about 3 hours total during our trip. Anyway, needless to say we didnt do much via car, bus, boat or anything other than foot when we stayed in Granada.

We ate at some incredible restaurants and had some of our favorite meals since living in Central America. Our hotel was my favorite that I have ever stayed in and I think Will agreed. It was absolutely beautiful, quirky and completely spotless. I typically lay a baby blanket on the beds whenever we stay at hotels (it is a weird thing i have about hotel beds) but I realized on the second night that i hadn’t even pulled it out of the suitcase. The owner Ulli was more anal than me and his place was so organized and spotless that I was in heaven. Everything was labeled (will makes fun of me b/c i like things labeled, like i like the sugar jar to say “SUGAR” etc, lol), the switch for light said “light” and fan said “fan” and so on, ugh it was my utopia.

Anyway, on to things other than mine and Ulli’s apparent share for the love of OCD. The city was so different from Costa Rica. We def. sensed a lot more poverty and it wasn’t as modern at all (people still traveled by horse), but the architecture was super cool, and there was a lot of flavor and people living there from all over the world. There were tons of restaurants of all types and every night there was some sort of party going on somewhere. The whole city was walkable minus the ginormous potholes that you had to look down for while walking on the street. We saw an acrobat routine, belly dancers, juggling, fire dancing, etc. and this was all in only 3 nights. The president was inaugurated while we were in town so they had fireworks and a projection screen showing the inauguration on the side of a delivery truck. We have videos of a bunch of the entertainment that I will post later.

I def. would love to visit Granada again and stay longer so we could see more of the sites. There are supposedly some beautiful islands that you can take a quick boat ride to visit. We will be visiting again for sure and just had such a fantastic trip. Sophie had a blast walking all around, playing in the pool, sleeping through the night (yes sleeping though the night), watching all the entertainment, talking to herself in the mirror and going absolutely bananas in the stand up shower. Visa run #1 was a giant success. We arrived home around 4pm and the house was super clean, the pups were happy and well taken care of, and Alexis even washed our car. We feel really blessed to have this opportunity and go on these adventures. We have met so many great people and hopefully continue to do so. Now enough of the rambling… slideshow below.

Daddy turned the big 3-0 today and we all headed to the beach to celebrate! We ate at an Australian restaurant (beach shack) called Outback Jacks and the food was super yummy! After we ate we headed down to the beach and walked around for a bit, then drove over to a bridge to check out some scarrrrry crocodiles. On the way home we saw the most beautiful rainbow which summed up our entire day perfectly. We picked up some cupcakes and a slice of carrot cake to have for birthday dessert later on. Unfortunately we forgot to pick up candles so we had to wrap some toilet paper around a fork and light it on fire (very classy) for daddy to blow out and make a wish. It wasn’t the prettiest, but it was resourceful and did the trick! Happy birthday to our hero and the most amazing husband/daddy around. We love you madly. You make us so proud and we are so lucky to have you in our lives everyday.

We hope everyone had a Merry Xmas! Sophie’s 2nd Xmas was a great success and Santa filled the tree with presents. She loved opening them and we made it last all day long by playing with each gift after we opened it. The weather was beautiful and sunny and it was just a perfect day. On Xmas eve we watched some Polar Express, daddy read our Xmas eve book, and we made brownies for Santa. It was strange to have a sunny 80 degree day on Xmas, but eh, we adapted just fine (lol). Below is a slideshow from the day with captions :). Both Maritza’s family and Pablo’s family made Xmas tamales for us (a costa rican tradition). Love you all!

Today we went to Grecia which is about 1/2 hour away and the town in this area that I love the most. I was looking for a house rental for the month of Jan. but couldn’t find one that worked for us :(. It is similar to San Ramon but there is just something about Grecia that feels right for me.

We hung out in the central park and then walked around and went in to a bunch of shops. Sosi of course loved the water fountain. She fell asleep on the car ride there and we took her out of the car while she was still napping so it was nice to just sit on a bench with her and enjoy the weather. It was perfectly sunny today with an amazing breeze. Once she woke up and saw the fountain she was on her merry way and climbed right up to check it out.

When we were done walking around we went and ate at a steakhouse called Galeria. We sat out back and the view was beautiful. Soph chowed on some guacamole and roamed around the yard with daddy. Will and I shared the guac and a sea bass dish. We will def. be going back! Who knows, maybe we will move here for a while after Santa Teresa. I really do just love this area…just something about it.

After we ate we walked on over to Soph’s fave ice cream shop, POPS, (it is a chain here so they have it in most towns) and got her a pistachio cone (only my daughter likes pistachio- weirdo). This kept her nice and busy for 1/2 the ride home which was a good thing since the ipad had only 2 percent battery left!! It was such a beautiful day. Slideshow below

Ja-Ja-Ja Jaco was what we were chanting on the drive to the beach (possibly why we missed the exit and went about 1/2 hour out of the way). Regardless, it was a beautiful drive and so nice to finally get to the beach here in CR. I am def. super excited to be heading to Santa Teresa in Feb. and live the beach life for a bit. It took about 2 1/2 hours to get there, and 2 hours to get back so it was a bit of a trek. It was supposed to take about 1 1/2 hours but we got lost on the way there and then stuck behind some trucks on the way home. I think we realized that whenever they tell you how long it takes to get somewhere by car, we just need to tack an extra hour on for some reason. We spent more time in the car than we did at the beach but we’ll def. be going back now that we know the route and will leave earlier so we can stay longer. We ended up walking down to the beach and then browsing a few shops and eating some chinese food (which was a nice break from rice and beans). Will wasn’t too impressed with Jaco. He thought it was a bit dirty and had a grimey vibe. I loved the shops and maybe was just super excited to get to the beach. Santa Teresa def. kicks Jaco’s butt in our opinion but I think i still liked Ja-Ja-Ja Jaco better than Will for sure. It is more developed than Santa T and has chain hotels and tall condo buildings. It seems to be a big party town and was def. mega touristy. All in all we had a great day and will be going back again. We didnt take that many pics since we weren’t there very long but below is a slideshow of a few snaps from the day 🙂

Here are some pics from breakfast/exploring at Villa Blanca before we got stuck on the way out. It was drizzly and wet but we had fun anyway.