Here are some pics of the lil prankster today. She had a blast all day and only napped for an hour. She was zonked out by 7:30pm and I dont even know what to do with myself. This is either really good and the turning of a new leaf (could i possibly be one of those mothers with a baby that sleeps from 7:30- 8am) or she will be up at 5am and ready to go. Most likely the latter…I should prob. go to sleep now. PS (Is she really holding her sippy cup with one hand below?! I remember when it was sooo heavy for her and she could hardly wrap both hands around it. Ugh, when did she get so big?!)

So Saturday night is here, SaturDAY has come and gone, but we had a lot of fun today and have some new memories that I’m sure we won’t forget – but first, a little business… I apologize if anyone has had trouble loading the blog the past few days! There was some sort of glitch that was making it run slow. All is well and done now, though, so back to writing!

This morning we woke up bright and early around 7AM. This was not the first time, however, that Sophie and Mommy woke up. It was more like the 12th time they woke up when the clock chimed seven times this morning. I’m not sure what the deal was, but Sophie woke up a bunch last night, nonetheless, Mommy was a champ about it and soldiered through the day, and so did little Sophie.

Mommy made extra strong coffee to help lubricate the brain and we were off and running on our way to breakfast at Hotel Villa Blanca. The weather was perfect to start off today, only a few clouds in the sky scattered amongst a beautiful blue. I like the sky here when it’s not cloudy – you don’t see any trails from airplanes and the color of the blue is just like the color of the ocean when you watch a Corona commercial on TV. Pure blue.

Once we got to Hotel Villa Blanca the resort was pretty quiet and low-key, I made another friend this past week named Pablo (Alexis’s nephew) who works there and he said there was only 7 out of 35 units occupied. In lieu of this, I think they skipped the breakfast buffet that they usually have and put out a simple breakfast menu. It was still really good though, and Sophie behaved pretty well. Actually, when I say “behaved pretty well” I thought about what is considered not behaving well for her and it really isn’t a matter of her being bad. Sophie is such a curious cat, she just wants to go out and sponge up everything that surrounds her. She is like a bee or a butterfly landing from flower to flower, when she is in a new place (or just about any place) for that matter, she wants to be on our own two feet and leave no stone unturned. I guess she gets that from her parents.

After we ate breakfast we went on a hiking trail at the hotel and looked at a bunch of tropical plants and then ended up settling on a couple of benches overlooking rolling hills. It was very beautiful, Sophie played there for 20 minutes – maybe more. She wanted to climb up and down off the bench and then sit on the ground and play with the rocks. When we first go to the benches I didn’t want to stay long because I wanted to go to the volcano up the road (which we hadn’t been to yet, it is a huge tourist attraction here – not sure why in hindsight but will explain). However, seeing Sophie infatuated with something as simple as climbing up and down on benches, or looking at different rocks, made me just want to sit there and let her be.

I wish we all could slow our thought processes down and just enjoying the moment like Sophie does all of our lives, and I hope that Sophie’s mind doesn’t speed up too fast and she can enjoy a long time of doing everything it is that she likes to do… before life gets in the way.

It is nice down here though, for example, Alexis and Maritza would give us the shirt off their back if we asked. They live in a small house with eight people, I think (a combination of kids and one grand-daughter). Yet, whenever we give them something they always give us something back… literally:

-I bought Alexis a six pack of beer and then he gave me 17 empty beer bottles so that I could get a huge discount the next time I went to buy beer (if you bring your empty beer bottles back to the grocery store here they give you a credit for them).
-Michelle made Alexis breakfast yesterday and then he stopped by last night to give us special Costa Rican coconut desserts.

I could do a whole separate blog post on this alone, there are probably a dozen or two dozen examples of just the two things above (and those are just in the last two days or so). The saying that everyone says here in Costa Rica to each other is, “pura vida” which means pure life. Now, I’m sure that there are a bunch of rotten eggs mixed in with the good ones here, but the people that we are around the most here have been some of the most helpful and unselfish people we have ever met, and they don’t ask for anything in return. They refuse to let you give them anything in return.

Pura vida.

***

So back to our day today, we finished up at Hotel Villa Blanca and headed off to the Volcano! It is an actual live and active volcano with lava running out of it, which none of us have ever seen before, so we were really excited. Let me tell you though, the idea was way cooler than the reality.

First off, our plan was that Sophie would be tired after breakfast and would sleep all the way to the volcano… WRONG. More like, Sophie would go to sleep 10 minutes before we get to the volcano and then sleep the whole time we were there. Unfortunately, this was only the first mosquito bite that started itching on our volcano adventure. The second one was that the road there is SUPER WINDY and the other 17 month old in the back of the car (Momma) does not like windy roads. Nor does she like super windy roads. I drove and drove listening to Sophie fuss and Momma burp with bouts of nausea. Oh well. Me being the patient and tough guy that I try to be allowed me to persevere – I was not going to let the two issues of the females in the back of the car rain on my parade.

Until it literally rained on my parade.

Everyone here says it is 1 1/2 hours to the volcano. It’s more like two hours. Okay, no big deal, so two hours in the car and we drive around this corner and see this huge volcano… awesome! Right about this same time, little Sophie falls asleep… double awesome! Unfortunately this only lasted about 10 minutes because the volcano disappeared into a cloud which was the lead horse in a cavalry of dark storm clouds that ended up monsooning allover the whole town as soon as we got there.

No lava. No volcano. Nothing.

Except the urge to go to the bathroom.

So we had to pull over because I drank to much coffee at breakfast and I ran through the monsoon into a hotel lobby so I could use their bathroom really quickly. Then I ran back to the car (damp with rain by this point) and hopped back in.

Oops! Closed the door too loud! Sophie is awake now!

She wasn’t in a bad mood though. She got her little half-hour power nap in but unfortunately it was raining cats and dogs at the volcano so Momma and I made an executive decision to turn around and go back home.

The drive back was pretty uneventful until we stopped at a restaurant/hotel owned by Israelis that also run a pet-rescue there. We only saw one cat and one dog, but apparently they have 200 cats and dogs there. Crazy. We had some hummus, cappucino, a latte, and a cookie for the road, and left to come home.

Even though we didn’t get to see lava or spend more than 20 minutes at the volcano, it was still a very fun day. Sophie had a blast and was in an awesome mood tonight (Momma made some Costa Rican soup with fresh vegetables) and we all relaxed and enjoyed not being in the car. Sophie took her shower and zonked out right afterward. She didn’t even watch any Sesame Street or anything before bed.

It’s always nice to see Sophie so tired at the end of the day. It makes me feel like we lived the day to the fullest and that we put our little girl into bed with her tank on empty.

Our tanks are on empty tonight too. We all had a great and fun day together.

Now it’s time to go to bed.

Here she is… our sleek, sharp set of wheels in her glistening beauty! Currently without a name, suggestions are welcomed- i was thinking something feminine and dainty would be fitting.

Every morning when Sosi wakes up she makes her daddy take her outside so she can grab a banana off the banana bunch that Alexis hung in the yard. I think i gave birth to a monkey…she is up to at least 2 bananas a day.

…well the clouds parted for a little bit today and for the better part of the morning and early afternoon we all got to enjoy some good old sunshine and warm weather. Sophie, Mommy and I all hung out outside for a little while and Maritza made us Eggs, Gallo Pinto (rice, pico de gallo and black beans) with fried plantains – yum yum. Then, to top it off she made us papaya smoothies. We are pretty lucky. She also cleans up all of the plates, etc., and does the dishes after we eat.

Later in the afternoon the storm clouds rolled in accompanying by booming thunder, but that didn’t stop us from having a good time. Sophie finished taking her nap – or should I say was rudely awoken by a little barking psycho white dog that resides with us at this house – and we packed up and headed over to the San Ramon “mall” for a some window shopping. Inside was an H&M, a surf shop with a bunch of American brands (albeit expensive), Burger King, McDonalds, KFC, and a huge grocery store.

Our new mission here is to find chicken broth. For some reason it’s nowhere to be found at any of the three grocery stores we’ve been to so far. As it turns out, there are a bunch of things we eat that has chicken broth in it. I emailed my friend Pablo so hopefully he’ll give us the low-down on where the goods are.

Other than this, Sophie stayed up a little later tonight. She ate a great vegetable dinner that Momma made (broccoli w/ cheese, brussel sprouts, and Momma’s special potato recipe). After dinner she watched a bunch of YouTube and then when she still wasn’t tired she came outside to take the dogs out with me. When a loud truck drove by while we were out there she pointed and said, “Car” – she is so smart and is doing new things and saying new words and sounds every day. Ah – how could I have forgotten, she also learned tonight how to blow on her arm and make farting noises. So for about 10 minutes she sat on the couch with me making fart noises and laughing – Michelle got it on video I think.

Anyhoodle, that’s about it for today! I’m starting to get tired and am looking forward to going upstairs and crawling in bed. I’m looking out the window at lights of a far off town set on a distant hill with a thunderstorm looming over it. You can’t tell there is a thunderstorm there except for every now and then when a big bolt of lightning illuminates the silhouette of a gigantic cloud. If it comes over here it will be perfect to go to bed to. The sound of the rain on the roof along with the rumble of thunder is the perfect white noise, and there are also no tornados to worry about in San Ramon.