Fun in the Sun!

Here are a few highlights from the last two weeks...our first two weeks in Costa Rica: Here we have Mary and Joseph in the stable in our Christmas Eve Nativity reinactment. It was going well until Joseph decided to tear down the stable, which didn't make Mary very happy. They were sweet though, and Bree just loved singing Christmas carols this year! Since our children were still on eastern time (and still are!!) they arose around 5:00 AM Christmas morning...when Robbie went in to try and tell Bree she needed to go back to sleep she said, "Did Santa come yet dad?" Robbie said, "I think so..." and Bree said, "Oh good cause he's bringing toys for me and Gabe since we don't have any." She meant in Costa Rica...and it was true, I guess I thought she'd be fine without toys for a few months...but that broke our hearts and so under the tree Santa had written a note to them that said, "You get to go with your parents to pick out one new toy!" Since she hadn't told Santa what she wanted he didn't know :)
Funny thing though, Christmas morning she went past the gifts straight to the stockings (which were Robbie's dress socks!) And I was just grateful that she was excited about the fruitsnacks and fruit roll-ups that were in it! After a fun breakfast and morning our neighbors invited us over for Christmas lunch. The traditional meal for Christmas day is Tamales... and mmmmm were they good! It was so fun being with someone's family for Christmas (they had their aunt, mother, brother and his family and over)! It was a definately a different but memorable Christmas :)
The day after Christmas we rented a car and drove 1/2 hour to San Jose for the Tope! This is a traditional horse parade that happens every December 26th in several cities in Costa Rica. But the one in the capital, San Jose, is the biggest and horses from all of the coutry come! See the horses behind Robbie and Bree? That was before the parade started, once it started the street was FILLED with horses! It was crazy! We couldn't believe the horses didn't go crazy being so close together! And sidenote, if any of you ever plan on traveling in Costa Rica here is a tip...there are NO road signs! Even on the highways! Robbie did an AMAZING job navigating our way there and back home. I was so impressed with his sense of direction because it was crazy! On our way back we stopped in a town called Belen (which means Bethlehem) where the temple is located. There is a church right next to it. It was such a welcomed sight. We actually went to church there the next day (since we couldn't find the one close to us in Alajuela where we are going to go). Afterwards, we stopped to get dinner, our first time out to eat and oh so yummy! Bree LOVED dipping her chips in the black beans... delic! This is gallo pinto, the famous Costa Rican breakfast meal. (Beans and rice with eggs :) It was yummy too! Not like out of this world you gotta have it today yummy, but really good. Sunday after church we went for a walk around Incae (that is the business school Robbie is doing his exchange with) and outside of campus a little bit. Here we're walking up the hill just before our house, which is down at the end on the right. The flowers here are amazing!! Seriously, florescent pinks, oranges, purples, bright yellows... my favorite! I am such a flower person that just seeing these makes me so happy :) And remember how I said there are ants everywhere? Well, perhaps it's because they don't have ant hills, they have ant mountains! But we are really surrounded by such beauty :)


Onto week two: Here's just a funny picture, I had peeled this cucumber to slice for a snack for our trip to the beach and had set it down for a second and next thing I know she says, "Look mom! I have a cucumber popsicle!" We took a day trip out to a beach called Punta Leona. The drive out to the coast goes up, through, and down these huge mountains... it wasn't too bad except that poor Bree got super car sick and threw up all over on the way there! But, that didn't stop us, neither did a few wrong turns (which made a 1 1/2 hour trip into a 3 hour trip!), it was all worth it! We still had plenty of time to swim, and Gabe even made a friend (the little boy on the left just loved Gabe and played with him for a while! It was so cute!). The water was perfect and we hope to go back again soon! I'm just grateful my husband has converted to being a beach lover (thanks to our trip to Topsail in North Carolina!!)... being the cowboy mountain man that he is it took me three years in NC to get him to the beach there, but once he went now he loves the beach! A few days later we visited the Zoo that is just down the street from us. It was way more pricey that we expected :( but it was neat to see new animals, and even have them walking down the sidewalk with us! (Bree wanted to pet that peacock so badly!) We saw such neat birds, crocodiles, monkeys, and the huge iguanas that are all over we've heard.
Gabe was so good to sit in his stroller the whole time :) He couldn't see much, but was entertained anyway! We just LOVED having daddy all to ourselves the entire two weeks! (I was secretly happy that our internet didn't get set up until Saturday because then every evening was like date night!) We are definitely feeling settled and happy and we'll just see what happens once Robbie starts school tomorrow! Oh and we went to our ward today... SO GREAT! The people there are just the sweetest and everyone kept coming up to Bree and Gabe and holding their cheeks and kissing them. Gabe was eating it up, Bree wasn't so sure at first. The funny thing is there aren't any other little kids Bree's age so there isn't a nursery, but there are several kids like 5 and up. So they just have one big primary class and Bree was just right there with them! There was a little group of girls who were all like 7 and 8 who just gathered around Bree and were so sweet. She loved it :) I asked her what they did and she said they played games and sang songs, but she didn't sing because she didn't know those Spanish words :) Hopefully we will soon! Pura Vida!