Signing off!!!

There is usually a "short summer", as they call it here in Costa Rica, a brief period of no rain, perfect sun, and hot weather, just before the rest of the "winter".....or rain, rain, rain. We had that short summer this past week, and feel so incredibly blessed. It has rained (at some point in the day) probably 90% of the days we've been here, but this week, we literally didn't see or hear one drop from Monday through today....needless to say, the kids played at the beach all week long. We had our friends, the Wride's over the past two days to enjoy the beach with us (they have 7 children ages 10-1, so all our kids have at least one friend to play with :)). We couldn't have asked for a more perfect ending to our adventure. One of my first friends, Megan, whom I met on the beach just for a week, said that she and her family spent several weeks here every summer, and that it is magical (I remember her using the word specifically), and I can honestly say that is exactly the word I would choose, MAGICAL. To watch our children, literally everyday run out to the beach from our back door and be so excited to play outside and never tire of going outside...to see them interact with one another in a way they did not do at home with neighbors and friends around....to see them have literally ZERO toys, yet never be bored...to see them with insane appetites, eating anything and never complaining....to see them make friends with someone who doesn't speak any english....to see them learning new things (surfing), and wanted to learn badly enough that they keep trying and trying even when they get pummeled....to see them enjoying a healthy, active life, without me having to drive them to swim practice, track or soccer.....it is just magical!!!! There are so many things I will miss about this place.

But the reality is that we need to head home for now. We can easily count our many, many blessings, and the blessing of being here for 2 short months, that has just taught us so much about how we want to run our family, and how we want to run our lives. So we will come home and continue the fight against the norm to have more family time, to always have family dinners, to not get caught up in the run-around, to reconnect every night with our children. How can we be anything but grateful for this experience!!

Schramms and Stouts on our day trip to Rincon de Viejo

A zip-lining photo, with our driver....

Almost ready to saddle up and head to the hot springs

Putting on my "diper"...getting ready for the 1200ft waterslide!

Zach and I both agreed, this was the funnest (or should I say funniest)

part of the day!!!

Bryan and Zach go out for a surf!

Finally a few pictures from our visit with Bryan and JoDee....my computer was giving me a hard time uploading these. We have had so much fun with all of our visitors the past few weeks and are so grateful we could squeeze in these visits before having the leave CR.

Scott and Cindy Gunderson came down for a visit with their two boys! Cindy actually had her tickets booked before we booked ours to come down. We had booked a condo in the northern part of the country, but ended up driving back to our house the next day. Accommodations worked a little better for our families here.....food was a 45 minute drive, the beach was un-swimable since there was some kind of biting fish in it, and we again had all of our kids sleeping in one king bed, while Zach and I slept on the pull out. We all agreed it would be easier to just be at home, so we headed back the following day. Even though we had some rain here and there, we had plenty of sunny and dry moments for playing out on the beach, which was everyone's choice of play for the week.

Stout/Gunderson volcano building competition. The kids actually got some paper and lit it on

fire for effects.

Also since we were at home, we booked Grettyl to watch all the kids for movie night so Scott, Cindy, Zach and I could go out to dinner. We tried a new restaurant, Nibbani, and I had a super tasty greek salad and spinach/ricotta ravioli (Zach let me choose, and this is so typical of me....I love pasta). Scott and Cindy went a little more cultural to the area, and had the ceviche, cream of onion soup, and the curry..... Bottom line was we didn't have to cook or clean up after the kids, so everyone was happy, and everything was super delicious. The following day we went to Monkey Bar, 2 for 1 pizza, and even though it was exactly that, bar pizza, the kids loved playing with the baby gecko, and goofing around on the billiards table.

Scott and Cindy left Saturday early afternoon to give themselves plenty of time to arrive in SJ before dark, but when we got a call from them around 8:30pm, they let us know they had just arrived.....8 hours post departure time!!!! Zach and I rearranged our plans to get to San Jose immediately, and called our driver, who is now picking us up at 7:30am instead of noon....