July Update.

I can't believe we only have ONE MONTH until school starts back. :( We have had a great summer but there are so many more things I'd like to do with the kids - more letterboxing, days swimming at my parents' pool, visits to the park, etc but days like today - just sticking at home all day are much needed and appreciated.


Here's a quick (if I can!) catch-up.


Andrew and Elizabeth had a week of swim lesson the week following our CR trip. Can I just say that I LOVE their swim teacher, Mr. Kyle? He is awesome. We had him last year and he did great with them. He helped Andrew last summer to not be afraid of the water. This year he helped Andrew to get over his fear of the deep end. He was so patient and had the perfect methods for my boy. Andrew has said he didn't want to take swim lessons last year unless he had a boy teacher. There aren't very many teenage boys out there teaching swim lessons but thankfully, his first grade teacher's son, Kyle, was!


The Friday before the Fourth of July, the third, we went to buy the kids some sparklers. It is tradition after all. :) When we went across the county line to where we can buy them, there were about three places to shop. Wade and I had washed my car that day and were driving it so strangely enough, what kind of parking lots the stores had determined where we shopped. We picked the place withOUT the gravel parking lot. LOL It turned out to be the best choice.


We had a ten dollar bill and wanted to only spend that ten. Well, my dear husband started getting a little giddy with all the dynamite in the little building with the paved parking lot. They were charging quite a hefty fee for using credit cards since they normally didn't use the machine and were renting it for the holidays. We were going to use the $10 for part of our fireworks and then put the remaining $5 on our debit card. The couple who were running the place were so sweet and told us to not worry about the extra five and we could just pay the $10. They said they felt bad they had to charge that to customers and even threw in two boxes of those little pop-its for the kids. Wade said for the first time he felt like he didn't get ripped off on fireworks. :)


For your viewing enjoyment (and a good laugh!):



The next morning we went to Papaw and Nana's so Elizabeth could get a perm. She had decided she wanted one. I was in fourth grade when I got my first so I didn't mind. Since she had made up her mind, she couldn't get one quick enough. Thankfully Nana wasn't busy that Saturday morning and agreed she could do it. I talked her into doing the pink rods because I didn't know how well Elizabeth's hair would take a perm. When I used to get them, mine would take them really well and would curl tight and stay for months. I usually only had to get a perm every 9-12 months it would stay so long! Hair full of rods:



Curls!

Here is a cute photo I took of her a couple of days later with her new look.


We've invited Daddy and Mom over for the Fourth for a few years now. We enjoy the time with them and then going to see the fireworks. This year Wade dropped us off and then drove the long distance to park the car. Daddy's back has been worse than it ever has been and it's hard for him to do a lot of standing or walking.


The week after the Fourth, the kids had another week of summer camp during the morning (9-12) at school. They enjoyed that and I enjoyed the time to myself to get things done.


That weekend (July 10-12), I went with a friend and met 10 other ladies at a bed and breakfast in Somerset, Ohio for a scrapbooking retreat. We had a fabulous time. Lots of good food and lots of laughing. I didn't get a lot of scrapbooking done but that's fine. I enjoyed being with my friends. I went last year to Kentucky to scrap with the same group of ladies. There were friends from Indiana, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia, etc.


We went to Mom's a few times for the kids to swim last week. I helped some with breaking beans. I used to feel like that was how I spent my summers when I was a teen - breaking beans, shucking corn, shelling popcorn, digging potatoes, picking strawberries. Oh the memories of my brother, sister and I working in the garden. Ha!


After my weekend in Ohio, I had a few friends inspire me to get back into working out. It has been since last winter that I had been to the fitness center. We've been paying the membership along the way *groan* but not using it. So I finally went week before last and plan on going regularly again (at least twice a week). I was SUPER sore for over a week. I'm talking so sore that it hurt to lay on my stomach to watch TV and it hurt to cross my legs. LOL Yeah, I'm out of shape.


Last Thursday I went to visit my friend, Annie, who had twin boys almost two years ago. I had taken some photos of them back last winter that had turned out so cute and she wanted me to come back and take some this summer. We finally got a day scheduled and I drove to Virginia. We met for lunch and then drove to a small park to let the boys play and hopefully get some good shots of them. I took photos for around an hour and took over 150 photos! :) I did get some really good ones. I shared some with her already. I can't wait to edit some more and burn her a CD. I am not a professional by any means (look at most of the photos on this blog post! LOL) but I am excited about some I got.


I took a free Jessica Sprague photo editing class recently. Most of what she taught I already knew or had tried but I did learn quite a few shortcuts and some new techniques to get the same look with fewer steps. It was fun though. I may take another from her in the future that is more advanced.


This weekend we went to visit Wade's dad. One thing we've really started enjoying is going fishing at the farm. We went for the better part of the day on Saturday. We went a little late though so I think the fish weren't biting quite like they usually are. We still had fun and caught a few and the kids enjoyed playing in the creek. When we were packing up to leave, Tollette, Wade's brother, arrived and we watched and helped a bit as he and Wade put a new gate up.


One exciting thing is that since Tollette and his wife and kids have moved into a new house, Tom, my father-in-law, has begun to clean out where he was living before which is the house Tom was raised in. He has cleaned out most of the attic and uncovered LOTS of old photos, newspaper clippings, old letters and other memorabilia some of it going as far back as 100 years. I took my first installment of it home to begin the task of scanning and saving the precious memories to a disc to share with the family. It has been fun to look at the photos and read some of the letters. We also found a book dated 1896 that is a book on wills and administration. It had been Wade's grandfather's who was a lawyer. That was a cool find especially since someone we won't say who - Tom - had thrown it in a trash can. I found it and thought it looked cool (for decoration! LOL) but when Wade saw it, he was excited. One of his specialties is estate taxes and he works with a lot of attorneys dealing with wills, trust documents, etc so he can't wait to show them.


Here are some recent cards I've made.

Summer Camp.

When we arrived home from Costa Rica, my parents were at the camp Elizabeth had stayed at during the week for the closing program. We were all excited to hear about her experience and whether she had liked it or not. The funny thing was that when Mom took her on Monday morning (June 22), she had helped her make her bunk bed and then Elizabeth told her, "Okay, you can go now!" You know how summer camp goes, campers don't get to call their families and families don't get to call them so we had to wait until the end of the week (unless we got one of those calls!) to hear how she fared.

So remember the brand new flip flops Elizabeth got just on our last vacation just three weeks prior? I think she wore them ALL day long and EVERY day. What do you think?


Not only did she wear these shoes all week, I think she took only one shower and brushed her teeth only two times. When she came home and walked in the door, I could tell. Her hair looked, well, uh, sorta greasy and I told her I thought something was growing on her teeth. LOL She is so much at that stage where she doesn't care too much about her appearance. Sure, she has her moments where she'll put on cute tops and try to find some cute shoes to go with it or whatever but I think her week at camp was all about fun. Really, that is the way it should be though.

She also brought home lots of mosquito bites on her body - all over. She counted 38 bites on her legs alone. Note for next year: pack bug spray. Her cheeks were a little red from sunburn too but not too bad, thankfully.

Other things to remember about her first week of camp and things I need to remember for next time:
1. She sometimes didn't eat the food they fed them in the cafeteria but would live on the Canteen's snacks of candy bars, soft drinks and Slim Jims. She said she thought she had lost 2 lbs from not eating much that week. With her being so scrawny, that's saying a lot. Really, it was good for her.
2. I paid twice as much for an underwater camera to only have her come home with only 15 photos that were taken. It held 27 so she and Andrew went on a mission to take the rest. I think I ended up giving back 3/4 of the photos she took when we had them developed at Walmart. She and Andrew got in trouble for a few they had taken. (insert eye-rolling smiley here)
3. She helped me back her suitcases, but it took her two days to find her other bathing suit and beach towel. She didn't find her goggles all week even though she knew we had packed them. Personally, I think she barely looked and was a little miffed with her about this but whatever.
4. We bought several snacks to only have her come back home with them - smooshed in pieces. I'm not spending the money to do that again when she'll just go and buy what she wants at the Canteen.
5. Most of her free time she spent in the craft room instead of doing other activities. Like mother, like daughter. She was proud of the jewelry and boxes she brought home.
6. A fanfare trumpet-like recording went off every morning at 7 to wake them and lights-out was at 10 pm. She liked getting to stay up this late.
7. There was a 30 minute chapel time in the morning, one in the afternoon where they had puppets and then about an hour chapel time in the evening where they dressed up a little more. For Elizabeth, this meant throwing a jean or khaki skirt on with whatever shirt she was wearing.
8. She had one moment of homesickness. On Wednesday she hurt herself somehow and then realized she hadn't sent us a postcard yet (we had them all stamped and addressed before she left) and then started crying. I think it didn't last long and she got over it.
9. Elizabeth had started wearing deoderant not long before we went to camp. While there she said the girls in her cabin had a deo smelling contest to see whose smelled the best. Hers won. LOL

Elizabeth did make several friends in her cabin. There was one or two blurry photos of them on her camera. We asked her if she wrote down their address to keep in touch. "I think I did" she said without interest. She's never looked for their address either or mentioned writing them. I also found it almost unbelievable that she didn't know that much about her new friends. She thought "one lives in VA and one lives in TN" but no knowledge of where in those states they live. LOL

Even though I say all of this, she LOVED it and plans on going back next year. She is hoping Deandre, her counsellor, is working again next year. We are happy she had a great first experience and did so well. It makes us quite proud of our independent girl!

Shopping on Our Way to San Jose.

Wednesday (June 24) was our last full day to relax at the resort and partake of its "all-inclusiveness" so we did just that. I finished a book I had been reading and started an audio book I had downloaded for the trip. It was a very breezy windy day by the coast. As it always is when we are on vacation, we knew it was our last night here and we were ready to start heading home. Now if we had some more adventures planned, then I would be all for staying another night or two but since we didn't, I really was starting to miss the kids and was ready to see them.


One last self-portrait of us. We tried to take a photo of us together every day. :) Can you tell that the camera fogged up immediately from the humidity?


We took one last walk before checking out to enjoy our last moments at the resort. A view from the side of the pier. (Click to see larger.)


An old anchor by the pier that we didn't notice before.


We had already made plans with Dimas to have someone pick us up and take us back into San Jose (really Juan Santamaria) to our hotel. He had told us about a town called Sarchi that was known for their woodworking and would be a nice place to find souvenirs. I also read about this town on Travel Advisor and knew it was a fun place to shop.


Giraldo picked us up at the hotel on Thursday at 12:30 (we had our last lunch there and gladly relinquished the green bracelets we wore while there). He could speak some English but didn't understand everything we said. I was able to translate some of what we were asking and saying. I wish I had tried to speak Spanish more while there. Next time. I also wish I had kept my Spanish-English dictionary with me and not packed in my luggage for times like this. My biggest fear in speaking more Spanish (because I translated in my head a LOT of what I would say to Ticos) is that they would think I could speak more Spanish than what I could and would start speaking it to me fast. LOL


He showed us coffee plantations and sugarcane plantations on the way. He explained how the altitude needed to be around 800 meters or so to grow well. (Don't quote me on that number but I think that is what he said!)


On our way to Sarchi, we traveled through a town called Grecia. Giraldo drove us past a church that he explained was the centerpiece or main tourist attraction of the town. It is made of large, dark red metal pieces that were imported from Belgium in the 1890's. It's named the Cathedral de la Mercades. The grounds were pretty too. We didn't want Giraldo to stop for us to take photos so I just took them from the van. As we drove past, we saw that the church was quite full. It made me chuckle to see a dog laying at the opened door in the middle of the church.


As we were leaving Grecia, we saw several signs pointing to the "World of Snakes". I found this curious and looked it up when we got home to find that it is a serpentarium that is home to over 50 species of snakes from around the world.


Arriving in the town of Sarchi, our driver took us to the enormous ox cart that is in the center of town. The ox cart is the national symbol of Costa Rica. You see them in small hand painted versions and you can buy them in all sizes - all the way up to a usable size. They are their symbol because of their historical importance in transporting the coffee beans to market over a hundred years ago. The oldest and largest oxcart factory (Joaquin Chaverri Oxcart Factory built in 1902) is found in Sarchi.


This was painted on a wall by the first store we stopped to shop at in Sarchi. It has the name of the oxcart factory on it.


This store we had stopped at was one of the several we would shop. Giraldo must be used to taking the tourists to these places because he immediately found a bench to sit at as we began to look around. Elizabeth and Andrew had requested we come home with certain themed wood puzzle boxes. When Wade and I had visited before we had each brought back a wood puzzle box - he, a fish, and me, a cat. Here are several examples I found online. Prices can vary one dollar to five dollars at these markets. We couldn't find what Andrew had requested and we didn't see one that we thought Elizabeth would especially like so we had Giraldo take us to another place. He had suggested it and said it was like a mini-mall. (Photo may look a little wonky as I merged two to make this one.)


Here we finally found the perfect box for the kids. They are made from the various exotic woods in Costa Rica (rosewood, iron wood, rum rum, purple heart, cristobal, and guapinol). We also found some neat wood puzzles for them.




I also bought myself a rustic bowl made from the exotic cocobolo wood, also known as rosewood. It is an extremely rare wood and even in Costa Rica, the government requires permits to cut a tree down. I read that most of the wood available today is from private land that has been growing for eight to ten decades! See the Costa Rican candy inside? It's Gallito frutini candy which is just regular hard candy. When Andrew tried one, he asked, "Mom, are you sure this is made in Costa Rica?" I looked at the back and said, "Well . . ." and then laughed aloud. It was made by Kraft foods but it was indeed made in Costa Rica. I told him candy in America is the same as candy in Costa Rica, I guess.


Here are some of the other (food!) goodies we bought in Costa Rica - the Britt coffee, cheap-o but yummo vanilla and Lizano sauce.


We finally made it to our hotel. The girl checking us in told Wade he looked like a guy on CNN. This has become a common thing to hear in the last couple of years. He obviously bears a resemblance to Anderson Cooper. I always laugh and say "too bad we don't have his bank account". :) By the way, did you know that Anderson Cooper is Gloria Vanderbilt's son? Little trivia for you there. Wade says that next time he's going to say that AC is his brother. We've thought about using "Cooper" as our last name in restaurants while on vacation. He's actually had a person stop him to tell him. Funny.


Upon getting settled into our room, Wade decided to use the FREE internet access (better than the $10 a day we paid at the other hotel) and I wanted to use the FREE international calls. At this point, I had emailed all our comings and goings to Andrew and my parents so there wasn't too much to say. Ha ha! However, Wade decided to check our bank account to see if any of our Costa Rica transactions had cleared and it. went. downhill. from. there. *sigh* Yes, we discovered that we had made a very bad decision.


Now I will uncover our stupidity foolishness to help anyone that may possibly happen upon this blog and read this from making the same mistake! The first few nights at the resort we had made phone calls from our room. Wade had called the front desk the night we had arrived (Sunday) to ask what the rates were to call from the room. He was switched to another person in guest services. They told us the rate was $1.75 for the first minute and then $1.50 for each additonal minute, but we needed to come to the front desk and get a voucher to put it on our credit card. He proceeded to ask them about the plastic card by the phone in the room that advertised that you could place phone calls from the room using your credit card. He asked what the rates were for that. He was told "the same". We obviously had one of those English-Spanish translation miscommunications BECAUSE on our credit card were six hits of $40 each for phone calls. It wasn't good.


Giraldo told us of a great steakhouse (El Cencerro) nearby. We were feeling frustrated about the whole phone scandal and were very hungry by the time we had spent time on our online account and on the phone with the hotel we had stayed at, so we just walked across the road to the Rostipollos restaurant. I was kicking myself again for not bringing my Spanish-English dictionary. The menu was completely in Spanish (of course - I know we were in a Spanish speaking country!) and unlike other places we had been visiting, no one knew English. So we just pointed and I ordered. The food was okay but quite expensive!


This was a painted cow outside our hotel. I didn't really get to notice the "legs" of the people/cow until we arrived home and I was looking at my photos.


Wade and I finally settled down from the day and went to sleep. Our flight home was at 8 am the next morning so we arrived at the airport at 6. We had an uneventful flight home and was in our house around 6:30. *Whew* It was a long day but we were happy to be home and looking forward to seeing Elizabeth and Andrew!