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sometimes we’re crazier than normal

By on April 6, 2012 in Costa Rica, HA! ☺, traveling

we’re probably particularly crazy today, as we are heading to the airport for the second day in a row and leaving our dear Costa Rica one day later than previously scheduled. (I’m just guessing based on how today’s dry run went – and I’m scheduling this to pop up tomorrow. are you confused yet?)

so in honor of general craziness, and all the late night Tronaditas we are leaving behind (remember this vlog?) here is the result of a couple minutes of one of our last late nights and Krista’s editing skillz. don’t make too much fun of us / think we’re idiots oh whatever, we did it purely for our own enjoyment :)

on that note, we’ll see you back in the US! we’re bringing a few giveaways back :)

Comments { 5 }

it was crazy and I almost died.

By on April 4, 2012 in Costa Rica, HA! ☺, help!, stuff we do, traveling

I’m referring to our latest adventure, which we actually went on sans children.
thank goodness!

most of the beginning I was thinking, there is NO way this is going to be worth it. 6 miles of crazy hills, much of which was the middle of the jungle – read, trails you could barely call blazed. the 3 times we actually stopped for a bit I felt refreshed and when we started out again I felt like it was no big deal.

that feeling was much too quickly replaced by “grrrrr, I don’t want to do this anymore!!!”

I can be kinda bratty sometimes, mainly in relation to intense physical exertion…

Mr. D was seriously my hero, though. he was sooooooooooo nice. he wanted me to not have to carry anything from the beginning, but there was no way I was going to be THAT much of a pansy! halfway through, though, the 3lb camera bag (I think it was more like 5lbs, but who takes a scale to the jungle) started feeling like 5 or maybe 10 pounds. Mr. D kept asking me if he could carry it (along with the backpack of water he was already carrying) and finally I gladly accepted his offer. he’s amazing.

there is really no way for me to accurately portray the difficulty of the hike, but when Eddy said “you carried a baby for 9 months, TWICE, you can do this!” and I replied “that was easier!”, well, you get the idea.

practically speaking, current you forgets how crappy the experience past you had was, and I already think, what?! it wasn’t that bad! but I very specifically told Mr. D in the middle of it that I had NO desire to EVER do that again. yeah, similar to labor, except I didn’t even say that when I had either of my kids, lol.

this video is a very tame idea of what we were doing (and you really can’t tell how STEEP it was)! I really regret that I couldn’t video the insane parts, for obvious reasons (like staying alive). seriously, the government actually shut down that part of Rio Celeste because too many people were getting hurt. but I guess it was a little hard to caution tape up the middle of the jungle, so it was more of a “hey, you’re not supposed to go in there”…

again, this part is pretty tame

(this is a little more what it was like, but still only a small idea – it was not just one mile, remember)

and it was slightly muddy…

this is how my shoes came out,
and the others were confounded by how VERY clean they were…?
but I failed to get a picture of their shoes.

we had to cross a few bridges along the way

 

this is where the two waters meet – see the regular water on the left, and the blue water on the right

here’s a video I found of the waters meeting, kinda cool

as you might remember, Mr. D is the photographer of the family, not I

here is one of his shots, I haven’t had time to go through them all yet

so was it worth it???

sigh. well, I’m glad it is over!

I suppose that since I already don’t remember the pain very well, I’m glad I did it.

we all joked that we need shirts that say “I survived Rio Celeste!”

I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that I am not much of let’s-go-climb-a-mountain! sort of girl… and I’m sure Krista will come on and remind me how old I am, lol

but if you ever want to go to Rio Celeste, Costa Rica, I’m pretty sure I’ll say
“have fun! I’ll see you when you get back!”

BWS tips button

Comments { 14 }

please shut up about working out, I’m trying to stuff my face here

By on March 30, 2012 in (something clever), fyi, HA! ☺, Lifestyle, Musings, Tico Says

the title really kind of says it all.

Comments { 4 }

fancy a chat? and maybe a little cuteness…

By on March 22, 2012 in Costa Rica, family, God and stuff, HA! ☺, Lifestyle, the cuteness, Transitions, ★ dreams

so lately we’ve been feeling a little overwhelmed again. it might have the tiniest bit to do with our Costa Rica workation speeding to a close in the coming weeks. we’ve had an awesome time here, but as usual only got about a quarter of the stuff done that we’d hoped. too much of our life up to this point has been spent playing catch up. honestly, we could easily have plenty to keep us busy here for the rest of the year. whether or not we’d make any decent sort of money is anyone’s guess :)

the truth is, we’re at a VERY transitional point in our lives. it’s one of those things that if you think too hard you could easily freak yourself out to the point of being paralyzed. on the other hand, if you choose not to think much at all and just keep moving forward in the direction that you believe God is laying out for you, then it’s super insanely exciting.

we are contemplating some really fun things for this summer… 2012 is looking like the year for all sorts of craziness, lol. we want to believe God not just for survival, but for big, awesome stuff. we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the things in our hearts are far bigger than us, and are only remotely accomplishable with the help of a BIG God. honestly, we only know a small part of our dreams – as we fall on God’s grace, he just seems to continue to make our hearts bigger to make room for bigger dreams.

it feels like being on a high rope – just keep looking forward, never look down!

Source: google.com via Lorraine on Pinterest

so we’re taking it one step at a time…

and really, I think that’s a good place to be in.

here are a few random videos you may not have seen yet. we upload them sporadically, but don’t always post about it.
the latest ones show up handily in the sidebar there.

David had the idea to do a fun, romantic sort of meal for his aunt and uncle, so the girls got everything around and we cooked for them for their anniversary last month. inspite of a few minor disasters along the way, I think it mostly went over well, lol. we had fun anyway.

Comments { 4 }

when I’m too lazy to blog about adventures I steal them from other people.

By on March 19, 2012 in Costa Rica, guest posting, HA! ☺, Lifestyle, traveling, ★ dreams

I just noticed that Krista had written about a couple of our tiny adventures lately, and so I asked if I could swipe and hack them over to here. makes my lazy brain rather pleased. except I had to go through and remove the double spaces. what are they teaching kids these days?! I thought you were home schooled, girl, I expected better. (not that I’m trying to bite the hand that’s feeding me in this case or anything… tee. hee.)

Krista: When a friend of [Mr. D] offered to let us stay in a cabin that she owned up in the mountains, we decided it’d be fun to go there for a day.  We left on Thursday morning with [Mr.D's] aunt and his parents (who are visiting from the U.S.) It took us an hour to drive there and I got to sit in the back seat with Maeve and Maverick. Maeve can NOT just sit there and enjoy the ride. So, we played thumb wars (which she calls thumb tag) and approximately a hundred games of 20 questions. Maverick does not understand how to play 20 questions (one person thinks of any random thing and the other person asks 20 random questions to try and figure out what it is)  but he tried to play along. Instead of asking questions about the thing, he would just guess what the thing was without any clues.

“Is it a car?”
“No”
“uhhhh… a truck?”
“Nope”
“ummm… a cow?  mooooooo”
“hehe! no!”
“Is it a truck?”
*sigh*

When we got there, we found something we were not expecting…

I probably would not call that a cabin.
I was picturing a nice little log cabin up in the mountains but this beautiful house was really cool too.

(allow me to cut in here and say that no, there is NO WAY this could be called a cabin. there must be some sort of weird translation discrepancy going on here. Mr. D and I wanted to stay for a good, very long time. and we asked God to give us something like that someday to bless other people with… sooner than later would be sorta cool.)

checking out the view

How awesome would it be to have a porch that looked out onto this?

We had a little snack once we got settled in a little bit.

Apparently, the lady who owns the house has grandkids and so it was well stocked with toys and games, which Maeve and Maverick took full advantage of.

Here are a few other snapshots of the house.

looking through a mirror

It was a beautiful day.  So Maeve and Maverick played outside a lot…

and I joined them for a little bit.

When our stomachs started telling us they weren’t happy, we walked across the road to a little restaurant.

After lunch, we went back to the house and I got to work out on the porch for a while.  It was a beautiful place to work.

Later, we went into the town to take pictures.

There was a park that was full of these randomly shaped bushes.  It looked like someone had started making them into cool shapes but had decided to go take a nap and left them half way done.

Is this a dog???

And some of the bushes had faces… kinda cool and weird at the same time.  :D

Ok, I’m pretty sure that’s a bird.

A hobbit tree?

We had a quick peak inside of the church that was beside the park.

(I must cut in here to say, can you believe this freaking thing with all these walls and the faeux marble texture on the side of the steps and such… all fake! hand-painted. each. tiny. little brick.

WHAT?!!!

can’t even imagine that making more sense than real bricks.
it’s crazy to think how little those painters must have been paid. this is my church pic, and then back to Krista)

Then, we had a little coffee break and..

got back to the house just in time to see a beautiful sunset.

The trip back home was filled with singing, because I refused to play 20 questions anymore.  ”If You’re Happy and You Know It” was one of the more popular songs that we sang several times.

ok, me again, thanks Krista!!!

I personally highly enjoyed the rousing rounds of ‘I just wanna be a sheep! ba-ba-ba BA!” :)

this is the kind of working environment we hope to someday provide for all of our team members :)
(no, not that one, the one below this sentence.)

so there is one adventure I am glad I did not have to post from scratch. woot!

Comments { 3 }