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Well so ends another weekend in the household of the Dillers. We have sadly come to the resolution that we are going to commiserate with our fellow Iowans and spend the winter here. We’ve already had a couple of inches of snow just this week, and I don’t think we’ve had any days that have been above freezing (I don’t track this too well so don’t quote me). So BLAH. Christina and I decided this after much thought, the trip wasn’t going to be long if we did go, so what is the worth of going to good weather and coming back to crappy weather. I have about 2 wks of paid time off at work so I think we’ll make use of those during this winter and get some stuff done with our business. yay !!
Bouncing the subject… I was so glad to receive a package of yummys from the church matriarchs!!! I guess they made some time to take care of our kids and make food for the parents!! I have to admit, this is one of the reasons why Iowa just rocks, nowhere in my travels have I encountered such a loving church family. I was blown away when we had Maeve, cus for 2 weeks we ate like pigs, because people in the church made meals for us, and now this! Sooooo… for those of you that don’t live in Iowa, stay where you are!!! Once mid-March comes along, THEN move to Iowa (I hope Kirk & Karla read this …).
I guess there’s not much more to tell. I’m proud of us because our house has had a good semblance of order for the past week. It’s amazing how much nicer and less stressful life is with a clean house.Well got to go!! Oh a funny!! The other day we were praying for lunch and we were going to watch “the office ” and so I finish, and Maeve adds her little tag “an Gamma (grandma), an Tapaw (grandpa), an Michael!!!!” hee hee I guess if you don’t watch the Office then sorry, and you should really come out of the cave and get some fresh air! Apparently she knows who he is!! ha ha!! Have an awesome week!! For those of you in IA, pray for God to have mercy on us.
David for the Dillers
Stuff on our list that we didn’t get done:
6 websites – some of the design is done
Maeve’s citizenship – missing some papers
working on this year’s Bible study theme
study programs, etc.
study nutrition
take dance lessons
invoicing
organize/archive computers
organize pictures/video
organize fonts/brushes
scrapbook monthaversaries/Maeve
will/guardian/insurance stuff
work on legal/tax crap
lose weight
argh. Soooooo now we still have all that stuff to do, plus the stuff we normally do at home, plus a bunch of other stuff… did we actually get anything done here???! Well, yes, thankfully. And we got to enjoy Maeve so much!!! And all the family here… we also got to see a number of random people that we don’t get to see very often: Dave & Mayela – twice!, Pablo & Judi, Paul Kurtz, Esther Helmuth, Ximena… I hope I’m not forgetting anyone. This has been a very blessed and well-timed time :-) We can’t begin to express our thanks to the Vargas’s and Tia Vicki!!! I’m pretty sure I’m going to cry tomorrow. Yucky. I hate these transition times. Thankfully, my parents are blessing us greatly in making it easier to go back by getting our apartment freshened up, fixing our van, and coming all the way to Chicago to pick us up in the middle of the night! God is very good to us through many people… we hope we can pass even a fraction of the blessing to others that has been given to us! Costa Rica is now joining the places where I feel at home, and I’d say it’s in second place – if we could bring our church and a bunch of people here, I don’t think we’d have any reason to leave. Well, ok, I could do without ants in my kitchen :-) And carpet is a way underrated luxury! I will miss it a lot until we get to be here again, though… we’re sad to leave! God is always going before us, though. One way this time is that David’s hours are probably changing to 8-4 instead of 6-2. We had gotten used to/appreciated his hours and getting off earlier, but we think this really will be a good change now that Maeve can go to bed a little later and it will also make so that WE can go to bed a little later. Going to bed at nine was lame, no matter how necessary it was. Two new pics of us in the “us” gallery.
the time to head back into snow country is looming ever nearer… a while ago we heard on WHO, which we listen to here online, “IOWA simply stands for Isn’t Our Weather Awful” If it would just stop snowing, I think we could deal with the cold… if it kept snowing and we could just stay home, I think we could handle that, too… if we would have just gotten a LOT more of our goals for our time here accomplished, we could probably manage not to look too unfavorably on our return date either way… alas, probably none of the above will happen. so I guess we will try to grin and bear it. I’m guessing the grins will freeze on our faces. hmm. OR maybe we could just ever so kindly take some nice weather back with us. we’ll try, I promise. we’ll try really hard.
on a cuter note, more pics in the maeve gallery – she has breakfast time with daddy most mornings while mommy forces herself to exercise for a couple of minutes. Maeve also reaaaaalllly likes to go outside. she is not a fan of being cooped up in here with her working parents. but she knows she’s not supposed to go out. so she’ll stand at the door and peer around the corner and call to see if she can get anyone’s attention in Frank & Ani’s house (about 10 feet down) to come and rescue her. poor girl! sometimes it works.
Well, it’s good Tim & Kimberley are leaving soon – I don’t know how much more spoiling we all can take before we are rotten! I’m pretty sure Maeve is going to learn the concept of boredom next week… I think she’ll be happy not to have to spend so much time in her carseat, though, too.
the first night they were here we took them to a local restaurant, which was when we first learned of Kimberley’s purposeful addiction to cilantro, lime, and “tortillas with stuff in them.” (no joke, she actually ended up buying a bunch of cilantro that we cut up and put in a little container for her to carry around, per David’s suggestion) She seriously wanted to order a side of cilantro with every meal, so David’s inspiration was born out of sympathy for waiters everywhere, no doubt. Back to that first night, she had commissioned David to take care of this small but important detail for her, but unfortunately his mouth was full when the waiter came by and so he motioned for Eddy to handle it. Eddy’s eyes were a bit glazed over by his new iPhone, however, so much so that when Kimberley reiterated to him that she wanted a side of cilantro, Eddy proceeded to order her another fork. Much discussion ensued that night and the days following about how Eddy could confuse the words cilantro/culantro with fork/tenedor, and the conclusion was drawn and I maintain that his sometimes hesitant grasp of the English language, combined with his iPhone funk, resulted in an educated guess based on the circumstances of the moment. Guessing/assuming… not really the best plan in relating with a person/culture not your own. fortunately in this case, no harm done, many laughs had.
the first full day that they were here visiting happened to be Valentine’s Day. We basically just went and did some sightseeing. (with some liberal spoiling thrown in) And David found a cool coffee tour, which you can see pictures of in the gallery. David and I really didn’t do anything to celebrate the sixth anniversary of our first date… but it’s cool that it was, nonetheless.
on Friday we couldn’t go anywhere far away because I needed to finish up the bulletin and get it sent off, so we hung out at their hotel and Maeve got to go swimming in her cute little blow-up boat that they found for her. She enjoyed kicking her feet :-) We went out that night to a yummy pasta place to celebrate David’s birthday. It didn’t include cilantro or tortillas, but Kimberley survived. Since they brought Eddy an iPhone, which he had requested, David was kinda wanting one, too, and so all week they have been joking about David doing stuff to earn brownie points in hopes of scoring an iPhone of his own. Some of those things included finding the coffee tour, finding Kimberley’s missing earring, taking them to a mall that was mostly closed (Tim, as most guys, is not a fan of shopping), etc. So on the night of David’s birthday celebration they took him to get i(ce)Scream, the slightly cheaper, much sweeter, food cousin of all the mac products.
on Saturday we made a bit of an earlier start and took them to the weekly farmers’ market. We bought our regular fruit and vegetables, and then also got a few of the weird things for them to try, mainly water apples, booger fruit, and cashew fruit. We’re not sure if the cashew fruit was quite ripe, because as we learned in our later research, it was supposed to give off a “sweet” fragrance and taste, and the one we had smelled and tasted more nearly “like butt”, as David so succinctly put it. I almost didn’t venture near it at all, but when I did daintily sniff it, my sensitive nose detected a bit of a nutty scent. It is one of the weirdest looking fruits ever, so we did look it up and discovered that it was indeed where cashews come from. After Maeve took a nice little nap, we ventured out some more and ended up finding a cool little restaurant with a great view on the side of a mountain.
we had high hopes on Sunday of going to a rainforest and other interesting things, but when the day started out with the car not working, it pretty much summed up how the rest of the day turned out. We mostly drove a LOT and ate some, met Eddy’s parents and little brother, and saw a bunch of stuff. We had much laughter on the way home due to many factors, the least of which were not being tired and stuck in traffic for long periods of time. Adding to it, was Eddy (better known as Ehd-DEEEEE) not being used to driving an automatic, and therefore mistaking the brake for the clutch a number of times.
today we took them to visit Pura Vida Missions, and they enjoyed meeting DeLynn & Gloria. We then bought fixings for a good carne asada tonight, but I think since I’ve been in here with Maeve napping they decided they want to go out instead. They blessedly cleaned up our house, though!!! It was very sadly neglected this week. I mean gross. We were too tired to care, but tomorrow would have kinda sucked if it weren’t for them doing that today.
ok, pictures in “maeve” and “costa rica” (scenes also)
Great, just what I always wanted, a lizard in our bedroom. I have no idea how David is going to get it out… it’s times like these, few and far between though they are, that there is no doubt in my mind it is better to be a girl. My poor man. This is taking the reasons we stay up too late to new extremes. Well, he can’t find it now. I guess we will just have to pray it does not get us in the night… or jump out of our clothes or shoes later on. Oh ugh. Maeve is definitely not sleeping by herself!
we survived the night and Maeve is taking a really long nap because she is fighting a runny nose/cough/teething. David is also napping right now because he so wonderfully got up with Maeve this morning and let me sleep a while longer. He’s snoring, but I can’t reach him to smack him :-) Maeve actually has two teeth poking through now. They are taking a really long time to get all the way out, though.
Ok, and now it’s the day after that. We haven’t seen the lizard again yet… hopefully it left. Somehow… anyway, I keep forgetting some Maeve stuff. When we were at the volcano hotel last week we discovered to a much greater extent how very friendly Maeve is. She was very intent on turning every which way in her highchair to try to get the attention of as many people as possible. She actually ate a lot, too. You really have to watch her, though. When our waiter was pouring water for us she stuck her hand in his back pocket. He laughed and told her that he didn’t have any money. When we were at the beach on Tuesday, and waiting in line to get back on the boat, she kept trying to steal a guy’s water bottle from his backpack.
yeah, she was not particularly impressed with the ocean or sand. I think the ocean kind of scared her when the tide came rushing in. and I don’t think she liked how the sand stuck to her. She was a little more acclimated to it by the end, but then it was time to go, haha. There are quite a few new pictures of her in the gallery – make sure to check back a few pages. You can also check out “family”, “us”, and “costa rica”.
