Trimester 2 - closer to home

The second trimester was very busy. I picked up a few more tutoring jobs, Cara was coaching ultimate, and the girls are still finding their way with extracurricular activities. We still found our pura vida, but we didn't get out of town as much as we strive to on the weekends. What we missed in out-of-town adventure, we made up for with in-town gravel bike rides, snorkeling, trail running, and surfing.

Although we lack bike lanes, Matapalo has plenty of gravel roads. Dry season rides are great as long as you remember your buff or bandana to combat the dust kicked up by passing cars and motos.

P at her favorite place in Costa Rica, Purr Vida - the Cat Cafe.

                                                   

A pumped P after a school swim meet

Fun with nature during one of our gravel rides

One of our favorite Saturday morning activities while S is at swim practice is to pick up a couple empanadas and a fresco (fresh juice of the day) from our awesome local Empanada Lady and ride out on a gravel road. The goals are to see animals and find a good spot to enjoy our breakfast.

Trying out Mike's Hanukkah present, an awesome shade tent, at the beach with neighbors. 

Because we were super hosts during our first break, we did not have time to leave the country and our month visa was expiring. We decided to push it to one of the final weekends in the hopes that we could just leave the country once before heading back to the US over summer break. So we headed back to the Nicaragua border with the plan on doing the "Revuelta" which means we would just exit the country, enter Nicaragua and turn right back around to return to Costa Rica. 

We left super early on a Saturday morning to arrive just after the immigration offices opened and about 5 hours later made it out of and back into Costa Rica. While it went about as smoothly as it could have, we hope to not have to do this again any time soon. 

S's bday party had it all! Lego building station, a unicorn kiddie pool turned floaty which was immediately popped and repaired, and a mountain of arroz con pollo. We even had to shut it down early after "the cops"/condo manager was called with a noise complaint...rock n' roll! It was great to have so many friends come and celebrate S. 

S looking strong on the blocks at a La Paz swim meet. We are so proud of her dedication and hard work this year. The early mornings have not always been easy, but she persists!

S showing off a group project about the layer's of the earth at "el museo", their end of trimester celebration of knowledge.

Cara was able to sneak away again during President's Day weekend to spend time with her friends in Colorado. Although it was a pretty bad snow year, there was enough for her to enjoy being outside and skiing.

Every year, they try to do something nice for Jenna, and this year was an album of awkward "family" photos. A lot of time and thought was spent throughout the weekend taking funny photos for the album. 

Cousin Ema! Ema loves to travel and is just starting her career as a nurse. She also studied Spanish, so visiting us in CR was perfect. She spent a few days on her own exploring Fortuna before returning to us to enjoy more beach time. 

Atardecer a Granda did not dissapoint

Cara and I snuck away on a date to La Paz's Full Moon Party! We love these girls, but it was nice having an uninterrupted night together. More of these to come!

Pura vida Reflection and Trimester I Adventures

Life is pura vida, but it seems to have picked up to be almost as fast as back in Austin which explains the long time between posts. I'm having a hard time figuring out why, maybe it's the workload Cara and I are both experiencing at the same time. We are both teaching new courses this year which is requiring a lot of time for preparation as well as the added stress of not fully knowing where our schedule and lesson plans will take us next and if we've fully prepared our students to succeed at the upcoming objectives. Maybe it's because I've also taken on at least 4 hours of tutoring outside of school per week (one of the sessions is for an 11th grade IB math class which requires at least 1 to 2 hours of prep before the session). This has lead to longer weekdays and work bleeding into the weekends. Not sure I've found the right balance there, and something I need to continue to reflect on as the year unfolds.  And maybe another contributing factor is the fact that Cara and I have not put in the effort and money to make sure we have time to ourselves without the girls. At Austin, it was so easy to tap our community built over 20 years to sneak out for a night. While we continue to build that community here, it's time I put this extra tutoring money to good use and find a babysitter we can trust. Either way, I still have many moments throughout my week that allow me to slow down and appreciate where we are. It happens often as I'm floating on my surfboard, watching the girls boogie board, driving with my windows down at a leisurely 60kph, or riding my bike along our neighborhood gravel roads. Truly pura vida.

Amazingly, we are over half-way through this school year. Recently, we committed to another school year so we will be back for year 3. The girls are doing well at school, learning Spanish, and making friends. Cara and I continue to study, but clearly need more time to become anywhere close to fluent. Can't leave yet!

A lot has happened since our first post this school year back in September. We won a halloween costume contest, went swimming at a new spot, spent a long weekend in Santa Theresa, celebrated our 25th anniversary together, and hosted both of our families over Christmas and the New Year.

Halloween! Our family theme was Gods and Goddesses, and you know we brought it to the school Halloween/Dia de Mascarades costume contest. We won $40 to our favorite local bakery, and best of all 18 visits to Purr-Vida Cat Cafe!

Now that we have a bike for everyone, we have been enjoying the gravel roads around our house together. Very little traffic, pastures filled with cows and horses, trees with the occasional howler monkey troop, and beautiful mountains. We are very lucky to have this access from our doorstep.

We took an awesome day trip to Pozas Los Coyotes with new friends Mark, Ashley and their two girls. Mark is a first year teacher and they have two daughters very similar in age to S&P. An awesome day with awesome people.

You can rent tubes here and swim your way up the river through a few slots and rapids to then enjoy the leisurely cruise back downriver to the relaxing pools for rock jumping and rope swinging.

Scarlet Macaws spotted on the way back from Santa Theresa.

Anniversary hike! Cara and I left the girls with our neighbors Sam and Joe and headed out for an anniversary hike at Puerto Viejo. 25 years! The highlights were spending time together and watching a few sea turtles swimming off the point.

TikoBadge achieved! After catching a nail, we taught the girls how to remove it and plug a hole in a tire. Sure to be a lesson we'll repeat. 

Student vs. Staff volleyball game. I did my best to relieve my fellow teacher's nerves by making the first couple/several unforced errors. Thankfully we found some rhythm and got the W!

Champion Teachers from L to R: Me, Denis, Cara, Isa, Ema, and Liz

S led this year's latke making at Hannukah! Here she is shredding onion in our "Gringo Guy" sunglasses.

We visited Playa Carbon, the neighboring beach to Ventanas, which is the neighboring beach to Grande. This beach is secluded and only accessible by a short hike through the forest. A great spot to relax and swim/snorkel. The sand was pure black and glittery, but SUPER hot when the sun wasn't covered by the clouds.

S and her friend P signed up for a musicals class at the local music school. Each week they sang musical songs for about an hour and finished the class by putting on a performance of about 3 songs. 

An amazing sunset after an afternoon on playing beach ultimate with some of our students and their parents. Good reminder to do more of these.

Opa and NanaCC came to visit, otra vez! This time we went to Rio Celeste and Volcán Tenorio before spending a few days together on the coast.

The Rio Celeste waterfall was beautiful, but closed to swimming.

Poison dart frog found at the AirBnb we stayed in that was right on the river!

Can't remember what was happening here, but so happy our girls had some quality time with their NanaCC.

We spent a good amount of time with girls down at the river, swimming and exploring, and climbing the rocks.

More Rio Celeste area views

On the way home, we stopped at some of our favorite hot springs: Rio Negro Hot Springs. Here are NanaCC and Opa with their volcanic mud bath. They looked decades younger after.

New Noche Buena tradition! We went to Miami Ropa Americana as a family to buy "fancy" new to us used clothes to wear during our Christmas Even Tex-Mex feast.

Low tide at Grande al lado del roce. The girls call this "the window"

NannaCC and Cara brought the cheer and decorations this year. Our house was very festive.

Beautiful sunset together at Portrero

Within 48 hours of dropping off NanaCC and Opa at the airport, we were back picking up our badass 14 person van and my family for their visit. The while immediate family came down! Dave and Ellie, Ellen and Ryan, Nana, and all the cousins.

We immediately drove to La Fortuna to spend the New Years around Volcán Arenal.

Nana on a sloth tour!

Night Tour! Lots of frogs and one deadly snake.

S was brave enough to join her cousin on a zipline. She's the first in the family to do it. She loved it!

Baldi Hot Springs, never disappoints! Love this photo.

After coming out of the rainforest, we returned to our dry coastline to an amazing house David found on VRBO. Our infinity pool overlooked Playa Langosta and we were able to walk to nearby restaurants and a great surfspot. Life was good. The highlights of this house: so many comfy beds, an outdoor yogo dojo, our back patio/pool, and the cousins particularly like the TV room.

We spent a lot of time lounging around the pool and playing board games.

One morning, we headed out for an on-shore fishing adventure. Cara, Uncle Ryan, myself, P and R all climbed in one boat, while S joined Uncle Dave and family in the other. We motored out to the rock islands you can see offshore from Flamingo and our guides batted the lines and hooked the fish for us to reel in. Cara and P caught the beautiful jack you see above.

After a few hours of fishing we all met back up at a secluded beach only accessible by boat for a swim.

The break was full and fun. While we did not start the second trimester well rested, our hears were full. We are so grateful to NanaCC, Opa, and my whole family for taking the time and spending the money to come visit. We love you so much!