You'll Never Guess What We Did Today...

Today was a perfect day. I'd say magical. Sure, there were a few of the regular glitches here and there, but overall, it really was a perfect day. And I'm sure you'll never guess what we did... that's right, it was the beach, again...


Ha! Did I trick ya? We didn't go to the beach this time, we did something different! We went climbing through the jungle! Wow! Let me tell you about it. But first, this next Tuesday is our Hump Day and we dimos cuenta that we are half way done with this adventure, 7 weeks almost over, only 7 weeks left. We gotta start making plans and seeing stuff before the time just flitters away and we're home. So today we got up with the determination to do something. After rice and sugar for breakfast, I got everyone ready and packed a few snacks while Corey made the plan at the computer (next week we'll try and plan it before the morning of ;) maybe)

So Corey led us on our adventure to Liberia and from there we went to the Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja. It started off a little rough, just cause kids' endurance for time in the car hasn't been stretched lately. It was a 2 hour trip to the park. When we got there we took a quick bathroom stop, and my ears ached from hearing Lily cry and Abi cry (Wes and Hyrum were my other two passengers and they did awesome) so while we were still driving I planned to tell Corey that I don't want to take the babies anymore, I want older kids. So I told him that at the bathroom stop. He looked at me surprised "You want to trade little kids for Laman and Lemuel?!?!" Then I looked at the kid passengers from his car getting out - Mel and Ethan were both scowling, Mel had tears, Ethan looked mad, Joseph looked repentant from Corey's rebuke. Hmm, focused on my own problems the whole drive, I hadn't thought out clearly what the alternative was. Now I remembered: sure older kids don't cry, but they complain. I don't like that even more... so which kids do I want? Hmm, but not time to think of that cause I had to use the bathroom really bad, so I passed over Lily and used the restroom. I came out and Corey had bought 4 Gatorade drinks for the kids to share and they were fighting over flavors. Corey looked at me with exasperated eyes and said "A drive in the car and a bathroom break and we're already maxed out..."

He's so funny, totally made me laugh, I thought that sentence captured the craziness of the moment perfectly, only I couldn't think of a way to express it, so it made me love him more again for making me laugh and made everything feel okay since we totally understood each other.

So after the kids fought over the colors and flavors of Gatorade and knocked over and spilled the yellow, Corey said "That's it, we're done here (at the potty)... into the car..." Ethan was chosen to join me in my car to separate him and Melodie, Wes went with Corey, and so we got the kids in and talked for a second... we had paid at a gated area already, but was told by the guy who sold the drinks that the park was another 8 km down the road. We've come this far, might as well keep on going and see what there is. I thought we were close to a volcano cause there was a pillar of white steam up ahead, I hadn't heard of them having geysers here, and not having ever seen a volcano I didn't know if they did or didn't do that, so I thought apparently they did, but as we finally got close I saw it wasn't a volcano and laughed at myself for thinking it was.


It was some big power hydro-electric turbine thing that some gringos built to harness electricity. Not as cool for me, but the kids liked it well enough. Abi and Hyrum were quite unnerved by the noise it made, sounded very big and powerful and like it could cause damage to us. We parked our car near where this was, cause there was a "parking lot" and Corey went to ask some people there about what a family with 7 little kids could do. And lucky for us we had come to the right place. Our guide was a really fun guy named Ofi (pronounced O-fee) after "Huffy" bikes, which he couldn't pronounce when he was a kid so that was given to him as a nickname. He was cute and Corey and he had a good time laughing and chatting. Corey always has such fun things and comments to make, I enjoy just listening.

So Ofi took us down a little trail...


which turned into a little dark trail covered by trees.... (Abi wore one of Lily's shirts today - as you can see all of her lower back)


and then he took our family picture - Corey joked "This comes with the tour, right?"


I wouldn't say people here are ripping you off, they just want you to do business with them, even if it's just for a job they've made up (more on this later with our McDonald's parking attendant entrepreneur) And then we started descending down, down, down to a river...

And that is all I have time for now, I'll post more tomorrow... in "Perfect Day - Part 2: Waterfall"