Mel, Joe, and our heaven sent friend Terry.
Our flight from Atlanta to Liberia went well. Abi and Lily slept about half of the time. Abi was sweet to Lilian as you can see by these tender moment pictures.
I was still exhausted though and didn't sleep at all, and thus easily started to cry on the decent when Lilian started to scream at the top of her lungs for the last 20 minutes. I think her ears had to pop. She thrashed around so hard that I couldn't even hold her, so I just let her collapse on the narrow floor space at my feet and jam herself under the seat in front of me.
We were the last ones off the plane again, climbed down the stairs from the plane, and a few stewardesses helped me carry our too many carry-on's as we headed to the passport/customs check in area which was like a warehouse. Liberia is a small airport. With the kids they let me go to the front of the line and we got checked in to Costa Rica, then off to the baggage claim, where after we got my 8 checked bags I remembered my 2 bags that were checked at the gate in Salt Lake. Glad I remembered those, too bad they were lost, as I previously mentioned. Corey was supposed to meet me here. He wasn't there. I was supposed to look up the phone number of Becky, the lady in charge of the management company of our rental house here so I could call her, but in my rush leaving Salt Lake I had forgotten to do that. So I didn't have a phone number of anyone in Costa Rica, nor the address of where we were staying, and my husband wasn't around, Abi was screaming from exhaustion this time, my brain was fried and I just couldn't think. I had 10 taxi drivers and 4 several airport attendants surrounding me (small airport and all the other passengers were already gone, so I had their full attention), and they were pressing me for answers as to where I was going to go, what I was going to do, "No se, um, Joe will you please help Abi, Um..." we called several people in the US to see who was near a computer and could look up Becky's #, no one answered except my mom and she was out running errands... I kept writing down different US phone numbers for this one taxi driver to call, and when I'd try to write them down, Abi would try and grab my pencil so she could draw, and then she'd scream as I tried to pull away from her, it was just nuts. Had my brain NOT been fried, I would have remembered, as I did an hour later, that I indeed DID have her number as well as the address of our home on some papers that Corey had printed up for me that were in my bag. Oh well, I didn't remember that until we were in a cab with our bins tied on top, on our way to Tamarindo, cause the taxi driver said he knew where the Blue Water Properties office was, and besides it was a small village and we'd figure it out, I just needed to get my kids out of the heat. Good enough for me. So we left. I left the airport with my 4 kids in tow in a car with some total stranger in a foreign country, not knowing really where I was going or what I was going to do. I just kept a prayer in my heart that Corey'd either see our cab passing by and recognize the bins on top or that someone at the airport would tell him what happened to us when he showed up. 45 minutes later he called the driver on his cell phone, apologized for not being here when I arrived, asked how I was doing... "Better" I replied, since the kids were all asleep and calm and we were moving. I had been cursing him and this whole situation a little while ago when I was at the airport with all the taxi guys harrassing me. I would have been fine if they would have just let me alone for a minute, but they had my bags on the cart all ready to load into a cab and so I couldn't get the snacks for the kids or go rest in the shade, they were just a little TOO eager to help. SO ANYWAY... Corey called and told the guy the address, Corey called the Blue Water Properties and by the time we got to Villareal there was someone from Blue Water there to meet me and give me the keys and sigh we made it. Corey arrived with groceries an hour later, pumped full of testosterone from his chaotic and adventurous journey through the jungle (My trip was testosterone producing too, but testosterone makes a woman tired, whereas it gives a man energy. More on the differences regarding stress on Mars and Venus on another post if you want to hear it. ) "We have had an ad-ven-TURE!!!" he said as he bounded in the door. I smiled, gave him a kiss, and went to take a nap.