Cuts and Bumps

Wesley's lip is doing great (thank you Heavenly Father) what a miracle our bodies are. I've been taking a picture each day of his lip and after I do I show him. This one above was taking half way through eating a peanut butter sandwich, thus the bread crumbs. The first pictures I took made him squirm and with compassion in his eyebrows - he'd say with deep concern for the poor chap photographed "Ohhhhh!!!" The last pictures have looked okay and don't make him worry, and I told him isn't it amazing that our bodies fix themselves all by themselves? "Imagine if you broke a toy and it fixed itself by itself!" Wesley squeeled with delight at the thought, "Or if you ripped your clothes and they could fix themselves!" We got very excited at the idea - endless possibilities! But alas, nothing just happens. Well, maybe chaos and time just happen. Everything else takes an intelligence behind it. God is the intelligence that made our bodies - they have a spirit and are alive! Wesley's body is one of God's incredible creations, and his spirit and body work together, what a miracle!
And this little angel, see those beautiful eyes? Those are the eyes of Abigail, and she got those beauties from her father, who has beautiful eyes. Here Abi is showing us her bump. She fell down the ladder/stairs at the RMs house and got a huge bump that covered the whole center of her forehead almost down to her eyebrows. She still has a slight bruise, but the swelling has gone down and she is doing wonderfully. She's got her father's eyes and her mother's solid build. Abi and Hyrum are both of the same mold, which I believe is the Tiffanie mold, and they are build strong and solid, so I'm grateful she handled it well. Hyrum is just heavy to pick up, and I don't know when it happened, but my little Abi is now big and heavy too! What happened to my little baby? She's growing up. I hope she will always love pink dresses and babies and flowers and glitter shoes. She is a sweet princess. Grateful she is alright from her bonk.

Holiday Swim

After our Thanksgiving meal and before the desserts, kids and adults took a break in the pool, doing super soaker splashes, diving, and family races. Here Sergeant Dannan has his swimming soldiers standing at attention before he called out their diving orders.

Then Corporal Jacob joined in the fun.

My kids favorite part was when Dannan and Jacob rocket shot them through the air into the pool - You really get a lot more height when you're thrown from someone standing on the sides of the pool as opposed to when the strong Dad is in the pool. They had fun flying!

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day - Joe, Mel, and Ethan slept over at the RMs. I arrived with the other 4 kids around 10:20 - it only took me 50 minutes that time! I'm always timing how long it takes to get to church and to Nicoya. I left at 9, then at 9:13 realized I forgot something, and we were almost done with the dirt road, darn it, but I decided to turn around cause I needed the speakers if everyone was going to be able to hear the Michael Medved Thanksgiving Lecture which Corey insisted we all listen to. So I turned back and there was no complaining from the kids, got back at 9:28, back on the road at 9:29, but I just rounded it to 9:30, and we made it in zippy time to Nicoya. When I got there, the women were still working and cooking many scrumptious dishes.
The kids had had a great sleepover and are ready for another one. They woke up and went swimming first thing

All the kids heading to the pool. Ethan was so proud of himself cause Michael and Joey showed him how to dive off the pool house thing into the pool. And may I say it's a nice looking dive too. I'll try to get that on video for posterity.

Melodie found a little little black snake - looked like a black worm except for the tiny tongue that kept smelling the air. I couldn't see it's eyes it was so small. Cute little thing.

The men grilled up the chicken for the feast. We decided to go with chicken instead of turkey cause they got the turkeys marked up in price big time cause they know we Americans have a holiday to celebrate. So we went with chicken, cause it was less expensive.

Around 3:00 everything was ready to be served, a Thanksgiving feast in a tropical paradise next to the pool with Christmas music playing on the laptop. :)

Thank you Rachael and Melanie for all your hard work!

The toddler table, enjoying chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and green beans. Save room for some pie!
The Meyers twin babies in their chairs eating some green beans, with the older kids group in the background on the pool house which is their diving board.
Hey you guys! How's the grubb?
Abi, la princesa
Up next: After dinner activity (swimming)

Thanksgiving Eve

We will be joining the RMs tomorrow for a lovely Thanksgiving feast. They invited us to sleep over too. :) Hyrum, who is our family "no man" (as opposed to a "yes man") didn't want to, so the three oldest kids are sleeping over there and I brought the 4 younger ones home, and offered to do laundry for them in exchange. :)


Rachael and Melanie were working most all the day, a most amazing feat since their kitchen is the width of a hall and has,, I'm estimating, oh, about a 3x4 area of counter space. We will be eating outside by the pool (hoping it doesn't rain like it did tonight! If it hadn't slowed down I might have slept over there too.)

I went to AutoMercado for them to buy some pumpkin in a can but there was none, so Melanie's making due with a squash she found at the local Tico market and a few cans of sweet potatoes which AutoMercado did have on their Thanksgiving display for the Americans to buy. We're skipping on turkey, since it's $60. Thus chicken will be served as the main dish.

After dinner, the kids watched "Cats and Dogs" in the Royal parents' bedroom.

Isn't that a cute picture? This was taken after Abi, in the bottom right corner, fell down the ladder from the loft around 6:30, which is about the same time Wes got hurt last night. I think during the next several weeks I will be putting the kids to bed at 6. Abi got a big goose egg in the middle of her forehead but was very brave and didn't cry too long. I didn't get a picture of that but we'll see how it looks in the morning. I'm thankful that it was her and not Lily - Abi is a tough cookie and Lily is so little. I'm also thankful that Abi didn't cut her head open or need stitches. Thank you Lord.

I am thankful the RMs invited us to join them. I am also thinking along these lines tomorrow for Thanksgiving, that I read about in this post of this blog (scroll down for the section titled "Thanksgiving", when I read this several weeks ago it gave me much thought...) There are wonderful reasons why celebrate Thanksgiving. A day of Repentance, fasting, and prayer. Corey's also sent us a Thanksgiving lecture by Michael Medved via mp3 to listen to for homework. Should be good stuff! Happy Thanksgiving!

Package from Home

Sent from Cottonwood Heights, Utah on Friday, 12 November 2010

Arrived in Huacas, Guanacaste on Tuesday, 23 November 2010. They called me, we went to pick it up, 20 minutes later, the kids were at home with the knife cutting through the packaging tape.


They are very excited to have some Legos! Thank you Mom!

And I was so excited to have Ikea dishes again - I ate a bowl of cereal to celebrate. Love that they are plastic (won't break anymore dishes here), their pretty colors, small size (should save a little $ on the cereal budget), easy to wash, they all fit in the dish drainer, wow! Thanks again Mom, once again I owe her big time. I'll be paying it forward to my kids when I'm the grandma I'm sure.

Situation Update

Wesley last night...

Then this morning. Swellings gone down, and the tp soaked up blood so it's all black with a little white, has made a nice big scab, hope it heals quickly.

This morning at breakfast - having breakfast burritos, so he has a piece of rice on his cheek. He was able to eat fine. Only problem is when he smiles -


And that makes his lip stretch out and rip again. But I think it's doing good.

Close up picture.

Having a Situation...

6:25 p.m.

Wesley walks upstairs and somehow during his ascent cuts his upper lip through.

What do you do if:

Your husband is on a plane to Chile
You're alone at home with 7 kids
He took the US phone with him
You don't know where an emergency center is for sure, but think there's a hospital in Nicoya, (50 minutes away)

I didn't know what to do. Wes wouldn't let me touch it, but it looked like his upper lip had been cut straight through. It looked like the width of it was about the length of a kid's tooth. Does that need stitches? Or will it be okay without it? Do I need to go to a doctor or Emergency Room? I don't know who I'd go to anyway?

I got online and was grateful for people that were online. It helped me laugh at the situation. We had arranged for someone to stay here with me precisely for this reason, just in case a situation like this happened to happen. But since Corey was driving to the airport in San Jose, they went with him because they had some errands to do in San Jose, and that way they wouldn't have to ride the bus there. No biggie, I thought, just one night alone, I can handle it. And I guess I did handle this situation pretty well considering circumstances. I did bark a little bit at Wesley 5 minutes into it when he was still screaming at full capacity and I was about to explode. After letting off that steam I was good and could laugh at how funny it was that all the planets seemed to align to my misfortune. Thank you Jeff J and Jacob M for being online to look at the photo I was able to immediately take and upload and for your advice (thank you Lord for digital cameras and the internet), and especially for by little brother Neil for being online with Mom on the phone at your end.

As I was online trying to decide what to do, Wesley fell asleep in the chair next tome with a hand towel to his lip. He wouldn't let me put ice on it. I got little bits of tp and soaked one of them in super glue and then put it on top of the cut. It dried before it had laid on his lip all the way, so now he has a stiff piece of tp sticking off his lip too. Sorry you're mom is so unprofessional Wes. I guess we'll just see how it looks in the morning and I'll give an update.

Thank the Lord in all things, especially this week of Thanksgiving. I'm thankful Wesley's teeth didn't get hurt and I'm thankful it was his lip and not his head.

Happy Thanksgiving week!

Hasta Luego Amor

Well, he's gone. Corey's leaving on a jet plane (at 5:30 pm), don't know when he'll be back again. And this is the first time we've ever done that - said goodbye not knowing when we'll see each other, but trusting that we will. I feel a little bit like an early Mormon convert in England, sending my husband to America to work and get money to pay for our boat passage across the Atlantic. Only what they did was hard, what I do is easy, cause I got internet, I have various ways to communicate with said departed loved one during our separation, and I am able to make a realistic guess of how long it will be till we see each other again - I'm thinkin' 3 weeks.

So anyway, Corey left for San Jose around 8:45 am, I did a quick wash over and wipe out of the inside of his rental car that he's returning. The kids "helped" me clean it, as you can tell by this picture of them all standing around picking their noses! (Melodie!!!) but mostly they're just staring off into space.

Ok, last hugs and kisses

As Corey tried to peel Melodie off of him, Corey said to me "It's easier to leave when they're clinging on to you..." then said to Mel and Ethan "I love you, now go away!" Ethan, with a quick wit said "Now I will always remember what your last words to me were! 'Go away!' So loving!"

Goodbye Love

Our house is on the left side of the street on a corner back where I stood to take the picture. The kids ran down the street following Corey to the gate, which comes with a 24 hour security guard.
I feel safe and things will be fine here with me. We would appreciate prayers as we figure out the next steps.

See you soon, sweetheart. Don't forget to send for us!

Packing Shoes

Yesterday I packed Corey's luggage while he tried to work a bit and finalize paperwork and stuff for our trip to Chile.

Seems like we just did this whole packing up thing? It is a lot easier this time since we aren't shuffling through as much stuff. We're livin' the simple life.

Although if I had known when we packed for Costa Rica that we'd be going straight from here to Chile, I would have packed a little differently. I would have brought more shoes for one thing. Did you know that right now Corey has more shoes than I do? He's got five, I only got 3!!!



I guess I really only have one pair of shoes, then two sandals. But we'll just call any feet wears shoes. So, I dare say that never before in the history of the world has a man had more shoes than his wife until Corey and Tiffanie went to Costa Rica! Do you think? Maybe I can be in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Sunday Dinner

On Sunday we left to go over to the RMs house around 4:30. We had a sudden idea that maybe going back to Utah could still be a possibility, and one of the adults from their house could be Corey's proxy and fly with E, H, and W from San Jose to Utah. What to do, what to do. Anyway, we thought we'd go talk about it with them. They let us eat dinner with them again and Corey had one last visit with Dannan and Jacob...

Yes, another evening of discussion, books, and politics. Corey's last before he heads to Chile on Tuesday. Don't know when these guys will be able to get together to discuss life in these latter days again. So sad. I love listening to them talk - such great insights and questions, points and counter points, it's like watching/listening to a mental chess game - very enlightening! :)

The guys were going strong for several hours. After dinner, I was taking pictures and we thought we should get one of the 3 of us.


Then we got a little silly taking various pictures of ourselves...


Someday I'm doing to get a great camera. I'm thinking the Nikon D5000 or whatever kind Costco has on the day that I do my big purchase. Someday.

Started to get late, the guys were still going strong. We thought we better get a little snack for the kids that hadn't dropped off yet. Rachael made some popcorn that adults and kids enjoyed.


They tried really hard to not give in to sleep. But they were just barely holding on.


Hated to see it end so we enjoyed it while it lasted, and we were on our way home at 10:30. We'll be back, my kids love going to the RMs house more than the beach, or atleast telling them we can go over there after they clean up works better than saying we can go to the beach. Funny. Glad we've all got friends here. Kinda silly that we had to come to Costa Rica to meet each other, cause we could have just driven to Manti. :)

Monkeys in the Trees

Last Sunday when we went over to see the Royal and Meyers Families (I think I'll just start calling them the R&Ms, or RMs?) the kids all started screaming to us adults to "COME SEE!!!!!" cause there were monkeys!!! so I did cause I got the camera to document (I feel so important!) :) Here are all the kids under the trees that the monkeys were in.

They would take turns standing right under the monkeys, then excitedly tell each other "I'm right under it!!!" I took a turn to - it was true - they were right there! Straight up. I got the best view with the zoom on my camera, so all the kids wanted to see the shot.

Pretty fun. There were three monkeys. All of us have seen monkeys before, but for us Wrides this was the first time we've seen them this close. The RMs told me that once there was a group of monkeys in the tree right by the house, and since those tree branches are all at eye level from the 2nd story kitchen/sitting room, they could see them perfectly - one monkey had a little baby monkey holding on it's back. So fun!


This monkey was just staring down at us. I imagined he was really excited and later would tell his family "You shoulda seen it - there was this huge group of human kids - It was amazing, they were all standing right under me!!"

Kids in Primary

How many will there be?

Most Sundays, this is the group of students...

Then on some Sunday's, like last Sunday, this crowd showed up...

It was pretty exciting, although it threw us for a loop thinking of what we'd do for the Primary Program if all these kids show up on that Sunday (next week on Nov 28th - better get my kids memorizing their part!)

My kids are all wearing the same clothes in both pictures. We only brought one Sunday outfit for each kid, although I brought two skirts for myself. I thought we'd be okay for our time here in Costa Rica, and we have been, except that Ethan's and Hyrum's shoes are to small. Luckily Ethan's old shoes fit Hyrum. Unluckily Ethan is without Sunday shoes and wears his sneakers. But everyone's sneakers are running thin. But that would have happened in the US too. And although there is no Walmart here, I think they do sell shoes. We'll make it three weeks till Chile though and then start to get settled with everything we need there. I hear they sell shoes in Chile too. I would have packed differently if I knew we were heading to Chile straight from here, but oh well. I'm sure we'll be able to find everything there, and we'll see how costs compare. Corey and I have come to the conclusion that the cheapest place to live, if you want to live like an American, is in America. You can live in-expensively here in Costa Rica if you live like a Tico. But if you want some of the comfort foods of home (like Lucky Charms) or air conditioning, you pay more for it that you would have in the States. So there are some thoughts. Corey is excited for Chile I'm pretty sure, although we don't really have time/energy to put in to being nervous or excited about it. But he had a plane ticket for Tuesday and will pack on Monday night/Tuesday morning. We might think about it then. We'd appreciate any prayers on our behalf in regards to finding a house for us. We found a few furnished homes, but Corey said apparently no one wants to rent to a family with 7 kids. I don't blame them. I hope the owners of this home are okay with the face that their nice table has had deep groves from pens pressed into it. And that the paint on the walls is a little thin from where I had to scrub and scrub the crayon/pencil/pen scribbles off. Also some pen marks on the sheets, and I accidentally got bleach on a brown comforter when I was trying to scrub the pen out of the sheets. Mad at myself for that one. Lastly I think we've broken 5 of the dishes. Other than that I think everything will be okay with a good cleaning. I get to do that again since Corey's gone, but it's all good, we have a lot less to pack up here and a lot less square footage to pick up - only 2000 here, that's doable.

Should I have anyone live with me while Corey's gone? There is a young married couple that said they could come stay here with me (I asked him if they'd be open to that). Pros to that would be company, the kids might learn some Spanish, they'd help me with the kids and cleaning, I could go to the grocery store without all the kids in tow. Cons - maybe not being able to relax as much with someone else here, not feeling as free to sleep in or take a nap, I'd probably be a bigger grouch, and would be nicer to my kids with people in the house. Seems like there are more pros and the cons are all pretty louse and selfish ones. Okay. I guess I'll finalize that on Sunday when we see them, unless anyone wants to advise me otherwise.