A Sunny Beach Day!!!

Today was our last Friday here in Costa Rica. Last I talked to the RMs on Tuesday, we decided to get together again this week and have a girls night out for the Moms. We thought it would be best to do it at our place, and if they are gonna drive all the way out here, might as well go to a beach too, no? So it was arranged. Playa Flamingo, and let's get all our American friends - the Martinsens and the Heathman's to come too. So it was. We got there around 1 and stayed until sunset (5:30). With our big group it looked/sounded like Raging Waters - water splashing, kids squeeling. It was great. Couldn't have asked for a better beach day, but we might still try to go one more time before we fly out. Flamingo is an awesome beach, and today it was a BEAUTIFUL DAY!!!! It was sunny! There were hardly any clouds in the sky.


The ocean looked SO BLUE - it was a beautiful beautiful day. Wow. My camera's battery was low, so I was trying to conserve and thus didn't take as many pictures as I normally would have, but still have a ton.


Lily fell asleep in the car on the way there, wasn't happy I woke her up and took her out into the hot and bright outside world. But she calmed down quickly and started playing with the other babies in the small slightly shaded area from the two folding chairs-


President Lopez from our branch came with the Martinsens and he was so cute with all the babies digging in the sand. He kept them quite entertained and the little ones seemed so pleased to have an adult freely choose to play with them.


Melodie sculpting her body again. Giving herself little troll legs. She's so funny.


Joseph started this - take a quick run in to the water and get wet, then book it up to the dry sand and coat yourself like a snickerdoodle cookie.

From Joe's macho pose here, I guess being a sand man makes him feel pretty tough

And Ethan as the Sand Man.


Rolling down the beach slope - making sure to get that sand everywhere!


Inspired by the other boys, Wesley also coated himself in sand. Wes was the only kid that I realized (at 4:00) that I hadn't put sunblock on. Luckily I think the dirt covering him did the trick. His cheeks looked kinda rosy though, so I rubbed the sand off of them and put some sunblock - made them look nice and pink. Glad to report that after the bath at home, I was glad to see that he wasn't not fried. As seen in Wes' photo above and hte following pictures, the sun was starting to get lower in the sky - it's more orange in color and longer shadows.

Lily was our designated beach b u m today. (I forgot her b o t t o m s - o o p s!) She wore a diaper at first, but when she needed a change I didn't want to waste a diaper that was just going to get filled with sea water, so she went without. Totally the norm here. :) I saw a grown man just take off his pants on the beach, right out in the open, to put on his swimming trunks! That wasn't here, that was at Samara. Maybe he was from Europe?

but Lara didn't seem to mind Lily's b a r e bottom at all and was so cute holding her and playing with her - thank you Lara! You are such a sweetie! As you can tell Lily loves her.

Lara also helped Abi find a hermit crab! We love and will miss the Martinsens! Maybe we'll come visit you guys in St. George since you all might be back in Utah before us! We'll miss you guys!

The boys spent the last hour of the beach making sand forts for their sandball fight. Ethan's head poking out - and up close...
Very impressive - this was packed dirt, so I thought it was really hard to dig in. Playa Conchal - now that's my kind of digging material. But the kids were determined and worked hard. when the mom's said it's time to go at 5, they hurried and had their mudball fight. We're doing the best we can to not miss out entirely on all the winter activities we're missing...

Sunset was beautiful!!!!

A great ending to our last week in Costa Rica.

More Pics of Samara

I already posted the pictures I had of Joe - having mud fights


Here are the rest of the kids:
Melodie first...

She's so creative - she thought of this feet sculpture on her own. Then I recommended she try and do it on her knees.

We were laughing at the pictures of her. Funny!

Then there's Ethan -

Looks like he got stuck in quicksand! Perhaps more appropriately called Sticksand. The kids would try and dig a hole in the mud, then let it sink all around them and they were held tight - it was really packed together sand.


Hyrum had fun in the mudfight, in the waves, and drawing in the sand.


as did Wesley - here drawing the face of a Ben 10 omnitrix watch.


Wes also got a small scratch on his heel as he played on the reef. He was sure he was fatally wounded.


He thought I was pretty mean for not carrying him back to our beach camp. I made him walk. "You can do hard things."

And here is our pretty Abi.

All smiles.

And the last and littlest one, Little Lil

Giving me lots of leg hugs during the day, eating lots of dirt, drinking lots of juice

Love that little face.

Pics of Samara

We parked a little far away from the RMs favorite spot, thinking they wanted to try something new, but then the kids all decided they wanted to play on the reef and watch crabs, so we walked west to the reef.


The reef behind the kids. Melodie drew a hopscotch game in the sand.

All right, now we're all set up. Who wants a sandwich? Melanie on PB&H (honey) duty

Lily and one of the twins feeding sand covered cookies to each other and to the RM's dog Sadie

Abi and Leah are good friends.


Here they are playing in the mud


And all the boys in the mud


Rachael and me

Boys Bangin' Coconuts

The boys love getting down coconuts and cutting them open. It's cute. And all the rest of the kids love to stand around and watch the process.


Michael - working up a sweat - can you see it dripping down his face?


Michael kept one and Joe took another one home, worked on it for an hour...


and I was then treated to a delicious tropical smoothie this morning: Papaya, coconut water, bananas, and pineapple! Mmmm.... (with a little vanilla stevia, thanks to Kristi Approved for introducing that into my life. Very glad I brought that from the US, although I don't think it will last me through our stint in Chile...)

Samara - The Drive Down

Leaving the home in Nicoya -

Ready to leave. Everything looks normal here, Officer (right?) Just don't anyone say "Hey kids!" to the crowd in the back or it'll totally blow our cover.


Woah, woah! How many kids you have in there? There are 14, Mr. Officer, sir. Those children two years and under are secured in car seats on the van benches. The rest will have to fend for themselves as they are all in a pile in the back. What are ya gonna do? We gotta get to the beach somehow, and we can't leave them or make them walk, right?

First, gotta fill'er up. Then to the Maxi Bodega (CR version of Walmart) for 4 loaves of bread for sandwiches and lots of Pozuelo cookies. The kids were jammin' to Ace of Base while we ran in for food. Made us Mom's laugh. They are having fun, we love it.

It's about an hour drive from Nicoya to Samara. It is a beautiful drive, similar to going up a canyon in Utah in that you're winding your way around the corners and streams. Different in that in Utah you're going up or down the mountain. Here on the drive to Samara, you are going up and down the whole time, like a roller coaster, going up the hill and then down the hill and up the little mountain and down over the bridge, I almost felt dizzy on some of the really curvy parts.

I also was quite distracted by the scenery - I'm too much like my Dad that way. I was in my car following the RMs, and they were frequently out of sight cause I was looking around and (tisk tisk) trying to take pictures. Listen, it's not my fault... there's no space on these roads to pull over for a quick stop, nor is their any shoulder to squeeze onto for a moment to snap a photo, so I did the best I could snapping with one hand holding the camera and the other hand on the steering wheel. I really wish I could have stopped, it was beautiful. Like a fairytale. Maybe like a tropical version of the rolling hills of England, cows grazing, beautiful slopes and hills, small cottages t

They have small trees that double as their fence posts, so that's what the blurry images getting in the way of these gorgeous hills are. Look close, can you see the hill behind? It was so pretty. I wish I could go again and walk and take pictures with a really good camera. Maybe I can find some online quickly...

I also thought someday I'd love to come here at night, take a blanket, and lay down on one of the hills and just stare at the stars. I'm sure they've got to have a lot of stars visible here, there are hardly any houses or lights. It was beautiful. Could be my promised land if I was a Pilgrim looking for a place to freely live my life and worship God. But I'm married to a Puritan, so I'm a Puritan also. Do you know what the difference is between Pilgrims and Puritans? Corey will tell you, or I can too. Listen to Michael Medved's Thanksgiving Lecture. Corey is a Puritan, and thus so am I, that's why we're off on another adventure next week!

Trash or Treasure

I've got one week until departure. Today I accomplished one thing to help us get there: I cleaned the upstairs where there are three kids rooms. It took me about an hour, but that doesn't count the time I plan on spending tomorrow to wash the walls where Lily, bless her heart, keeps drawing with pens on the cheaply painted walls. Magic Erasers get it off, but they also take the paint with it. My apologies to the owner of this house.

You know, it's really easy to houseclean a small house where rooms are small and when you don't have a lot of stuff to begin with. All of their clothes have been moved downstairs. Pillows, blankets, legos, and Webkinz are allowed to remain upstairs. So the only other thing to deal with was all the paper on the floor. Is it garbage or is it a special drawing, perhaps an important family document? Most of it was trash, and I am very grateful for the garbage bags here for lawn clippings. They are the perfect size for the mess my 7 kids make. As I sorted through the garbage, I did find one gem that made me pause, smile and love my cute kids.


I think if you click on the above image it will enlarge for you to see. It reads as follows (misspellings in original document):

Attention kids Dont Let mom see this. If you dont understand this ask melodie what it says. next morning Lets All wake up and instead of turning on the tellavision Lets all clean up for no Darn reason. If we cant do it that day we will do it the next day. And try to be good the rest of the Day. Though Im pretty sure we will not succseed. you dont have to. But I think Its a good Idea. so Im going to do it. If Your doing it sighn Your name --> _____



Joe, Melodie, Ethan and Hyrum all signed it. I smiled as I confronted Melodie and asked her when this paper should have been dated - there was lots of garbage on the floor, and I didn't notice if/when this "clean the house and be good" event particularly happened. She said it was just from this week. So that was fun, she laughed and I laughed. I told her my favorite part was the "for no darn reason" - Love it. I also liked the "I'm pretty sure we will not succeed." I love my kids! They make me laugh. 5 points for Gryffindor.

The Family Car

So here we are driving in Costa Rica. After Samara beach, we stopped to say a last goodbye to the RMs as we parted ways in Nicoya - them for their home, us heading back to Villareal. They said they had to get a picture of all of us jammed into our 5 person car.

Me and the 7 kids cause Corey's gone in Chile, yes, that makes 8 people in a 5 person capacity car. Shhh - don't tell the car rental people! And this isn't even our record. I'll try to get a picture of us on the way to church this Sunday, cause I think Esteban and Magaly will need a ride again... So if they come with us, that will make our 8 plus 2 more = 10 people. Thankfully those 2 are skinny and my 7 are small.

I actually have very fond memories of road trips as a kid in our white Buick station wagon, other memories in our hatchback Nissan Datsun -
(could be our old station wagon, minus the wood paneling... who would do that to a car?)
(almost like our Nissan - my sweet set of wheels during highschool)

...we'd just fold the seats down, everyone would grab their pillow and blanket and claim their space - we drove like that to Disneyland, up to Idaho to visit Grandma and Grandpa Hibbert, it was so fun. If we were driving at night in the Nissan, we could position ourselves to see the stars as we were laying down by the back window. What freedom! And lo and behold, we are all alive to tell the tale. My 2 cents right now as I'm basking in this lack of strict law enforcement of seatbelt laws... you're gonna die when your gonna die. If your work is done on this earth, God will take you home. He'll let you drown or let you get sick, if he needs you he'll take you. (knock on wood that no kid dies at the beach tomorrow) - So always choose the right and say a prayer of thanksgiving for another day of life. I survived my youth of driving around sleeping on a pillow in the car, we survived our time in Brazil driving around this way, and once again with a prayer and putting our lives in His hands, we are safe at home and have been safe while Corey's been gone. We're doing the best we can in our current circumstances.

Still, I'll admit, this is definitely not the safest way to drive with a 5 year old, huh? Wesley would surely be the first go through the windshield in an accident. And not only am I driving at night with a child straddling the stick shift, but as has probably occurred to you by the very existence of this photograph, I'm talking a picture of myself while I'm driving that way. In my defense this is a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in Costa Rica and I am not driving very fast (too many potholes). Still, I'm sorry for being recklessness. ...although I'll probably have to do it again tomorrow.

Here are the 7 and 8 year olds ~ asleep in the front passenger side of the car equipped with airbags. (That one was also taken by me while I was driving... bad Mom.) Thank you all for your prayers, I'm sure it's YOU that are keeping us alive! Thank you and we love you all! See you in a few months.