A Catch-Up Entry (01.19.15): The Parkinsons' Visit, Crazy Mud-Filled Hikes, and Other Tidbits from Christmas, New Year’s and the January Break...

I’ll admit that I kinda love when the kids write blog entries. Now that even Ella has joined the list of Gavin bloggers it’s like we have a staff of writers. Pretty soon I’ll be able to assign them their own beat or topic area (“Liadan, you cover sports // Jack, you’ve got Costa Rican politics…”). Having a crew of writers takes the pressure off of me to sit down and bang out a blog post and lets me play “Editor” instead. I like being Editor. : ) Unfortunately, the staff appears to have unionized and is limiting itself to one blog post each every few weeks. I tried to find some scabs to step in and help me break the union but half this country is on vacation right now and everyone I’ve bumped into the past couple of days hasn’t really hit me as a capable fill-in (e.g. Danilo the Nicaraguan landscaper with the gold teeth is outside right now but I don’t think he could hold a candle to Liadan when it comes to blogging). That leaves Audrey and I to pick up the slack on some of the updates re: what we have been up to lately... ------------------------------------ I have to say that it is weird getting used to having such a LONG school break at this time of year (the kids’ school is on a quarterly calendar and the post-Q2 break is the longest of the year…5 weeks!). Some of the days have been filled with travel (the Monteverde trip Charlie wrote about, our beach weekend with the Parkinsons that I will touch on below, our trip to Panama that Jack and Ella are writing about). Some has been and will be filled with visitors (the aforementioned Parkinsons’ visit, the upcoming visit from another set of cousins - the Browns). But a lot of it has been spent with family time around the area. Audrey and I were worried that we’d all be ready to kill each other with that much downtime but it has been shockingly drama-free and fun-filled. A few highlights... Christmas... Christmas was a refreshingly relaxed holiday this year. Don’t get us wrong, we LOVE the energy of seeing family and we missed everyone a supah-wicked-lot! But it was nice to have a year to step back and take it easy. On Christmas Eve, our friends Liza and Jeremy graciously invited us to crash Christmas Eve dinner with them and some of their extended family.

Kids watching a movie at Jeremy and Liza's house after Christmas Eve dinner

We made sure to get back early enough to hang our stockings by the chimney with care.

Luckily the gale force winds didn't blow Santa off the roof...

The next day we opened presents, went to church in San Rafael and took it eeeeeeasy. It was sooooo relaxing!

Liadan had Charlie in the "sibling grab."

The church and park in San Rafael de Heredia.

It was amazing how FEW people were at church on Christmas Day...because evidently EVERYONE goes at midnight on Christmas Eve...except us...

The Parkinsons Come To Costa Rica...! The day after Christmas, Ellen and Dan and kiddos showed up for an all-too-brief but still super-awesome visit. Both adults and kids had a great time hanging out but it was particularly rewarding getting to watch all of the cousins adding to their already long list of shared memories. It’s fun to think about the Gavin and Parkinson kids sitting around someday saying “remember when we hiked down to the beach // went kayaking // hung out with monkeys in the mangrove // played laser tag in the dark at the home in the mountains // got ice cream in a little Costa Rican town // etc.?”

We met the crew at the airport and gunned straight to Manuel Antonio for a few nights of rain forest and beach. It was fun seeing everything as "new" through the eyes of visitors. Even on the drive to M.A. it was fun listening to "whoa...is that a cow on the side of the highway?" but not quite as fun hearing "why are you not more shaken up that we just had to swerve into the oncoming traffic because a guy was walking in the MIDDLE of our lane?" It's scary to think how much this country has numbed our senses when it comes to driving craziness. All worth it once we got to the hotel, though. : )

The Parkinson fam at the hotel restaurant.

Jack and Beth try their hand at kayaking.

That "no kids in the hot tub" sign didn't mean US, did it?

The cousins play a big game of "Rat-a-Tat-Cat."

(Sidebar comment --- a babysitter recently introduced the kids to the card game "Rat-a-tat-cat" and it has become an OBSESSION around the Gavin family ever since it showed up as a Christmas gift for the kids...)

Spotting the first monkey of the trip (a howler monkey off the deck)

Beth gets up close and personal with a monkey!

Jack and Beth...the oldest of the Gavin-family cousins have been friends since they were newborns. Look at 'em now!

On the drive back, we stopped to look at the River Tarcoles and the bazillion crocodiles below...

It would SUCK to fall off that bridge...!

I don’t think I quite realized how important it is for the kids to be able to SHARE some bit of what they are experiencing with folks from home. Going to the beach with the cousins was fantastic, but it seemed to be equally important for them to be able to share little things about day to day life (from Ella finally having a sleepover in her little loft bedroom to going to the Monte de la Cruz playground to walking by the cows and ox-cart guy on the road to hanging around the house).

At Monte de La Cruz for a short "hike" and some playground time.

After lunch at Cafe Britt...as you can see Liadan didn't want a pic.

Liadan will kill me for this someday but the combo of the two pics was too funny NOT to include 'em...!

It makes sense, though. Sure — everyone’s life experiences are different even if you share a neighborhood, school, family, etc. But on the Venn Diagram of Life, the kids' experiences this year have a helluva lot less overlap with those of their friends and cousins than before (and after) the year abroad. The kids seem to love sharing bits and pieces of the experience whenever they can. It makes everything feel a bit more “real” and less like a funny existence that they will only be able to talk about amongst themselves in a few short months. I only hope that our visitors don’t get bored out of their minds getting shown the kids’ school or the town nearby or the house and neighborhood... : ) New Year’s... Going into New Year’s Eve we knew a couple of things: (i) people say that spending New Year’s in the mountains around the valley is awesome b/c you get to watch the fireworks; and (ii) there were little kiosks set up in mall and plaza parkings lots all over the place selling fireworks. We kinda-sorta put 2 and 2 together and were expecting a decent show but what actually happened was CRRRRRAZY! It’s not that you watch 2 or 3 big fireworks shows going on down in the valley. Starting about 10 minutes before midnight, there are fireworks going off at literally 10’s of thousands of houses and locations across the valley. It was unbelievable. Audrey and I watched it all from the deck off our bedroom. We tried to wake the kids up but Jack and Ella were beyond waking. Liadan and Charlie came in to see it but I don’t think they ever woke up enough to remember it. A once in a lifetime experience for the parents, I guess! I tried getting pictures of the scene but they don't do it justice. You'll have to trust these thousand words because I think that's about all a picture is worth anyhow, right? Hiking... We have taken full advantage of the lazy vacation days by exploring a bunch of areas nearby that we hadn't explored yet. Sometimes we just take more of a family walk (rather than a hike) on the mountain roads (that was how we kicked off the New Year). Or we kick around the paths right next to the house.

Jack, Charlie and I finally decided to ignore this sign and see what lay beyond the barbed wire fence at the end of our road...

...it was a pretty cool trail that wound past beautiful farmland and woods.

Other times we have gone much further off the beaten path. The best of these “local hikes” is exploring the trails in and around Cerro Dantas, a nature reserve that we didn’t know existed until a few weeks ago. It is CRAZY cool. You drive about 10 minutes outside of town and the road “mostly” ends, turning to an uber-rutted and rocky dirt road (and i use the word “road” generously…you couldn’t pass without 4 wheel drive). Then the road stops and there is a trail that takes off into cloud forest for a few miles. We tried it once as a family but it was a cooooold and rainy day and the mud was so deep we couldn’t get through (see pics for proof).

Those are Jack's boots. After this mini-rescue, the kids realized WHY I tell them to tie their boots TIGHTLY!

All in all, though, the kids LOVED the "mud-hike" and we went back for more a few days later.

Finding "the end of the road" on another path...

Jack and I went back alone for a half day hike to try to make it to the reserve and explore the trails in there and it was unbelievable. This place is a hidden gem! The trail takes you through 2 foot deep mud, over foot bridges that have rotted-wood-gaping-holes over a 30 foot drop, over rickety suspended bridges, etc. And at the end there are a bunch of cabins and a research center for scientists. There is a middle aged couple who LIVES there and the guy was telling me that there is no road in…they carry everything for construction, repair, food, etc. down the crrrrrrazy trail. He then took us on a short hike through super dense forest to a waterfall. I was blown away that all of this exists SO close to town. As “the crow flies” it’s a few miles away…it just takes you hours to actually get there and you feel like you stepped back in time about 50 years. A highly, highly recommended hike if you are ever in the area.

That's about a 30 foot drop through the holes in the bridge...!

This makes the craziness of the hike worthwhile!

Around The House... The days haven't all been filled with trips, visitors and hiking. We've had some chill time kicking around the area (going to see "Night At The Museum 3" at the movies, swimming at the Lomas del Zurqui gym, etc.). And of course lots of mellow time around the house. Time around the house has flown by during this vacation. I have been trying to read a bit more with the kids in Spanish (we are currently working through the riveting tale of “El Oso Que Amaba Los Libros” or “The Bear Who Loved Books” — I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the movie version). The kids have been super creative with their downtime, too. Jack (with some assistance from Charlie) created his own board game based on snorkeling in Bocas (called “Bocas Quest”) and I have to say, it’s pretty damn cool with some creative twists to the rules, etc. Liadan then decided to make a game, too — in true Liadan fashion she made one in which “nobody wins or loses.” : ) It has also been telling to see how much more comfortable the kids are. They are all benefitting greatly from the mixture of some time away from school, some opportunities to "show the place" to visitors and some time to let the past (nearly) 6 months sync in. Even Jack (initially our most reluctant and resistant) has said that he feels "comfortable" here now. The kids know the area. They have their patterns of life. Seeing people from the U.S. has hammered home that they haven't permanently lost touch with that world back in Boston. They are even getting more comfortable with the language (even Liadan...I used to think she wasn't picking up anything but then she'll shock me, like the other day when I was talking to Doña Isa, the cleaning woman who comes by every week or two. I was rambling away and then suddenly Liadan jumps in and says "no Dad, that's not what happened." Evidently she understood what I was saying!?!). And, of course, there is all of the bond-building. Seeing all of that take place has made for the happiest of Happy New Year's. I'm going to sign off now and go play a round of Bocas Quest...

The newest game craze around the Gavin house...