In our new place

Hi all,

We have now spent our first "official" week in Costa Rica and what a week it was! We did our part to support the Costa Rican economy (a couple trips to the grocery store and Walmart equivalent took care of that!) and unpacked all the suitcases. The picture here is James adding some new plants in the backyard. (Oh what a lovely electric fence there in the back ground) We have rental furniture and everything right now in the house. (yuck!) But it's better than being in a hotel for the next month or having nothing until our shipments arrive.

I'm at the office daily now and getting settled into a routine. James and the kids are getting into their routine of going to the pool and the playground every day. :) Corwin has his second test at his new school on Monday to determine which grade he will start in there. Audrey will start her Montessori right after Corwin goes to school. Then what will James do with his time? Clean house? Laundry? Nahhh...I'm thinking Playstation 3 and WII will be the distraction of choice. LOL!

Tonight, we're getting a sitter and going out for a very nice dinner at a very nice French resturant up in the mountains here. Our sitter is the 16 year old daughter of the other expat collegue of mine who also moved here. I think she is going to be our new "best friend". :)

We made it!

As my first blog post, I'm starting with the fact we made it to another country with 2 kids under the age of 10, with 5 VERY LARGE checked backs about 1 pound away from the weight limit, 3 carry ons, which certainly had to be close to the size limit, plus a briefcase, a backpack and our sanity somehow miracously intact.

A significant component of that was due to the fact all of our flights were blissfully on time and we crashed in a 5 star hotel the night we arrived in Costa Rica (THANK YOU corporate relo package!).

After we crashed for the night in 5 star down comforters and threadcount sheets unheard of in a 3rd world country, we proceeded downstairs at the ripe early hour of 11am to pick up our rental car and meet our new mobility coordinator. Here we discovered the first gem of Costa Rica: compact cars.

Here's the picture: A Nissan Tiida and 5 large suitcases, 3 carry ons, 1 briefcase, 1 backpack, 2 adults and 2 kids. Ummm...NOT! A half hour and several bent corporate travel policy rules later, we rolled away in a Mitsubishi Montero. I'm like, a Nissan Tiida? really? I asked the rental car dude to look at the luggage cart where all of our luggage was and asked him if everything would fit. Needless to say, he agreed perhaps a Nissan Tiida wasn't the best option.