Getting settled.

 I thought I'd give you a tour of the place today.

 We ate dinner out here on the front porch last night. There's a little kitty there asleep, she hangs out there most days, and when she saw us eating at her table she was a little miffed and walked by kind of huffy.

 THe kitchen is amazing. Marble and hardwood, I have to train the kids about leaving wet stuff on the wooden counters. Who has wooden counters? Butcher block I can see, but this ain't butcher block. But it's lovely.

 Living/family room.

 Second floor landing over the dining room.

 Bathroom --notice the hardwood counter again. All of the interior and exterior doors, casings, furniture, everything is made of this wood.

 Tile floors with this pretty river rock border.

 Looking down on the dining room.

 Stairway to the third floor roof balcony.

 Here's the roof --we're hoping to sleep out here one of these nights.

 Hardwood stairway.

 Bedroom with messy sheets.

 I love the exterior plantings here too.

Banana tree.

 

I don't know what this flower is -related to bird of paradise looks like from the leaves.

 We got out to the water as soon as we could.

 Soon after this the surfboard broke a fin, so we were stuck with the boogieboard.

 I thought this crab was so cool. It's so well camouflaged that it looked see through to me.

 Tidepool and sunshine.

 

 

We are already running out of food (I'm used to having food storage downstairs!), so we took a walk up to the little store.

 

 

 It was sure cute, but closed. Wah. We had rice pudding with carrots, and fried plantains, grilled pineapple for dinner. Weird, but good.

 

This morning, Kai and I were the only ones awake, when I heard a sound I hadn't heard since Costa Rica in college. " I think those are monkeys" I told Kai. We ran outside, and the gardener directed our gaze up to the right tree.

 So cool. The gardener told us they come for the water. He said they usually don't see people, and they were curious. They moved tree to tree until they were right over our heads shouting at us. Which is when I decided it was time to go in and wake up Jeff and the girls to show them. I may or may not have been a little chicken...



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Day 1 --Flying in and Driving Across.

 Monday night, June 30th, we left as a family to go live in Nicaragua for a month. This trip started out as a family home exchange with another family in Europe; actually three different families since one plan fell through after another. We had a little extra this year since Jeff's old job had withheld too much and cut us an unexpected check (also we actually had a tax return! wooo!). I then noticed that with some finagling we could pay for housing AND the flight if we just went to Central/South America instead of Europe. I'm still a little sad about this, I REALLY wanted to see Europe for the first time in my life, but am very grateful this trip worked out.

 To get the airfare to fit in our budget, and to avoid really dumb layovers (8 hours worth on every flight we saw) we flew into Costa Rica and hired someone to drive us across the country and into Nicaragua. We flew overnight and landed in San Jose at around 5:30 am (same time zone as home as far as we can tell --little hard to care much).

 We drove in a big van through jungle, and over mountains. I took this one crappy shot of a coffee plantation is all. I was so sleepy I missed a lot. I had been to Costa Rica during grad school for a research project, so I didn't feel too guilty.

 Our driver woke us up (barely) for a breakfast stop.

 We got the Desayuno de Casa (house breakfast) just to see what the heck was "tipico" (typical). "Pinto" --a rice and black bean mixture -- was part of every breakfast they offered, and it came with that, then eggs, fried plantains, some local cheese, tortillas, a slice of ham, I can't remember what else. Jeff, Ari and I shared 2 breakfasts between us and it was plenty. I got hot chocolate although it was about 100 degrees, because it's my thing, and it was great. Here our guide/driver is showing us the 52 volcanoes in the country, and the remainder of our route through C.R. to get to Nica.

 Border between the two countries. I hate to say it, but I was a little nervous about trusting the driver guy. We had to Western Union half of the money to him up front while still in the states and I didn't tell anyone about it. It just screams STUPIDITY. But, we had heard about him through a travel forum, and how he was great at getting you through customs and immigration etc. and went for it. I was so glad we did! Even when our driver stopped again at a Western Union office in the middle of the jungle and said we had to pay more impuestos to leave C.R., I tried to trust. Yeah. We whipped through customs and immigration while whole crowds of people were turned back because they hadn't done what we had.

 Little Nica coin Kai found on the way.

 Here's our first glimpse of the ocean in San Juan Del Sur. We stopped here (the nearest real town) to rent a surfboard and boogie board for the month. My phone camera is crappy in situations like this as you can see. The ocean is the glowy stuff in the back of the picture.

 Ari went and sat immediately in the rocker on the back patio --again, glowy ocean stuff is about 100 yards away.

 Then she went inside to change into her suit.

 Kai ran out to the water with the boogieboard without waiting for anyone. I had to chase him down and tell him to wait for the rest of us. I'm still not completely over my fear of the ocean.

Oh but it's lovely. We all stayed out until dark (which hits around 6:30 pm year round) and took turns with the boards. I was a pro at catching waves with the boogie board by the time we left. Well. Maybe not a pro, but I could do it, which was better than I expected. We showered and read a while and went to sleep with the patio doors open (screens on!) and the fan going. I slept great even without air conditioning. I love that ocean sound to sleep to.

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Goodbye garden!

 Made some bouquets for the ladies I "visit teach". In our church it's a little program where we look after each other and care for each other. I had plenty of flowers --might as well use them up since we leave tomorrow for a month.

 Filled up both trash cans yesterday with cuttings, and larkspur. It was so hard to pull all of those out! But the wood chips needed to go down to help keep the weeds down while we are gone. They would look like weeds in a month anyway.

 Sigh. What a relief to see those chips covering everything though! It's like I put a nanny in for my yard while I'll be away.

 Here's what was the biggest pain in the neck to weed: the raspberry patch. It was next to the last unfinished section of the yard, so has the most weed seeds --it was the worst. Should be better now with it's thick brown blanket.

 Here's a big bummer about being away the next few weeks: I prayed over this tree. I know it's silly, but I really wanted apricots, and just when it was in bloom, a big cold spell hit our area. Classic Utah. There are apricot years, and there are barren years. I was so sure this would be a barren year, but prayed anyway, went out and talked to the tree, and worried about it every time I looked out my window that week. 

 Low and behold it is so loaded the branches are weighed down to almost the breaking point. They are big, lush fruits. But guess when they will be ripe? Yeah, right in the middle of our trip. 

 The bees are loving this lamb's ear and the lavender. I walked down into my lower garden, and at first thought they were angry the buzzing was so loud. No, just a loud contented purring from my girls.

 The Canterbury bells are laying on the ground (like they do), so are prime for picking.

 This lower area was covered in larkspur. I'm still a little sad about it being gone. By the time we are back though the marigolds should be in full swing. Notice the clouds of tansy, and day lily stalks! Tia experimented with day lilies in an arrangement and they were lovely. First time we've ever used them is this year.

 The bees have a regular highway going between their hive and the fountain. Every once in a while a bird comes in to get a drink and bath, and gets scared off by the bees!

 The yarrow is early this year. This is the longest lasting flower! Looks good for months.

 I also will miss most of this lettuce. I've been cutting now, but we'll have bolting in the next couple of weeks. Oh! planted arugula this year! Love love love it!

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