*pictures will be added soon*
Let's see how far I can get in blogging Costa Rica.
We left on a midnight red eye flight from Denver to San Jose on the night of Monday the 22nd. The kids did even better than I anticipated. It was Brady's first flight as a real person (he got his own seat) so he got to sit in his car seat instead of my lap which was awesome because he slept the whole way except for waking up a few times to sleep cry for a few minutes before falling back asleep. Abigail, that snoozy girl, happily fell asleep instantly and gave us no problems the whole flight (six hours, one hour time change so we arrived at 7am). It was as great as I could have hoped for.
We waited forever at the airport to get the rental car situation figured out (that's a whole other huge story) but it was great because the kids were so happy to play with the uncles (mark, John, Nate) and it was adorable seeing Brady learn/try playing soccer with them.
Eventually, the drivers Brent, Brian, and Chris) showed up with our rental cars. We got a tiny little Suzuki jimmy and the other whole cars were normal SUVs with power windows and clickers and four doors and stuff like that. Ours had two doors, barely enough room in the backseat for two car seats (I had to forward face Brady due to space restrictions and we still didn't have an inch to spare), roll down windows, no clicker, and not even a mirror when you pulled down the sun visor. It's been a long time since I've ridden in a car without power locks or windows but I'll have you know that I'm pretty much an expert at it now. I'm not an expert at the two doors thing though. That made strong kids in and out of car seats even that much more of a pain. But... It was a fun adventure, provided a lot of laughs (Chris had to put it in first gear for us to make it up any sort of hill), and got us everywhere we needed to go. We logged about 24 hours in that car.
Anyways, we hopped in our cars (suv #1- Brent, Klaudette, mark, Nate,and John... suv #2- Bri, Kelsey, Hallie, grandma Joan, and grandpa Ed... tiny jimmy- Christopher, myself, Abigail, and Brady) and drive several hours to libera, got mc Donald's for lunch, and drove the remaining 45 minutes to our resort at flamingo beach... aka playa flamingo. Driving in Costa Rica involves a lot of slow trucks, passing, and bumpy, windy roads with zero street signs. And I really mean zero. I did not see a single street sign the entire trip, and not for lack of trying or driving (remember 24 hours in the car?!). We got to the resort around 4 or so and headed straight to the pool and enjoyed the incredible sunset (happened around 5:20 each evening) before getting showered and dressed for dinner at the resort hotel. Klaudette and I shared the chicken Parmesan and the creamy sea bass fettuccine which was the clear winner of the two even though both were really awesome. That night, Abigail fell right asleep in her bed and Brady cried for maybe five or so minutes before falling asleep in his crib. It was a huge success.
Wednesday- Christmas Eve. We spent the day at the beach. brady was initially terrified of the beach (tuesday night and the first part of wednesday) and also despised the sand (flat out refused to touch it) but got over both of those things much quicker than i'd anticipated. like within a few hours! it took him all summer at the pool to not hate getting wet and it took him the entire week at ocean isle and he still didn't like the sand or water. so this was awesome. klaudette brought a big sun canopy tent thing that provided a lot of shade and so we spent most of the time just lounging and watching the boys play football on the beach. we hung out all day and didn't head in until the sunset. and by head in, i mean, we went to the pool for a while before we cleaned up for dinner. talk about perfect. we went to an authentic costa rican restaurant for dinner that night. and we asked the mariachi band to play us a christmas song. they didn't know any of the religious ones we requested so we got feliz navidad instead. ; ) they either sang eight verses of it or decided they would just stop after ten minutes. longest feliz navidad of my life but it was great. i ordered the fried shrimp served with rice and beans (like everything else... so much rice and beans) and it was great even though i wasn't feeling top notch. we had ceviche as our appetizer and it was great. i liked it best on the saltine like crackers they gave us. and mark gave me the helpful suggestion to add a little bit of mayo to the cracker before adding the fish. it was delish. i was hesitant at first because i hadn't studied up on what seafood and quantities are approved during pregnancy (and we all left our phones in the states so we had no internet) so i asked what was in it and was assured it was only fish although i can't remember what kind... just a basic white fish. well, i just googled ceviche for the first time 30 seconds ago and apparently i should have asked more specific questions as apparently i was eating completely raw fish. whooooops. sorry baby hillier. i know i've eaten a few varsity chili slaw dogs on purpose, but i swear the raw fish in the ceviche was a complete accident!
Thursday- Christmas day. this was the least christmas-like dec25th i've ever had. we didn't celebrate at all... although i think a few of us wished each other merry christmas. ; ) We went to Buena vista for a boat ride through a nature preserve and saw birds, monkeys, crocodiles, etc. we got there and they fed us all fruit and juice and snack stuff and then we followed a guy to the river and got on the boat. the whole thing was way more relaxing and cooler than i thought it would be. not sure why, but i thought we'd be in a crowded, windy, boat with no sun shade and pretty far from the shore. it was a smallish covered river boat with just our family on it. we had a boat driver and the tour guide that pointed everything out to us and answered all of our questions. it was shaded from the sun and so nice and pleasant. i was especially surprised considering how hot it was that day! we went back to the restaurant part of the place and had lunch. we got back to the hotel and hung out at the pool for a bit and then made and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the pavilion by the kelseys' room. as i said, not a traditional christmas day or dinner. we'd all celebrated christmas the saturday before, so it was hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that most people were celebrating christmas on a day that felt so completely normal to me. chris took the kids in for bed, and i stayed and played games with the fam.
Friday- it was another glorious beach day. i spent way too much time in the sun since i could just let the kids play in the sand under the sun shade and i could play beach games or go in the waves or just lay in the sun. i'm trying to remember where we ate that night. maybe the italian pizza place we walked to from the resort. i hadn't even looked at their menu and the server said "the lobster ravioli is unavailable tonight because we're out of lobster" and my heart was sad. and it got sadder when i looked through the whole menu three times and was still wanting that lobster ravioli. i ended up getting just a regular margherita pizza though and it was delicious.
Saturday- Adventure day! despite a long, back and forth decision making process, we decided it would be most fun for everyone to go to the same place for adventure stuff. we did horseback riding (abigail with me and brady with christopher), hot springs (they had cold, medium, and hot... also a sauna and mudbath), super fast water slide through the jungle (holy cow it was intense!), lunch (the spaghetti really hit the spot), and zip lining (because of my fear of heights, i stayed with brady and hallie but everyone else went and abigail LOVED it). the whole day was just one thing and then another and each thing we did was just so much fun. the place was beautiful and the weather was perfect. i think we stopped for lunch at subway on the way back to the hotel and when we got there, i couldn't wait to see Steph, since she and her husband had arrived there just a few hours earlier. woohoo!!! the whole hillier family under one roof!
Sunday- we all woke up early and got ready for 9:00 church that was an hour away from the hotel and in some random part of town since the church building is currently being renovated. sacrament meeting was in some vacant first floor corner of a building and it had no AC and was so super hot. brady was sweating up a storm and john was constantly giving him drinks from his water bottle and pouring water on his head to cool him down. the kids played with john and mark and nate for all of sacrament meeting while i daydreamed about who knows what (it was all in spanish and my spanish is pretty much non-existent). we'd planned to stay for all three hours but because everyone was struggling so bad after just one hour of sweltering spanish sacrament meeting, we decided to head out early. we went with the matarrita family to a nearby park for a wonderful chicken salad sandwich picnic lunch and games (soccer and
kubb). after, we drove past the matarrita's old house where the hilliers first met them and then dropped them off at their current house where they've lived for the past 13 years. we got to go inside and it was super cool to be on the inside of a real costa rican house since we'd spent hours and hours during the week driving by thousands of them and only seeing them from the outside. i would have loved to have gotten pictures of the inside but the situation just wasn't right for that and i didn't want to be rude. but let me tell you. it made me simultaneously grateful and jealous. their home was so simple that it made me appreciative that i didn't have concrete floors in my home, but i was envious of the simplicity and lack of excess and clutter. seeing their home was one of the highlights for me of the entire trip. once we got back to the hotel, we all changed clothes and headed out to take family pictures. then we changed clothes again and went to the theater room at the hotel (you can reserve it) and watched
when the game stands tall. it was excellent and i highly recommend it. brady got really fussy during the beginning and then fell asleep for the last two thirds of it. he felt feverish and you could tell he wasn't feeling too awesome. i think that was the night that we ate at marie's and brady was a crying mess and wouldn't go to anyone except me or john. chris hurried through eating his dinner so that he could hold brady for me, but brady just kept crying with him and eventually ran over to where john was. john was brady's favorite person all trip and was a complete angel. he abandoned his dinner for the third time that night and took brady walking around (it was a covered outdoor restaurant... kind of under a two story roof) until i took him again and then could hand him off to chris while i finished eating. in short... brady was a disaster, crying inconsolably and feeling like crap. he was relieved when it was bedtime. ; )
Monday- we ate breakfast as usual at the hotel buffet. totally unexpected, the matarritas surprised us at the beach! it's a public beach across a dirt road path so they'd made the drive and got all their beach stuff all on the beach before we even finished breakfast. but christopher and steph and my father in law had all seen them when they'd been walking on the beach earlier. so we hung out with the matarritas at the beach all day. Brady actually napped in his crib for a few hours in the hotel room because christopher took pity on the boy and said he'd take brady in and work on emails while he slept. so brady got a good nap until the room service lady came by to clean the room. ; ) and i can't really remember where we ate that night or anything else about later that day. whoops. that's what i get for writing this two weeks late.
Tuesday- first thing that morning, we hit up the pool for a bit before breakfast and then it was checking out of the hotel and off to arenal. the day (like many others) invovled a lot of driving. the funnest part of the day was when we showed up to the place with our cheaptickets reservation and the people had never even heard of cheap tickets, had no reservation for us, and absolutely zero vacancies. ummm, there was no room in the inn. there was also no room in a lot of the other inns around because we needed to stay that night which was new years eve eve. luckily we found a place and stayed in these cute and primitive little cabins that only had minor leaks from the roof when it was raining (which was the entire time we were there) and three large beds (there was only one pack n play in the whole place so that went to bri and kelsey since hallie is only 18 months old. we got our stuff settled and headed out for dinner at this meat place that was known for their rotisserie chicken. we waited forever for our food. no joke it was well over an hour... which seemed a little crazy since all the chickens were rotisserie and already done cooking when we got there (they were all on display in a big fire towards the front of the restaurant. anyways, eventually our food came and we ate lots of chicken (along with plenty of rice and beans of course) and had the most delicious banana split (served inside of a fresh, carved out pineapple) for dessert. i've discovered (definitely, because before i only suspected it) that fresh pineapple seriously kills the inside of my mouth and tongue... but depending on the situation, it's totally worth it and i eat it anyways. how could i not?! i loooove fresh pineapple! dinner went really late because of how slow the service was, and when we got back to our cabins, the kids were exhausted (especially abigail... this happened every night, but especially when did didn't nap in the car that day) and literally we walked three feet in the door and i turned around to see where abigail was... she was already half undressed and asking me which bed she should sleep in. i helped her get her pj's on and go potty and brush her teeth and through it all, she just kept asking me which bed she should get in. i had her sleep in the one at the back of the cabin and she fell right asleep. i put brady next to her (no crib, remember?) and laid next to him for 15 minutes until he also fell asleep. there was a nightstand next to the bed and i put the kids' suitcase on the floor right there too, so i was pretty confident that if brady rolled off, he'd be just fine. then i got in my own bed and read harry potty until honey came back from playing with mark (i can't remember what they were doing in the lobbyish part of the place. we all slept pretty well except for the time or two that brady woke up crying. but i laid next to him and he was able to fall back asleep. he probably would have done that even in a crib though because he sleep cried quite a few times on the trip (on the airplane ride there, and the last couple of nights at the resort when he wasn't feeling well... and during the movie on sunday) so it really wasn't a big deal.
Wednesday- New Year's Eve. roosters semi woke me up around 5:30 or whenever and honey took off at 7 to go hike to some waterfalls with his dad and mark. so the kids and i got ready and hung out and then went to breakfast at the hotel lobby room area. we all had fun making fun of the weird toast, sliced deli meat ham circles, tang orange juice, neon yellow butter, runny scrambled eggs, room temperature hot chocolate, and everything else about that breakfast. abigail actually ordered the mexican breakfast which included rice and beans, and she was pleased with her choice. ; ) it was still raining and super cloudy so we were disappointed not to be able to see the top of the huge volcano but i liked the rainforest, jungle feel that the constant rain gave to the stay. after breakfast we packed up our things and headed to the hot springs. they were great and it was basically like a water park kind of with a bunch of pools and slides. my favorite was the one like a hot bath and everyone hung out there most of the time. we checked out the butterfly pavilion, frog pavilion, and ant farm house before we left and they were all super cool. we ate snacks in the car and grabbed Burger King when we passed through town. honey ordered us all kids meals because they were half the price of a whooper jr and by far the best deal and man... it hit the spot. the fries and orange soda... wonderful! then it was just even more driving to get to San Jose so we could stay at the Holiday inn by the airport. the drivers returned the rental cars and the kids and i hung out in the hillier's hotel room watching random spanish speaking tv with mark, john, and nate. eventually we went to the lobby and watched the grandparents and honey and john and klaudette play skip bo until it was time for dinner. we went to Denny's because it was literally just a walk across the parking lot and because we'd all overdosed on rice and beans over the last week. i won't lie... the food kind hit the spot and we were glad to head back to an american feeling hotel for the night. sometimes you just get a little homesick like that. i took a marvelous shower and then headed to bed and held brady's hand (he was in a crib that slid perfectly between our bed and abigail's bed) until he fell asleep because he was still feeling under the weather. we were all asleep by 10:30. that's how we party on new years eve. ; )
thursday- we got out wake up call at 4:30am and were catching the shuttle to the airport at 5:15. yeay for early flights! the flight wasn't horrible but i was kind of sick of our kids at that point. brady slept in his carseat for a bit and i slept in my seat (brady by the window, then myself, then abigail... i had chris switch with the guy in front of us so that if brady kicked the seat, he was only kicking chris), but when we were all awake, i kind of just wanted to be really far away from my kids. sorry, it's the truth. there is such a thing as too much togetherness. and i'd skipped my unisom and prenatal vitamins for several nights and was feeling super sick and holding a barf bag just in case i actually threw up. so that didn't help. but i passed the kids around as much as i could (mostly to john, and to honey's row since he was sitting with mark and nate) and we all survived. bags and customs took a long time and then we said our sad goodbyes... especially sad to say goodbye to john who was heading to idaho the next morning. i kind of had a mini panic attack about missing everyone and how i wasn't going to see them that night at 6:30 for dinner... it's true. but i remembered that i always get sad and nostalgic at the end of trips and got myself pumped to just be at home with honey and the kids and get back to normal life and our spacious home (after living in a hotel for that long, it's exciting that you can be in a different room than your kids!) and a routine. of course when we arrived in Colorado, it was snowing and had been snowing a lot. we carried our kids and wheeled our bags to the car (i was glad i'd put on my fur boots when i'd gotten dressed that morning!) and hurried as fast as we could to get the kid's carseats installed and get the kids all buckled in the cars (since they were just wearing long sleeve shirts and pants with no heavy coats or boots. sadly, we found out that our car battery was dead and there was only one other person around in the parking lot. that guy was an angel though and the situation couldn't have been more perfect. chris had just run over to him to ask if he wanted our luggage cart (the guy politely declined because he had no need for it) so he ran back over again and asked if he had cables and could jump us. the guy actually had in his truck one of those battery pack things and just carried it over to our car. i helped them find our battery (since i'd just experienced it dying like 5 weeks previously on my birthday when we were at the zoo and i knew where it was kind of hidden) and it took like 30 seconds until our car started. on the way home, i couldn't help but keep gushing to christopher about how perfect that situation was (how sucky wouuld it have been so have been freezing in the parking lot and not been able to even heat up our car? and we would have tried to run around a deserted parking lot (wearing clothes that were not appropriate for the 21 degree weather) finding someone that had cables and time to jump our car. and it's not like any of us had cell phones so we couldn't just call the hilliers and have them drive over to where we were to give us a jump. it was seriously such a blessing. so i told honey that that solidified it for me and i was going to use some of my birthday/christmas money to buy one of those battery pack things so that i wouldn't be caught in a bad spot (what if it was dark and i was alone with my kids and there was no one around?!) if my battery died. and that way, if i was ever in a position to help someone that needed a jump, i could be that angel for them. so i need to do some amazon research, but i'm really really excited about this. i mean, we've had to borrow cables (and sometimes a jump) from people FOUR TIMES in the last year.
anyways... it snowed the whole way home and a lot more in the two days that followed. happily, costa rica was one of those super fun busy family trips that was enjoyable at the time, but also enjoyable to come back from. i'm so grateful for the opportunity to have gone. and abigail keeps talking about next time we go. ha... someday...
