Today marks 21 days until we leave Costa Rica. Three weeks. We officially enter a period of time that could be a “long vacation”.
Sadly, a vacation is something we’re not going to be having. Instead, we have a lot of things we have to do. Not just here, but also in preparation for our return to Calgary. In some ways, it almost makes leaving Calgary look easy…
Well, Monkey, we’re down to less than a month before we’re back home again. In fact, a month today you’ll (hopefully) be sound asleep in a bed in our home in Calgary. It’s hard to believe that this is actually ending. It seems to odd to think that after all that we’ve been through, that this isn’t more permanent. Such are the joys of life…
Thankfully, one of the other joys of life are grandparents. You’re lucky — you’ve got four of them. And you were very excited when Grandpa and Granny came down on Wednesday. It’s Grandpa’s third visit since we came to Costa Rica, and Granny’s second. You might see them nearly every day on Skype, but there’s just nothing like seeing them in person.
Our time is dwindling in Costa Rica, Monkey. Our little experiment draws to a close in just over a month. That’s five weekends (not counting the one we just had — that would have made it six). Our Costa Rica “bucket list” is a little longer than we’d like, and there are just things we are not going to get to see. It’s a little tragic, considering how long we’ve been here, but I guess this is what happens when the joys of life sometimes hold on a little harder than with others.
Being in good shape (namely, none of us was sick), we decided to take a little journey north to La Paz Waterfall Gardens. It’s listed in all the tour books as one of the places “you must visit”, and we’d waited more than long enough to go.
We kinda had to wait, though. It took them a while to rebuild…
Hey Monkey! Almost a year and a quarter ago, I brought you and Mommy so we could all be together here in Costa Rica. In that time, we’ve had the opportunity to do some travelling, but until this past week, we hadn’t ever been to the Caribbean side of the country. It was kind of a major check mark we needed to cover.
We’ve been to the Pacific side a few times now, and we’ve done the “middle” parts in between, even just a little. (Sadly, we’ll probably not be able to do the more southern parts. Or see pretty much anything else, if my job ends up being the way it’s looking.) It would have been pretty silly not to see at least both coasts.
And with our impending departure in a couple of months, we were running out of time to do it.
For anyone who’s been reading this blog for a while, you know two things:
One of those things is about to change.
I arrived in Costa Rica on 16 June 2008. I started the process to become a resident of Costa Rica over a month before that. All of our paperwork was handled to immigration lawyers.
And we waited.
And waited.
Well, Monkey, the last week’s been quite the slog. Last Saturday, you started showing signs of being sick, having caught something from one of your schoolmates. It basically turned you into a bonafide snot factory. (One upside: you’ve learned how to wipe your own nose. Now if we can just figure out how to make you blow it, too.)
The bug hit me next, kicking in on Tuesday, and then taking me down on Thursday and half of Friday (I didn’t sleep at all Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday nights, partly due to your coughing and partly due to feeling so crappy.) Mommy caught it next, and her illness really kicked in on Friday, and is just coming out of her illness today.
The group of us effectively played “Sick Family Robinson”, holing up and trying to keep our wits, all the while trying not to spread the sickness to Grandma.
Well, Monkey, if your memory is any good, you should remember the last few days for the rest of your life. And not because you got to spend five uninterrupted days with your dad (remember, I just turned 37 … I’m not old), or even because Nana is here for a visit.
It’s ‘cuz I doubt you’ll ever see that much rain ever again.
Well, Kiddo, today was a really fun day!
Plans don’t always go according to plan, but there are those times when one plan ends up giving who new plans that are possibly even more fun than the original ones. I’d like to think today was like that, largely because we got to go somewhere fun, and I got to spend nearly the whole day with you! (Except for, y’know, when you were sleeping.)
Right now on this very week, back in Calgary, AB, is the Calgary Stampede. It’s the largest outdoor show in the world (at least that’s the story). It usually means a massive influx of cowboy- and cowgirl-wannabes (among the real McCoy, mind you, which the Stampede also attracts in large numbers), a lot of public drunkenness. A lot of Calgarians happen to take vacation during Stampede week, for obvious reasons.
One thing the Stampede is also famous for is something that doesn’t actually happen at the Stampede — it happens just about everywhere else in the city: the Stampede pancake breakfast. It’s a tradition dating back decades, supposedly started when one kind rancher shared his breakfast with those around him.
There’s only two rules with pancake breakfasts: have a lot of people, and it should be free! (There are even websites to help people find the pancakes.)
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