Three weeks

I feel like there's a ton I need to update y'all on, but the thought of writing it all makes me very tired, so I may not get to everything.  Instead, I may just tell you a few fun things and do a bigger update tomorrow.  We'll see how it goes. 

Eduardo cracks me up.  He's already such a boy!  We had to go through his clothes to figure out what was clean and what was dirty as he and his father follow a "minimum two wearings before something is dirty unless it gets spilled on" policy, and all of Eduardo's clothes from the week were just piled on the desk in his room.  I would hold something up and ask him if it was dirty or clean and he would smell it and make a face like - that's good enough - and say it was clean.  Only if something had visible dirt on it would he say it was dirty.  I've already been through his clothes and made piles of things he's only allowed to wear around the house because they are stained and/or have holes / things that have to be given away because they are beyond stained or have major holes in them (some of these things he still is wearing - I'm going to have to hide them until I can figure out where to take them!) / things that are acceptable to wear in public.  :)  I don't really care all that much about it, necessarily, but he kept wearing these white and green shorts that have HUGE holes in the bum.  Not appropriate for public use!  :)  He's got a decent amount of shirts, but I would like to buy him some additional shorts.  He runs out of shorts quickly - hence the continued use of the green and white shorts even after I've given him a hard time about the holes.  :)  In a joking way, of course.  I don't want to give the kid a complex! 

It's funny the things I've learned matter to me as a parent over the past three weeks.  If Eduardo has only had juice, I make him have milk and/or water with dinner.  He can watch some TV in the morning, but not hours and hours worth.  He needs to spend some time on his own, keeping himself entertained without Davie or I or TV or video games or things like that, for part of every day.  I tell him I love you every night when I tuck him into bed and give him kisses.  It's been fun to watch him get used to me and start to be affectionate with me.  I don't think hugs and kisses were a big part of his life before, but I love to give hugs and hold his hand and things like that.  He's started snuggling with me while we watch movies in the evening and Tuesday afternoon when he called me Mama for the first time I thought I would cry.  I love that little boy!!! 

He should be able to go to school Monday.  I think he could potentially go tomorrow, but since it's a Friday, Davie figures it makes more sense just to wait until Monday.  We tried taking him this past Monday, but the school said his teacher wasn't back yet.  Waiting until Monday means we can call the school tomorrow and make sure his teacher is back, so we don't spend another morning getting up and ready if we don't have to.  Not that it was that much additional time or effort to take him to school Monday, but it helps keep him from getting nervous / excited about going to school just to be disappointed and have to come back home.  We've been working on math and English and his reading for part of every day.  He's learned quite a few English words already, considering we didn't really start teaching him any until this week!

Eduardo all ready for school on Monday, June 2nd.

We've got a car.  It's not exactly what I had hoped my next car would be (one day Infiniti, one day), but it should work really well for us here.  We purchased a 2000 Suzuki Grand Vitara with 134,000 miles on it from our Italian wife / English husband neighbor couple down the hill who are moving to Ecuador.  They've had it for two years and said they never had any problems with it.  I already scraped the side this afternoon trying to pull into the covered parking at our place.  :P  But it's just a little scrape and considering it's 14 years old, I figure it's just more character for the car.  :)  Thankfully Davie did not yell.  :)  We have very tight parking at our place and I figured I could pull in forward to the space I've been backing into.  Nope - turns out backing into the space is much easier than pulling in forward!  :P 

I had two interviews with Walmart HR this week.  One is a position with the shared services center here in Costa Rica and one is a position with Internal Audit in the US.  The US position would be a fair amount of travel, at least for the first year, but it sounds very interesting.  The Costa Rican position probably wouldn't be much travel at all, but I don't think the salary would be as good, although I'm really just guessing about that.  I'm supposed to have a video interview with the man who would be my boss for the US position early next week and it's another 2ish weeks before I hear something back on the CR position as they are just starting their interviews and I was the first one.  They've got 5-6 more candidates still to talk to before they move on to the second round of interviews.  Keep your fingers crossed that something comes from these interviews - I really like the sound of working for Walmart the more I read about the company, and it would be great to get a job!  We have an offer on the house now, so a job here is really the last big thing we are needing!

Speaking of the house offer, I don't think I've mentioned that here yet.  We are supposed to close on the 26th and I've been emailing with the title company about handling the signing of the paperwork from here, so it seems like everything is moving forward.  It's sad to have the house gone, but it's time.  Having been here three weeks already, the Tulsa house seems very far away.  I feel like we are settling in here very well, so it's not as sad to me to let go of the Tulsa house.  It was a wonderful house for almost 8 years, but it's time to let go. 

I'm about to enter into the longest time I've spent out of the US - I've done two previous trips in high school that were around 3 weeks long each.  As we wrap up our three weeks here and move into the fourth week, I'll have been out of the US longer than ever in my life.  That seems very weird.  But at the same time, right now it's something I'm okay with too.  Thank goodness!  :)

So we tried out the mailing to Miami option that I had previously posted about.  It worked really well, but it was pricey.  It was around $30 for taxes and shipping on a $5 invoice where the box weighed 5 pounds.  (I made up the invoice cost - it was actually stuff I had gotten free, so the fair value would have been way more than $5, but I just made something up. :)  It's possible the taxes were based on what the Costa Rican government has said the price of the items should be versus what the invoice price says.  I don't know about that.  But the taxes were almost as much as the invoice itself!)  So I don't know that it's really a feasible option for sending us things, unless it's something that was purchased at an extreme discount where adding the additional taxes / shipping costs wouldn't make the total cost of the item prohibitive and/or it's something that weighs almost nothing.  :)  It ended up being about $5 a pound for shipping costs, so shipping something heavy would really add up, I think.  I'm bummed, because I had really hoped that would work!!  But it's looking like electronic Visa gift cards are going to be the best way to go.  So not fun at all.  :(  If I do hear of any other options, I will keep you posted!!

We heard back from the lawyer that Eduardo doesn't have to leave at the end of his 30 day visa.  I'm still not 100% sure how that works - I sent some follow up questions to the lawyer so I can try to understand better - but right now it looks like only Davie will have to leave within the next week to renew his visa.  He and I still need to talk about timing, but maybe he can go Tuesday and be back by Thursday - that way he can be here Monday for Eduardo's first day of school.  I'm not really looking forward to being here without him, as I know I'll just worry the whole time he is gone about all the things I can think of that might potentially go wrong while he is away, but thankfully it's just a few days.  His next visa run won't be as long, but he's going to go to his mom's for this one to get his driver's license since he has to go back to Nicaragua anyway.  So that will take more time.  I guess after being apart for 17 months, we can handle being apart for three days.  :)  It'll be weird though!

I think that ended up being all of my updates.  Davie is down at a party for the English neighbor - he leaves Saturday (his wife left two weeks ago) and had a BBQ going away party tonight.  We took au gratin potatoes that were very yummy.  There was a New Yorker there who I felt very bad for as he didn't know what au gratin potatoes were!  I guess they are a Southern thing?  It was a very international party.  In addition to the US, Nicaragua and the UK, I know Italy, India and Columbia were represented, at a minimum.  It was funny to hear the mix of languages.  I was a party pooper and left after 30-45 minutes.  Eduardo came back about an hour ago and went to bed and Davie is still having fun.  I'm just not much for parties these days.  I came back and took a freezing cold shower (I've resigned myself to the fact that there will be no hot water showers for me once I start working as there seems to only be hot water Mon-Fri from around noon to 2pm and Sat / Sun we're lucky to have water at all, certainly no hot water, so tonight I just sucked it up and made myself take a shower in the ice cold water - after 10 minutes or so it wasn't so bad) and then I've just been playing around on my phone / the Internet since.  It's actually been kind of nice to have a few hours of quiet time.  Not that I don't enjoy watching a move in the evenings with my boys, because I definitely do!  We've had massive amounts of rain the past few evenings, so our movie nights have ended up with Davie on one side of me and Bella wedged in between Eduardo and I in the bed as she pants away in her nervousness over the storms.  :)  Then Sammie will get up there sometimes too and I'll have Sammie on one side in between Davie and I and Bella on the other and it's all just a little crowded for our full size bed!  :)  But I love it and wouldn't change it for anything.  Well, I would change Bella's fear / nervousness.  I feel so bad for her since it has rained here pretty much every afternoon since we got here and she HATES it!  :(  I'm hoping she eventually gets used to the rain and it stops bothering her so much.  That'll probably happen right as dry season kicks in and then we'll have to go through re-acclimating her to the rain next rainy season.  :P

Bella staring outside at the rain, wondering if it will ever stop......or wondering why she had to be brought to this place!

I'm sure I've forgotten something, but I'll let y'all go for now since this is so long!  :)  Thanks for reading along on our journey!  At some point I'll start putting pictures into the posts as pictures are always more fun.  :)  I went back and added a few.  And here's one of Eduardo and I - he wanted to take a pic of his "bump" too!  :)

And, no, I don't think my face is really looking that skinny these days - although I wish it was!  :)  I will say, I've still only gained three pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight.  I'm hoping to only gain 10 or so, and it's working so far!  All the weight from other areas of my body is just accumulating in my stomach.  :)

P.S.  Any word or group of words that is in a different color is hyperlinked to an article or a website and will open in a different window.  Just FYI, in case you hadn't realized.  I like to hyperlink things.  :)