Big day

Last night while surfing the web looking for childbirth classes, I stumbled upon a Facebook group for expat families living in the Central Valley (where we are). I spent quite awhile looking at recent posts on the group page and found a post about a weekly "Kids Cafe" during the month of July while the kids are on vacation from school. Every Wednesday kids can go to a private school in Escazu and spend three hours planning and executing lunch for their parents. For $20 for one kid and one adult plus $5 for each additional person at lunch, I figured this was something Eduardo had to try. The post said it would be bilingual too and would include music and art. Definitely sounded like a win-win. I didn't figure Eduardo could get into today's class given the short notice, but I emailed anyway and the lady emailed me back and he was able to go today! I think there was actually less Spanish than English and Eduardo seemed very nervous when I left him at the school, but when Davie and I got there he seemed to be having a good time and he said he wants to go back next week. The food was yummy too! And I really enjoyed getting to speak with some Americans!!

We came home and Davie and Eduardo played soccer for awhile and when they came inside I decided it was time to play with the egg we had put in vinegar Monday as part of our kitchen science experiments for the week. Eduardo thought the bouncing rubber egg was way cool. Until Davie tried bouncing it from a higher height and it broke. :) Although even that was pretty fun. 

Then, because we hadn't done enough today, I decided that the weather was perfect for us to make s'mores. I've been craving them for quite awhile now and we got the stuff to make them at the store this weekend (it was almost a major meltdown moment for me when I couldn't find graham crackers at first!). This afternoon it's actually cool with a storm rolling in, so really pretty good weather for cooking something over a fire outside. I'm not sure who was more excited about the s'mores - Eduardo or me - but all of us, including Davie, loved them. Neither Davie or Eduardo had ever had them before. Eduardo actually crazily said the next time we make them he wants one without chocolate! They were so good and messy. 

For me, a much better day today after Sunday. :) Although after Eduardo's big birthday day yesterday and everything we did today, I think tomorrow will be pretty boring! Friday I found a Fourth of July picnic that's put on each year by a group of expats, so that promises to be a lot of fun too. There will be food, games, a petting zoo and lots of other stuff. I'm also looking forward to spending more time speaking English! :)

I'm hopeful that the various groups of expats I've stumbled across the last few days will be helpful as we continue to transition to this country. It was interesting because the woman from the private school mentioned at lunch that she's spoken with lots of expats here who aren't happy because it's so different and things are just generally not as easy as we're used to things being in the US. While I agree with that sentiment and feel the same way, her comment made me want to not be one of those people. No, it's not easy here (my hammock pictures notwithstanding :)), but that doesn't mean I can't still come to be happy here. And that's the ultimate goal that I plan to reach!

Here are some pics from Eduardo's birthday yesterday and yesterday's vinegar and baking soda experiment. We went to an indoor play place instead of having a party for various reasons. It was a hit with Eduardo and only $4, so another win-win!

He enjoyed jumping off the stairs into the ball pit. I just tried not to picture him breaking his leg landing wrong. :)

He didn't mind this so much. But this....

He didn't really like at all! :) They had ropes and a harness so Davie pulled him up the wall and was able to slowly bring him down. But it totally freaked Eduardo out being up that high!

I've had Eduardo write in his notebook what he thought would happen before each experiment. (Because that's what the websites say you should do.)

He thought this was pretty cool. Of course I can't explain to him why any of what happens happens during the experiments, but he doesn't seem to mind that part. :) And the why isn't that important, right? Isn't it enough just to see the experiments? That's what I'm telling myself anyway! :)

We're three days into his three weeks of vacation. I'm hoping I haven't had us do too much too soon! We still have a ways to go before school starts again!

Culture Shock Part 2

Warning: this is kind of whiny. :) I'm ok, but I just had to say these things to feel better!

I wish I could go to the grocery store and find the things I want / am used to. They don't have my face wash or body wash or replacement heads for my toothbrush. I couldn't find vegetable broth! And the apple sauce is with the spaghetti sauce. Because they both have sauce in the name? Who knows. Grocery shopping takes even longer than it used to for me because I have to look at almost everything on every shelf to make sure I haven't missed the thing I was looking for. And it makes meal planning very difficult when I don't know if I'll be able to find ingredients I need. I miss refridgerated cinnamon rolls. They have a lot of products similar to the US, but refridgerated bread is not one of them - no Pillsbury crescent rolls here. :(

I wish my house didn't smell. :P I'm hoping it's just pregnancy nose and the house doesn't really smell, but I think it's really a mix of both. I can't figure out what is causing the smell, but I wish it would go away!

I wish I didn't have to worry about bugs. Flying bugs, crawling bugs, big bugs, little bugs. There are bugs everywhere and I. Hate. Bugs. I feel like I am probably eating and sleeping with bugs. I just have to try and ignore them as much as possible. Until I can't ignore them - I had to kill a big spider in the living room just now when I came down to let Bella out one last time. Ugh. 

I wish I could turn on the water and know for a fact that (1) we'll have water at all and (2) it'll be hot water. We went about 12+ hours starting last night with little to no water. I'll live without hot water if I have to, but we at least need cold water then! It's so annoying. I don't even mind hand washing the dishes so much, but I just feel wrong washing them with cold water!

I wish I could be headed to California for my annual 4th of July trip. And that Eduardo and Davie could be headed there with me too. 

I wish we could have friends and family over for a party for Eduardo's birthday tomorrow.

I wish there was a Qdoba, Melting Pot, and places to get mac & cheese and biscuits and gravy and chicken fried steak. I wish we had jobs so we could go to those places if they did have them. Maybe it's better they aren't here! :) (I did make biscuits and gravy the other day, but they don't have breakfast sausage so the gravy was just butter, milk and flour and not very flavorful.)

Ultimately I just wish I could be living with Davie and Eduardo in the US. But that's not possible yet, so I will suck it up and deal with all of these things I wish were different because they won't be changing any time soon. 

For all of the things I wish were different about the house, the part that makes it all worth it is that Eduardo can go play outside and we don't have to worry. Our complex is gated and there are only seven houses here. We know everyone and he can't leave and no one can get in without a gate opener. I never thought we would have to give an almost seven year old a curfew, but we finally had to go looking for him the other night around 8:30! He was playing with a boy two houses down, who unfortunately is out of town this week or else we would ask if he could celebrate Eduardo's birthday with us tomorrow. Eduardo at least has made friends! :)

Things really are good here, today's trip to the grocery store just sent me over the edge a little. I've always loved going to the grocery store, but I do not feel that way here. Hopefully I'll get that back as I get more used to the grocery stores here. 

Eduardo is on summer break for the next three weeks so I found some kitchen science experiments for us to do this week. Of course I couldn't find everything I needed at the store, so some we'll have to revamp, but I think he'll enjoy the ones we can do! He certainly seemed to have fun setting up the rubber egg experiment tonight!

Thanks for listening to me whine! :)

Pictures!!

I have lots I could and should tell y'all, but I think a picture post would be more fun. :) So here's a few pics from the last few weeks. 

He says he doesn't like the animals. And then this happens. :) He's a total sucker for them!

Back to the doc today. I can't believe we've already been here long enough for me to go to the doctor twice!! All is looking good and baby weighs right around one kilo (2.2 pounds). She's moving all over the place. I love feeling / watching my belly move!

And speaking of belly - it's sooo big! :) I've still only gained around four pounds, so I'm happy about that. But the belly just keeps getting bigger. One of my current fave things is when Eduardo sees the belly coming - it's right at his eye level - and he gets excited and hugs it and talks to baby girl. I told him she can hear him now, so he likes to say hi. :)

This was our excitement last week. :( Davie got hit by a motorcycle on his way home from taking Eduardo to school last Wednesday. Thankfully no one was hurt, and just structural damage to the car. But definitely scary! And poor Davie had only had his license for a week! 

This bug. Seriously. It's this sort of thing that freaks me out in this country!!! 

Eduardo loves the movies. :)

The sky here. It's gorgeous. (Makes up a little for the crazy bugs.)

We've continued to have ups and downs as we get used to life here, but overall things are very good. The time is going so fast and I have to remind myself that we can't live in our little bubble forever, even though I'm loving the bubble. :) But one day we'll have work (hopefully soon!) and I know we can't spend everyday napping or in the pool or watching the World Cup. :) I'm so glad we have this time together right now though. It's really worked out so well to be able to spend time together before baby girl comes and after so long apart!

All by myself

And yes, you totally have to sing the title of this post in a sad, slow style, like the song. :) Because that's what I do in my head. :)

Davie headed to Nicaragua very early this morning, leaving Eduardo and I to fend for ourselves for a few days. Eduardo is finally in school, so I had the house to myself today from 8:30-1:30. It felt very weird. But seeing as my sleep was all messed up from Davie leaving early and Eduardo waking me up at 5:30 saying he was ready to go and we were going to be late (we didn't need to leave until after 8), I ended up spending most of the morning dozing. Not that it helped me feel any better, to be honest, but I don't think I could have gotten much done had I tried. :)

School seems to be going well so far for Eduardo. I think Davie and I have had more work for his classes than he has so far, but now that we've got his notebooks straightened out, I'm thinking that should slow down. I do have to say that I haven't been super impressed with the supposed teaching of English at this school as he hasn't had it so far this week, even though he was supposed to. I guess it's a different teacher and she hasn't come in the last two days. We'll see. She may be sick - I've already discovered it's very hard to get answers from Eduardo about what happens during the school day. His answers tend to be "I don't know" or something so far from the subject of the question, that it's obvious he either wasn't listening or didn't understand the question. It's a little frustrating. :) But I know it's normal, so I just take what I can get from him and hope his teacher will tell us anything else we need to know!

Tomorrow school starts at 7am, so it'll be good if Eduardo can be up and ready early. He'll probably end up sleeping and be hard to get up. :)  I need to go tomorrow and buy him a clock for his room so he can know what time it is when he wakes up and whether or not he is able to continue sleeping or can get up. 

We've found a bilingual private school that isn't far from the house that we want to look at for when I get a job.  It's got a preschool too, so baby girl could go as well, which I think would be nice if they could go to the same place.  We'll see though - there's still lots to figure out! 

Davie should be back Thursday night. If all goes well. He's going to pick up his drivers license, he stayed in Ocotal tonight so he would be there first thing to get his license before heading to his mom's, and bring back some of Eduardo's toys since they didn't have room to bring any last trip. It feels weird for us to be back in different countries after being together almost every minute of every day the past (almost) four weeks! But I like that he doesn't feel as far now since I'm just one country over. 

I've got my second interview with Walmart US set for Friday afternoon. Other than getting ready for that and starting to plan Eduardo's seventh birthday party (he wants a Lego theme :) and thankfully I have this handy guide to use to help plan, but any ideas you have would be welcome as well!) it should be a pretty slow week! Yesterday I applied for more jobs, so hopefully if Walmart doesn't work out, something else will come along!

I hope you all have a good week!!

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.  :) 

It's really happening

We have wifi at the house!!! And my iPhone is back to being hooked up to my US phone number. Yay! :) Here's the post I wrote / started on the plane on the 15th. 

I can't really begin to describe how I feel as I wait for the plane to take off. I'm overwhelmed and happy and sad and excited and anxious about finding a job and getting settled and making sure we do everything legally and the right way (as it would completely defeat the purpose to come to Costa Rica, miss a step and end up illegal here!) but mostly I just keep thinking about being with Davie and Eduardo and the animals in a few short hours and how we'll finally have what we've been working for the past few years. It may not look like what we had thought it would, but we'll be together and that's what matters.  We're not done, not by a long shot, but we're so much closer than we were. 

Dad and I got Tiger, Sammie and Bella dropped off and checked in for their trip in cargo. That was about $1,000. But the people at Pet Safe (Uniteds pet travel service) seemed nice and mostly on too of things. Sweet Pea and I got checked in ok, after another $1,400. (This is getting pricey :).) Costa Rica requires proof that you're leaving the country before you can come in. I thought I could just tell them we were renting a car and driving to Nicaragua, but that didn't work. So I bought a refundable ticket for August 15th for $1,000. Then it was $390 for my bags because I had three and one was over 50 pounds. But all things considered, I don't feel like the extra baggage fees are all that bad. Expensive, yes, but since I'm moving I figure it's worth it. 

Sweet Pea seems to be doing well. I had to carry her through the X-ray machine but she actually did really well with that. I hope everyone in cargo is doing as well!!! Everyone but Sammie got Benadryl this morning. (Sammie wasn't having it and threw hers up.) I really think the Benadryl helps a lot. 

Davie and Eduardo made it to the house late last night. Davie said Eduardo likes the house and they were at the market when I called this morning. They are going to meet me at the airport around noon / 12:15 and we'll go to cargo to pick up Tiger. Then we have to go to the USDA equivalent to get import permits for Sammie and Bella before picking them up. As I was getting on the plane I got a call from United cargo in Costa Rica telling me I need a broker to get the animals out of cargo. The guy I spoke with is going to organize that. Thank goodness. Let's hope that all goes well! There's still a lot to do once we land to make sure this happens as planned!!

Sweet Pea has gotten anxious and keeps moving around under the seat. I hate that she's freaking out, but hopefully she'll be ok for a few more hours!

I haven't really been looking forward to the move, to be honest. I've been excited to be all together, but not to have to live in Costa Rica. I wasn't sure how conflicted I would feel when it came time to actually make the move. But the last few weeks, I've just been ready to be there and I stopped feeling so conflicted about making the move. Yesterday we passed the turnoff for Dallas and there was no doubt in my mind that I did not want to head that way. Even this morning, after getting a little sad before leaving the hotel, I still didn't feel like there was another option I would rather take. I'm happy with this choice. I know there's still so much to figure out and it won't be perfect when we get there, but I'm ready to face this adventure (or challenge depending on how you look at it :)) and like Davie and I always say, as long as we're together, we'll be ok. 

Thank you to all of you for being with us on this journey. It's been full of ups and downs over the last few years, and part of me wasn't sure if we would ever get here. But I'm so glad we did and I can't wait for the next part of the fun!!

Culture Shock

I found this website months ago when we first started looking at Costa Rica and right after the move I reread this article on culture shock.  Of course my thoughts on culture shock at the time were - this won't be a problem for me!  I've got Davie and sure things will be different, but how different can it really be?  We'll have a similar routine to what we had in the US and all will be fine.  And all we really care about is being together - the country we're in won't play that big of a part in that! 

Why am I always so naïve about things?  :)

Yesterday I would say I experienced culture shock for the first time in a big way.  And it wasn't even any one specific incident.  It was more just that I got completely overwhelmed while driving.  Because, you see, while driving is driving, at the same time it is so very different here from what I know from the US.  I never know what the next turn will bring - one way streets that start and stop without warning?  Stop lights where all the lights are dark?  (I still have no idea what that one means - do I go, do I stop, do I yield?  No idea.)  A car stopped in the middle of the road randomly?  A person or persons hanging out in the middle of the road?  A roundabout?  (I hate those!)  In the US I may not have known what the next turn would bring, but I knew how to approach whatever might be there.  Here, I feel like I am still learning how to deal with each thing I may encounter on the road and it makes me very nervous at times.  Yesterday especially was bad because it was raining off and on pretty hard and there was A TON of traffic!  There were also people soliciting money everywhere we turned for a group called Techo and having people in the middle of the road (think the firemen with the boots only the number of people is multiplied by 50 and it's not limited to one intersection it's literally everywhere you go in multiple cities) with all the traffic and the rain just made it even more disconcerting.  Plus, I was tired and already had spent almost an hour on the phone with T-Mobile and the bank trying to get issues resolved so I was frustrated before we even left the house.  Needless to say, it all culminated in a big meltdown and no one was happy by the time we headed home.  

Mostly what I learned though is that we aren't going to be living in our own little bubble here and there will be things that will frustrate me and make me uncomfortable and I need to learn to deal with those in a better way BEFORE I end up completely overwhelmed and upset.  It's funny too, because in a lot of ways I really enjoy driving here.  It's like driving in Dallas - gotta be aggressive and get out there, which I enjoy.  The part that's not like Dallas is that you have lots of people on the road who drive SO SLOW and in the left lane!  Every time I pass them I tell them they obviously aren't from Texas and don't know that slow people are supposed to be in the right lane.  :) 

I also learned that I really probably need to sleep more / better.  I think going from a king sized bed that I had all to myself for quite awhile to now sharing a full sized bed with Davie has made it a little difficult for me to get good sleep.  :)  If/when I get a job, I'll definitely need to have more sleep - being tired all the time is not going to be conducive to a good work day! 

Davie spoiled me this morning, so I'm feeling much better.  :)  I slept until after 9am and then got up and he made me banana pancakes, some of my favorite things.  A much better start to the day than yesterday when I was on the phone with annoying people for an hour!  :P

In other news, we went to the lawyer Friday morning to talk about residency options.  She said our best option is to find jobs and get work permits and then to apply for residency once baby is born.  If we can't get jobs, we stay under tourist visas and have to leave the country and renew our visas when they expire.  (We can literally leave the country and return in the same day, so it's not a big deal to make a run to the border as needed, just inconvenient.)  Then once baby is born, we apply for residency and change our status then.  The part that I had misunderstood was that even if I get a job, it doesn't necessarily help Davie and Eduardo - they may still have to be under tourist visas if Davie can't find a job.  I had thought Davie could get a spouse visa if I have a work permit, but the lawyer said no.  It's possible that with the guardian papers that Eduardo's mom sent us, Eduardo can be here with me if I get a job - we scanned the paperwork to the lawyer  Friday for her to look over and let us know what our options are as far as that goes.  (Totally forgot to take them with us when we went - did not make me happy.  :P)  There is the possibility we can get our current tourist visas extended without us leaving the country for the same amount of time as we currently have - 90 days for me and 30 days for Davie and Eduardo - but the lawyer didn't seem to think that was super likely.  If Davie and Eduardo both would have to leave at the end of their current visas (only 12ish days from now), then we'll probably go ahead and try to get the extension for them as it was a lot of work to get Eduardo's visa.  If Eduardo can stay here with me on my 90 day visa, we'll just take a weekend trip up to the border and Davie can get his new visa and we'll visit Guanacaste, which we want to visit anyway.  :) 

I had hoped for some better news from the lawyer, but I'm not really surprised by most of what she said.  She did say we can do most of the paperwork for residency before baby is born and have it reviewed and everything so all we would need to turn in would be a birth certificate.  That could help save a lot of time.  She said if we don't do anything before hand, it's 3-6 months to get residency once baby is born.  But we'll see how that goes.  Things here tend to move pretty slowly.

So, that's where we are.  Hopefully I'll have a job and won't have to worry about my visa and we'll just need to work on Davie and potentially Eduardo.  Davie and I are going to look this weekend for roofing / construction companies he can call Monday to see about him getting a job as well.  It would be nice if we could both get jobs next week!! 

I have interviews with two different departments within Walmart  this week - one Tuesday here in Costa Rica and a phone interview with the compliance department at corporate in AR on Thursday.  I'm really hoping something works out with Walmart since they seem very interested.

Friday I also accepted an offer on the house and signed the contract.  We'll close June 26th.  We'll end up taking a pretty big loss, but the buyer is an investment company who is buying the house as is and I think we would need to replace the A/C unit if there was an inspection, so that alone makes up a big part of the loss we are taking.  It'll be nice to have the house gone, although sad too!  

It is possible Eduardo can start school tomorrow.  We're going to take him and hope that his teacher is there.  It would be nice if we could all get on a routine! 

Now we're off to run more errands (the errands seem never ending!) then we're going to try to catch a 2:30 showing of Maleficent.  :)  I love summer movie season!