Home Sweet Home / Coming Soon

This will be a double post. :) I've been meaning to post an update about the Tulsa house and hadn't gotten around to it, so I'll combine that update with info about the potential Costa Rica living situation. It seems to work well together. 

First, the Tulsa situation. This will be a rambling story I'm sure. Bear with me. :)

Years ago, right before Davie and I got married, so four years ago now, the house on the left of us caught fire while I was out of town at a training. I still remember the phone call from the friend who was watching the cats for me - she had gone by the house and it was surrounded by fire trucks! Thankfully our house wasn't damaged, but the house next door was unliveable. And has remained that way up until very recently. It was a total eyesore, but I didn't mind not having neighbors, to be honest. :)

They've finally gotten the house fixed up and it went on the market last week or so. The Saturday between my trip to California and my trip to Costa Rica I was at the house when the realtor for the house next door came by. I knew from talking to a different neighbor that they had gone all out in fixing up the house next door and that they were going to be asking a lot for it. I had vaguely considered trying to piggy back my house with theirs, but hadn't really gotten around to doing much to get the house ready to put on the market yet. 

So the realtor came by and offered to show me around the house next door. Of course I took her up on it, as I was way curious to see how it all turned out. And I will say it's gorgeous. However, I don't think it's really $214k for 1400 sq ft gorgeous!! Needless to say, seeing that house and hearing how much they are wanting for it really started to get me motivated to finally do something about mine. So I told the realtor to put a coming soon sign in the front yard and that I would try to get the house ready when I got back from Costa Rica as she thinks the house next door will sell in weeks. (I would be surprised if that happened, but you never know!) My hope is someone will go look at the house next door, but want something bigger / cheaper and will come check out mine. And buy it. Soon. :) 

Of course I say I want someone to snatch it up soon, but that's not 100% true. It wasn't love at first sight for me with the house, but it didn't take long for it to grow on me and now I can't imagine living somewhere else!! When I first saw the house, I had just come from a newly renovated, 2000+ sq ft home with three floors that was over 100 years old and on the national register of historic homes. I loved that old house and all the history it held. I did not however love the neighborhood it was in, that promised not to be welcoming / overly safe for a single white girl. So I walked into my future home, mourning the loss of my "dream house" and was met with gold walls in the living room with black trim and black leather furniture and heavy curtains that kept all the light out. It was terrible!!! But I kept going back to that house, even though I hadn't liked it at first, and eventually I realized I really did like it and it wouldn't take much but a coat of paint to make it something I could really love. And that's where I've been the last seven and a half years. 

I've put it on the market before. The first time was soon after I bought it. I had a panic attack after realizing that owning a home meant I was stuck in Tulsa and what if I wanted to move?? So I listed it and my realtor came to the house and took professional pictures to use in the listing. I still remember sitting in my cube at PwC, looking at those pictures and thinking - but I love this house! I can't sell! And that made that decision for me. :)

We listed again the summer before Davie went to Nicaragua, thinking that selling before he left would be easier than me having to deal with it on my own. And it would have been. But our realtor wasn't great and it didn't work out. I do think that having the familiarity of the house to come home to has been helpful over the last year with Davie gone. With so much of my life uncertain, the house has been a nice constant. 

But now the time is here to sell it for real. I can't imagine giving it up and I can't imagine Davie not being there again before it's gone or Eduardo never getting the chance to live there. But it has been a great first home to me and I will always remember my life there. 

I do have to say I was feeling a little discouraged our first few days in Costa Rica. I was expecting San Jose to be a typical Central American city, but I had hoped for something that would feel a little more like home. When we went to Alajuela to the butterfly farm I was really starting to feel like there wasn't going to be a place I felt we could call home. I've never wanted a yard, and even the little yard I have in Tulsa seems big sometimes, but I definitely want more than the one sq ft yard that homes in Costa Rica seemed to have......if they were lucky! I kept telling Davie I wanted to live in the mountains. If I looked closely at my surroundings, I really didn't love what I saw, but if I looked out, I just saw mountain after mountain covered in green and it seemed like that could be where we would find what we wanted. 

On our way back from the butterfly farm we ended up on the wrong bus. This ended up being fortuitous though as we went further into the mountains and we really got to see part of that area. I don't think we were even really in the town before I turned to Davie and said "We're going to live in Santa Anna (pronounced Santana)".  I don't think he believed me at first, but it didn't take long for him to get on board with the idea. The houses there are more in the country, with good sized yards, not on top of the neighbors, and the town itself seems cleaner and less poor and crowded (but also less "Americanized" than Escazu, the most expensive suburb where the expats mostly live - I may not want all Costa Rica, but I don't really want cookie cutter America either!). We did hear that it's a more expensive place to live, but hopefully we can make it work. 

So now the plan is for me to get the house ready / sell the house and find a job. Davie will head to Costa Rica around the first of March to try to find a place for us to live in Santa Anna before I get there with the animals around March 21st (after we've filed the 10k at work and I've had time to wrap up any loose ends). Then I'll start work there around the 31st of March or first of April. 

There's still lots to do, but I do like that we now have a plan and I feel better about the chances of finding a good place to live there. I think Santa Anna or the surrounding area will end up being a very nice place for us to live and raise our family!

It's an adventure!

I'm not sure where I got my travel style from, but I can guarantee it wasn't from Mom!  :)  I did try to be organized - I bought a travel guide for Costa Rica and looked online at various half day / day trips, but in the end I decided Davie and I would just wing it.  Which, considering the way I live the rest of my life, I shouldn't be surprised that that's the way I travel as well.  I read about 60ish pages of the travel guide and found a few places that sounded interesting.  Of course the travel guide is 350+ pages, but I'm sure 60 pages gave me plenty of insight into the country.  I didn't really need to read more!  :)  And being based in Escazu, outside of San Jose, did kind of limit our options some, so it's not like everything in the travel guide would be applicable anyway.  :)  Or at least that's what I'm telling myself.

I decided I wanted to go to a butterfly farm and to see a volcano.  Not that I shared those plans with Davie, necessarily, but that's what I had in my head.  :)  So Friday morning we got a lazy start and then hopped a bus to Alajuela to go to the butterfly farm.  I hadn't read much in the guide book besides "butterfly farm" so I didn't really know what to expect, but I figured anything involving butterflies would be awesome!  We took buses to Alajuela and then got a cab to go to the butterfly farm.  The guide book said that all cab drivers would know where to go if we said we wanted "la finca de mariposas", which ended up not being altogether true.  However, once we showed him the entry in the guide book, the cab driver was able to get us in the general direction of where we wanted to go.  We went down the wrong street to begin with and ended up at this steep downhill, gravel road where the cab driver stopped.  People in the house next to the drop off told him he couldn't go down there - he would get stuck and need a tractor to get him out!  So he had to back all the way out and get back to the "main" road.  We finally ended up at the butterfly farm, only to see a "closed" sign, but the gate was open so we went ahead and went in.  They let us in and we didn't have to pay, but I don't know if we got the full experience or not.  I couldn't really understand everything they said about their closed status, but all I cared about was getting to see some butterflies!

An awesome worker showed us around and pointed out various caterpillars and eggs and pupae.  We never would have seen all of that on our own!  I didn't realize until just now that the butterfly farm is closed for good.  Which is sadness as it was very pretty and the website says it's been open for 23 years!  I'm glad we got to experience the garden before they shut it down to the public completely!

I checked back a couple times, but never did see this guy fully come out of his cocoon!  I really wanted to help him along, but I used all of my self control to not touch him!

The big catterpillar in the bottom right turns into the blue butterfly on the left.  Craziness!!

These butterflies are all laying eggs on the leaves around them.  I didn't get a closer picture, unfortunately!

If you messed with this guy he would stick out his antenna and then "spit" nasty smelling stuff at you...that's what is dripping down the leaf.  He turns into a beautiful butterfly though!  The same as the one who is trying to leave his cocoon in the first picture.

This is the same as the guy above - I seriously thought he was bird poop at first.  :)

I really loved this brown and orange and white one.

Saturday I tried to set an alarm so we could get up early and get to the volcano.  The guide book said that the best time to view the volcano was early in the morning before the clouds roll in and there is only one bus that leaves San Jose every day at 8am.  If Davie and I were going to make that bus, we would have to leave the hotel no later than 7:30.  So I tried to convince Davie Friday night that we should go to the volcano and get up early but he wasn't really feeling it.  I went ahead and set the alarm, but we didn't get up.  Surprise.  :)  We had another lazy start, but I really, really wanted to go to the volcano!  I wanted to see more of the country if we were going to seriously consider living there.  I finally convinced Davie to go and that we would just pay extra for a cab, so we set off.  It wasn't until we were on our way that I realized that part of Davie's reticence may have been due to the fact that we were looking at 2+ hours on buses / in cabs after spending a fair amount of time on buses / in cabs the day before and he had already spent two full days on buses getting to Costa Rica and would have to spend another two days on buses when he returned to Nicaragua.  Then I felt really bad about forcing the issue! 

Davie was really good about letting me do what I wanted though, and I did apologize for dragging him all over the place to see the things I wanted.  To be fair, we did spend Thursday shopping for tennis shoes for Davie, so it wasn't like the whole trip was only about what I wanted.  :)  But still.  Then I felt even worse when we finally got to the top of the volcano only to find out that the weather hadn't been great the last 3 days and all we were going to be able to see was clouds.  It did make me feel a little better to know that even had we gotten up early and gotten to the volcano on the bus we still wouldn't have been able to see anything but clouds, but I still felt terrible that we made the long trip only to be able to see clouds.  I will say though that it was a very interesting, surreal experience to be at the top of a volcano and to not see anything because of the clouds / fog.  I knew we were on top of a mountain and that we were high due to the drive up, but since all we could see was white starting ten feet in front of us, it was hard to wrap our heads around that idea.  It was also really interesting to experience the drive up the volcano.  I think we went through three different climates on our way to the top.  We started in Alajueala which was hot and humid, went into a colder climate and then got into wet and cold and cloudy.  It was crazy to experience all of that in the span of an hour!

That's the arm of the cab driver pointing to where we are in relation to the picture.  On a "normal" day you should be able to see down inside the volcano to the crater.

Supposedly the whiteness is hiding the crater of the volcano.  The whiteness was absolute - there was no seeing through it. 

More whiteness.  I don't know that I have ever seen anything like it!  The volcano would have been cool, but the whiteness really was too. 

I think Davie would have preferred a trip where things were planned or where we did nothing and just hung out in the hotel the whole time.  But that's just not how I roll.  :)  I did enjoy the slow starts to every day and the hotel buffet for breakfast was great, especially followed by a local lunch on our travels.  And we did get lots of down time.  I'm glad we got to see the country, or at least a little bit of it, and our cab driver was great - he pointed out a couple of awesome waterfalls on the way up the volcano and then stopped on the way down so we could get pictures!

It was literally breathtaking.

I kept hoping to see a monkey or an awesome bird.  :)

There were so many rivers and streams throughout the country that we saw.  I loved them!  What was crazy though was that you would go across the bridge and look down and the bottom of the ravine would be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay far down.  It was really surprising!

This just freaked me out - everyone on the bus had to get off and walk across the bridge as it wasn't strong enough to hold the combined weight of the bus and all of the people.  Seriously????  It made me nervous to go across even in just the cab after that!!

Mom hooked us up with this awesome lady and her family.  They were so nice and it was fun to have lunch with them Sunday!!  Their little girl was tooooo cute!!  I bought lunch in exchange for their help in getting us settled - I think we got the better end of that deal.  :)  This is also the only picture I got of Davie and I during the whole trip!!  I got lots of pictures of things and the scenery, but none of either of us.  I don't know what that was about.  :P 

This song

"Wake Me Up"

Feeling my way through the darkness
Guided by a beating heart
I can't tell where the journey will end
But I know where to start

They tell me I'm too young to understand
They say I'm caught up in a dream
Well life will pass me by if I don't open up my eyes
Well that's fine by me

[2x]
So wake me up when it's all over
When I'm wiser and I'm older
All this time I was finding myself
And I didn't know I was lost

I tried carrying the weight of the world
But I only have two hands
Hope I get the chance to travel the world
But I don't have any plans

Wish that I could stay forever this young
Not afraid to close my eyes
Life's a game made for everyone
And love is the prize

[2x]
So wake me up when it's all over
When I'm wiser and I'm older
All this time I was finding myself
And I didn't know I was lost

Didn't know I was lost
I didn't know I was lost
I didn't know I was lost
I didn't know (didn't know, didn't know)

Bucket List

I'm on the plane, sitting in first class again (a girl could get used to this), finally headed home after what feels like a forever long time away, even though it really wasn't, and I'm reading the latest O Magazine. This isn't a magazine I typically pick up, but I saw on FB that there's an article about forgiving others in this month's issue and it caught my eye. So while looking for a magazine at the airport (magazines are my travel treat - I almost never buy one unless I'm traveling), I remembered the article and picked up O. Even though it's not a magazine I normally read, I still have to read it cover-to-cover since I have it. No skipping ahead to the article I was interested in for me. Magazines are meant to be scoured over with every word and picture analyzed. I don't want to miss anything! So while pouring through the pages, I come across an article that talks about things to take off your bucket list. Things that are only on there to please other people, for example. And it gets me thinking about how bucket lists are all the rage right now, but I've never sat down and really thought about what would be on my list. What would I be sad about if I never experienced it? And then a thought occurred to me - would living abroad have been on my bucket list prior to this? And the answer, of course, is yes. In fact, living abroad was on my unofficial bucket list for years. I would check overseas opportunities while at PwC and GT and spoke with people about how that would work. It was something I had been interested in before, just not something I had really thought about for years. I think things have been so consumed by the many consequences my marrying Davie came with, both good and bad, that I haven't given much thought to long term beyond wanting to be together and wanting to have kids. And maybe I never thought about him and I living out of the country since I know he came to the US for a better life. Given that fact, I don't think I had considered talking to him about leaving this country after he worked so hard to get here. (Other than making his leaving to work out the Visa situation a requirement, of course.) But it's kind of silly that I hadn't thought about it since he's lived in other countries before. There's the US and Nicaragua and Costa Rica. So for him, and most of the people he knows, I think, living in a different country isn't the same as it is for most of us. It's not nearly as big of a deal. 

All of that then got me thinking about why I've been so upset / worked up about leaving now, if living overseas is really something I would have said I wanted had you asked me 5 years ago. And I think it really all comes down to control. I HATE not having control over things, and this is a decision that was mostly made for me. So I've been upset about the loss of control, and understandably upset at leaving everything here behind, but I really need to be focused on the exciting adventure that is ahead of us. I have a hard time feeling more than one thing at a time, I think. I wholly commit myself to whatever emotion is strongest and I come to grips with it and consider it from all angles and talk it around in my head until I get to the point where I don't feel it as strongly anymore and I'm able to put it down and move on to the next thing. But that's been hard for me to do with my angst around moving because there's so much wrapped up into it. And I want to be happy but I'm also mad and frustrated and sad and scared and nervous and it's all just too much. But I think maybe I can start putting it down now. Realizing that, while it may not have been 100% in my control, this is still something I have been interested in for years and that I think Davie and I will be very well suited for. I think it's also something that he and I may have come to on our own, had there not been other pressing things we were trying to accomplish. I think we're at around 34 days until we go to Costa Rica. I'm getting more excited and less upset as each day goes by. My hope now is that I'll step off the plane, find Davie and immediately feel like I'm home. I know it probably won't be that quick, but I do think I'll leave there with a more secure feeling that we are doing the right thing. And, if that's the case, I may just end up happy about crossing "live overseas" off my bucket list yet. 

I will say one thing that will always be on my list is spending as much time as possible with my boys!! 

Living on Tulsa time

Although I guess it would be more appropriate to say "Nicaraguan time" as that seems to be the big driver for me these days. I never paid much attention to time zones before. Now I feel like I'm constantly playing the "what time is it in xyz place" game. I'm traveling a fair amount this fall for work, personal and Davie and it seems like everywhere I'm going is on a different time zone. Which never was that big of a deal before, but now I have to calculate the time in Tulsa and in Nicaragua. 

Technically Nicaragua is Central time, but they don't do daylight savings time, so right now they are the equivalent of Mountain time. It's really not that big of a deal, except for times like right now when I'm in Eastern time and sending emails to people at work in Tulsa and trying to find time to talk to Davie. It also comes into play on my way to / from Nicaragua. Especially when I have three flights and I'm flying in/out of Miami and I end up in three time zones in one day. Then I spend most of the day trying to figure out what time it is in the city I'm in, in the city I'm going to and in Tulsa / Nicaragua so I can figure out when I should eat and what time I'll get to where I'm going but what time it will feel like to me. 

Maybe it's something I focus on a lot right now because it's an easy way to keep my brain busy and not thinking about things that would potentially make me emotional. Either way, I'm hoping it gets a little less complicated when the US falls back and Davie and I are back on the same time. Although I do think to some extent I need to get used to it as I don't think the international aspect of our lives is going away anytime soon. Maybe I'll become an expert at some point. Or maybe I'll just download an app for my phone that will tell me what time it is in my saved cities.....I think I like that idea. I'm sure there's an app for that! :)

Pride

Tonight has been a big night. I'm president of the Tulsa chapter of the Accounting and Financial Women's Alliance and we raised almost $3,000 for scholarships for women studying accounting or finance at local universities. (We just are starting our scholarship program and this money is a great way to kick it off!) I'm so proud to be part of this group and making a difference. I can't wait to begin awarding scholarships with the money we've raised!! We just reactivated the Tulsa chapter last year and I feel like we've come so far already. We've had great sponsors and great speakers and I'm looking forward to seeing what else we can do. (Although I will say it's also been a lot of work and I'm ready to pass off the leadership reigns soon!)

The other big news of the night was Davie telling me Eduardo has started reading on his own!!!! I'm so proud of him and I wish I could be there and have him read to me! I hate that I'm missing this milestone. It's funny because I know I missed the first 5 and a half years of his life, but now that I've met him I don't want to miss anymore time! I did find out today though that I'll be able to stay in Nicaragua through New Years, so at least I'll have two weeks with Eduardo then. I'm sure I'll make him read to me a ton while I'm there. :) And now that he's reading, he definitely needs more books! I'm thinking a suitcase full would be a start.... :)

Whiplash

As if this whole thing hasn't been hard enough to follow, now we've got a new development to confuse thing even further. However, this development potentially could be a very good one. But we're trying not to get our hopes up. After everything we've already been through, I hate the idea of getting too excited and having something fall through. Again. :P

The lawyer is going to apply for an exemption to the 5 year ban that doesn't have an available waiver. I don't know why there's an exemption but not a waiver. The whole thing is so confusing. And even if he got the exemption, we would still have to do the waiver for the 10 year ban, so it's not a guaranteed thing if we did get the exemption. There would still be another step. But at least we would be one step closer to being together here, if we did get it!

I wasn't even going to say anything about this possibility. The first time I talked to the lawyer about it, after Davie's second interview with the embassy when we got the bad news, the lawyer said this would be an uphill battle, but one we still had to try. As far as I was concerned, if he's saying this is an uphill battle after what we just tried, there's no way I see this having a positive outcome! However, we were emailing again last week and he said he feels there is a possibility Davie could come home soon, so that makes me feel like we have to see this through and not make too many decisions that can't be undone beforehand, just in case. He says we should know something by the end of the year, so that would still give us enough time to get things done if it doesn't work. 

So now we're back to waiting. I'm going to keep working on cleaning the house and getting it ready to sell, in case this doesn't work. So at least we won't be completely at a stand-still while we are waiting. I'm also going to try to talk to one of OK's senators / congressmen and see if they can do anything. At this point, everything is worth a try!

Davie took Eduardo and Randy to a fair yesterday. It looks like the kids had fun, but Davie said he was too scared to try any of the rides. :) I love how he's like a monkey on top of a roof, but a fair ride gets him nervous. 

It's been really rainy there. Eduardo and Randy have so much fun together!

I'll continue to keep you posted. It's such a hard, frustrating process. And it's such a fine line to walk - trying to be hopeful but realistic at the same time. Thankfully, we were looking forward to plan B, so if this last ditch effort doesn't work, we'll be ok going back to plan B, I think. 

I hope everyone has a great week! I'm in Vegas for training. It's trips like these that make me really miss Davie - I wish he was here to see this with me! Maybe soon. But, if not, definitely one day. :)