Tips for Costa Rica...

#1: When you approach a toll, keep in mind that a green light means stop (lane open)....and a red light means go (lane closed). It's all very confusing.

#2: Do not use the term "America" when referring to the USofA. It offends many people outside the 50 states who share this great big continent. I accidentally used it today and immediately got a geography lesson from a co-worker....politely educating me that there was a North, South AND Central "America". He even went so far as to remind me that Canada is even part of America...which made me think...hmmmm.

Bored to Floored!

Today during my early staff meeting, I decided to Google "Pefi Costa Rica" to see where "the Google" had decided to rank my blog entry on our recent Pefi trip (something that I typically do during particularly exciting staff meetings). I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Google had decided to place my blog entry at number 6 of 367...not too shabby. So I started to scroll around to see who was above and below numero 6. Entry number 9 caught my attention so I decided to click it and see what else I could learn about the Pefi-meister.

I was floored by what I saw.... seriously....of all the wibbly-wobbly-web links I could have chosen...there - staring at me was the wife!!! Yeah - who would have thunk that! Immediately I experienced a Disneyland flashback and for some reason a chorus of "It's a small wibbly-wobbly-web after all" popped into my mind....jees! And the other amazing part....if you scroll down on the main blog page...you can even see pictures of Kade at Hailey's party and of him at school with his friends....I guess that means that the "Adventures in Costa Rica" blog gets an honorable mention add to the left link tab...and as the CherkyB would say...a Cavalanche of Adsense revenue....but alas...there are no adverts on the site!

Horny Toads Spotted in Connecticut (must be the snow)

Looks like the snow is already making people in Connecticut a little frisky.

Police say woman groped Santa

Article Last Updated: 12/18/2007 08:01:39 AM EST

DANBURY -- A 33-year-old woman was charged with fourth-degree sexual assault Saturday after allegedly groping a man playing Santa Claus at the Danbury Fair mall. Details leading up to the alleged fondling are sketchy.

2007 has not been a great year for mall Santas. Earlier this month in Missoula, Mont., a mall Santa was assaulted with a pumpkin pie.

Meanwhile, a department store Santa in Australia claims he lost his job earlier this month because he said "Ho, ho, ho." His bosses had asked him to say "Hi, hi, hi."

It isn't unusual for an adult to sit and pose with a picture with a mall Santa. "I've had some very nice ladies sit on my lap," Connaghan said. A harmless flirtation isn't out of the norm. "Once in a while they'll say 'I hope Mrs. Claus isn't going to be upset.' You have to be discreet and kind and say 'Oh no, she'll be OK. You can sit here, but only for one photo.'"

Holiday Message From The Fambly

Well it is that time of year again when everyone sends out their fambly letters. Since we are spending the holidays down in Costa Rica and still haven't figured out how to mail something to the USofA...we decided to simply post it to the wibbly-wobbly-web this year. So here she is (Hint: click to open the letters so you can read them!)...

A bit of political foreboding....??

Wasn't sure if everyone saw the interesting turn of events down in Argentina...just in case you happened to miss it...here is the story. It almost seems like something from Alice and Wonderland...or at least in some other country....but wait...could it happen in the USofA?

Geography Quiz Time

Where in the world is Costa Rica?

For those of you who have forgotten your Central and South American geography (as I am getting a lot of questions)...here is a refresher. A few things of note:

• CR is at the same longitude as Florida
• NM/CO is about 20-25 degrees longitude west of CR
• CR is actually south of the northern tip of South America
• CR is waaay south of the 23.5 degree N tropic of Cancer (so we are solidly in the Cancer zone..ohhh)

Pefi-Me Please

A few months ago (with the help of Panama-Jen), the wife found a local artist named Cecilia Facio de Figueres (nicknamed Pefi). She bought some pottery (see above) but more importantly she came home raving about her new find. She could not stop talking about how this little old lady up in the hills was so interesting and friendly. Apparently Pefi took Jen through her house showing her all her artwork and just talked and talked. She even has been "found" by Starbucks. Apparently, Starbucks started selling a series of mugs in the US based on her design. They sold out of them so fast...and Pefi could not keep up...so Starbucks bought the design and started making the knock-offs in China...imagine that! So now you need to be careful and make sure you have an original Pefi. How can you know for sure? Like Fiestaware all you have to do is look at the bottom. Originals will say Costa Rica and the knockoffs will not. Also, if you look at the design on the bottom you can tell which ones were really painted by Pefi and which ones were painted by her assistants. Pefi's trademark is the yellow butterfly (left) and her assistants all have their own marks...as you can see on the right. They sell come on the internet...you can see her stuff over here. Good news CC and Mike, she even makes egg cups! :-)

Anyway, Jen was really excited to take me up to the hide-away art studio so we decided to head up last week. The trip wasn't that long...only about 30 mins but it ended with a 10 min drive up the side of a hill on an unmarked road. When we got to the top the place was amazing. It had a real Costa Rican feel and an awesome view of the valley below. There was artwork and painted pottery everywhere. Pefi took us on a tour of her home and offered me the same peek into her life. She explained many of her paintings as we perused through her life. Jen asked her if she got sad when she sold her paintings. Pefi said that she "cried for 15 days" when she sold her first ;-). Now she can smile a little more as we ended up buying a piece of artwork from Cecilia (see below). I won't mention the price...because it is art...and what is most important is that both Jen and I love it. The neat feature of the piece is that it is reversible. You can swap the two pieces (L<>R) and the centers will still match...check it out.... Anyway, I have to agree...it was a wonderful experience. Pefi was even willing to hand touch-up the painting since there was a small chip on the edge. Luckily, I had the cellphone camera and was quick enough to catch her in the act. Now there is no denying that she painted ours!

I finally figured it out...Brut and Hoopla 4 Hopla!!

When I was like 7 or 8...my parents gave me a wonderful xmas day present...my very own bottle of none other than Brut cologne. I poured just about the whole bottle on my that very day...most likely ruining everyone's Christmas day but my own. As I told Jen this story this evening...she reminded me that this is exactly why you don't go and give a bottle of cologne to an 8 year old. What sparked the story was my trip to the grocery store this evening. I was walking through the store when I stumbled upon an endcap of none other than Brut! I have not seen Brut in a very long time and it made me wonder...who the hell buys Brut? Well, apparently the answer to that question is people in Costa Rica! Upon further follow-up on wikipedia...it is apparently the #3 selling cologne in the world...go figure...I guess that makes it ALMOST "the essence of man" as advertised!

Other tidbits of note:
Some of Payton's new sayings include: "I love you" (to Jen finally) and "I am sorry" to Kade after she bit him this evening!

Also, Kade informed us this evening (as he sat 5 inches from the TV screen) that he needed to watch the news so he can play football with me in the street....ummmm, ok Kade.

Finally, what's all the hoopla about Hopla you may ask??? Hopla da Montare (the miracle whipping cream direct from Italy which comes in a box) is apparently the next best thing to sliced bread. Jen was raving about it tonight much like so many others on the web [warning: all the reviews are in Italiano]. As you can see...things are a bit different down here ;-)

MP3 Musak

This one is for Jflog. Ok...first let me state that I am not an expert in the area of music organization! If someone is I would also like to hear from them!

We currently have about 4,000 songs in MP3 format. I have ripped most of them from our CD collection so we could store the CDs away...out of the chillin's reach.

I actually used Windows Media Center (MCE on my home theater PC) to rip all of my music. Getting the music in that way is very easy. As long as you have an internet connection...you simply put in the CD and off it goes... It will pull all the album info down from the wibbly-wobbly-web, put the files into directories by artist/album and digitally tag the songs the "default" way. Now...the next part is the hard part and the part where most everything falls apart.

What I do is simply use the MCE interface to change the genre for each album. Some will tag XMAS muzak as "Holiday" some as "Christmas" ... so you need to move all the albums into a common category...in this case "Holiday" since we are all politically correct these days. It took me only about 1 hour to get all of our albums (about 300) into one of ~6 categories...i.e., "Holiday", "Rock", "Religious", "Country", "Metal", etc. That is where I stopped. Trying to do anything at the song level beyond deleting songs you hate is STUPID hard and not worth the effort.

So now, when we fire up the HTPC and play music...we play in shuffle mode by artist, album, genre or all music. It works out well for us. We usually have music playing in our house about 5 hours a day ...

As for the MP3 player....... since I only have a 4G iPod...and our music collection is now over 10G...I need to do a little selecting. This is pretty easy. I tend to just grab by artist or Genre and then let the iPod software (iTunes) randomly select from within those categories to stuff the 4G. When I want something specific, like my audio Spanish lessons, I just grab those and throw them in. Now...let's say that the whif (a.k.a. wife) wants me to generate a custom playlist for working out. This is pretty easy when you only need like 20 or 30 songs...but anything over that I just leave to the genre/artist method. [I should mention that despite the whif wanting me to generate a playlist for her...I still have yet to do that :-)]

Again, it is pretty basic and crude system...but it works for us since we never really want to hear a particular set of songs. We generally just listen to a narrower selection of songs at the artist/genre level for a long time and do not want to hear the same song twice! Trust me...it beats the radio in Costa Rica ;-) Any other bright ideas...I am listening too!

Elves

I know that a lot of you have probably already seen thins one...but for those who have not....here are our two little elves in action. Click the picture to take you to the website!

Three quick ones....

This last weekend we finally got everything together and put up our Costa Rican Christmas tree. It turns out that the "trees" at the tree farm are actually shrubs and grow to a height of 8 to 10 feet in one year. They trim them year round into the shape of a tree...that explains why the branches are very flimsy and can barely hold any of our ornaments. Anyway, Saturday morning while Kade and I were putting up the lights...I was getting ready to put up the angel topper. I hear the following from behind me:

"Dad, that is a really tall tree.... Are you going to put the angel way up there?" ... silence ... "be brave angel, be brave"

On a separate note, I was taking a shower with Kade and Payton this weekend. The kiddos have taken a fondness to the shower lately as the bath is just plain old snoring. So we are in the shower , Kade is holding a bowl full of water and pretending to paint on the shower door. This is what follows:

Kade: "Dad, look at me...I am painting"
Dad: "Really...I see....what color are you using to paint?"
Kade "water color"

I don't think he quite got why I started to laugh.

Finally, Payton told me that she loves me - I really could understand her for the first time. When mom asked if "Payton loved mommy" she got a side to side shake of the head....then Payton proceeded to tell Grandma GiGi that she loved here too (over the phone). That is about par for the course with Payton!!

Oh Christmas Tree - Oh Christmas Tree

So here is one for you all to enjoy. This past weekend after our wonderful Dia De Gracias...we decided to go and get our "Christmas Tree". We were not sure what to expect but we heard that there was an actual tree farm in the Escazu mountains - not too far from our house - where we could go get a real tree. So we gave it a shot. While the trees themselves are not our typical Spruce type trees...they are actually not all that bad. The tree behind the fambly is the one we finally chose...it is about 8 feet tall and only cost C25K....about $48. The views from up on the hill were wonderful as you can see from the bottom right picture. The kiddos has a ball...Kade was practically jumping out of his skin on the way to the tree farm. He was a little mystified by the little trees - not sure why anyone would want one of those (top right)...had to explain that one a bit. We ffinally chose the tree, left a deposit and told the man we would be back next Saturday (Spanish was a bit of a challenge on this one) to pick the tree up.

Then the fun began. We spent the next two days going from store to store trying to get all the lights, decorations and a tree stand. The lights and decorations were very easy to find but the tree stand was a friggin' nightmare. We ended up going to 7 stores but could not find one. Finally we lucked out and had our Panama friends (who happened to be coming back to CR on Monday) pick one up at their local market and bring it to us. So by Tuesday night we finally had our Imported tree stand....it was most definitely an "I hate Costa Rica" type of weekend...which is too bad because all in all it started pretty well at the tree farm ;-(

Good night prayers

Kade has come up with his own little version of our goodnight prayer.

Normal Version:
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the lord my soul to keep
May angels watch me through the night
And keep me safe till morning light

Kade's Version:
Now I lay me down with BABIES...ha ha
I pray the lord for all the BABIES...ha ha
May BABIES watch me with the BABIES..ha ha ha
And keep the BABIES safe all BABIES...ha ha ha ha ha!

Kade also has a VERY similar version of our table prayer...I will spare you the details ;-)

Dia de Gracias

So this years Turkey day started just like any other we have every had....70 degrees and flowers blooming in the backyard while we ate breakfast....uh, yeah something like that. Of course, since it is not a Costa Rica holiday, Arelys (our employada) showed up at 7:45 in the morning and we had to take Kade off to school at 8. As you can see, Arelys and Payton got the morning started off in the right direction with lots of playing around. Most of the day was spent in the typical T-day tradition...cooking in the kitchen. The turkey turned out really good despite the somewhat burnt appearance (thanks to the new range we purchased a few weeks ago). Thank heavens too...as a 15lb turkey in these parts is apparently rare - so they "fly" them in from the USofA...and charge us $35...about $2.33 per pound of pure US heaven ;-) One of Jen's playdate friends came for dinner with their family (Amy, Jason and Sophie). Sophie fit right in and before long was acting just like any other monkey we tend to find in these parts of Costa Rica. Dinner was surprisingly good and everyone had a great time. The kiddos were still going strong at 10pm as you can see form the video at the bottom...at least they slept in the following morning ;-)

What do these two items have in common...

Maybe Amy - our Detroit connection - can help us with this one ;-)

One Box, One Push Toy and Two Kids!

Toys For Tots

While we were in Albunukie we took the opportunity to do a lot of our Christmas shopping...and then bring all that stuff back to CR (9 bags total...but that is another story). We ended up having to return one gift due to baggage constraints...so we bombed down to Toys-R-Us. When we got there, the Marines were out front with a big old truck and a bunch of big toy bins....collecting toys for the Toys For Tots drive. So we decided to just put the gift we were returning into the bin and then go inside to buy another toy (and some books) for the Marines. We ended up buying a Fisher Price Geo Trax set since that is just about the coolest thing in the store....according to Kade ;-) Well as you can imagine...when it was time to part with the gift and leave it with the Marines...someone started to get a little teary eyed. Here is how the following exchange went:

Kade: "Daddy...sob...sob...I want the GeoTrax...."

Dad: "Kade, that toy is not for you...it is for another child who does not have toys"

Kade: "Sob....sob...sob..."

Dad: "You already have a whole bunch of GeoTrax. It is just back in Costa Rica..."

Kade: "Yeah...sob...I want to go to Costa Rica...sob....but I still want the GeoTrax..."

Dad: "Kade, there are some kids who's parents don't have the money to buy their kids toys. You know how daddy goes to work and makes money for cheesburgers and toys?"

Kade: "Yeah...I like cheesburgers and toys..."

Dad: "Well, some parents do not have enough money for cheeseburgers and toys. So mom and dad want to give those kids some toys. Wouldn't you be sad without toys?"

Kade: "I want my Geotrax....sob...."

Dad: "We will be back to Costa Rica soon....just a couple of days"

Kade: "Do you know the name of the kids who are getting the toys?"

Dad: "Uh, no...why?"

Kade: "I think we could be friends..."

Dad: "I think so too..."

A stroll in Albunukie

So while we were all in Albunukie for the balloon fiesta, we all decided to take a stroll along the mightly Rio Grande. The walk only lasted about 30 minutes before we had to take a snack break and then the pooping began. That was the end of that. It was a lovely walk as you can see...everyone had a great time. We were especially impressed with the hat selection that Mike found for Colioliolio at the local Walmart.

Our Superheros

Not much time tonight...kiddos were running around for most of the night on a sugar high. As you can see...our two little ones were superheros. Kade loves being Batman and dresses in it at least a few times a week. Payton was a great wonder woman (courtesy of our Detroit connection)...

We made it about 15 houses and then everyone was ready to head home. Not a bad run if you ask me ;-)

The three pictures on the bottom are of Kade, Payton and Kylie making the faces they wanted on their pumpkins.... their SCARY pumpkins.

I just can not pass this one up...sorry

The new A380 is the object of much fanfare lately. Super-jumbo title, full double decker, up to 853 seats (10 wide on lower deck and 8 wide on upper deck), 2 stairways, 50% less noise and a no sex policy to go with that less noise claim ;-)

I guess this makes Jen the majority

ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" took last week's ratings top spot with its Monday edition, outstepping even the World Series' decisive Game 4.

Who would have thunk it!

The Amaizing Pumpkin Patch

As with most of America, last week we took our annual trip to the corn maze and pumpkin patch. It was actually an insanely hot day in the Albunukie sun. Sooooo, about halfway through the maze Daddio took over the map responsibilities and we took the direct route to the pumpkin patch. Enough with wandering around in the sun following the kids. We were lucky enough to catch Kylie posing....ok, maybe it was not so much luck...maybe it was simply having a camera focused on a little 4 year old diva :-)

In the end, as always the kiddos had lots of fun. Kade loved burying himself in the corn box...and Payton loved throwing corn...which we were no so pleased about. Finally, the last pic on the left is of Kade and Kylie making some scary faces...for some reason Kylie's didn't turn out so scary...I dunno...maybe it is just a diva thing. Jen?

Should have known that it was going to STINK

In what might be one of the worst movies I have ever seen...Michael Clayton sets a new standard. This movie makes me want to start a bottom 10 movie list! Jen and I were very excited to have an evening to ourselves and went looking through the Albunukie Journal to see what was playing. We were torn between The Kingdom and Michael Clayton. The Nukie gave Clayton 4 stars...and it looked like a pretty good movie from the trailers....

We pretty much slept through the whole thing. It was way too predictable....you knew the ending before it began. Should have gone to The Kingdom or simply gone out for a nice dinner!

Upon reflection I should have known that it was going to stink. Thinking back to what George Clooney has done recently...I would be hard pressed to find a good movie. About the best one in his past is likely Oceans 11....not exactly Earth shattering.

PASS

Oy

Jen and I were rooting against each other...in the end even she was disappointed.

Pool time with the Zups

Last Saturday morning was spent with the Zups at the Residence Inn pool in Fort Collins. The kiddos had a blast...and that includes the biggest kid of all (me). As you can see from the picture above...the hit of the day was our little game of SharkBait (ooo-haa-haa). Megan and Kade are finally tall enough to stand on their own in the shallow end of the pool which opens up a whole new world....one where we no longer need to hold them all the time in the pool....thanks goodness!

You can see from the second picture that Payton was very excited to be in the pool...even had a little spare time to yawn for dad ;-) And on the right you can see Ellen and Laura chillin' in the sun. Unfortunately the hot tub was out of commission this trip so the sun was the next best place for the girls to warm up.

Joe got some of his very own Payton time...which Payton seemed to enjoy immensely. If you look really closely at the last picture on the right...you can see that Payton is starting to turn blue...hence the trip with Joe to the sun ;-) Overall, a nice little piece of normalcy in an otherwise hectic trip thus far!