Days 6 and 7 in Costa Rica

Day 6: Jen and I headed back out in the morning with G3 to look at the three candidate homes.

1. We started in Escazu. This was the neighborhood we liked best with sidewalks and more contemporary stores in town. Unfortunately, the house was just ok (bigger in size but a little outdated...like the kitchen) and had a very little yard. The common area is basically just a pool so no real help there with the kiddos.
   
2. Then we went over to Santa Ana and saw a really contemporary home (read, not kid friendly) but in a neighborhood with lots of open grass and kids play structures. The home actually had a set of stairs up to the third floor with no railing at all...I am SURE Kade would love those!
   
3. Finally we headed back to Belen (closest to Intel) for the best home of the bunch. It was a really big/new home with a relatively big backyard. It also had a big common area which was done really nice but no kid play area...more of an adult kind of place. Unfortunately, Belen is more of an older/sleepy CR neighborhood ...so no sidewalks or modern stores nearby.
   

Once we saw all three homes again, we headed back to the hotel to make our choice.

Which home do you think we chose?
	1. Escazu
	2. Santa Ana
	3. Belen
Free polls from Pollhost.com

It was at that time that Jen declared that she was done with the house hunting trip (or maybe it was the night before...can't quite remember). For the record, I do not blame her...to this point it had been a mentally exhausting experience...and I wanted to give up also. Juggling the kids and trying to find our home for the next 2 years all in a foreign country turned out to be a little much...but, we really had one more thing to do...price out common items we would need.

Sooooo, I headed out with our counselor to go look at furniture and price out common goods at the local equivalent of Costco and Walmart. In general, the furniture stores looked rundown on the outside but just like any other USofA store on the inside...see pictures. In general things are a little more expensive on average due to import taxes. It will be an extremely interesting experience to fully furnish our home when we get down there...working within the company budget will a nice added wrinkle to an already otherwise daunting task.

Day 7: Travel day back to the states. In general an uneventful day (thankfully) but you could tell that everyone was ready to head back to the states...I think G3 may have even shed a tear when we got off the plane in Dallas ;-) In Dallas, we parted ways with G3 and AuntieR...both invoking massive demonstrations of sobbing from Kade...he definitely enjoyed his time with both of them. Once we got on the road back in CO, we immediately stopped at the first fast food restaurant we came across...SONIC...God bless the USofA!