Our First Costa Rican Christmas

Well, there is a lot to catch you all up on, you know, like our crazy trip to Panama last weekend, our first Christmas here in Costa Rica, and learning how to make tamales.  I guess, since it's the simplest story, we'll start with Christmas.

Christmas Eve Day, there was a staff Christmas party at Campmamento Roblealto.  And of course I forgot the camera.  Sigh.  By this point we were running on fumes from the last week (more later, I promise!)  Families were invited to come and spend the morning, just enjoying camp.  The boys had a blast playing on the downed trees, enjoying the ice cream, which was like a snow cone with powdered milk and sweetened condensed milk on top, and the Asado!  An Asado (literally barbeque) includes three types of meat,pork, chicken, and beef (for each person) beans, and all sorts of grilled vegetables and fruit.  I really enjoy them!

That night, we went caroling around our little neighborhood.  We brought Christmas chocolates and really bad singing to our neighbors.  It's not something people typically do here, but it worked in our little 5 house neighborhood.  We were able to meet one neighbor we hadn't yet, and just spend time getting to know more those that we had already met.

Of course Christmas morning we were up bright and early. It was strange weather, a thunderstorm.  It was strange for a couple of reasons, 1.  This is the beginning of Dry Season here, and 2. It was a thunderstorm, not a snow storm. At least it's light here at 6 am.  Between the boys and the puppy, it was quite a fiasco, but fun none the less.  Somehow, the settings on the camera were changes and so we have all of these interesting long exposed photos...at least we are going to go with the word interesting...instead of crying because Quinn's first Christmas photos are so strange.  Anyway.

Noah made Christmas pancakes and we spluged on bacon.  After a fair amount of playing with Legos and nerf swords, we loaded up, and headed to another missionary family's house for the day.  It was a great time of eating Christmasy things like turkey and pie and choclate and just enjoying each other's company.  It's nice to be understood.

Really, it was a very relaxing day full of nice reminders of home and some of the new things that will mean Christmas to our boys.