Children's Day

So today is Children's Day here in Costa Rica.  You know, like Mothers' Day, Fathers' Day, Children's Day.

But, Forrest's school decided to celebrate last Friday by taking the 2nd graders to see the new Nija Turtles' movie.  Yeah, that's a PG-13 movie for 2nd graders.  No offense if your kids can handle that.  Our's can't and we are more than ok with!  So instead we planned an adventure day for the whole family, since Fridays are now Noah's day off.

We started the morning off with their presents.  And when I say presents, I mean scrapes of fabric that cost me nothing to sew into something else, like field bags for the big boys and a fabric marble maze for Quinn.

Then we were off.  The town of Sarchí is known for a couple of things.  It's furniture and the ox carts.  Ok, lemme splain ox carts.

Coffee is kind of a big deal here.  And the traditional way of getting coffee beans from the mountains to the coasts was by using ox carts, like these. 

All along the road from the mountains to the coast sprung up these repair shops...but I am getting ahead of myself.

The first thing we did was explore a Botanical Garden.  If there is one thing that Costa Rica has a lot of, it's gardens!  These were some of the best we've been to here.  And since it was a Friday morning during rainy season, we were the only ones in the whole place, which was lovely!

We did a lot of exploring and playing and just being together.

After we were done with the gardens, we found the only remaining ox cart factory in the country.  Again, since it was a Friday during low season, we were the only ones there. But Noah found one of the employees and he explained to us the history of the ox cart wheel (it used to be made out a single piece of wood!).  He also explained  how they make them now so they will last 50 years by banding them with a iron band, sorta like a whiskey barrel.

He also showed the boys how the waterwheel still powers all the tools in the work shop.  Such a cool stop!!!

All in all, we had a much better day then if Forrest had just gone to a movie that was way too old for him.  And we got to know just a bit more about this country that's starting to feel a bit more like home.