Squeezing in every last ounce of "family-time"

Saturday, December 29

I spent most of the day finally attacking the pile of mail that was brought to us by Eddie’s parents.  That is not how I wanted to spend vacation time, but that is the reality of being an adult.  We got phone calls made, bills paid, and junk mail trashed.  It felt good to be done with that project.

I spent the afternoon snuggling with my new nephew as much as I could before we left. 

He was keeping the Pedialite and milk down for the most part and was starting to seem like he felt better.   Abuela played with Jaden and his new puzzle.

Mom, Olivia and I sipped hot chocolate and caught up on girl time while the boys and Amanda went sledding.  The freshly fallen snow and the near-by steep hill had been tempting them for days.

We spent the evening watching Nacho Libre (shout out to Jen and Maurine) with the family…

…eating ice cream and packing.  We had to decide what would go to Florida with his parents, and what would go back to Costa Rica with us.  Sadly, not all of Jaden’s toys could go with us, but we know he will be fine!!!  He has plenty to keep him entertained in Costa Rica!

We also did a late night photo shoot of Jaden in one of his new outfits…

Which also inspired one last family photo… 

...even if half of them were in their pajamas (or half-dressed and half-in-pajamas like Eddie) and it was 10:00 at night… they are all still so beautiful, don’t ya think!?!

Sunday, December 30

We enjoyed one last delicious breakfast prepared by my father-in-law before heading to the airport.  We gave ourselves 4 hours to make it to our flight on time.  It took over an hour to get to the airport, so we had just under 3 hours to check in before our international flight.  We had some long lines to wait in, but we had time for a delicious but expensive lunch near our gate.  After that, we boarded our plane with virtually no wait.  Everything went pretty smoothly.  We landed about 30 min. late but were greeted by Gatica and Marcos.  They had planned on eating dinner in San José before meeting us at the airport, but they had run into a traffic back-up.  They had to take a side-road for part of the way, and it ended up being very dark, muddy, rocky and dangerous.   The traffic back-up was due to a fallen electrical pole lying in the middle of one of the only main roads to get to San José.  Marcos and Gatica had only just arrived at the airport when we did, so the timing turned out okay.  Unfortunately, we hit the same problem on the way home.  The problem was, that the government was not sending someone to clear the road until 7 am.  We did not want to wait until then, but Marcos did not want to take the dangerous road again.  He tried a different one and with in 30 min. he knew where he was going and we headed home with no further delays.  

We arrived at our new house and explored the newly furnished home just before midnight.  We were so excited by what we saw, but we were also exhausted.  Once the car was unloaded, we unpacked only what was necessary and headed to bed.