A Sequence of Events

We went to Samara beach on Saturday afternoon as we usually try to do if Dani doesn´t have to work and after playing in the water for about 20 minutes, Matthew said something bit him. He was really crying out in pain and I was surprised because he´s not an overly dramatic boy that makes things worse than they really are. I told him he probably just stepped on a sharp shell or rock and he thought something bit him. The weird thing was that he was complaining of pain in the achilles area, not on the bottom of his foot. We got out and then back in and he basically didn´t want to put his foot down so he was hanging on me the whole time. All of the sudden, Dani, about 5 feet away from me holding Julian in his arms, jumped away and swatted at something with his hand. He said, "something just bit me!" and I was like, "what, really?" and so I told Matthew that we were getting out right now and I started making a b-line for the beach pulling Matthew behind me! All of the sudden, Julian starts screaming bloody murder and I thought it was because he was scared because obviously WE were a little scared but he said his foot was hurting and he was crying really hard! So we made it out of the water and I was the only one not in pain. We concluded that it must have been a jelly fish because everyone had red welts where it had got them. Dani on his waist, Julian on his foot where it was dangling at Dani´s waist and Matthew on the achilles tendon. That was a bummer because instead of two hours in the wáter, it was 20 minutes and we had made the drive to the beach. Now what? Playing in the sand, that´s what! I knew I kept those sand toys in the car for something!

 



Matthew wants to be buried in the sand!
 



Watch out, the wáter is coming closer and closer!
 



Oops!!! It GOT him!!!!!!!!!



Guess we better get up now.....



And later while drinking wáter, his third tooth fell out!!!

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures!

Roxana and her Saturday English classes

 

 

Making pancakes in the Saturday English classes

Field trip with Roxana

Gold medal in honor of Roxana

Matthew celebrating 6th birthday in Roxana´s class

1st place in Liberia July 2015

My Little Guanacasteco in his tipical attire for Guanacaste holiday

My boys in their tipical Guanacaste attire



Practicing with the snorkel gear (it was dark outside....not clear pic)

Brothers pretending to be asleep on bathroom floor to avoid bathtime

Julian took this selfie among others with my phone. I found it later.

Julian´s Father´s day present to Dani this year

At the most recent TKD tournament

Celebrating Guanacaste becoming part of Costa Rica in 1824.

Matthew took this of me :)

Teacher Roxana

Last week was a bit of a sad week. Matthew has lost the second person he loved in his life due to death. Besides Tito Daniel who passed away almost 2 1/2 years ago, his beloved teacher Roxana has passed away. Roxana has been a part of his life for the last 2 1/2 years as his teacher in his last year of pre-K and then again as his kindergarten teacher last year. In addition to that, he had gone to English classes (not necessarily for the actual English part but the daycamp type activities they did) for the last 2 1/2 years every Saturday for 3 hours and loved it! He never once complained about going to those classes on Saturday and actually if there weren´t classes occasionally for whatever reason, he was a little bummed that there were no classes with Roxana. Sometimes he was the only one who showed up to class but that didn´t bother him at all because he always had fun with Roxana. She taught him how to read and write when he was only five years old. Two things SO important in life that I could never be more grateful to her. I remember one day thinking they were just practicing putting syllables together and the next day he was reading the first grade reading material in kindergarten. I don´t know when or how it happened but she taught them to read and write before I even realized it.

Roxana started losing weight for no apparent reason earlier this year and she even told me herself that she didn´t know why because she was eating the same and nothing had changed. As the months went by she was still losing weight and began having stomach pains and wasn´t able to eat like she should. She had started getting some testing done at the hospital but they weren´t finding much. Later she was having trouble keeping food down and not able to stop throwing up. She was from San Jose so had no family here and she lived alone with her cat. Unfortunately she died alone and four days passed without anyone realizing it. When they found her she was dead and her cat was curled up next to her. Such a sad way to die. Her mother had come here and told her to go back to San Jose with her until she got better but I don´t think Roxana really knew how bad it was going to be. She was only about 47 years old.

Matthew was in a TaeKwondo tournament on Saturday and won a gold medal. We had talked about the fact that Roxana was now in heaven with Tito Daniel and that we were sure they were watching the tournament which they had never gotten to see when they were alive. I said that probably Roxana and Tito Daniel´s friends were all watching cheering him on. Any time Matthew had a tournament on Saturdays and had to miss English class, she always asked about how it went when she saw us on Monday. Matthew told me after the fight when he was sitting on my lap with his gold medal around his neck that he said a little prayer to God and to Roxana before the fight when he was in the warm up room waiting his turn. We decided that this gold medal was definitely for her!

Today her sister from San Jose came into my store with her husband because someone had told her that Matthew´s mother was the owner. She asked me if I was Matthew´s mother and I said yes and she said she was Roxana´s sister. I hugged her and we talked a little about Roxana and how important she was to me and to Matthew. She wanted to thank Dani for helping her many times when she needed it and for giving her the sick leave permissions so she could try and get better.

As sad as we are, we are glad that Roxana is in a better place and no longer has any pain or suffering. We will miss her so much......

Pictures to follow tomorrow!

School Projects

 
Welcome to first grade!! And to the projects and all that come with it. Luckily I like things like posterboard projects and getting creative and Matthew definitely has a bit of an artistic side. As I mentioned before there are these projects called "Extra Classes" that we usually have a week to crank out before the round of tests that follow. They´re designed to help prepare for the tests and so far, since Matthew´s only in first grade, they´re pretty fun! When he´s pouting or complaining that we have to do projects, I try to explain to him that these projects are SOOOOOO fun compared to what he´ll do in the future so he better just enjoy it while it lasts! hahahahaha, he has no idea......

Julian has also been doing some studying and class trips to the library.
Here is a look at some of our latest projects....You might see yourself in our family tree.

 

 

 
 

Beach Saturdays....and a Bit About Chickens

One of our favorite things to do these days is every Saturday afternoon, we head to the beach! Since it´s only about a 35-40 minute drive, we´ve made it an every weekend thing, this going on for the last couple of months! There´s a restaurant we go to that has great prices and good food and they´ll let us shower off in their outdoor shower and use the facilities when we eat there. We go late afternoon, most of the time getting there around 4:30pm and into the ocean we go! SUCH a nice time of day to relax and play in the waves. Don´t have to worry about sunblock and there´s just something about the water and the lighting at that time of day that is so relaxing. We play around until dark and sometimes even a little after and the kids shower off, change into dry clothes and we sit down for a nice beachfront dinner (although you can´t see the beach at that point but you can hear the waves!) They have all these nice tree lamps and hanging lights with big rustic tables and we sit there and eat with our feet in the sand. I hope we can continue to do this for a while because it´s something us and the kids really look forward to. Julian and Matthew are really able to handle the waves amazingly well now so it´s much more fun than stressful like it was when they were little. Rainy season is upon us though and soon we´ll have to cut back I´m sure. We´re enjoying it for now!!!

Now about the chickens. We now have 3 roosters and 3 hens and two of the roosters are now old enough to sing their song in the morning! Sometimes it´s in the middle of the night which isn´t cool but usually it´s around 6am when we´re getting up anyway. Hoping to have some eggs soon which we´ll let hatch into baby chicks instead of eating them at first at least. All three pairs of chickens are different types of chickens. There are the ones that for fattening and production that grow super fast and super big, the typical patio homegrown free range chickens and these others that are quite ugly and not that nice and they don´t have feathers on their necks and never will! I don´t have pictures of the bare necked ones but the other ones you´ll see below. They´re fun to have and roam free in our yard!

 

This little chick is the big white one you see above!!!

TKD!

 Two posts in one day, what, WHAT???? I have a lot to get off my chest today, hahaha.

We´ve been to two Taekwondo tournaments in San Jose in the last three weeks. We came home with a gold and a silver! The only thing about the gold was that Matthew didn´t actually fight for it. It felt like we just paid to particpate in the tournament, made the trip to San Jose  and picked up the medal that they had reserved for us. So what happened was Matthew and this other boy were about to start their fight and all of the sudden I saw the referee saying something to the other boy and the other boy shook his head and was about to start crying. Then, all of the sudden, the referee makes a signal, and flagged his right arm up in the air to the side where Matthew was and apparently Matthew won!!! What happened was the kid got scared and nervous and was almost crying so in that case they don´t make the kid participate and he basically forfeited the fight and that was that. I had seen the other coach talking with the kid and looking at Matthew´s belt before the fight and I think the coach was talking to him about the stripes that Matthew had earned on his belt which are like "badges" for different things like flexibility or knowing the names of the kicks in Korean, etc. The other boy didn´t have any stripes. Both boys had Green belts , were the same age, same size and with the same nervous look on their faces so I thought was going to be a really great match. Apparently that was the kid´s 5th tournament or something so who knows! Our coach said that they had been watching Matthew warm up also and Matthew was doing some really great kicks and the kid got scared for that reason too.

 

The fight that he got the silver in, he was neck and neck the first half and something happened after that and the other kid got the best of him. The other kid had a more advanced belt and was one year older and honestly Matthew REALLY held his own in that one.

 

Dentist Time!!!

Ok, I don´t know how bad of a mother I am being that my oldest is 6 years old and neither one of them have been to the dentist before. Matthew has always been great about brushing teeth. I might have started a little earlier with him being the first since you have to do everything "by the book" with the first and it´s a little more relaxed for the second. Julian was NOT good about brushing teeth. For the last 9 months he´s been good about it but before that, it was a fight.....every. single. time. Literally, Dani and I had to lay him down on the sofa and hold him down. One would hold down arms and legs and the other would brush. Or on most nights that I was alone at that time, I had to straddle him and do it myself. So of course there were some times that I didn´t do it all that well or just didn´t do it. So, when we noticed a spot on Julian´s tooth that may be a cavity, I wasn´t all that surprised. So, we made an appointment for a check up but not an actual cleaning the first time to see who had cavities. Turns out Matthew had one and Julian had FOUR!!! I was shocked that A) Matthew even had one because I had done SUCH a good job with that and B) that Julian had FOUR! Wow! I never would have imagined. So, we made another appointment for the fillings.......

The appointment for the fillings was with a mother of one of Julian´s classmates who was also in our little tikes English class last year that I did so Julian and Matthew both knew the dentist well thank goodness. The first appointment was Julian since he had four and that seemed more urgent to me so I explained to him how it wasn´t going to really hurt but it was going to sound really bad and he might think it was hurting but it really wasn´t hahahaha. We debated to do it in the public healthcare because that way it would be free but novacaine is not regularly used here anywhere, but not at all in the public healthcare so we opted for the private dentist just in case novacaine was needed. Julian did AMAZING!!!! I couldn´t believe he didn´t cry or get too scared or anything. He´s always been the more delicate one so I thought it was going to be tough but nope, he did great!!!! He just laid there as stiff as a board, held on to the stuffed tiger I brought and the dentist did everything needed on the 2 most urgent cavities and not even with novacaine, wow!!!!

A couple of weeks later was Matthew´s turn. During those couple of weeks between appointments I noticed that the spot in Matthew´s mouth was growing fast and getting darker. So when we got in there, the dentist told me that it was REALLY close to the nerve and that she would use novacaine but had to fill it with something different (I don´t remember what) and wait two weeks to see if there was any inflammation or pain. If it got infected, he would need to start antibiotics right away and have the tooth removed, ugh!!! Thank goodness it all went well and Matthew was a REAL trooper because she must have shot him up 2 or 3 times to make sure it was numb and that novacaine injection is a slow one! She had the needle in his gum for a while, while injecting it and Matthew was very uncomfortable. He squirmed and squealed a little but no crying. I felt so bad for him. I thought we had done so great taking care of his teeth! Oh well. I was shocked at how great they both did. They just did so well! I have the toughest boys ever!

AMAZING JOB JULIAN!

 

 

 

THOSE SHOTS LOOKED PRETTY PAINFUL TO ME, MATTHEW!