Costa Rica

Konrad has had the dream of moving our family to Costa Rica, for a couple years now. He wants to learn the language, the culture, and simplify our life. Pura Vida. That's what he wants.

I haven't been having that same dream, at least not the dream to move there, but I was more than happy to comply with vacationing there.

We got to spend 10 wonderful days. Soaking up the sun. Playing in the water. And most of all spending time as a family without all the normal every-day-distractions.


It was definitely a different experience. The Guanacaste area that we spent most of our time in looked different than we thought (really dry and desert-y rather than tropical and rain forest-y), the roads were hard to travel on, maps were tricky to follow at first (we were champs by the middle of the trip), and it wasn't as developed as we thought it would be. Not many natives spoke English either, which was sometimes tricky.

The one thing we wish we would have changed would have been where we stayed. All though we loved the condo we stayed in and the town we were in, we wish we could have stayed in various parts of the country so that we didn't have to spend as much time driving each day. There is so much to see and do and we feel that we didn't get to see or do it all b/c we'd have to drive 8+ hours in a day in order to go everywhere we wanted. It would have been better to stay in one location for a couple days, do everything there is to do there and then head to the next location for a couple days, etc. That way you aren't having to do round-trips everywhere you go.

But really - it was amazing. We love being on vacation. We love spending time with each other. We love the sun. How could it not be amazing???

There are quite a few posts about it...many, many, many pictures. I tried to cut back (and trust me I did. We took around 850 pictures, so I narrowed it down quite a bit :)).

Next time you should come with us!

Playa Tamarindo

We stayed in Tamarindo, Costa Rica for 10 days. The beach was literally across the street. A 3 minute walk. Perfect!

Kimber was an artist:

This was my favorite :)

(Go to Mormon.org. I am a Mormon and I'm PROUD!)

Konrad attempted surfing for the first time. He was going to sign up for a lesson but we decided he could just watch some You-tube videos and pick it up on his own (I am so cheap :))

Here are his first attempts:

We were told that while Costa Rica is a pretty safe place, you do have to watch your stuff on the beach. People will swipe your cameras, bags, flip flops even. So one of us had to stay out of the water most of the time (unless there was a trust-worthy person set up near us and we could ask them to watch our bags....or if we left the camera at the condo...I wasn't so worried about just our flip-flops)

I call this "Kimbers Pouting Rock". This is where she went when she was mad at us. Luckily she wasn't there too often :) (this particular "pouting time" was after she decided she had been stung by a jellyfish and we didn't believe her...in the end we all decided she must have just stepped on something that poked her, so she did in fact get hurt, but that she was not stung by a jellyfish b/c she would have been screaming in agony for hours :)) (Love you Kimber!!!)

The girls wanted a ride on the surf board

We had dinner at a restaurant right on the beach, at sunset. It was pretty.

There was a play ground at the restaurant for the girls to play on while we waited for our food (another pouting spot??? :)) (Love you Kimber!!!)

Sam riding the waves on her boogie board - Peace!

Waiting for a wave:

Kimber the surfing instructor teaching Alli how to ride the waves :)

The orangish building is our condo complex:

Sam, in the water, WITHOUT goggles :) We didn't see that very often!

Oh how I miss it already!

Pool Fun

We loved the swimming pool at the condo. It was beautiful. It was refreshing. It was so much fun!

Our condo is the one that has the dark window (no white blinds in it) in the center of the picture (the far corner of the complex) - on the 3rd floor (there are 5 floors even though you can't really see the first floor in this picture)

Kimber's hair turned green from the chlorine :)

Kimber made me add this one of Konrad with water pouring out his nose :)

They loved swimming at night..it was just them, so they had the whole pool to themselves. It was my favorite time b/c I didn't have to put sunscreen on them! They close the pool at 8:00 though - promptly at 8:00 we learned from the Spanish speaking security guard who told us to get our nino's out of the pool!

Shutter was open longer than Konrad realized :)