Happy Easter

    Apparently the Easter bunny couldn't get through customs with all those suspicious plastic eggs filled with candy. He was a no show.......
This is OK with us as we have been trying to downplay the Easter bunny thing the last couple of years. You couldn't buy a plastic egg, chocolate bunny, or egg dye here if you wanted to. The hole US version of Easter is non existent here.
So what did we do and how are we celebrating ? We did decorate (with markers) some brown hardboiled eggs. You sometimes see white eggs but I couldn't find and in the last few days. We have been talking about the real meaning of Easter throughout the last few days. Reminding the kids and ourselves the sacrifice/gift Christ gave all of us by dying on the cross. Amy found a kids video online last night with the Easter story for the kids to watch. After eating some eggs this morning we will go to church and then hang out as a family here. We plan on having a late lunch/early dinner with grilled chicken, pasta salad, deviled eggs, and fresh fruit. Most importantly we are celebrating the fact the Christ rose from the dead. (Without this detail Christianity would be meaningless)

We wish you all a Happy Easter and hope you appreciate today for its true meaning.

    How do the Ticos celebrate ? We had been warned that Semana Santa (Easter week) was crazy here.  That the beach would be packed and town would be nuts. We were told that the Costa Rican's from the cities travel to the coast for the Holiday. Thursday and Friday are paid vacation days for most and that is when it really gets going. The locals also said that the city Ticos would leave all there trash on the beach and to watch out for drunks wondering through our yard. The coast Ticos and city Ticos don't seem to be to crazy about one another.
It's true that the beach and town started to fill up on Thursday and was "packed" by friday. But it was not near as crowded as I expected. This was like a slow day at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in CA. The thing that surprised us most is that the beach was all but quiet again by yesterday afternoon and is like a ghost town this morning. We didn't have any drunks and I don't notice any trash. The interesting thing is that many of these visitors are from San Jose which is a 4 hour drive without traffic. So they leave San Jose Thursday morning, and head home Friday night or Saturday at the latest. I personally don't get it...

On another note we are moving. As mentioned before this location is great but the house isn't. It is truly like high end camping. We both hit our wall a week or so ago. We are tired of sleeping in grit, and constantly battling the never ending ants and other bugs. When you prepare a meal everything has to be done very quickly because if anything is on the counter for more than a minute the ants appear as if from thin air. Not to mention we just want to be more comfortable with some A/C and just a nicer place. So we are trading location for comfort. We have been looking at other house for a while and decided when we saw the right place we would move.
Tuesday we move to a 3 bedroom place across town. It is still within walking distance to everything. It is on a property that primarily rents to vacationers with about 9 units total. This will have some pros and cons but we are excited about the move. It does have a pool and it's about a 4 minute walk to the beach. The monthly rent is comparable so we are still within budget. I forgot to mention we will also have TV. Sure there are only 2 channels in English but I miss the background noise.