Pura Vida Gammon Family!



The Rauzi - Gammon Families on the day of their departure....

Tamarindo beach day...
one day last March 2013



Isaiah, Zack and Tucker

As the thunder rumbles outside and I sit here waiting for the rain to begin, I cannot help but feel that Costa Rica is also crying for the loss of our dear friends, The Gammon Family, who left Costa Rica Sept. 5th to begin their next family traveling adventure in Florida.  

Marissa and Seraphina at the Witch's Rock Bon Fire





 

 

 

 

 

We met the Gammon Family at the La Paz school New Parent Orientation last August and felt a connection with them immediately as they too had left a school and community they loved to pursue an international experience for their children.  In fact, their description of the home they left behind had made me cry.  I felt the same.  Sad to see our wonderful life back home "gone," but also thrilled beyond belief  that we were actually here and had actually made this happen for our kids.  I also cried because I could not believe that I was surrounded by so many families who were doing the exact same thing as us....something that others would consider way outside the box, but for us, it was way inside the box...inside the box of adventure!  I will continually wish for more and more adventures for our kids all throughout their lives, no matter where that takes them (and hopefully we can go visit them!).

 

 



William checking in with the big boys.....

One of our favorite "after-the-beach" hangouts.....especially on Friday nights when they have bon fires and Radio Dos reports live with Evan Luck and Joe Welsh (owner of Witch's Rock Surf Camp and Restaurant).  There is no doubt that their cold beers taste good after a long day surfing, but so does their sushi...our favorite is Joe's Barrel roll....kinda like a deep fried California roll with salmon and cream cheese.  Yum!

 

Sushi Boat...that lasted all of 3 minutes before
they asked if they could get another one...NOT!







  



A typical day at the beach for the girls...
Seraphina and Marissa
 (who both wish they had each other as a sister)

 

Over the course of the first half of the year we would run into this family at this beach and we would hang out as our kids were all drawn to each other.  They have 3 kids with similar ages to our kids....Seraphina is 8, Tucker is 12, and Isaiah is 14 and in Zack's class.  Many times we continued the beach fun into the early evening at a restaurant.  Good vibes and good times.

 



Seraphina and Marissa (the posers!)

 

 



 

William the photo bomber!

Then, last March, after a second break-in at their house, but this time in plain view of the kids, they moved into our guest house.  Nate was in the US at the time, so it was great for Mary and the kids to have an alternative to go to as the kids did not want to return "to the scene of the crime."  Nate returned a few weeks later and they spent a couple weeks looking for a new house.  This time they landed just down the street from us (lucky us!) and so began our fun time as neighbors.

The photo bomber strikes again....

 



 



 





A new froggy friend at JT's in Tamarindo
(Isaiah, William., Seraphina and Marissa)



 

 

The big boys even played on the same soccer team together....all of them having a blast.  Mary and I spent many a hot afternoon watching them play while Nate assisted with practices.  So great to see them in action!

 

 

Dominic, Tucker, Zack and Isaiah

 

 

 





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soccer in the intense heat/humidity of Costa Rica was a new experience for all of us.  Practices started during the dry season, so games were held on rock hard, dead grass fields most of the time.  Water was in high demand and they played their hearts out!

 

 

Soccer practice in the rain!

 

La Paz vs. Cartagena

 



Coco Loco dinner...end of trimester!



Tucker, Dominic and William

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dinners out or dinners in...it was all fun.  Our favorite dinner spots were always on the beach, with a sunset thrown in.  Many times the kids played beach games after dark while we sat and talked.  Hide-and-go-seek, soccer, bowling, sand castle building, Frisbee, etc.  No game was off limits, no matter the age.





 

 

In front of Coco Locos, Playa Flamingo....beach sand dune surfing!



Me, Nate and Mary at the Internet Café
(it's really just our back patio...but, it's where we could all get on-line!

Nate the grill Master and Marissa the Ham!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dance Party!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The kids also flowed seamlessly between the two houses and the one across the street, with lots of bike rides, swim sessions and soccer games in the yard.  We held many an impromptu dinner party and there were plenty of  sleepovers and helping with carpooling the kids...with 7 kids between us (and 4 more across the street with another family!), it was nice to "divide and conquer all the tasks of raising this multi-aged group. 

 

 

 

The kids....William, Tucker, Zack, Isaiah,
Dominic, Seraphina, and Marissa

 

 

Whether it was bike rides to get smoothies, the boys rip-sticking or skateboarding thru our house, a game of tag in the yard or on the beach, games in the pool, dinner parties, dance parties (the girl's favorite), the many shows and fashion parades put on by the girls, sweating at boot camp, hiking, stretching at yoga, bottles of wine or tropical drinks, sunsets in Brasilito, Mary's amazing meals,  fishing, boogie boarding, skim boarding, surfing, sea shell collecting, sand castle making, Nate's masterful grilling, or playing 7 Little Words, it was always fun and always easy.

 

 

Everyone digging in....fish tacos!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary's a-m-a-z-I-n-g taco shells rubbed with Coconut oil!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary and I had an easy friendship....traveling to boot camp, yoga and hikes together.  We loved getting pedicures from Harlan and shared the same wonderful cleaning gal, Argentina.  We walked the beach many a day together and had our share of lunches out while the kids were at school.  We both felt great about our fun workouts and Mary even devised our own boot camp workout down by the bridge by our house over the summer!  Girls just gotta have fun AND work out (when ya live by the beach!). 

 

Mary and I hiking at Las Catalinas

 





Nate, our other neighbor Tony, and Kurt on the beach for sunset

One of our favorite things to do was to run down the street to our local beach for sunset.  It was an easy way to get the kids out of the house for an hour right before dinner, enjoy ourselves and enjoy our beautiful surroundings.  There is just something magical about the sunsets here...even the air is colorful.  But, floating in the warm water with all the kids, at sunset, with a beer in your hand is even more magical!

 

The girls....inseparable friends!

 



Sunset chatting....

 

 

 

The girls at one of our sunset runs....

 

But, as the year ran down, we all felt that it was time to decide....we decided to spend a second year in Costa Rica and the Gammons decided to move to Florida to be near grandmothers and extended family and for Nate to expand on some new ideas for his lumber brokerage business.  Both of our families embarking on another year of travel and family adventure and both of us hoping that this next year (and years to come) will bring us back to the same location....we hope to travel to Florida for Halloween in October and they hope to return in Jan or Feb to visit and have a check-up with the orthodontist.  They have also embarked on a new adventure of home schooling, so we hope the flexibility of this will allow them to travel more and put Costa Rica on their list of destinations!

 

 

The boys...Dominic, Isaiah, William, Tucker and Zack

Marissa and Seraphina....the Peace Twins!

Moving and traveling with your family has it pitfalls and one of them is the short or condensed amount of time one gets to spend with friends and acquaintances.  But, as Nate said to me at our last family dinner together, he did not look at this as a passing friendship, but as a lifelong connection that we will all work hard to maintain.  I actually don't think it will be that hard to maintain and we look forward to traveling hook-ups with this wonderful and fun family.



Mary and I being strong and not crying (yet!)



The wonderful Gammon Family!

But, what else can I say that has not already been said....it was a great, great, year and one we will never, ever forget.  Thank you for sharing it with us.  Pura Vida Gammon Family....until we meet again (very soon I hope!).  xxoo

Shaking things up with Mother Nature (again!)

I still find it hard to believe that mother nature sent us another big earthquake (6.0) on the exact one year anniversary of last year's huge quake (7.6)...and almost at exactly the same time.  Last year was at about 8:30am and this year's was at about 6:30am.  Coincidence?  Whatever you want to call it, it was enough to have one of my kids ask if we could be away on Sept. 5th next year for fear of what it might be next time.

 

Last year's quake was a strong, long lasting (3 minutes!) quake that happened just after the kids arrived at school.  3 of our kids were starting their day and our oldest was at home with Kurt and I working on a proposal for the internships he would be doing that year as part of an elective course he was taking called LEEP...which stands for Lifelong Experiential Education Program.

 

As the earth began to shake and the noise from the rattling windows and doors got louder, the 3 of use stood up and pondered what we should do, but when things began to start flying off the shelves and glass started to break, we suddenly knew that it was time to run outside, which we did...but, the quaking kept going for at least another two minutes.

 

When we darted down to pick up the kids at the lower campus, there was broken glass everywhere, but the kids, just pre-school thru 5th grade, were all well cared for and loved.  The quake had happened during the morning meeting out in the outdoor palapa....far away from any glass....and had found all the teachers close enough to all the kids to give hugs and immediate instructions.  Lots of excitement filled the air and each kid had a story to tell.

 

When we drove up to the upper campus (grades 6-12) we found the kids up the hill/mountain, as a tsunami warning had been issued by then.  Of course, this is more worrisome and fearful to most than the actual earthquake, so reports of this precaution sent a new found fear into our children when they thought it was all over.  Lots of conversations ensued over what all these events meant and what our family plan of re-connection would be.

 

We then drove home to find dad with our property management team cleaning up all the broken bottles and items that had flown off the shelves, mostly in the kitchen.  The neighbors were all out front and we met many of them for the first time as we had just moved in 2 weeks prior.  It was amazing to see a community bond and connect thru such an event.  We, at that moment, knew that our time in Costa Rica would be just fine.  Not to mention the minimal damage sustained by all the buildings, if any.  Kurt and I were living in San Francisco during the Loma Prieta quake of 1989 which registered a close (and lower!) 6.9 which leveled many buildings, including our own, killed 63 people, flattened a second of the Bay Bridge, and stopped the World Series.  So, to see Costa Rica roll with the flow so easily, it made us all feel much better.

 

But, this year, the quake was loud and strong enough to wake us all up and send us again flying out the door in our PJ's.  Well, except for the two teenagers, who woke up and rolled over despite our jumping up and down about the excitement of being woken up that way.  No broken glass or power outages this time.  And many of the kids in the neighborhood were all asking if school would be cancelled again...but, no.  We did have a second really good aftershock a few minutes later and then one again that night....but, they all just seemed fun and not so scary.  Dare I say that after so many quakes this year, that we are actually getting used to them?!

 

But, what this quake did do was remind us again that mother nature is supreme, that the Ring of Fire is real, and that community is everything.

First Day of School, 2nd Year in Cost Rica

Well, I guess it is now official....we loved our year in Costa Rica so much that we are turning it into a two year adventure!  With the exception of our oldest, this new life suits all of us just perfectly and we are beginning to hear requests to either stay here permanently or to at least continue to travel.  Dominic, our oldest, still desires to return to his high school in the states for his senior year next year and we have assured him that he can.  Secretly, I hope this year turns out even better for him as he should be now settled in and into the Pura Vida routine and that maybe he will desire to finish out here...but, we will see.  With the newly acquired International Bachelorette (IB) designation at the school, it is kinda hard to pass up an IB International World School Diploma for a regular old California State Diploma (cause we all know what that means).  But, it will be up to him and time will tell.

 

Our wonderful neighbors, the Gammons, are moving back to Florida (sob!) in a few days and started a home school on-line program a few weeks ago and a few of our kids have been very interested in the concept of this (I personally think they just like the idea of doing school in their PJ's and not having to wear a uniform!).  Dominic and Zack will get to try this out soon as they will both take World History on-line to keep up with the requirements of the high school back in the states.  History/Social Studies here at La Paz is taught in Spanish and is place-based and mostly about Costa Rica and the Latin American countries.   Cool in itself, but not cool enough to qualify as World History per the state of California. 

 

In the car this morning on the way to the first day back, we all talked about how different this year feels compared to this time last year.  Last year, we were new, still figuring it all out and had only met a handful of friends in the weeks before school started.  We were all new, in a new land, and attending a new school....this year, Dominic's class (11th) is the highest grade at the high school and thus the upper classmen of the colegio (what they call high school here), and Marissa's class (5th) is the highest grade at her campus and both are excited to be leaders and the oldest.  William is excited to be in a 2nd-3rd grade blended class (especially cause it is with Ms. Kelly...the wife of Marissa's teacher last year....we have all been saying that we are going form one Dodge to the next and so excited to still be in the magic of the Dodge family teaching circle).  Zack's class lost several of his favorite friends this past year, so he is excited to meet the new students and get back to playing some soccer (along with acquiring some advancement in some video game he wants to conquer this year).

 

I find myself personally slipping seamlessly back into my volunteer ways as I will be co-coordinating the new La Paz Community Council (a hybrid of the American version of the PTA) after helping to form the group last year.  After preparing a much needed Welcome Packet for the new families, it gave me the honor to get to know many new families even before they arrived and helped them with a few questions, logistics, and details of moving a whole family to a new country.  It has helped my own second year feel like home, familiar and welcoming.  And of course, I will keep up with my yoga classes (with the exciting addition of an aerial yoga class in Tamarindo!), tennis lessons, and I hope I can keep up with "Mary's boot camp" class (as we call our little work out down at the bridge) even after she leaves for Florida.

 

Kurt just headed back to the states early yesterday morning after United has cut their flights into Liberia to one flight in on Saturdays and one flight out on Sundays per week....yep...just two flight a week to choose from...such a bummer.  But, he was here for our little vacation last week and now he is back working hard on the launch of his new business, Dedicated Capital.  I just love the title, cause out of all the people I know, Kurt is by far the most DEDICATED husband, father and provided I have ever met.  Go Kurt Go!

 

So, I can't pass up an opportunity to show a picture of the kids from last year and this year....who do you think has grown/changed the most?  Just love their adventurous spirit (not to mention their newly acquired Spanish speaking skills.....they are now my translators!).  Go kids go!