A SoCal Christmas & Back in Paradise

Our trip to California for a month over Christmas and New Year's was just delightful. No hiccups whatsoever, except for a couple of pet issues (more on that at the end of my story) and a little bit of a "fire" theme.

We left Monteverde for San Jose the first week in December. Anibal and Christian, the son & nephew of our finca (farm) owners, drove us down in our car and dropped us at a lovely small hotel in San Jose. Anibal and Christian then returned and looked after our house, car and dog (Chispita) for the month we were gone.

We spent two days walking around San Jose, exploring and Christmas shopping. Most of San Jose was out on the street with us shopping and the shopping areas were all quite crowded. My favorite place was the central markets... wonderful crowded stalls selling fun souvenirs as well as typical household staples, especially meat and fish. We spent a little time exploring San Jose 's historic quarter, but mostly simply enjoyed walking around town.

At this point I must say that I've never actually been to San Jose, as I've never heard anyone rave about it, and it's always been easier to go straight from the airport to Monteverde. Well, having now been there, I can safely say that I wouldn't really go out of my way to go back to San Jose. Not that there is anything terrible about it, but much of the city is just miles and miles of razor wire and wrought iron bars with almost no architecture of note. Basically on a scale of 1- 10 for ambiance, I'd rate San Jose about a 2. So, if you're thinking of coming to visit, I'd allot one day maximum for San Jose.

After San Jose we traveled to Riverside, California to stay with Scott's parents. Our trip was super easy and it was wonderful to see Mom and Pop and return to "perfect land" once more. Costa Rica spends very little on roads, landscape, sidewalks and other public amenities. What does exist is generally in poor repair, if not downright dangerous (rebar sticking up out of sidewalks, etc..) So, we were happy to see and enjoy all the good roads and well cared for amenities of Southern California.

After spending our first day simply catching up and enjoying Mom & Pop's company, we set out for Disneyland the second day. We met up with a friend of mine from grade school and her kids and had a really lovely day enjoying the park. Niall thoroughly enjoyed the day, especially since he could hang out with kids his own age. We enjoyed the day as well, and were amazed by the fireworks, but were surprised to find a number of the park employees were quite rude...not something we expected!

Late in the week we spent time with our the Raincross Cyclery gang (the bike shop that Scott used to work at when he was first starting out working in CA). It was fun to see that all of our footloose friends have turned into such "cool" parents with really great kids. Unfortunately our good friends the Hands, who had hosted the party, had their house catch on fire the following day. Luckily no one was hurt and most of their belongings were not burned, but they will have to spend a few months out of the house. We are hoping for a speedy renovation.

The rest of the week was full of shopping (anything imported here in Monteverde is fairly expensive), and preparing for the great Carter cousin gathering (Mom's side of the family) at Mom and Pop's. This year there were 30 people, 12 of them kids and a good time was had by all. It was lovely to catch up with everyone and see all the cousins, especially the youngest generation which ranges from 1 to 15 years of age. Niall was absolutely thrilled to have lots of kids to hang out with as most of the kids are around his age.

Niall spent a fair bit of the week at Mom & Pops either in front of the TV (making up for lost time he claims, as we have no TV in Costa Rica) or out hanging with the neighborhood kids who are around his age. He went for long walks around the lakes of Fairmount Park with Mom and Pop and rode his bike up Mt Rubidoux with us one morning. We all felt in quite good shape from our hiking here in Costa Rica and were very pleased to see how fit Niall has become as well.

The second week we enjoyed planning for Mom & Pop's 50th Wedding Anniversary and meeting up with many old friends in Riverside. We were able to see our good friends from school as well as work and spent almost too much time wining and dining! We enjoyed Christmas shopping... California is quite the shopper's paradise, especially compared to our little remote town in Costa Rica! It was a good thing that we didn't want to schlep much back with us to Costa Rica, but we did indulge in buying each other consumables that are hard to get in Costa Rica. There was altogether too much chocolate wrapped up under the tree Christmas morning!

That week we were also able to spend a couple of nights with the friends down at Newport Beach. We enjoyed walks along the beach, playing in the sand, riding bikes and a lovely dinner out. The highlight of the visit was baking the traditional family Christmas cookies which are really hard to resist. So much so that Niall tried to convince Trenton (age 6) to sneak out of bed in the middle of the night for a cookie raid. Luckily, Trenton is a bit wiser than Niall and refused to give in to temptation. Ah, it's always so fun to visit your friends and have your own child be the trouble maker!

On Friday the 22nd we celebrated Mom & Pop's 50th wedding anniversary with an elaborate dinner at their favorite restaurant. All the nieces and nephews were there along with good friends and several original wedding party members. Afterward we enjoyed two beautiful cakes at the home of their best friends, Jackie and Harry Cramer. The second cake was for Scott and I, as we share our anniversary with Mom and Pop. Sure makes anniversary celebrations convenient!

The next day, my dear friend Sue from San Diego drove up and took me out for a day of girlie shopping! Sue helped me spruce up my backwoods Costa Rica attire, but most fun was just catching up. We later met Scott for lunch and once again overindulged at one of our favorite little restaurants.

Christmas Eve we drove to Clay and Diane's and enjoyed a lovely dinner and long walk along Manhattan Beach. The boardwalk was just packed with everyone out enjoying the weather and their families. Christmas Day we spent cozily at Mom and Pop's and then drove to Palm Desert (past Palm Springs) to have Christmas Day dinner with my sister's family and her in-laws. We had a delightful meal cooked by my sister's mother in law and simply enjoyed catching up with everyone.

Christmas week we spent with my sister and her husband in their beautiful home. Niall and his cousin AJ (4 years old) got along quite well. It was fun to have AJ now be big enough to really hang out with Niall and for them to have time enough to really get to know one another. Other than Niall wanting to retreat to a corner to read a bit more than AJ wanted, they got along very well.

Niall's favorite gift for Christmas was the last 4 of the "Redwall" series of books by Brian Jacques. With no TV in our little house in Costa Rica (our choice) Niall has gone from being a below grade level reader last year to reading way above grade level this year. He's able to read in the car, even when the roads are rough, and often takes a book with him when we go out to dinner. This has really helped Niall's ability to deal with some of the more boring stretches or our adventures this year, for which we are eternally grateful!

During Christmas week we were able to finally relocate the last of the family boxes from a storage unit in Riverside to my sister's house in Palm Desert. There are still about 50 boxes of family papers (covering three generations! ) that we have not sorted through, so getting them to Palm Desert was the first step in that endeavor. Given how busy our lives our, it will probably be years before we get through everything. I have new found appreciation for why my parents never were able to sort through any of it either!

When we returned from Palm Desert , we set out for San Clemente State Beach to camp overnight with our bicycling friends and ring in the New Year. I guess we're all getting a little bit long in the chops as we were all in bed by 12:04! Nevertheless we had a great time hanging out around the campfire...it hardly seems like it's been 20 years since we've been gone. We also enjoyed meeting new friends and Niall especially liked hanging out with the other kids, riding bikes, climbing trees and getting scraped up from skate board adventures.

New Year's day we drove up along the coast to Manhattan Beach and spent the rest of the week with Clay (Scott's brother) and Diane and their four kids. Niall was in heaven… he was simply absorbed into the family and spent hours playing with Legos, playing tag at the beach, and just in general enjoying life with other kids! We were happy that Niall got to spend a decent chunk of time with all his cousins as generally when we visit we just don't have the time for more than a few hours here and there. This trip we were really able to just hang out for days and didn't have a big "to do agenda". Mostly we just did everyday things with our families.

I greatly enjoyed a number of long walks on the beach with Diane while Scott and Clay worked on building a wall in front of their house. We also enjoyed an "adult's night out" while our oldest niece and nephew babysat. Wow, that was a nice treat! Scott and I also enjoyed getting to spend time with the kids and getting to know them better. The youngest, Tim, 9, is remarkably similar to Niall (they both have that mischievous glint in their eyes!) and they spent many an hour bonding over Legos. During the week we were also able to visit old friends up in Santa Barbara (what a delightful city!) and visit other good friends in LA.

At the end of our last week, we all traveled down Lake Elsinore for the Shannon family reunion. Once again, the young cousins almost outnumbered the adults and Niall had a wonderful time. We greatly enjoyed seeing everyone and getting to know some of our cousins that we haven't really gotten to see in the past. It is fun to see the "engineering" gene on the Shannon family side being expressed in the younger generation. We also had fun looking at old photos and seeing how similar some of the young cousins look to photos of Scott's Dad and his brothers when they were young. While some of the cousins look remarkably like their fore bearers, Niall is a bit of a genetic mongrel. We were able, however, to identify just exactly where his ears come from!

We spent the last few days between Mom & Pop's and Clay and Diane's (nice to have them living so close to the LA airport!). The last night we were at the beach, we spent much of the early evening watching a huge fire burn in Malibu just down the coast. It burned down about 10 homes, so that was our other brush with fire on the trip. We took a "red eye" flight back to San Jose - aside from the lack of sleep it's definitely the way to travel. LAX was not a crazy zone (as we've seen it in the past) and we breezed out of the airport at San Jose in record time. Anibal and Christian picked us up at the curb as planned, and drove us back up to Monteverde. That was a real treat as it's a 3 to 4 hour drive, and it was delightful to be chauffeured when we were exhausted. They brought us up to date on all that had happened while we were gone, including the adventures of our little dog Chispita. Apparently she disappeared for a few days and was sighted hanging out "downtown" and then later hitching a ride with some of the tourists!

We also learned that the night before we returned, a creature had gotten up into our pet turtle's container on top of the dryer on the back porch, and had enjoyed him as a tasty little morsel. We have since cleaned up the mess that was left behind and last night I found little muddy footprints with very long claw marks on top of the dryer. It appears as if our visitor had returned to search for more goodies, but must have come away disappointed. We suspect a coatimundi was the culprit. They are similar to raccoons, but with long delicate snouts and long, cat like tails.

While we greatly enjoyed our vacation from our vacation (so to speak, for Norma at least!), it was very nice to get back home to our own little place in the cloud forest (and I'm sure our relatives and friends we're just as happy to see us go!). Niall's back in school and we're back to our regular routine, with a little bit more added emphasis on the hiking part due to the added post holiday insulation we all seem to have acquired.

We have started up new Spanish courses which we hope will begin to smooth out our extremely rough Spanish skills. We have also started to help plan a 10K fundraising race for the school. This is a new idea for everyone so we're finding it all very interesting. Scott continues to work on a wide variety of projects.

The weather has been sunny, but with a strong constant wind blowing over the Continental Divide. Some gusts at night wake us up, shaking and rattling the house, but it's mostly pretty benign. Sometimes it blows over misty rain, which can be fairly cool, but mostly it's still sunny and 75 and the stiff wind helps keep us cool while we're hiking.

We hope everyone has had a lovely holiday and New Year and we look forward to seeing some of you down here in the coming months!