Hola!

Just popping in to let you know I'm back! I have 100 million loads of laundry to do today as well as Christmas decorations to take down (eek!).  I've missed y'all! Costa Rica was a wonderful break from the internets and phones and the hustle and bustle of my days.  I had a chance to sit by the pool and read with gorgeous views of the ocean and volcanoes. I also had a chance to see a different way of life in a very poor country. It was eye-opening and a wonderful way to start the year.  Costa Rican people love babies, dogs and Christmas so we have a lot in common.  Here are a few pictures from my phone.  I'll share a few more from my camera once I get them properly downloaded and sorted.

 Pink horse stables = happiness.  These were located at the base of the mountain (?), giant hill (?) where our villa was located.

A gorgeous beach we found after climbing over some rocks on our last day there.

The next two pictures are views from the gym, which was located just above our villa.

Funny story: When we first arrived, the directions to our villa told us the road would dead end into our driveway.  Wrong.  It dead ends into the gym parking lot that you see in the first picture.  So we all got out of the cars and unloaded our bags and ran around like total goof balls, silly with delight at our amazing view.  My sister-in-law even exclaimed, "Our house has a full gym!!!"  It wasn't until we poked around a little further that we realized, oh, it WAS the gym. Ha!

We stopped at a little place to eat after our boat tour and they had the cutest gingham table cloths that they put out just for guests. You could tell they were very proud of their ability to decorate for guests.  The part of Costa Rica where we stayed in Guanacaste was as I said before, very poor.  I often found myself saying aloud, "Can you imagine ... ?" It put a lot of things in perspective for me.  The people there are so lovely and really seem to make the most of what they have.

Like me, they also still had their Christmas decorations up.  Which reminds me it's time to take mine down.  I plan on getting rid of a lot of stuff over the next month.  This trip provided the impetus for the fire that needs to be lit under my tushy to get it together.  I'm excited to get back to blogging as well! Hope everyone had a Happy New Year!