La Casa de Los Suenos

  The house of our dreams! Well actually, thats not really a true statement because we didn't even dare to dream this big! We just moved into our new home (until November 10th) and we couldn't be happier about it! First of all, we don't have to carry everything we own on our backs or wheel it down the streets (or trails of the jungle). Secondly, we don't have to strategize when to buy food, when to cook it, and how to pack it in order to maximize our budget and minimize the amount of food we're lugging around with us.  Thirdly, THIS HOUSE IS AMAZING!!!!!!

And now, where to begin? So much has happened since we last wrote to you. We soaked up the sun in Puerto Viejo and decided to extend our stay at Rocking J's so that Shuli could spend her first night in Costa Rica at one of our favorite hostels of all time.  Shuli is an amazing - she's been one of my best friends for a couple years now, ever since we worked together in Hawaii, and after spending the last 10 days together she's one of Kirby's best friends too. So many wonderful things to say about her and her visit, including a road trip around the Nicoya peninsula, but you'll just have to wait for that because this post is about our new home!

Last night we spent our first night there, and we probably said "wow" over 1,000 times. Well,  maybe if you combined the "wow"'s with the "oooohhhhh!"'s and "aaahhh!"'s.  Here is a little peek into what you might have heard if you'd been a fly on the wall of our house last night:
Kirby: "This is OUR house!"
Katie: "We LIVE here!"
Kirby: "Oh, are you hungry? Let me just whip something up for you! What do you feel like? Let's just see what we've got in the fridge. Oh, its hard to see what we have because it's just so full of food!
Katie: "We have a fridge and it's stocked full of food for us to eat!!"
Kirby: "We have vegetables in the crisper!"
Katie: "We have 30 eggs!"
Kirby: "I put napkins in the napkin holder!"
Katie: "We have napkins in the napkin holder!!!"
Kirby: "We have paper towels on a paper towel holder!!!"
Katie: "We have a toaster! We have a blender! We have a stove! We have a bean cooker!"
Kirby: "I used our bean cooker to cook these beans!"
Katie:  "We have ice in the freezer! We have a freezer! We can cook food... and freeze it!"
Kirby: "ICE!"
Katie: "We LIVE here!"
Kirby: "We LIVE here!"

And so it went. Everything is a celebration. We are beside ourselves with joy.  Literally, it's as if we are looking down at ourselves, amazed by the simple pleasures that come with having a home. But they're even more exciting because we have been living like turtles with overstuffed shells for the past 40 days.  And even MORE exciting because our new home is so luxurious. 2 stories, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a big kitchen with all the appliances you could ask for (even a blender!!!), a cozy living room, and the piece de resistance: the upstairs balcony with the view of the volcano!  Outside of the house we have our pool, our mini-pool (we thought it was a hot tub but no, for us its just a round mini-pool) a huge lawn, a BBQ, a laundry room with 2 washers, a spinner to help dry the clothes (miraculous!!), and plenty of covered drying area, and don't forget the view of the volcano from almost every spot on the property and most windows in the house. We got lots of use out of the laundry facilities today, literally washing everything we own that is washable!

The view from our backyard - our precious laundry room and all our freshly cleaned clothes! There are even more that you can't see in this picture, plus our sleeping bags laying out by the pool. Quite the laundry day!

 As I re-read this, I feel a bit self-conscious because it sounds so boastful.  The house is just so amazing, it's really hard to downplay.  And we're so so SOOOO excited about our new home that we wanted to share our excitement with all of you!  The pool and the view of the volcano are definitely amazing, but the most important thing is that we have a safe, dry, and clean place to spend our days and nights.  Life will be very different now that we are no longer wondering about where we're going to sleep and eat.  Last night we had more important things to worry about, like how to re-distribute all the little knick-knacks so we could move a shelf upstairs for me to use as a closet.  The little white elephant is on the microwave, the cows are in the kitchen (in tribute to Kirby's mom, Mary Lou, who loves having cows in the kitchen), a little golden Christmas ornament is in one of the potted plants as a "gazing ball" type decoration, 2 frogs are on the toilet, and 3 toucans are the welcoming committee, dead center when you open the door. 

And now you may be wondering, "but how could you two, the budget travelers eating just rice and beans all the time, afford this fabulous home?" Well, it's because we are able to split the rent 3 ways instead of just 2, with our new visitor Denise, another one of my favorite people, who arrives tomorrow morning.  When I called her a couple days ago to see if she wanted to spend her Costa Rican vacation in "the dream house" with her own room, a huge bed, a pool, big kitchen, and view of the volcano from the deck, she said "go get it!" So we got it. And now here we are. Kirby is holding down the fort at the dream house, I'm in San Jose gobbling up internet time like it's chocolate, Denise is about to leave for the airport to fly down here, and by the time you read this all 3 of us might be on our balcony watching the sun set behind the volcano. The only downfall of the dream house is that there is no internet, so our blogs may continue to be a few and far between, but we we're really excited to share our journey with Shuli and more of the beautiful things we've gotten to see.

When you go home tonight, or if you are at home now, take a moment to be grateful for all that you have at your fingertips to make your life easier and more comfortable. Hot water, electricity, climate control, carpet (!), the internet, your closet, your refrigerator, your bed... it's easy to take all of these things for granted, I definitely did before moving here, but hopefully this post has helped you to see how exciting it can be just to have your own little space to call home.