Samara Beach

Today we went to Samara Beach - wanna know what makes for a great day at the beach?

3 Mom's from Utah

Bread, PB&J, 8 packages of Pozuelo Cremas cookies, diapers, wipes, folding chairs, um, what else did we pack?

Oh yeah, 19 kids.
It looked like a school class field trip! Love it.

Kids eating dirt (mostly that was just kids under 2 years old)


Kids having a mud-ball fight, since there's no snow.


James playing hop scotch!


...and kids just getting dirty! Yeah!

I took lots of pictures, wanted to get some uploaded before I go to bed. I'll post more tomorrow!

Holiday Swim

After our Thanksgiving meal and before the desserts, kids and adults took a break in the pool, doing super soaker splashes, diving, and family races. Here Sergeant Dannan has his swimming soldiers standing at attention before he called out their diving orders.

Then Corporal Jacob joined in the fun.

My kids favorite part was when Dannan and Jacob rocket shot them through the air into the pool - You really get a lot more height when you're thrown from someone standing on the sides of the pool as opposed to when the strong Dad is in the pool. They had fun flying!

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving morning, and the women are still working hard to make a special feast for all of us. Everyone was looking forward to trying many scrumptious dishes.

The kids had had a great sleepover and are ready for another one. They woke up and went swimming first thing

All the kids heading to the pool.

The kids found a little little black snake - looked like a black worm except for the tiny tongue that kept smelling the air. I couldn't see it's eyes it was so small. Cute little thing, if you can call a snake "cute"?


The men grilled up the chicken for the feast. We decided to go with chicken instead of turkey cause they got the turkeys marked up in price big time cause they know we Americans have a holiday to celebrate. So we went with chicken, cause it was less expensive.

Around 3:00 everything was ready to be served, a Thanksgiving feast in a tropical paradise next to the pool with Christmas music playing on the laptop. :)


Thank you Rachael and Melanie for all your hard work!

The toddler table, enjoying chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and green beans. Save room for some pie!

The Meyers twin babies in their chairs eating some green beans, with the older kids group in the background on the pool house which is their diving board.

Hey you guys! How's the grubb?

Up next: After dinner activity (swimming of course!)

I Have An Extra Minute!!!

Hello Everyone! I am blogging for the first time on my own. Well not really I had to have a little help from friends but I am now making my first post with pictures and everything!!! Isn't that awesome! I feel so computer savvy! So, we are doing well! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast with the Wrides and the Hildagos and Jose, our grounds keeper and his son showed up too!! We had a great time visiting and eating good food. We gave thanks for our blessings and gathered for an hour together to listen to an inspiring message from Michael Medved on the true story of Thanksgiving. We haven't listened to all of it yet but it was wonderful what we did listen to and I can't wait to get back to it again! We are so thankful that we were able to have Thankgiving this year. I will share with all of you our everyday miracle that made it possible for us to even have a feast! I woke up on Wednesday and realized that Thanksgiving was tomorrow and we had no money and we were had no food to cook either, except food storage food. I talked with Dannan about it and we decided that we should call Tiffanie and see what her plans were for sure. (She talked to us about getting together for Thanksgiving and being 'family' earlier this past week but we didn't have any plans layed out.) We thought if we combined our resources we could possibly pull off a decent meal. So we did and she was excited and willing to celebrate with us! Hurray!! We love being with the Wrides, they are an awesome family! So, we added up all our money and it totaled out at $30.00. We need to open a bank account and it takes about 50.00 to do it, so we were saving that for the deposit, but we felt like we should use it to buy what ingredients we could for dinner. We headed out to the store and Dannan thought, hey, why don't we just check the account and see if there is anything in it. Well, the day before there wasn't but, alas, when we checked there was $150.00 in there. We had enough and to spare to buy all that we needed to make everything we were hoping to have for Thanksgiving. So that was our little miracle for Thanksgiving. We truly had a wonderful time being with friends and enjoying the sun and warm weather for our outdoor, pool party Thanksgiving Celebration! We made grilled chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, southern style green beans, carrots and celery, and four kinds of pies!! We had a wonderful german chocolate pie made by Rachael and Coconut/Banana Cream pie and "pumpkin" pie and apple crisp (made completely by dried food storage and it was fabulous!). I made pastry dough for the second time ever and it turned out Perfect! I couldn't believe how good the crusts were on all those pies! We feasted and feasted! A little tid bit on the pumkin...they don't have canned pumpkin here or real pumpkins for that matter, so I had to do something else. We found some large squash at the market and it kind of looked like pumpkin and smelled a little like pumpkin(they had some squashes cut up and wrapped). Well, I thought, yeah, I could use that to make pumpkin pie and they actually had butternut squash as well, so I got one of each and headed home to get busy baking. When I cut open the squash it was green!! Not ripe at all! So I was quite bummed out! I called and talked to Dannan but he was already at the lab and Rachael and I have no working vehicle, so I was stuck. Finally Rachael had the great idea of calling Tiffanie to solicit help. We did and she was willing so she headed out to the grocery store by her and they didn't have pumpkin either so she got sweet potatoes instead. When she got to our place we hoped in the car together and headed back to the market bought the already cut squash that I knew was ripe and headed home to make pie. It turned out great thanks to the help of a great friend and we had tico squash and butternut squash pie, yummmm!

So we are good and well and are here at the lab today to talk to family, unfortunately no one was home so we are just using the internet and now we are going to visit a friend. Love you all.... So the pictures are of some of the animals and such that we have seen here at our home or at the beach. The parrots, butterflies, hummingbirds we see all the time and it's so wonderful to watch these beautiful creations. The large spider that you can see is a tailess whipscorpion. We have seen a few of these around and it's pretty scary. We've seen a couple scorpions as well! The iguana you see here is the same kind that is living in our roof and we get to see him all the time. The crab is similar to the one I saw at Samara beach. This blue butterfly is a blue morph they are very large and are so graceful to watch fly!

Thanksgiving Eve

We will be joining the RMs tomorrow for a lovely Thanksgiving feast.


Rachael and Melanie were working most all the day, a most amazing feat since their kitchen is the width of a hall and has so little counter space.

Melanie working at the counter space - My estimate is that it's about 3 x 4 square feet.

I went to AutoMercado for them to buy some pumpkin in a can but there was none, so Melanie's making due with a squash she found at the local Tico market and a few cans of sweet potatoes which AutoMercado did have on their Thanksgiving display for the Americans to buy. We're skipping on turkey, since it's $60. Thus chicken will be served as the main dish.

My three oldest kids are sleeping over there tonight, I brought the 4 younger ones home.
After dinner, the kids watched "Cats and Dogs" in Melanie and Dannan's bedroom.

Isn't that a cute picture?

Dannan defrosting and fixing the fridge again, that silly fridge.

Melanie's Facebook - Part 5

We have internet!! I am at the lab and we got our internet hooked up yesterday! I can now keep in touch a little better, I hope! It's still hard to get over here very much because money is tight and we have large vans that get bad gas mileage! When I get Tiffanie to tutor me on the blog spot I can post on there but for now I'll keep posting on here!

Things are good! We had a family pool party on Saturday, the sun was shinning and it was a blast. Dannan spent 2 hours cleaning the pool before we all swam, we were so thankful he did because the water felt great and was soon clear and clean. So, he is now fried!!! I feel so sorry for him, you can't even touch his shoulders. We have work coming into the lab and we are feeling happy about our prospects here. We are excited to be in our branch. We have made some good friends there and are excited to do more missionary work.

The kids are doing great! Savannah says she loves Costa Rica but misses our big house and our horses. I do too! Joey says he misses his friends and it's hard to not be able to speak Spanish, but he is making friends anyway and it will be good as we are able to go more places and spend more time around Ticos. Jacob tells me he misses his MauMau and his nice, big house. He likes it here though but is ready to be in his own house, me too. Molly is happy and sunshiney just about all the time, she loves it here and loves to help with the twins! James is very happy to have a cute little playmate that is always willing to go and make mischief with him! Rachael and I just sit and watch them sometimes, laughing at their cuteness! They are just so funny together!

The weather is beautiful lately and I am enjoying less rain and more sun!! It is about 80 every day and the sun usually shines for most of the day, until around 2 or 3 when the clouds tend to roll in. It is a beautiful place to live and I feel like I am settling down now and I am getting to feel comfortable and able to handle most things, the mold, I'm afraid is something I really don't like and am not adjusted to! It is sad to lose nice clothes and books to mold!!! I am praying for a home with air condition so it will be easier to control the mold problem! Things are good and life is good with the Lord by our side! Love you all!!!

Royal/Meyers Family Update 11/22/10

Where to even begin? How to even begin? I have been staring at the screen for nearly a half hour wondering where to start and what to tell you all. Since Dannan and I drove away the 17th of September it feels like I have lived 10 years. The events of the last 3 months have filled more than 100 pages in my journal. I don't know how to relate it all in one newsletter. I will do my best. Please email back with questions if there is something you would specifically like to know more about.

Since communication has been sketchy since Dannan and I crossed the border into Mexico I will start and give a brief overview from when we left home until the present.

This will be pretty long so I will be sending it out in chunks. This may take several newsletter to cover.

The Plan

Our plan was to drive the cars down to Costa Rica and be there no later than the 27th , hopefully sooner to find a place to rent, get the lab set up and pick up our families from the airport by the 29th. . According to all the blogs and websites we had studied the estimated travel time from the States to Costa Rica was anywhere between 6-12 days to cover the entire 3,700 miles. Plan 6 days fast or 12 days worst case scenario. We thought it would take us one, maybe two days to drive from Manti, Utah down to Nogales, Mexico. We were wrong or whatever you may want to call it: pipe dream, misinformed, sorely mistaken, etc....The wisdom of the blogs or 'Gringo Guides' to Central America did not apparently apply to our unique journey.
We started out with a fair amount of cash as well. I began with a little over $6000, Dannan and Melanie had $15,000. We figured that it would take about $3000 for each of us in gas, food, repairs, etc. to make our trip. Rachael and I hoped to have $3000 left over with which to cover living expanses in Costa Rica for a month or two while Dannan and I got the dental lab up and cash flowing. We were wrong again. Like early Mormon pioneers we had no real clue what we were in for. All we knew was that God wanted us to go down there and so we pressed forward.

What actually Happened

(Swear words have been deleted)

September 17th Dannan and I were loaded up and ready to go. We had both sold all of our possession that would not fit and would not be prudent to take across Central America. We packed all or our tools, the dental lab, clothing, food storage, photo albums, books, a few of the children's toys,my crossfit gym, and our camping equipment. Our caravan would include my 15 passanger van pulling an 18' trailer, Dannan's 15 passanger van pulling a 24' gutted camper trailer, and the Royal's little blue Hyundai. Before departing we weighed the loaded vans and trailers. We both weighed 17,000lbs separately. Most of that weight was the food storage.
We planned for a nice smooth ride down to Arizona and hopefully spending the night somewhere in Tuscon. We got a late start but figured to drive through the night. We do not even get out of Manti before due to some miscommunication we loose our hired driver David Vick for over an hour. We actually wondered if he had stolen the Hyundai and went on ahead to Mexico to sell it. We later learned that this was a totally groundless concern with Mr. Vicks character.
After reuniting we set out in single file with Dannan in the lead, me second, with David Vick bringing up the rear driving the Hyundai. We did not get far. Just north of Panguitch of Arizona as we are bouncing down the road at 60mph I watch fascinated as one of Dannan's trailer tires literally explodes like a balloon. I had never seen a tire do that before. We stop, change it and get back on the road when not 15 minutes later the one right next to it explodes too. We had a second spare so we change it too. In Panguitch we buy two new tires for Dannan and an extra spare for my trailer just to be safe. Out of Kanab on our way to Page Dannan blows a 3rd tire! For those of you who know Dannan, know that he has a very wide streak of Texas through him. So you can just imagine some of the language that was used to 'bless' that trailer at this moment. We have not even gone 200 miles but it has taken us 6 hours to get this far, and the sun is setting. We know by now we 'aint making it to Tucson tonight.
Lucky for us I have a brother and sister in law who live in Page, AZ. Ben and Crystal very kindly agreed to let us come stay the night in there home. They fed us, visited with us, and were very kind.

September 18th Dannan goes to the local tire shop and pays to get his trailer outfitted with load range E tires. Those suckers are not cheap, but it worked. We are on only the 2nd day of our trip and already have spent $1500 on tires. Today without excuses we would get down to Mexico. It was not to be. Thirty minuets south of the turn off to Tuba City crossing the Navajo Indian reservation my radiator exploded just as I crested a steep hill. That is a game ender. There I sat alone with Dannan's dog and the vans for 8 hours as Dannan and David took off to find a replacement part in the middle of the desert. Providence smiled upon us and the shop in Tuba City was able to get the part on the weekly transport that was coming up that day from Phoenix. About 5pm and $350 later they show up with the part and we have it fixed and on the road by 6pm. We didn't go 5 miles before we got pulled over by a highway patrol officer who wanted to know why we didn't have trailer lights. He let us go with a warning since he'd seen me sitting on the side of the road most of the day next to a broken down van (he never stopped to see if he could help). We spent the night in Flagstaff.

September 19th We wake up that morning to discover that my van will not start. Sounded like an electrical problem. We jumped it and went to the local Auto Zone and have the battery tested, which was good, changed the solenoid, which was good, and determined that it must be the starter. I bought a new starter ($150) installed it, and had the old one tested (which was good). I pulled off the new starter and put back on the old one. The van still would not start. Meanwhile Dannan does a full front rotor and brake change while I'm playing with my van. Finally we decided to take the cursed van to a local mechanic shop. 3 hours later and $40 they have the van working. They played with the wiring assembly on the battery and she started right up. They told us the solenoid was wired funny and that's why it wouldn't start. We hit the road and actually make it through Phoenix. On the south end of Phoenix we stop for gas and the van won't start again. We jumped it and it wouldn't start. We tried again, no good. We wiggle wires, use a manual started, and use a screwdriver on the solenoid. Finally almost of it's own violation it starts. We frantically drive down to Tuscon and spend an hour searching for another auto parts store. No good. We got to Nogales and determined to break down and take it into the Ford dealership to have it repaired.

September 20th Sunday. The Ford dealership is closed. Van will not start and cannot be jumped. We are stuck in Nogales for the day. We again go the rounds of having the battery tested, the solenoid tested, pulling the old starter and putting in a new one but it was all in vain. We even have a traveling mechanic come and look the van over, but he was useless. We went to church and enjoyed the dynamics of a bilingual ward. There was a new move in looking for housing so the elders quorum president asks the elders to help him find a nice neighborhood that was “less dynamic” with 'packages' and 'humans' being trafficked through it. Nice place Nogales. Makes you want to raise kids there.

September 21st For a mere $450 ($150 for parts) the shady mechanics at the Nogales Ford dealership 'fix' my van. They swear it was the starter. The van actually starts. Even though it's late and we heard it was best to cross the border in the morning we went anyway at 4pm. We tried to cross at the Nogales #3 truck crossing and of course got pulled over to be searched. This was a true blue learning experience of dealing with bald faced liars and the bureaucratic customs agents of latin america.
First rule of border crossing: do not deal with anybody who is not actually dressed in the full uniform of an official customs agent. A mere badge is not enough. We dealt with a guy with a badge who assured us he was a customs agent who wanted to unload everything off our trailers and vans to have each item categorized and assessed a tax. He also insisted that bb's, camp hatchets, and pocket knives are weapons that cannot enter the fair and safe state of Mexico. He was a lair who wanted a bribe who didn't even work for customs.
Second rule of border crossing: The less you say about what you've got the better. When the official agents searched us they didn't even look in the trailers or under tarps. They opened our van doors, kinda' looked inside, asked us if we were carrying merchandise beyond personal possessions for resale in Mexico, and then let the matter drop. As long as we were just transmigrates driving through Mexico to another country there was no tax on any of our things. The only mistake we made here was telling them about Dannan's lab equipment which they classified as 'medical'. We still could cross Mexico for free but we now had to drive to Brownsville, TX 1500 miles away. There they could do the correct paper work to let us cross as transmigrates. After 6 hours of discussing the matter with the customs agents (mostly attractive girls in there 20's who acted very blond) they agreed we could cross with everything. They went back to Dannan's van, looked at some of the lab equipment, determined it was not medical, but got hung up on the plastic denture teeth. They were going to have to call the Mexican Dept. of Health to verify if it was safe for us to cross their country with a small box of plastic teeth. Stinger missles, small arms, rocket launchers, and napalm were all ok, but don't you dare bring plastic teeth into Mexico. They don't want your sort here unless you enter through Brownsville, TX.
So frustrated, and almost to tears, and trying to not to kill anyone, we spent the night in our vans locked up in the parking lot of the Mexican customs office. Let it be said that we were praying our hearts out seeking guidance from Above on how to overcome this situation. Before going to bed a bright thought occurred to me. If these people are so inept as to be worried about plastic teeth then there was a better than good chance that they also do not communicate between border crossings about people they had turned away. The next morning we re-entered the USA and went over to the main Nogales border crossing. A 20 minute wait later we were through! A miracle!! They did stop me and looked at my fine collection of 5 gallon white food storage buckets and took my word that it was all food. They didn't even stop Danna's monster rig or David. We were officially in Mexico. But at the infamous Kilometer 21 it was not to be.
Kilometer 21 in the state of Sonora, Mexico is were you do your official transmite documentation with the Mexican government for your vehicle, get your passport stamped, buy Mexican car insurance, and receive a road sticker that goes on your windshield stating that you have Mexico's permission to drive in their country. There we learned that you cannot enter Sonora with a vehicle with a title that classifies your Ford E350 van as a 'bus'. No matter what. It does not matter that the van parked right next to it (Dannan's) is also a white Ford E350 van who's title classifies it as a 'sport van'. That is moot. All that matters is what the title says. No hay paso. After a failed bribe to the customs official I called the Utah DMV to see if they could help me out and send me over a different title that says 'sport van'. They could not or would not. They did recommend however that I could drive back to Salt Lake City for a special inspection to determine in my van was indeed not a bus. Amazing. Dannan couldn't get through either. Turns out that you are not allowed to enter Mexico with two vehicles registered to your name at the same time no matter what. We were stuck at Kilometer 21.
Again we prayed for help and then an idea occurred to me; what if we just drove through the checkpoint? I did not see anyone with machine guns to shoot us, or even that the customs officials looked very closely at your road pass. I saw folks slowing down to about 5mph and wave their pass at the guard and keep going. I figured that at most they would send a police car after us and send us back to the USA. There was another gringo standing there who we got to talking to. He'd been througth the shakedown at Kilometer 21 for years coming and going from Mexico. We bounced the idea off of him and he said,”Man, I have thought so many times of doing that exact same thing. Just go man. Time is 'a wasting, and your families are counting on you being there in Costa Rica before the 29th.” The three of us drew off to one side bowed our heads and asked the Lord what he thought. We each felt a peaceful but power feeling come over us that we should just cross.
Without further aduea I lead out. As I approached the crossing I actually got pulled over. The agent didn't for my road pass, but instead wanted to know what I was carrying. I offered to show him and started to get out of the van, but he just waved me through. Dannan and David also crossed without incident. Again God showed us the way when everything said there was no way.
From there we made good time through the state of Sonora. Everything was rosy until just outside of Hermacillo where we pulled over to fill up. Once again my van wouldn't start. Unbelievable. We tried everything all over again, but it was in vain. Finally we parked the van and trailer behind the gas station and headed into Hermacillo. I found another Ford dealership and hired a tow truck to bring it in. More money to fix a problem that two mechanic shops have sworn up and down they have taken care of. For a van that worked perfectly for the 3 months prior to this trip it sure was costing me a lot of money. The problem was obviously electrical and had nothing to do with the weight it was towing. Why now?






Contact information:
Jacob and Rachael's cell phone: Country code: 506-8987-6261
Dannan and Melanie's cell phone: Country code: 506-8808-8761
Jacob's Skype number: jacob.meyers2
You can also stay in touch with us via facebook.com

Physical Address
Do not mail anything to this address.
500 meters south west of the plaza Pedernal, Nicoya Costa Rica
500 metros suroeste de la plaza Pedernal, Nicoya Costa Rica

Mailing Address
We are working on this one. There are several private services that are more dependable than the Costarican mail system. We are shopping around for a good one.

Sunday Dinner

Just another day for the Moms and Dads making dinner. Why don't we go crash the party? What's another 9 mouths to feed, no biggie right?

Dannan slicin' and dicin' for pico de gallo.

Melanie cutting the corn bread.


Rachael's got the pineapple under the knife.

And Jacob is in charge of the entertainment for the evening... trying to get the ipod working with some Rockwell tunes. (that's Dannan and Melanie's room behind him)


How bout some couple shots? Who do you love?


The men enjoyed another evening of discussion, Corey's last before he heads to Chile on Tuesday. Don't know when these guys will be able to get together to discuss the future of the world again. So sad. I love listening to them talk - such great insights and questions, like watching a mental chess game - very enlightening! :)

Monkeys in the Trees

Last Sunday when we went over to see the Royal and Meyers Families (I think I'll just start calling them the R&Ms, or RMs?) the kids all started screaming to us adults to "COME SEE!!!!!" cause there were monkeys!!! so I did cause I got the camera to document (I feel so important!) :) Here are all the kids under the trees that the monkeys were in.

They would take turns standing right under the monkeys, then excitedly tell each other "I'm right under it!!!" I took a turn to - it was true - they were right there! Straight up. I got the best view with the zoom on my camera, so all the kids wanted to see the shot.

Pretty fun. There were three monkeys. All of us have seen monkeys before, but for us Wrides this was the first time we've seen them this close. The RMs told me that once there was a group of monkeys in the tree right by the house, and since those tree branches are all at eye level from the 2nd story kitchen/sitting room, they could see them perfectly - one monkey had a little baby monkey holding on it's back. So fun!


This monkey was just staring down at us. I imagined he was really excited and later would tell his family "You shoulda seen it - there was this huge group of human kids - It was amazing, they were all standing right under me!!"

Kick the Can

The kids and I went to visit the Meyers and Royals today after lunch. As soon as we pulled up, the older kids jumped out and I hardly saw them - they were lost in adventure playing the games kids play. After a few hours of exploring the jungles, they returned to homebase to play kick the can and I was finally able to get some pictures of them.

Kids Rule!!!!


So, what should we play?
Some going off to hide and planning their strategy to kick the can, which I would say was in a pretty guarded and hard to get to spot for any would be kickers...


Isn't that in a hard spot? You can see the food storage can in front of Mel's left foot - that's home base, on top of the pool house? The kids have to climb up and around the pool side to get at the roof of the pool house to kick it... I didn't know how they could do that without getting spotted, cause Mel had an unobstructed view in every direction from on top of there. Hmm.

Then I had to laugh when I saw how they did it. The person counting just stayed on top of the pool house looking around, and then all of a sudden (I need to ask the kids how they coordinated this part) after about 5 minutes in hiding they all came out at the same time and headed for the can.

The poor person that was it kept jumping and calling names, but with 14+ kids coming at ya, they couldn't call and jump over the can quickly enough before someone kicked it over. Good strategy I thought, but the person counting was in tears twice - felt a little ganged up on. And they were, but I don't know how else the kids in hiding were supposed to have a chance at winning. It was fun to see them all play together. They were busy and lost in their game for 5 hours, only taking a break when I called them in for sandwiches. It was great, just how childhood should be. I'm so glad we are here in Costa Rica! If we hadn't come, we never would have made these friendships. We're excited to meet more dear friends for the first time when we go to Chile, and we hope to be back to Costa Rica soon.

But there's 3 weeks before we go, so we'll be over to play again soon. (The kids want to do a sleepover!!)