On this first day of 2009, I’m a happy camper.  The two things I like about winter – snow & our Christmas tree – are in effect.  The thing I hate about winter – frigid cold – will be a distant memory in 48 days.  Last night I packed another suitcase, which will be ‘done’ once I borrow a scale from our neighbor and weigh it.  Things are starting to move, and there’s a lot to look forward to – warm weather, fresh food, new experiences, new friendships and more …

We just got a subscription to the Tico Times, a popular English weekly newspaper in Costa Rica. Being aware of what’s going on in our prospective home is important. Our scouting trip was successful because we learned as much as we could, and had a good grasp of what to expect – the good and the bad. The grass isn’t perfectly greener, and being realistic helps. I’ve used a number of resources to learn about Costa Rica and to become aware of the important issues.

The Tico …

I’ve been trying to convince my dad to retire. He’s one of those old guys who thinks he just has to work, and the last time I bugged him about it, he insisted that he wouldn’t know what to do with his time. But he could come up with a list of 10 things he would do if he didn’t have to work. That’s what you’ll be doing when you retire, I told him.
Maybe all those years I went to school for 2 months and spent the …

We met many interesting people during our trip, and it seems that everyone has different reasons for moving to Costa Rica, with the two most common are cost of living and climate. Here are 5 reasons why moving to Costa Rica works for me.
1. Climate
I prefer hot weather over cold, by far. Costa Rica is in the tropics, where there are two seasons: Dry and Wet. The majority of the population lives in the Central Valley, around the capital of San Jose. San Jose is about …

That list of parenting dos & donts I found recently got me thinking of the power of the word.  It’s not the first time I’ve come across the idea that writing down goals makes them more tangible and more likely, but it is the first time that I realized that there may be something to it.  Must really be something since we pretty much nailed everything on that list.
I started thinking of other decisions that I made at some point or another (written or not) and whether they’ve come true …