Christmas Week

Monday afternoon, we had a full house of teenagers over to help bake shortbread cookies.  Kayleen and Jessica are Joey and Eida’s teenage daughters and they and their friends, Diana and Joshua came over to help.

It was an interesting baking experience, as we don’t have a lot of tools to use here.  The batter takes about an hour to cool in the fridge before you can bake; and during this time, I gave the 3 girls French manicures.  They loved them!

I found out though; that with 4 teenagers helping you bake, there weren’t a lot of cookies at the end; but we all had a lot of fun.  In fact, Jessica wants to get together again real soon to bake cakes.

Unfortunately, because the butter and flour are so different here; the cookies were good; but not near as good as what we make at home.

We are located right behind the main park in Jaco; and there have been lots of activities going on there lately.  On Tuesday, we heard music and lots of voices; and walked over in the afternoon.

There was a very long, slow moving line of very well behaved children.  Figured they must have been waiting to see Santa, cause where else would that many children behave so well for so long.  I was right.

Because we are so close to the beach; we’ve headed over 3 or 4 times already for sunsets.  Much nicer to live this close to the main part of town than tucked away up on the mountain.

Thursday night, we headed over to Joey and Eida’s for a visit.  She made a delicious pork appetizer called chicirona’s and we shared a Christmas drink.  Along the way, we stopped and wished a few of our friends a Feliz Navidad and gave them maple candies and chocolate loonies… they were a big hit and I felt like Santa for a few minutes.

Before we left home; we bought a few “truly Canadian” presents.  A micky of Canadian Club; a bottle of 100% pure maple syrup; hard maple candies; chocolate loonies; a deck of cards with a map of Canada on the back; and a set of Canadian coins.  From the penny right up to the toonie; all made in 2011, so nice and shiny and new.

We gave Joey/Eida the bottle of Canadian Club the night they picked us up; and it turns out they liked it so much; that while in Panama earlier this week; they bought a bottle at the boarder.

And today, we cooked an old fashioned North American turkey dinner, complete with all the trimmings; and shared it with our new  friends Bob and Sherry from  B.C. and Joe from Indiana.

It was very tasty and the 5 of us enjoyed a nice evening together.  We bought the turkey a few days ago; and got the smallest one we could… turned out to be almost 20lbs.  Thank goodness we like turkey leftovers.

The past 4 days have seen little to no rain; and today was hot and sunny.  Glad that the turkey was being cooked at Joe’s place and not ours.  

We would like to take this time to wish all of our family and friends a very Merry Christmas!  It was great to talk to so many of you today.

Feel free to take a look at our pictures.