60. Bringing in the New Year with a BANG

Monday 12/27- It’s been a little bit over a week since we spoke to Jose, our cabinet maker. He has had a chance to draw up plans and we’ve had a chance to think more in detail about what exactly it is that we want. We met with him at the house today to take some more measurements and finalize the plans. Once it was all discussed and agreed upon, Jose asked when we needed it ready by? We told him that Geiner said the house would be ready for the cabinets at the end of January. This would give him a month to get everything built. He looked kind of nervous, and said he would do everything he can to get it done by then, but with New Years in there and the possibility that he wouldn’t be able to get his supplies as quickly as he sometimes does, he said he might need until the first week in February. We told him that we could work with that. Since he was doing everything from cabinets and closets, to doors, beds, night stands, tables, and chairs, we asked him to focus first on the front door, that way as soon as all of the windows get installed, they can install the front door as well and we would be able to lock up the house. After that, next priority would be cabinets, vanities, and our bed, and finally the rest of the items. If the bed for the 2nd bedroom, the pool lounge chairs, or the dining table weren’t finished, we would still be able to move in. If we didn’t have a front door, kitchen cabinets, or our bed, it could set our timeline back. He agreed and promised to get working on our stuff!

Thursday 12/30- We got a call today that we were absolutely not expecting. Our pallets are already in Costa Rica, and we should have them here in Uvita early next week.

  

Austin Powers Fook Me GIFfrom Austin Powers GIFs

In fact, if tomorrow wasn’t New Years Eve, they probably would have been here on Saturday! We weren’t expecting them for over a month yet! We’re pretty happy about this because now we know we will for sure have the items for our house build (like the lights, door knobs and hinges, fans, and other fixtures that we sent down) when we need them. Since they are so early, we won’t be able to bring them out to the house yet, but that’s fine because the shipping company has storage here in Uvita (the same place that our appliances are currently being stored) so the pallets will just stay there until we are ready for them.

Friday 12/31- Happy New Year's Eve! Today, we decided to make an impromptu visit to the beach again. Why? Well, why not? We enjoyed our Christmas Day trip to the beach so we decided to go do it again. Instead of going all the way up to our secret, deserted beach, we decided to stay closer and go to the one that is nearer to us and typically busy. While there were people at the beach today, it wasn’t packed like it was on Christmas. We only spent an hour and a half or so at the beach today but enjoyed our walk in the sand, looking for rocks and shells. Really we were just there to walk the beach and enjoy the sound of the ocean. One of these days we may actually swim. We even got to see a pair of Macaws fly right over us. We see them fly near our house fairly often, but it is still always really neat to see them up close. They are such a beautiful bird but with such an ugly sound. LOL 

 

Since no one was working out at the house today (they worked Christmas Day but not New Years Eve… huh?), we decided to stop there on the way home. They were starting to prime the walls in the house, and as mentioned in a prior post, Geiner likes to get the primer colored the same as the paint so it covers better (and possibly in fewer coats) when it comes time to paint. It was very cool to get a sneak peek at the colors we picked while we still had a chance to change them if we wanted to. Fortunately, we liked what we had picked and were excited about the fun colors we are going to have in the bedrooms! 

 

Our Bedroom

Guest Bedroom

This evening Loren and Nancy were hosting a New Years Eve party at OMG from 3-8.

  

New Years Party Aliens GIFfrom New Years Party GIFs

In our opinion, this is the perfect time for a New Years Eve party!! We are definitely not into the whole staying up till midnight thing, so it was fun to hang out for a few hours and still get to go to bed at a reasonable hour. This was a potluck party and geared toward adults and families, unlike the Halloween party for the kids. There were probably about 25 couples there along with some of their families. So much good food and some good laughs. This party was mostly the people that live on Loren’s mountain, plus a few other people from around town that are friends of Loren and Nancy. Networking and meeting new people isn't really our forte (we just aren't that outgoing) but is always a good thing. We had a lot of fun hanging out with everyone, meeting some new people and talking to some who we had met before. We learned a lot and made connections that otherwise we probably wouldn’t have.

Earlier this week we started babysitting Stuart, Gem and Devin’s dog, Jet. If you don't recall, Stuart and Gem and their son Devin are our neighbors where we are renting. While they go on their vacation Jet will stay with us. It's the least we can do as they were the ones that watched Breeze for us when we were back in the US. Jet is about half the size of Breeze and she gets her name from the color of her jet black fur and how fast she runs. We will have her for about 3 weeks. 

 

After being gone from the house for most of the day today, both Breeze and Jet were very excited for us to be home. We played with them for a little while before going to bed, but we woke up a couple hours later at about 11:30. There was a group of people renting the other house down the hill from us, and they decided to ring in the new year with fireworks. We could see the fireworks above and through the trees while laying in our bed, and we sure could hear them, and so could the dogs. The echo sure is different when you're surrounded by mountains. We quickly found out that Jet is terrified of fireworks. She was just shaking and trying to hide, but there was nowhere she could hide from the sound. She ended up in Ramie’s lap on the bed just shaking. The fireworks kept going all the way until just after midnight when they had a grand finale, and boy was it a lot! It was very neat that we got our own private fireworks show that we could watch from our beds, but we were glad when it was over and Jet could calm down again. After that, we were able to go back to sleep the rest of the night!

Happy New Year!!!