When we landed in Costa Rica, Jordan told his sister, "Maddi, this is going to totally change my life."
This is the same nice brother who on the airplane accompanied his little sis to the bathroom with the logic, "I don't want her to get sucked down the toilet!"
At baggage claim I asked Onie to help with a "bag of Grandma's." The request hit her silly bone and she asked me, "Do you want me to get Grandma's bag or a bag full of Grandmas?" The vision had all of us laughing as we loaded our luggage.
When we turned the corner for customs the line was a minimum of ten rows deep. I took a deep breath knowing the wait would be awhile in a region whose culture claims, "There's always tomorrow." Within moments a security guard led us to a different line, the one marked for elderly and handicapped. I guess traveling with four children has its perks.
We spent our first night in La Bara Blanca (the town where "The Bachelor–Costa Rica Season was filmed). Our initiation to Costa Rica was a Frog Tour where we saw lime-green and lemon-yellow Red-Eye Tree Frogs amongst a variety of other rare Rain Forest reptiles. For me the tour was a bit creepy crawly, finding cucarachas (cockroaches), large frogs the size of a baseball, frogs tinier than pennies, an Army frog dressed in green and white camouflage and a tiny poisonous frog named Blue Jeans for its jean-colored legs which Steven insisted on holding.
Our tour guide put a large guacamole-green frog on Cajsa's baseball cap and told our family to pose around her for a picture. "Say 'Whiskey'!" he told us to produce a smile (the Latin American version of "Say Cheese!"). Just as he started to snap the photo, I was sprayed with frog pee! Jordan also got spattered like a garden hose on the loose. There were a few droplets on Cajsa's hat. "Awesome!" she said, "I've never been pee-ed on by a frog before.
This became one of the worst and best memories of the trip. Maddi said, "I know why the frogs pee-ed…they were nervous." Jordan didn't care if they were nervous or not, "That was totally nasty," he said.
Jordan woke up the next morning and said, "It's amazing to wake up in a real paradise."
"Two seconds before the frog pee-ed on us!"
