Happy 2006

Is it really possible? Wow. A whole new year already. We're amazed when we look back at 2005 - we sold and moved out of our house, finished packing all our earthly belongings, finished raising our support,"moved" to California to MAF headquarters for training for a few months, and came to Costa Rica. And now our time in Costa Rica is over two-thirds complete. What a year. God has been good.

Well, last night we got a bit of a feeling of what "shock and awe" must feel like. Fireworks. Loud, big fireworks. They were going off in spurts throughout the night but we definately knew when Midnight hit (yes, we were in bed and I don't see anything shameful in that). A lot of U.S. cities have fireworks shows. San Jose doesn't have its own show but every citizen of San Jose sets off his own little fireworks show. You can probably imagine. We could hear the whole city shouting and yelling, sirens, and fireworks going off right beside our house and all across the city. It was actually a bit unsettling, considering we had been sleeping peacefully for a couple of hours already! We might have been running for cover if we didn't remember that it was the New Year. Surprisingly, Brooklyn slept through the whole thing. I don't know how. It was pretty cool at first but it went on and on and pretty soon I was kinda mad at these people disturbing my sleep. "All right all ready, so it's a New Year. Now go to bed!" If we could have had a nice view of the city, I'm sure it would have been amazing. As it was, we couldn't see much from our little house.

Don't get me wrong, we did celebrate the new year. We ended up going to the house of some missionaries from White Rock, British Columbia. We went to school near White Rock for a year and used to love taking a drive to White Rock, which is on the coast. Anyway, we just happened to meet this family at a Chinese restuarant on Friday night and were invited to their house for New Years! They have a couple of acres (totally unheard of in this city) and so it was nice to have a little space. They also have a kitten, a beagle dog, fish, and a hamster. Brooklyn was in heaven. The girl could hardly contain herself. At one point she walked into the room carrying the kitten.... with hands wrapped tightly around its little neck. It's eyes were bulging a bit. We hope it recovers okay. We set off a few fireworks ourselves. It was a great time.