Quality family time in Nosara

The best part of our trip definitely had to be enjoying the wonderful, fun, beautiful town of Nosara for 3 weeks. Our time there has helped ingrain in us both our picture of our ideal lives, work-life balance and more.

Throughout this trip, video games have been off limits for the kids – a rule we set last year for all vacations because we got tired of them wanting to play video games instead of enjoying the unique experiences offered in a new place. The nice thing about that is because they know that, they don’t even ask. They also haven’t asked for TV shows more than just a couple of times when reminded from some outside influence.. We have effectively gone, as a family, without digital media as entertainment – aside from Tim watching a couple of sporting events on TV – for 5 weeks. And it doesn’t even seem like it was much work. With the time the kids might have been watching TV and playing video games, they have been making up imaginary games, catching bugs, playing with hermit crabs, playing with their friends, swimming and playing in the ocean, drawing and reading. Rylan has actually done a ton of reading, he found a Peter Pan book at one of the rentals, ironically the only kids book there, and has read it already four times — and the book is over 500 pages! He says he wants to read it one more time and plans to read it on the entire plane ride home. Aubrey has nearly filled up her entire journal I bought for her with pictures of things we did and saw on the trip, a journal that she (and I) will treasure forever.

The kids did not get the Spanish immersion I hoped they would, even with the week of Spanish summer camp. But they did get a lot of exposure and saw us speak it quite a bit, so if nothing else, they have seen the value of speaking another language and have certainly picked up more comfort using the words they do know.

Our family time over five weeks has been so amazing, I don’t see how we won’t try to do something like this every summer. It is what life is all about, and we would give up a lot if we could make this happen each year.

Yesterday evening, I took the kids down to the ocean and they immediately jumped in without concerns, the only kids jumping around and screaming in the waves as most the other onlookers enjoyed the sunset from a cautious distance. I thought to myself, this is what this summer of adventures has created in them — kids who jump in and experience life, not just watching it happen from afar. They are not the ones complaining that things weren’t what they expected, asking for a quick entertainment fix with their ipad, or wanting to know when they are returning home. They have become the adventurous ones who dive in and live in the moment – create the moment – and I couldn’t be happier.