< 13 > The loss, the gain & the magic

When I last shared about our journey here in Costa Rica, my Mom and her partner had just left after a month long visit. A lot has changed.

Life is a mixture of grief, happiness, frustration, joy, anger, excitement, sadness and growth.

I am often reminded that this life is beautiful and that even in the hardest times, there is always something to be grateful for.

Every morning I wake up and see a gentle bull out my living room window, I'm reminded that life is full of magic and wonder.

We've closed on our property here and are officially homeowners! We have started a garden space and plan to be as sustainable as possible and are eager to add some chickens, a goat or two and some solar panels to our lives in the near future!

Our mechanic, Carlos, returned our vehicle to us after almost 3 months without it and within a week, our transmission went - it's been another month without our vehicle... Our mechanic was honest and told us he doesn't have experience

working with automatic transmissions so he sent it to San Jose, where a different mechanic fixed it up and sent it back to him; We should have our vehicle back early next week! Now it will have a fixed engine, new battery, alternator and fixed transmission & brakes! We're very excited to have it back and return to our adventures and explore the beaches and areas nearby. It's been a long few month, sans wheels; I've resorted to getting g

roceries with our wagon, at a store about 15min away - however my last venture, the wagon decided to rid itself of it's front two wheels; I have a taxi coming today to bring me to "Costco" (PricesMart) to get some essentials today!

Unfortunately, without a vehicle, we were limited to what we could do for Mako.

On March 3rd Mako passed away shortly after 11:30pm after over a dozen seizures. Mako presented with idiopathic epilepsy on January 6, just over one year before she passed away. Mako had a normal day, relaxing, cuddling and loving; I was putting MrBaby to bed when Chase brought her outside, where she had her first of many seizures that night. Chase had made a snack: chicken nuggets; knowing how much she loved them, he fed her some, not knowing he was giving her the very best last meal. Shortly after, she had another, became disoriented and needed to be held. We administered all of the meds we had on hand, including her CBD, to no avail. We contacted vets in the area but none were available for home visits. As she clustered, I remembered that the fellow who did our home inspection said "call if you need anything, I live nearby", so I did. And by the time he arrived, she was gone. Mako was held as she drifted off into another realm.

We told her that she's a good girl and how much we love her, we stroked her fur and gave her kisses; we didn't want to let go.

We are so grateful for the wonderful 4 years we had with our sweet, special girl.

Not knowing what to do with her food & treats, I approached our neighbour (who only speaks spanish) and asked her if she would take them for her dog - she obliged. I explained that our dog had passed away and she said "The baby needs a puppy" to which, I agreed. She told me to wait a moment and returned with a 1.3kg 4 week old puppy in her arms; her dog had a litter of puppies and when they returned home, saw that she had killed (&eaten) seven of the eight, so they removed the last one from her and he began to eat solids. I was hesitant, knowing he was too young to be away from his mother, but how could I say no?!

Lazarus had big, oozing bite marks on his neck & was covered in fleas. After a google search, we eliminated both adult and flea eggs by bathing him in ACV and then dawn dishsoap - his name comes from being a survivor & challenging death.

What I find to be exceptionally magical is this:

When our cat "Bean" died suddenly, I had been at work 4 days later and was handed a kitten to foster. One of the youth we supported had this cat and was being incarcerated and the kitten needed a place to go. Echo went through a meth detox and became a part of our little family; What really gets me is the synchronicity - We were given Laz 4 days after Mako passed.

I truly couldn't make this up if I tried.

MrBaby has upgraded from sleeping with us to having his own bed on the floor! He loves his bed and having his own room; we're very fortunate that he will sleep from 8:30/9 to 5ish for a quick nursing session and back to sleep for another 2-3 hours. MrGuy also experienced his first true injury - a cat bite.

We have two stray cats that frequent our property, one of whom is this sweet fella, who is extremely affectionate... to adults.

I'm unsure what happened but what I saw was the cat out of the corner of my eye and then MrBaby screamed and the cat ran away. We treated his (very deep) wounds, cleaning it and bandaging him; I used gauze under pro wrap with medical tape on top so no adhesive would be on his skin directly and would also stay in place. I brought him to a Dr and they gave us antibacterial ointment and amoxicillin to use for 5 days to prevent an infection.

That first night, he hardly slept, he was so uncomfortable in pain.

Since then, he has healed and grown; he recently developed a pretty intense bum rash so we've been having lots of "free bum time" which prompted me to break out the potty! I wasn't expecting him to be successful but he urinated in it

TWICE in one day! I am so proud of him!

He can now say "Laz, Cat, Dog, Under, Water, Mom, Dad, Gogogra (Grandma), Hi, Want That, Yea and Ice". He likes to colour with his special pencils on mom's sketch book, swim and go under the water in the pool, go for walks, play outside, hug his dog, cuddle, read books and most recently, give kisses! The other night, as I read him his bedtime story "guess how much I love you" I realized that He's been telling us "and back" every time we tell him that we love him! "I love you right up to the moon, and back." is the last sentence & he's been saying "ah da" every time I say that phrase AND every time I say "I love you." What a clever, sweet guy!

We had some visitors recently! My Cousin Stephanie came all the way to Costa Rica with her friend and her friend's parents! They stayed nearby and came for visits, enjoying the pool, refreshments, delicious food and adventuring! We walked down to the Tempisque river near our home and enjoyed each other's company. It was excellent to catch up and see some familiar faces, we're very grateful for their company.

Live here is different.

Everything is new; a learning experience.

Some days are excellent, marveling at how beautiful this life is while others are harder, missing our past life, our friends and family. I have no regrets, I simply hope the government will change the travel restrictions so we can go visit, soon.

With that, my next post will include our many adventures (as we'll have our car back), how amazing our garden is doing and hopefully introduce some new outdoor animals! None of this would have been possible without trusting that everything will work out and diving in, head first.