New address and phone numbers for the Wilsons

We've made it back to the U.S!  We're visiting family and friends in Michigan until Easter then we'll move to Colorado.  If you want to get in touch, here is our new contact information:

Our address (hoping that you'll come for a visit)
935 Grey Eagle Circle N
Colorado Springs, CO 80919

New phone numbers:
Sarah - 719-360-4433
Kevin - 719-360-7156

Goodbye, Costa Rica - Top ten things about our time in Costa Rica

• Going down the fast slides at Los Lagos
• Seeing the clouds drift over Volcan Poas’ crater
• Reading in the old, gray comfy chair with the padded sides for my head
• Going to Orosi Valley and seeing the view from high on the mountain
• Spraying Mom and Dad with the pool noodle in Dominical
• Beautiful, clear sunsets off our front porch
• Doing fun read- alouds with our family
• Doing magic spots in my favorite tree, which has a little seat
• Moving the flashlight beam for Chloe to chase
• Having a yummy “Curry Christmas” with our neighbors

-Kyle Wilson

Saying Goodbye to Costa Rica - a song

Saying goodbye to Costa Rica,
makes me kind of sad.
But don’t be grumpy-
Cheer up soon
‘Cause we’re leaving soon
We better have fun
We want to take advantage while we can

Ding dong didly do
Ding dong didly do
 

I will miss the jungle,
and the ocean too.
Ohh, and the monkeys, of course!

The green, the banana trees, the birds
And the wide open fields of coffee

Sweet, sweet mangos
Inexpensive fruit from trucks,
And loving people

Saying goodbye to Costa Rica,
makes me kind of sad.
But don’t be grumpy cheer up soon
‘cause we’re leaving soon we better have fun

-Seth Wilson 

Our New House in Colorado Springs, CO

When Dad was at meetings in Colorado Springs, CO for his new job at ACSI, Mom, from Costa Rica, found a house on the internet. It was a day before Dad had to leave Colorado. Mom said, “You have got to see this house I found! It looks perfect!” So Dad went and looked at it, and agreed. A few days later, we made an offer, and they accepted! Here are a few ‘dreams’ we have for the house:

• The garage is perfect for building my creations! -Seth & Joel
• I want to dangle stuffed animals from the balcony! -Wilson Boys
• A ping-pong table would fit in the basement. -Kyle & Dad
• I want to have my own bed! -Joel
• My room is big enough for a desk to do my homework. -Kyle
• There is plenty of shelving space in the garage for camping gear and stuff. -Kyle
• The family room has a good place for my piano. -Kyle
• That’s the biggest refrigerator we’ve had! -Kyle
• I can’t wait to stop doing dishes because now we have a dishwasher! -Seth & Kyle
• I want to drink coffee on the back deck! -Mom
• I want to have guests now that we have a guest room. -Mom
• Reading or playing games together in front of the fire in the family room. -Mom
• Being able to host lots of people for parties or meals. -The Wilson Family
• Playing backyard baseball in the backyard. -The Wilson Family
• Seeing deer off the back deck. -The Wilson Family
• A place to keep my legos and other toys set up. -The Wilson Boys
• More counter space for baking and cooking! -Mom
• Taking family walks on the walking trail behind our house. -The Wilson Family
• Playing Ga-Ga ball on the trampoline in the backyard. -The Wilson Boys 
• Playing hide and seek in the house. - The Wilson Boys 

And here and some pictures:


Our house


Our kitchen table


Our kitchen


Our living room


Our dining room



Open space trail behind our house (that's our house in the picture)

Coffee Tour

Baby Coffee Plants

On Fridays, we have a tradition of going on field trips. This week we went to the Doka Estate Coffee Tour.

First, the guide showed us how the coffee grows. First a worker plants the seed in a small pot and it stays there for 6 months. After that time, the small plant is transplanted with another plant into a plastic bag where it grows for two years. At that point, it’s ready for the field for the next thirty years. When the 30 years is up, they use the tree for compost.

Second, the guide took us to a small field where he gave us a coffee cherry each. They tasted both sweet and bitter at the same time. He explained that sometimes there is a cherry that is called a peaberry. A peaberry is a round cherry that has only one bean in it instead of two. Some people think that this kind of coffee bean is sweeter, but the guide said that it just depends on what you like. Someone in our group got a peaberry and she really liked it.

Then we walked to a big building where they processed the beans. First, we saw a giant hole about 20 feet deep. The guide said that this is what they use to separate the good beans from the not so good beans. First, they fill the hole with water. (It is cemented over so the water doesn’t get out.) Next, the workers drop 20, 26 lb buckets of beans into the water-filled hole. The bad beans float out a hole at the top and the good beans sink. Then the good beans get sucked up a tube and get taken away to a machine that takes the skin off.

The machine that takes the skin off the cherry

After that, we went to a large room. There was a big machine in it that takes skin off of the cherry. The bigger the beans are, the higher quality they are. The big beans go through one machine, the medium beans through another, and the smallest beans through the last. To actually get the outside pulp off of the bean, it has to sit in water for 2 days.

Then the guide showed us a big bean-drying machine. The lower quality beans go through the dryer. It takes about a day in this thing to get to the golden humidity ratio, 11%.

150 pound bags of coffee ready to roast

Then we walked to a room where lots of 150 lb burlap bags of coffee were stacked to the ceiling. We felt the beans in open bags, and they were very light.

Next, the guide took us outside to what looked like a huge parking lot. He said that this is where they dry the good beans. They have to rake the beans every 45 minutes, and leave them out for 3 days.

Then the guide took us to a room where he showed us all the different roasts that they roast. The group continued, but we stayed. There was a big poster explaining the history of coffee. It said that the Catholics baptized it so they felt it was safe to drink it. Also, a French Naval officer brought a clipping of it to the Caribbean, and that’s how coffee came to Latin America.

Lastly, we followed the group to the gift shop to get a free sample of their coffee and their chocolate-covered peaberry coffee beans. We ended up buying a whole bag of stuff, including an ornament for our Christmas tree.

We learned a lot, and after you read this, I hope you have too. It was very hard to go home.

-Kyle Wilson

Field Trip to Ark Herb Farm

Awesome Treehouse

One of the greenhouses

On Friday we went to an herb farm for our field trip.

We saw medicinal plants. Some of those plants cured parasites, headaches, memory loss, and there was aloe for burns. We tried an herb that made your mouth water that helps runners and cancer patients.

There were many things on the herb farm. There was a really cool tree house. It had hot and cold water, a shower, sink, and a fully supplied kitchen. There were three different kinds of sixty foot bamboo shoots. There was a cactus garden on his twenty acre lot and in the cactus garden I almost walked right into a cactus!

Tommy is the owner of the herb farm. He invited us to his house where he gave us a snack of banana bread, tea, and pomegranates. I loved it. I hope you can see one too.


-Seth Wilson

Field trip to Coffee Farm

A coffee plant.  The red ones are ripe.

Do you want to know more about coffee? I went to a coffee farm that is about a half hour away from our house and I learned so much about coffee!

• Pickers get paid $2 for every basket they fill.  An average picker picks 10 basketfulls a day
• Coffee pickers are hard-working people
• They can only have a coffee plant for 30 years or the coffee beans are not so good.
• The red cherries are good to pick
• In order to get to the 2 coffee beans, you have to peel off the skin.  The two coffee beans are slippery.
• Over 100 years ago the coffee pickers used a giant mortar and pestle to take off the skin.  Now they use big machines.
• Every 45 minutes the worker has to rake the beans with a large wooden rake to turn the coffee to help it dry
• The best coffee beans dry in the sun. The not so good coffee beans are dried in a humongous dryer 
• The coffee beans are done drying when they have 11% moisture left, no more, no less

The rake they used to dry the beans

There was also a butterfly garden at the farm with at least five different kinds of butterflies.  At the beginning of the tour, our guide gave us an iced coffee sample, I liked it a little, but the rest of my family loved it.  There was also a souvenir shop where we tasted six different kinds of coffee and bought some presents.

I hope you've learned a lot about coffee and can go on a coffee tour someday.

-Seth Wilson