Early Halloween Party

We decided to have an early Halloween party here this weekend and it was a blast! The kids looked adorable in their costumes, and really played pretty well together considering we had 11 kids, and all but one were five years old and under.

Aspen the Fireman
Batman Luke
Princess Journey and Peyton the Monkey
This wasn't all the kids, but a good majority.

From the top, Aspen, Luke, Adam

Sofia, Journey, Peyton

and Ava.

It is so hard to get a good group shot! Someone is always trying to run off :)

Playing "Simon Says" with Justin. The kids loved the game. He had them jumping, spinning, wiggling, on the ground, etc. Thanks Justin!

Activities of the Night:

Isaac bobbing for apples in the bathroom sink with Lexi, Aspen, Luke, Adam and Ben looking on.
Success! Adam catching his apple.
All the kids eating their prizes. They all did great and got their apples without completely soaking themselves or the bathroom :)
Next, we decorated pumkin sugar cookies.
We had planned for the kids to carve their pumkins, but by this time, they were done with the organized activities and left it to the adults.

Here are a few more pictures from our busy weekend. We had Aspen's cousin Luke, and Ryan and Christina had his brother Adam for the weekend. We met up at the mall for coffee and play time at the play structure. The boys have had such a great time playing together this weekend. It has been such a treat as we do not get to see them very often.

Luke 3, Aspen 4, Adam 5 years old
Journey 20 months
Ava 17 months
Aspen, Adam, Luke and Journey playing at the mall.

See Journey's bear? Mark and Journey built it at the Build-A-Bear store in the mall.
Journey fell in love with the bear as we were walking past the store and Mark couldn't say no :)

Thoughts..

Journey really loves her dolls. She has discovered the baby carrier and carries her dolls all over the house in it. I love my girly girl! On another note, she is really becoming much more confident in walking. She even crawled up the whole flight of stairs for the first time this week.

Aspen just started Kidmo!, a kids group on Tuesday nights at Abundant Life Church. He loved it!

For the past month, I have been thinking about what is really important to me, and how to make sure that the busyness of life doesn't overshadow what I feel is really important. I decided to make a list of goals/priorities for myself to see what would come out of that and then shape my schedule around that. Here's what I came up with....

- Aspen memorize at least one scripture (group of scriptures) a month

- Work on preschool type activies including learning to write letters, math, learn to tell time, matching words with letter sounds, etc. (I'm pretty much just feeling my way through this!)

- Library - 2x per month

- Work on charictar qualities - kindness, gentleness, manners, respect, etc.

- Dinners together as a family - takes organization and pre-planning on my part!

- Make up chores chart for Aspen? Not sure on this one yet.

This has been the first week that Aspen and I have been working on "school" together. So far we have had a Letter of the Day theme, and have worked on A and B. I got a few preschool workbooks that we have been using. The biggest challenge for Aspen right now (besides wanting to do this) is the writing part. He has never been an artsy type of kid. Doesn't color or draw, and has just figured out how to use a writing grip on the pen.

So I am basically still working on a schedule for us. I have decided to go back to work on a temp basis, hopefully one day a week. I will be in a group at church one day a week, and will have to try to balance the office work for Mark inside all the other stuff I am doing during the week.

I guess I don't have any set in stone answers for myself, but just analyzing this has lead to me making sure I am spending a little more time playing and reading to the kids, and a little less time cleaning and on the internet (unless they are in bed!).

Our Trip Home

We had quite the adventure getting home from Costa Rica. The plan was to leave Sunday morning at 7am, which meant that we were up and out the door by 4:30am to return the rental car and check in at the airport on time. As we were walking out the door of our rental house, Aspen asked in his sleepy state, "How many days until we can come back?" Yes, he loved it there.

Anyway, we all boarded the plane on time and waited for things to get moving. We waited for about a half an hour before the pilot came on over the loudspeaker and said there was a maintenance issue and they are waiting for the mechanic to come to work on it. We waited some more, an hour goes by and again the pilot comes on to let us know that they are actually still trying to track the mechanic down (probably a local Tico still at the bar...). Finally the mechanic showed up and started working. Pretty soon the wing was being taken apart as he searched for the problem. Yep, every flier with kids worst nightmare happened to us. We were stuck on the airplane for 4 hours before they finally gave up and let us off. Unfortunately, that was only the beginning. Now they had to figure out what to do with all of us for the night and how to get us out of there. We spent another 4 hours in the hot, outdoor airport while they worked it out.
Amazingly, the kids did great considering all we had been through. There was one other family with kids on the airplane, and Aspen made friends with their boys. They had a great time playing together on the airplane and in the airport. Journey was as easy as usual, and just rolled with the day, finally passing out from exhaustion just as we were boarding the bus (1pm) for the hotel.

For all the stress and exhaustion of the day, the airline did put us up in a nice all-inclusive resort for the night. We were all so happy to get there and see all the food and let's be honest here, drinks! The kids were excited to see the pools and couldn't wait to jump in. All that went a long way to erase the pain of the morning.

The next morning we repeated the whole "to the airport" drill. Boarded the airplane and this time there were no problems. We were all much more exhausted, but amazingly there were no melt-downs on the way home. God was really with us and I did a lot of praying on the way home that we wouldn't be the ones with the screaming kids on the airplane :)
When we finally touched down in Portland, even Journey was excited and saying "yay!"

Albertsons

Okay, not too many people care about my grocery savings. I know that, but there are a few who are a little crazy like me and would like to see. I had a great day so I have to share.

35 cans organic tomatoes

20 yoplait yogurts
6 powerade zeros

2 glad cling wrap

6 campbells cream soups

1 darigold yogurt

1 Alb. orange juice

1 pack mashed potatoes

Total......................$11.28!! (It should have been $8.28, but a $3 promo didn't come off and I didn't notice until I got home. Oh well.)

I will post about our trip home from Costa Rica when I have time. Let's just say it was verrrrry long!

It's Time To Go Home

This is the club house at Hacienda del Mar (where Mark's condos are). It's getting close to being finished and is going to be beautiful.
The back side of the clubhouse. Checking out the pool area.
Our last day of swimming.

Yay! Look at the fuzz. Journey's getting some hair!

We have had a great time here in Costa Rica. Two weeks really gives you a chance to relax and unwind from our normal, busy lifestyle. Actually, it also gives you enough time to miss it again :)

The first week went pretty fast as we were doing so many new activities. This week wasn't quite as action packed.

Just so that I will remember later what we did...

Monday - African safari zoo

Tuesday - we went out to Mark's project to see the project and show Aspen and Journey. There was actually a lot of progress since we were here in June, so that was nice to see. From there we drove up north and saw the entrance to the Four Seasons (guarded, so we didn't go in). Then we went exploring through the jungle on barely a road looking for a deserted beach. We never did make it as we were stopped by a 30 foot wide river. Passable in the hot season, but not in the rainy. We could see two houses that were cut off across the river. We talked to a lady who lived at the river's edge, curious I'm sure about a car full of gringos that far off the beaten path. She knew no English and we didn't know enough Spanish to figure out how far away the beach was once we crossed the river (she told us she knew a place to get through). We settled for Hermosa Beach and lunch at The El Velero.

Wednesday - Mark had meetings all day so we hung out at the villa for the day

Thursday - Mark had more meetings. He dropped us off in Coco for a couple hours in the morning before meeting us for lunch.

Friday - We had heard from a couple different people that we should go check out a town called Puntarenes. That was a mistake. We drove for 2 1/2 - 3 hours. Walked around and got lunch there. Were hastled by the Ticos, and left in less than 2 hours. Driving that long with small kids is not fun! We did get in a lot of "I spy with mine yittle eye.........". We did have fun with that!

Oh, and it rained all day.

Saturday - our last day here. We had a great day. Found a cool new coffee shop, played at the pool a couple times, and had dinner at a cool beach front restaurant. The weather started out rainy, but turned sunny and beautiful. Probably the least humid day of our trip. We had a great time as a family, and we won't soon forget this trip.

More From Our African Safari

Getting ready to go feed the giraffes.
This is the "savannah" part of the zoo where the giraffes, zebras and many other animals we were able to drive by live.
Zebras!!

Our first look up close at the giraffe. See Aspen and Journey's faces? They weren't so sure about that huge animal being right in their faces :)
This was the friendliest (and hungriest!) of the 4 giraffes they had there. They actually flew the giraffes in by 747's a couple years ago!
They are getting a little more comfortable...
They are such gentle animals. You can just see Aspen's head behind the giraffe's. He was finally okay with them being so close.
Petting it's long neck.

We were tired and hot after riding around for over an hour and a half looking at all the animals, but we had a great time and have hopefully made memories that will last a lifetime. At least for Aspen. We also got tons of videos of the giraffes. Where else can you interact with them like that?

African Safari

Today (Monday) we went to a real zoo. Well, actually, more like an African Safari. It was incredible and we really felt like we were in Africa. Our guide told us that it took the owner 15 years to get all the permits and permissions necessary to open the zoo. Just for the 5 giraffes plus permits it was over 10 million dollars!

We were driven through the park in a variety of safari-like vehicles - hummer, land rover defenders, etc. The roads were very rough and we were able to see a lot of animals up close, including wart hogs, zebras, ostriges, antilope, camels and of course our favorite, giraffes.

We 4-wheeled, and I mean 4-wheeled, to this beautiful waterfall in the park. It was an adventure that Aspen and Mark especially loved.

I am hoping that this picture can be lightened or something because it is really a great one of all of us together. It's rare that we are all looking at the same thing!

Journey was a brave girl and fed the camels carrots.

Looking at a real ostrige egg.

We were supposed to be able to feed the ostriges, but they were out of long carrots. They were fun to look at though!

I will post more of the giraffes next....