Costa Rica day 1!

Mark and I took advantage of my parents visiting to take off and discover the beautiful country of Costa Rica!

A 10-day trip filled with adventures, amazing sights and friendly people... 

We started off by leaving the DC blizzard (and take one of the first flights since the airport had been reopened) and fly to San Jose. We were welcome by a 82 degree sunny afternoon!

After dealing with Alamo and accepting reluctantly to pay an extra $400 for a rental car insurance, we faced the traffic of San Jose for a short time and then took the direction of Monteverde in the central part of Costa Rica... Everything went very smooth until we started to climb in the dark the dirty rocky mountain roads to reach Monteverde...!

Our first night was in a lovely and charming hotel "the Historia Lodge" and we enjoyed our first typical dinner "Cassada" at a local restaurant.

 

Mark noticed that the shoes I had packed would be rough on his heels so we started off (after a hearty breakfast also typically Costa Rican) by going to a pharmacy to get band aids. 

Monteverde is in the mountains of the cloud forest and the weather is very unique: 80 degrees at 9am with a gentle breeze and a mist... quite pleasant when you are walking up steep hills!

When we got to the adventure park it was raining and it was very cloudy... we debated to pay the large amount of money to go zip lining if the clouds were going to hide everything... after talking to several members of the Staff and to each other, we decided to get the whole package since this was a once in a life time opportunity...!

We started by a walking tour with a guide through the cloud forest and 7 hanging bridges... The guide was so knowledgeable and pointed out so many things that we would have missed otherwise such as birds, a tarantula and huge diversity of vegetation...

 

Time for something we had wanted to try for years: zip lining!!

As we were going up the mountain via cable cars, we started to be in the middle of the clouds and could not see anything!

Here are some views from the last zip lines where you can see the hanging bridges we walked earlier that day... We ended our series of 8 zip lines by bun-jee cord jumping from a platform! What a fantastic adventure!

H for Halloween!

 

Victor all dressed up for his preschool Halloween celebration!

A future pianist?

Cute faces!

 

 

 

Great Falls with our guests...

In October Dean and Michele and their girls came to visit us and the many educational sites that are located in our area...
We took them to one of our favorite places... Great Falls! The weather was fantastic and the colors splendid!

Cox Farm...

Growing up...

For Victor's birthday, I took him (it was my friend Sharon's idea) to the Railroad Museum and he was so excited to see all these beautiful train and go inside some of them...

Celebration at night

I did not take the time to make a cake so I attempted to make a popcorn cake, which had a hard time holding together!!

Victor is really easy to please and was thrilled by it.

Can you tell that Victor was not the one loving it?

Another school year begins...

Feeling blessed...

My hearts is full of love as I look at this picture and count my blessings for having such a wonderful family... We have a simple life and each one of us rejoices in simple pleasures...

Trying out our Geoshelter....

We purchased earlier this year a all-season shelter and decided to try it out on Memorial Day weekend... It was good that it was a 4-day weekend because between the time it took us to set it up and the time to disassemble it and pack it away, we did not get to enjoy it for long...
We stayed at the Camp Liahona located near Gettysburg and it was a beautiful site...
We cooked using our solar oven and our volcano and everything was delicious!

Double digit...

Our older child is now 10!!! Hard to believe that he has been with us for a decade!! =)

We had a quick celebration for Adam's birthday since we were camping the week end of his birthday so he opened his presents the day after we came back...

Bubbles...

 These pictures were taken at about the same period and they were too adorable to leave them out... Cibelle is becoming mobile!! which means troubles are at hand!

Our birthday girl...