Anna, the Moviemaker

I gave Anna my old digital camera, and recently she has discovered the video function on it. She knows how to make the "movie" and even take it to the computer and upload it! She's made nearly a dozen of her 10-30 second "movies" starring herself, Tommy, the plants in the backyard, Eddie, and almost anything else she can find! This is a cute one of Eddie and his artwork.

Bluebonnets!!

It's been 2 years since we've had a family picture taken, and we've never had one done in the bluebonnets! My fabulous sister, Mandie, took these for us. Eddie was really sleepy, and didn't want to cooperate with us for our family picture, but I still like it. What do you think?

Eddie LOVES that gray shirt! He refuses to wear anything else! Oh well, at least we got a smile out of him!

The Farm

For those of you who don't know, Danny was born in Costa Rica, and his dad had a large farm in Jaco, (pronounced Ha-ko, NOT Jack-o as in Michael Jackson!) a small beach town. One of the things I was dying to do was to go see where the farm was, and I was actually suprised, Danny was too, to see some of the buildings still standing! Below is where they used to keep cattle.

This is the creek that Uncle Mike nearly drowned in as a toddler!
This is the back of the building that used to house machinery. There is a family that actually lives here! We were suprised to see chickens in the back, and a little boy playing in the dirt! The family lives in the part that used to house some offices.

This is right next door! Can you believe it? It sits unfinished, and boarded up. Costa Rica was not immune to the economic crisis, unfortunately.

Here's the front of the large machinery shed.

It was fun to see where the farm was, and I was shocked by the size of it! When I think farm, I think a couple dozen acres, not MILES!

Volcan Irazu

On our final full day in Costa Rica we went to Volcan Irazu. It's considered a dormant volcano because it hasn't erupted since the 60's. The area around it is fertile and very beautiful! We passed dozens of farms on our way to the volcano. It was in the low 50's, upper 40's up there, so we needed jackets. I'm so glad Danny's mom warned us before we left!

The crater is really big, and super deep!

The smaller crater is still really big, but not near as deep.


The clouds started rolling in about an hour after we got there. We were grateful that it was clear enough to see the craters!

We paused for a picture on our hike up to the upper observation deck.

The leaves on this plant are HUGE, and very rough to the touch! This is actually one of the smaller ones that we saw!

We climbed up to the highest observation deck, and I swear I was going to pass out! The air was so thin, and the path was super steep!

The clouds starting to roll in.

A sulphur cloud. Yuck. It smelled like rotten eggs up there, and the ground felt like Texas asphalt in the middle of summer! It was HOT!

Danny got this great shot of the crater by holding on to the railing and leaning over as far as he could with his arm outstretched! I was really nervous. Not for Danny, but for my camera!

Photography

Yeah, I know, I totally suck about posting on my blog!

Anyways, I got a new Cannon Digital Elph for Christmas and I was excited to use it on our trip! I'm no photographer, nor do I want to be, but I did want some good pictures! Well, it took me a couple of shots to figure out the settings in order to have some good pictures! Sometimes the facial recognition would zoom in on something in the background and the subject of the shot turned out blurry! Check out my first try below:

So, I switched up the settings a little, and here's my second try:

Not bad. Those are bougainvilleas, by the way, the namesake of the FABULOUS hotel that we stayed at in San Jose. There is a gorgeous garden that surrounds the hotel and we ended up spending a lot of time out there! It was so beautiful! I finally got it right on this shot:

Isn't that such a beautiful flower? The garden was filled with such beautiful flowers and plants! There were several plants that I have never seen before, and several that we see all the time here in Texas, but they were 10 times BIGGER!