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!

Our Newest Friends

So, I will start my blog posts about our trip to Costa Rica by going backwards. To make a long, frustrating story short, we missed our connecting flight to Love Field out of Houston, and the next available flight was cancelled on Friday night (which happened to be the last flight of the day), and the next available flight wasn't until SUNDAY!! I was frustrated, and apparently, so were these other four people. From left to right we have, Anita (FUN FACT: she has perfect pitch), Danny (of course), Debbie, Kim, and Mitch. Danny and I rented a van and drove these four strangers back to the metroplex with us! They paid us, of course, but they really had no choice. None of them had a driver's license and they were essentially at our mercy! Debbie and Anita are both teachers in Grand Prarie, Kim was a tourist from Korea and spoke very little English, and Mitch is from California and was flying to Dallas to visit his dad, who lives in Keller. We had, suprisingly, a really fun trip home! Mitch was hilarious and kept us laughing most of the way, and it was fun getting to know these other people! We dropped Mitch, Anita, and Debbie at Debbie's house in Grand Prairie, where Mitch's dad met us. It was past 2am by this time, so we drove Kim to his hotel in Dallas where he was going to catch a shuttle to DFW. His shuttle was to leave only a few hours after we dropped him off! Poor guy! He was trying to sleep on the way to Dallas, but I'm not sure he was able to! We still don't know for sure if he caught his flight and made it home safely! Danny and I then drove to Mandie's house in Wylie and crashed on her couch, and Carter's bed! We were so tired, but SO glad to be back!

Danny claims that this was all my fault. Why, you ask? Because I'm not a huge fan of flying, and for some reason, I had a lot of trouble on our flight from Costa Rica to Houston. It was really bumpy, and the landing was terrible! I groaned when we got off the plane and said, "we have to do this AGAIN in less than an hour!?" Danny said, "well, what do you want to do, rent a car and DRIVE home? That doesn't sound fun to me! I'd MUCH rather fly!" Well, we ended up doing just that, and had a great time doing it. I would have much rather flown, but at least I got home in time to see our crazy snow storm, and now we have a funny story to tell our grandchildren!

We have some winners!

Thanks everyone for the love! I didn't realize that some of you actually read my blog! I have been super busy the past couple of days, so I'm sorry this is a little late. Tommy was diagnosed with strep and a double ear infection on Monday. I would have never taken him to the doctor, but in the middle of the night he woke up with a 102.4 temp. The next morning he was fine, said that nothing hurt, and he could go to school! So, I sent him to school, called the doctor, explained what was going on, and they said they needed to see him. When the doctor was examining him, she looked at him and said, "hey, bud, you shouldn't be so happy. It looks like you should be in a lot of pain. Does anything hurt?" Tommy looked at her and smiled and said, "nope!" Crazy kid. Especially since after taking the first 2 doses of medicine, he was feeling lots of pain, was super tired, and didn't want to eat! Oh well, he's at school today, and Danny is home sick. Danny thinks he has a cold, but I'm afraid it could be strep. Dangit.

Anyways, our winners are: Damaris, Ginny, and Chrystal! I'll get you your prize as soon as I can!

300!

I guess I didn't realize that my last post was my 300th! Wow. I can't believe I've had so many posts! To celebrate, I would like to do a little giveaway. Since I have had 300 posts I would like to award three lucky readers a little token of my appreciation! It won't be something big, so don't get too excited! Just leave a comment on this post, with your e-mail address, by Monday, March 1st! Here's to hoping more than 3 people read this blog!

A little sad

Anna and Tommy were both placed on new soccer teams this year. It was so sad for us all! Their teams have ceased to exist due to low numbers of returning players and no coaches. I have been in contact with the team manager for Anna's new team, the Panthers, and she sent me a picture of what the girl's uniforms looked like. When I opened the e-mail I was suddenly REALLY sad. She sent a picture of the Panthers playing the Lady Pumas, Anna's old team! (She had no idea that was Anna's team, by the way.) You can see the fabulous Tayte on the far left in the pretty pink and black uniform. Anna LOVED those uniforms, and so did I! The pink was the perfect shade and it was the best looking uniform in their age bracket! The Panther's uniform is green. BRIGHT green. Anna doesn't like green. And to make matters worse, Anna doesn't know a single girl on the team. Great. JUST great. This will be an interesting season.

My Happy Song

My most recent happy song is "Fireflies" by Owl City. It just makes me smile everytime I hear it! Do you have a happy song? Please share!

Early Morning

I've been up since 6am. Eddie woke up early, and I stayed up with him watching the school closings hoping that school would be cancelled for the kids and Danny. No such luck, but Anna woke up with a fever, sore throat, and awful cough. She gets a snow day, while Tommy and Danny both have to go to school. It certainly is beautiful outside, though!

Eddie's Speech Progress

Eddie had his one year review last week for ECI (Early Childhood Intervention). Last year, when he was 18 months old, these were his scores:

Cognitive - 16 months
Communication - 10 months
Social Emotional - 29 months
Physical - 16 months
Adaptive - 15 months

As you can see, he was all over the place, but he was consistently behind in every category except one. He has made huge improvements this year, and we've worked pretty hard to get where we're at right now. It's really fun to see how much he learned in the past year! Here are his scores at 29 months:

Cognitive - 29 months
Communication - 24 months
Social Emotional - 35 months
Physical - 32 months
Adaptive - 33 months

He is now only 5 months delayed in speech, and only has 3 things that he needs to work on in order to catch up!! He is now caught up in everything else! His speech therapist is confident that in 6 months he will no longer need services! This is AMAZING! Tommy is still in the need of speech services, so I feel so grateful that Eddie is doing so well! Yay Eddie!

Picture of the Day

This is what Tommy looked like before he pelted me with handfuls of snow! Last December was awesome!

Picture of the Day

Classic Eddie. He drives me nuts sometimes, but I love my little guy!

Catching Up

The kids wouldn't have even gone out into the snow on this day, but our neighbors were out in their front yard building a snowman, and the kids just HAD to go out too! I'm SO glad we went out! We had a blast! Tommy's favorite part was making snowballs and throwing them at everyone!
Our snowmen were really dirty because we had so many leaves in our yard, and the snow was so WET!

Eddie and Papi took off for a long walk down the street. Well, actually Eddie took off down the street and Danny followed, but it was such a beautiful night they both enjoyed how peaceful it was! Eddie just loved the snow, but he didn't love how cold it was! Danny would periodically blow on Eddie's hands to warm them up. We didn't have any mittens for him!

This is actually the snow that we woke up to on Christmas day. Anna was the only one who wanted to go out in it. The boys were too busy playing video games! It was hard and icy, and not much fun to play in! It was NOT fun to drive in, either! We had a rough trip on the way home from Abuela's house Christmas Eve. The drive is normally about 30 minutes, but it took us almost an hour to get home! The roads were super slick, and we were SO grateful to get home without any problems!

Our little cactus did not like the snow one bit! We forgot to bring it in this winter, so we're not sure if Spikey (yes, we named the cactus) is going to make it to spring!

I'm a slacker

Yeah, I know. I haven't blogged in a month. I have a TON of pictures, but I've just been too lazy to download them to my computer. I'll try to post something worthwhile later, but right now I have to deal with Anna, who has strep, Tommy, who has been grounded from video games because his behavior at school has been TERRIBLE, and Eddie who is still sick with a cold! Sigh...it's going to be a LONG day!

Looking for some inspiration...

My bedroom is ugly. Okay, so it's not really ugly, it's just not pretty. It's not a room I walk into and feel like it's my sanctuary. It has outdated furniture, and an ugly clock, and too much gold, oh and black curtains I made when I found out we had a peeping tom! I want something peaceful, and pretty, but not frilly, girly. I want to paint the walls, replace my headboard, maybe repaint my dresser, or even get a new one, get a new comforter, shams, bedskirt, maybe re-upholster(why does that word look weird to me?) my chair...the list goes on. Any ideas of what I should do? Any pretty rooms you have found online to give me some inspiration? I don't even know what colors I want or anything! I would love to hear/see your ideas!

ANOTHER conversation with Tommy

Setting: The kitchen, early this evening.

Tommy: I want milk.

Me: I want milk, what? (trying to get him to say please)

Tommy: Oh. I want milk, poe low bowl.

Me: WHAT?!

Tommy: I want milk, POE LOW BOWL!!

Me: Poe low bowl?

Tommy: You know! Poe low bowl, please in Spanish!

Me: You mean, por favor!

Tommy: That's what I said!

A Conversation with Tommy

Setting: Early this morning in the living room

Tommy: You have to be friends with a girl before you can marry her.

Me: Sounds good to me. Who told you that?

Tommy: Cambree. So, I'm not going to marry her anymore. I don't want to be her friend; I just wanted to marry her.


Oh dear.

SNOW!

I woke up this morning to see snow outside! I was so excited, so I ran to get the kids up. They dressed in record time (I wish it snowed every morning!), and rushed outside. Tommy was the first one out, and Anna was not far behind. They had a short snowball fight, and headed inside for some breakfast. They were freezing but VERY happy! Eddie was content to watch from the door. He did NOT want any part of the snow! After I got the kids to school, I made a small snowball and threw it at Eddie. He thought it was hilarious, and finally started playing in the snow. The snow only lasted an hour on the ground before it started to rain, but it was a great start to our day!