Eddie won a Shamu at the kids' midway. He carried it around all day! He was really good and stayed in his stroller when we needed him to, but by the end of the day he was exhausted! 
Since it was raining on and off all day, attendance was pretty low. Anna and Tommy were able to ride the kid coaster almost 8 times in a row! They loved it! I took Eddie on it once and he was not too happy about it! He didn't scream or cry, but he did have a look of sheer terror on his face! Tommy was ready for a big coaster by the end of the day, but he was too short to ride. He missed it by 1/2 an inch!! I seriously took 5 pictures of them on the coaster, but Tommy has that same creepy smile in each of them! Sigh...
Papi and Anna on the river rapids ride. Anna didn't like getting wet, but since it was raining all day, you'd think she was used to it!
Of course the kids LOVED seeing Shamu. Shamu had a baby back in January and little Sakari made an appearance during the show. Anna couldn't get over how cute she was, and STILL talks about her! And Shamu looks pretty good for having a baby just 7 months ago, don't you think?
The kids gave our day at Sea World 2 thumbs up! We spent the morning at the water park, and even though it was raining we had so much fun! There were no lines for any of the water slides, and Anna and Tommy LOVED them! I took Eddie on a little one and he freaked out and cried all the way down! Oh well. He loved the kid pools, but started getting really cold after about 2 hours, so he and I took a break to warm up, while Anna, Tommy, and Papi played in the wave pool. I don't have any pictures from the water park because of the rain and all the wet. We had lunch after we were done at the water park and then we went to enjoy the shows and rides! The kids had a great time and we can't wait to go back!
Carter went into the office on Tuesday morning to get his juice, and less than a minute later he was in tears with blood streaming down his face! I have no idea what happend, but Carter was fine 5 minutes later and playing with Eddie. He now has a lovely mark right in between his eyes!
The honeymoon is over for these two, and they spend a lot of time fighting. There are some good moments when they actually get along, but it really helps to have the older kids around!
Yesterday was Tommy's kinder graduation. They did a great job singing their songs and the slide show was too cute! You can see Tommy in the front row in the dark green shirt.
Tommy LOVES Mrs. Woods and is so sad that she won't be his teacher anymore, but he is really excited that today is the last day of school! You can also see that he's lost his front two teeth! 
Well, we survived church yesterday with no big problems. Eddie did whack Tommy in the head with a magnadoodle, but Abby and Carter did great! Abby was a little sad yesterday, and again this morning, so she went out with Anna to make a video for her mom and dad. Anna dressed her up in her Sharpay dress and did her make-up as well. Making the video seemed to help Abby's spirits, although going swimming helped out a lot too!
Carter just turned 3 and he is ALL boy. He is a charmer, though.
Yep. Totally screaming "Granny chair! Put some doilies on my arms!" They're not bad chairs. We actually bought them new, but mainly because they were only $50 each on clearance at Wal-Mart and we needed furniture for our home. The fabric was itchy, but the chair is actually really comfortable. It even reclines! Below is the after. I had bought the cordouroy at Wal-Mart for only $1 a yard years ago thinking I would make curtains for my living room, but I didn't have enough fabric to do it. So, I used some of the fabric for my office curtains, and had some left over. I started with the leftover fabric, but that barely covered one chair! I ended up taking down the curtains and using those too! In all, both chairs used TEN yards! 
The picture below makes it look almost purple, but it's not even close to that color. I'm sure you can see all the flaws, but I think it looks WAY than before! What do you think? Don't be shy, I would love to hear what you have to say, good or bad.
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.
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! 
The crater is really big, and super deep!
The smaller crater is still really big, but not near as deep.
We paused for a picture on our hike up to the upper observation deck.
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!
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!
