Parades, puppies and... unicorns???

A sea of green!

Checking out the Dogtown parade - or rather checking out Dogtown since we couldn't really get close enough to actually see the parade.

Ryan's parents came up this weekend too and brought their new doberman puppy, Sammy. 

Tuesday and Sami had a great time wrestling and Sammy had a great time chasing Irie around as she played ball. 

And, last, but certainly not least, Ryan decided to get his mom a tattoo as her Christmas/birthday present. We weren't sure she was going to go for it, but she surprised us all by not only agreeing, but choosing a unicorn. :-) Never a dull moment. 

Why we have toys all over the house...

Irie has recently figured out which drawer we keep their toys in. She now uses her nose to pull out the drawer and select her toy. She then leaves it open enough that Tuesday can get her head in and take her pick. By the end of the day virtually all the toys are spread out throughout the house. 

 Tuesday is a big fan of cat toys for some reason. She particularly likes this one which is just a soft "tail" toy that you can swing around for your cat. Tuesday thinks it's great fun and I love the look on her face when she was caught in the act.

The early aftermath. 

Puppy Photo Shoot

Ryan and I got a new camera this past week and (as fair warning) I think anyone viewing the blog may have to put up with a lot of photos of our dogs as we learn the settings. :-) We've been thinking about getting a DSLR for some time now and recently found an excellent on-line price. I'm beyond excited to be able to take much better action shots and do some continuous shooting to get the pictures I really want. Photography has been a long time hobby of both Ryan and I, but we haven't done much with it in recent years (and neither of us used digital when we learned on our original SLRs), so this should be interesting.

Here are some initial shots of the dogs playing in the backyard and out on a hike yesterday.

Watching Irie wears me out.

Wild weekend with Mom and the kiddos

Ryan was working all weekend, but lucky for me, Mom came to town so I was plenty entertained. On Sunday we had a very busy day. We met Kathleen and the kids at the Zoo. It was a little chilly, but several of the animals were out having a good time. The hippos were particularly active. We actually saw a bunch of them play fight for quite awhile. 

William was particularly taken with the hippos. I have to admit, they were pretty impressive.

When we were about to head home, we discovered there was a Mardi Gras party going on in the building we exited through. So, of course, the kids had to make masks, have some ice cream and get their faces painted. My camera washed Lily's design out a bit, but she opted for some sort of "princess" face. She claimed she was the princess and William was the dragon protector.

 William was already covered in chocolate (from the ice cream), but he was pretty excited about the dragon on his face.

Then, Sunday evening, Mom and I took Lily and William to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner while Carl, Kathleen and Emmy had some time to themselves. I have never, and I mean never, seen a child as single-minded as William is about his favorite things. Chuck E Cheese apparently tops the list. Pretty much anytime I see him, he will bring up Chuck E Cheese (and the zoo and choo-choos.) He always wants to go somewhere and will routinely get me to go outside with him and then try to get into my car. He'll even check all my pockets for the keys to make sure I'm not lying about not having them with me. 

So, while we were hanging out this weekend, William regularly asked about going to the zoo, choo-choos and Chuck E. Cheese. All this is to be expected, but I about lost it when he ran up to me, put his hand over my mouth and said, "No, listen. Go Chuck E Cheese." Kathleen had told me he had done this to her before but it was still impossible not to laugh, which of course just made him more insistent. Apparently he has decided that we don't really take him seriously, so he has to make sure we really get it. Funniest thing, ever.

Maybe followed closely by the fact that Lily has a little princess figurine in a wedding dress that he refers to as "Ing'id." Even better, I watched him chase "me" around with his digger truck saying, "Oh, no, Ing'id! Digger coming!"

Anyway, I digress. So, Sunday night we went to Chuck E Cheese and William babbled the whole way there saying "Chuck E Cheese this way!" and "Chuckie's coming!" Lily is so good-natured about this all, just enjoying her little brother's enjoyment (not that she minds going to Chuck E Cheese either!) 

William is pretty talented at sports for a 2 year old. He was a particular fan of this basketball game. Check out the form. :-) 

Lily and Meemaw

Lily has gotten MUCH better at skeeball. She still has a few scary throws in her, but she's much more effective than even the last time I played with her. She found a broken machine that just kept sending the balls out so she ended up playing for a looong time!

William was a huge fan of skeeball as well. He was more than happy to have us help him roll it underhand, but left to his own devices, he clearly thought throwing overhand would be the way to do it.

Just some random favorite pictures from Costa Rica

His expression is priceless!

A shot taken during our horseback ride to the hot springs. It was quite the ride. The horses were not exactly tame, trail horses and we were riding with a group of girls from New York City who clearly had never been on horses before. It was quite impressive that we all survived. 

After coating ourselves with some volcanic mud before the hot springs.

There was an amazing fruit sculptor one night at dinner. The picture is not the best, but he was impressive!

There were staff photographers all over the resort who kept asking if they could take pictures of us (to sell us later). We found some ways to creatively tell them no, but on our last day we staged our own photo-shoot. I thought we did a decent job! :-)

This is Ryan participating in water aerobics. :-)

Thinking man.

The only picture of us together where we're dressed a little nicer than swimsuits!

The view from our room...

We got upgraded to an ocean-view room which was nice. Really the only complaint we had about the resort was the housekeeping (and an odd smell in our room.) Housekeeping had this totally odd tendency of taking all of our towels out of the room, but not replacing them with new ones. After two days of this, Ryan got smart and requested two sets of towels from the front desk and stashed one set in the dresser so we'd have them the next day. However, that day when we came in, we were given fresh towels (a first!), but housekeeping had removed our shower curtain and not replaced it. Very odd. The best was when Ryan went to the front desk to complain about the shower curtain they didn't believe him. Yup, we steal shower curtains from hotels - that's just how we roll. :-)

As you can kind of see in this picture, the landscape was actually a lot drier than I had thought it would be. I knew Guanacasta was the "dry region", but for some reason, I was still anticipating lush, tropics. That really wasn't the case. It was still pretty, but just not exactly what I expected. Next time we go to Costa Rica, hopefully we'll get to spend a little time closer to San Jose and the actual rain forest. 

Of course, the actual resort, was very well manicured and had plenty of green.

Zip-lining!

Before we went to Costa Rica we had many conversations about whether we would be doing zip-lining when we got there. Ryan definitely wanted to do it but I was a little less than sure. I am not a big fan of heights and was not sure I would be able to make myself leave the platform without a push. (Thankfully, Ryan agreed to push me if needed.) As it turned out, I didn't freak out and was able to get through all ten zip-lines. Actually being on the zip-lines was kind of fun, but standing on small platforms with ten other people waiting to get on them, not so much. I didn't really like looking down and not being able to see the ground and all the while being pushed forward by all the other people jumping on to the platform!

Here we are all geared up before jumping out of trees.

 By the last leg of our zip-lining adventure Ryan was feeling secure enough to go upside down. I declined this invitation. :-)

All in all, I actually did enjoy it, but I'm not sure it's something I'll be doing again soon!

Monkeys, lizards and crocodiles, oh my!

These are some of the creatures we saw on our Palo Verde boat trip. It was pretty cool to be in this little boat surrounded by crocodiles, monkeys and a variety of other wildlife!

Hatching black sea turtles

So cute!

There were about 75 of these little guys! They're protected in Costa Rica, but we were still allowed to be right there while the person dug them up and he let us hold a few. It was amazing!

Costa Rica Honeymoon!

Ryan and I just got back from our awesome honeymoon in Costa Rica. We have hundreds of pictures (not that this should be a surprise to anyone), so I won't post them all here, but I'll try to get some up. You can view them all here. 

Here are some of our favorite memories....

1. Dirty Monkeys (the drink, not the actual animal) at the swim-up bar.
2. Ziplining upside down (Ryan, not Ingrid)
3. Watching baby sea turtles hatch and run for the sea (and getting to hold a few!)
4. Feeding veggies from lunch to the resident iguanas pool-side.
5. Creating our own photo shoots in the pool.
6. Seeing lots and lots of monkeys (2 species), both at the resort and out on excursions.
7. Guacamole at every meal.
8. Getting up close and personal with some crocodiles.
9. Trying to boogie board on a VERY windy beach.
10. Spending 7 sun-filled days with no cell phones!