Soccer season #2

Alyssa had her last game of her tots soccer season today. She was NOT into it this year. At first she likes it but after she comes out and rests she hardly wants to go back in. I have to convince her to play. It was a little frustrating.  She scored a few goals this season, which made her really excited. She had a girl on her team who got the ball every single time and would dribble it all the way down and score goal after goal. It made the other kids not want to play because they hardly ever got a chance to even touch the ball. There is 4 kids on each team out at a time. So 8 kids and 1 ball everyone running in a clump next to each other is hard for kids this age.  Most of our team was like Alyssa, not having a ton of fun because of the "ball hog" haha, Noelle told me not to get annoyed because that was her as a 4 year old. =)

After Alyssa scored a goal, she was doing a victory dance.

Kate actually loved the games. She clapped for Alyssa all the time and of course she LOVED the snacks.

Alyssa the Flower girl

My friend from the Philippines got married in SLC a few weeks ago. She asked Alyssa to one of her flower girls. They got married in the temple but then had a ring ceremony afterwards. Alyssa got to walk down the isle and everything. If you know Alyssa, she was ecstatic to do this. She had so much fun and of course made friends with the other flower girls.

Family Pictures

We had family pictures done by my favorite photographer a few weeks ago. She is awesome and also gets them back to me so quickly! Here are some of my favorites.

Tulip Festival

We were lucky enough to have Noelle come visit for 2 days. She came into for her sister in laws wedding. We went to the Tulip Festival with her. My pictures are terrible. My camera was not working well and I could barley see out of my view finder. Anyway here are the pictures. Kate is in a stage where she doesn't want to hold still or look at the camera unless she has a pout face. We have family pictures this week and I am nervous how they will go.

Seriously Kate! She wanted to walk around and NOT have her picture taken

Kate and Alyssa loved to chase each other and then tackle each other. They laugh so hard. It is so cute to watch them play together!

We miss having Noelle around!!

Costa Rica Part 2

 We had 2 relaxing days at the house. We played in the pool, played games and made smoothies. Mango smoothies everyday for me!

Always a gymnast at heart

 Then we drove down to Manuel Antonio. This is a national park that is on the beach. The jungle meets the sand. They have a lot of wild life there. We saw Capuchin monkeys right on the beach. They told us to watch our stuff closely because these monkeys would come and take your stuff and hang it in the trees. We got pretty close to these guys. We also saw Howler monkeys (although they were not howling). We played at the beach inside the park for half the day. This is the beach pictured below. Then we went to a beach right outside the park and that beach had waves that we could boogie board on. We had a lot of fun in the waves at that beach.

 

 We also went to a place called the Waterfall gardens. It was only about 50 km from our house but it ended up taking us 2 hours to get there because of the narrow windy mountain roads. This place has paved paths, a little zoo area and water trails. It was beautiful.

On our last day we went to  beach called Punta Leona. We saw about 10 Scarlet Macaws in the trees, they were also squawking all day long. This beach was an adventure to find. It is one of the only white sand beaches closer to San Jose. We had checked out a few other beaches, some had such high surf that we thought we would drown. Others had black sand that was unbearable to walk on. My costa rica book had told me about this beach so we went out searching for it. In Costa Rica there are no street names. The instructions we had were "turn on the road before the Punta Leona complex". We guessed a few times then drove down a dirt road for a while. Then we parked and walked down a beach and over a cliff to find the beach. It was worth it. It had great boogie boarding waves. Great sand. They had a restaurant at the end. Ashley(my friend) and I(Ashley Potter) went there to buy smoothies but because we weren't staying at the resort we couldn't buy anything. There was a smoothie cart in the parking lot, so we went there. We asked the lady if we were allowed to buy a smoothie because we didn't have a wrist band. She didn't speak English and so she made us smoothies. We paid and left. But then a security guard came and kept saying bracelet, bracelet and a bunch of Spanish we didn't understand. We pretty much figured out that he was telling us that we couldn't buy a smoothie or couldn't be on the beach because we didn't have the wrist bands. We told him "No comprende" and he kept taking to us in Spanish. So we ended up walking away from him while he was talking to us because we were getting no where. We ran down the beach, he radioed something in. We were nervous but no one ever came after us. It seems stupid that they wouldn't want our money to buy a smoothie just because we didn't stay at the hotel.

Punta Leona beach

We had a great trip to Costa Rica. Word to the wise if you go..You have to soak the strawberries in salt water and then rinse them fresh water before eating them. The strawberries have a lot of bacteria on them. Ashley and I found out the hard way and were quite sick.

Costa Rica part 1

Russ has been trying to convince me to go on a couples trip forever. I never wanted to leave the kids and go on a trip with out them. I like vacationing with them. I decided that it was about time for a get away with out kids and told him I would go somewhere. I wanted to go somewhere that was adventurous and that had a lot to do that I couldn't do with kids. My mom and dad had been to Costa Rica before and loved it. I looked into it and was set on that destination. I am very glad I choose it, it was everything I wanted it to be.We went with our good friends Ki and Ashley. They live down the street from us and Russ went to UVU with Ki.
Most of Costa Rica is a lush green rainforest even in the dry season. We landed in Liberia which is up north and when we were landing I looked around and everything was dead. I was so nervous that it was going to be that way every where. Good thing I was wrong, most places we went were very green.
We started up north near a Volcano called Arenal. We did Tabacon Hot Springs, Canyoneering, Zip lining and Rio Celeste Waterfall. Our first 3 days were jam packed with adventure.
Tabacon Hot Springs is a natural hot river that flows out of the volcano. A few resorts have built soaking places from this. The one that we went to is the biggest one. It was AMAZING. So many rivers and waterfalls to soak in. I really have never been more relaxed in my life. We went there twice and would have gone back every day if we could.

I don't have pictures of Canyoneering or Zip lining yet but I will post those later. Before we left the north we went up to Rio Celeste waterfall. It was out of the way but I am so glad we mad the trek. This is a place were two rivers meet and because of their mineral make up when the rivers join it causes a chemical reaction that turns the water light blue. There are only two places like this in the world. It was incredible. I loved every minute of that hike. 

Where to two rivers meet and the reactions occurs.

On the hike down we stopped at this spot in the river. There is also a hot spring here too that we soaked in but first we played in this part of the river. We jumped in off the rocks and swam around. I can't get over the water. Some of these pictures don't do it justice. The water is the color of a light blue Gatorade.