our kind of vacay

That ended up being our slogan for the week. We said it jokingly to each other all week, whenever we did something fun or cool or weird or crazy. And there was a lot of all of the above. We've been to so many timeshare presentations that Jon's on all sorts of call lists. We got a call with an offer to come stay at an all-inclusive resort in Costa Rica for pretty cheap, as long as we listened to the presentation while we were there. (please don't ask me how we got it. We've been going to at least 6 timeshare presentations a year for about 9 years). We gratefully traded the snow for the sun on Saturday, January 12th. The boys stayed with Jon's parents the whole week and did just fine. We flew into the airport in Liberia and stayed within about a 45 min radius of that. Our resort was on the Pacific coast directly to the West (about 30 min from the airport).

We got there in the afternoon on Saturday and checked into a hotel the first night. We were going to our resort the next day. So after we settled in, got something to eat, got our rental car and figured out what our first excursion would be, it was nearly 4:00pm or so. We heard about a waterfall nearby so we set out down that main highway you see on the map in red, towards the SE. That main highway across the whole country is only two lanes!! We weren't seeing any signs so we stopped to ask someone who didn't speak a lick of English (turns out not many people did there!). So after some hand motions and pointing at the map, he figured out what the heck we were talking about and told us we were close. We got a little further down the road and saw a rough wooden hand-painted sign. We turned off the main road onto a very rough rocky dirt road.  After a couple miles of getting jerked around on that road, we see a big rock painted with "waterfall" and an arrow. We didn't realize it, but got there right as they were going to lock up a wooden gate for the night. So after some more hand signals and one word sentences, the guy let us run down to see the falls and snap a quick picture. I literally said as we were scrambling down the rocky path, "do you think this thing is going to be more than a trickle down a rock?" That's what we expected because of the lack of signs and paved roads. Then a minute later we start to hear the roar of water and about died when the view opened up to this: 

It took our breath away. It looked like a scene right out of LOST or Jurassic Park. We snapped these pictures and then ran back up the steep path to the car and decided we'd come back the next morning since we couldn't check into our resort til later in the afternoon anyway. 

A cheap breakfast the next day since we'd be eating good the rest of the week at the resort. I wish our McDonalds had this option! So delicious (except the fried plantains in the middle. Those were gross.)

We always had a view of these volcanoes driving across the country:

 I couldn't get enough of all the beautiful trees around:

Well, the next day was Sunday and the place ended up being packed out with locals and a few other tourists. It was really cool to see it deserted the night before.

 
Jon climbed in and behind the falls. I didn't go all the way in since the water was freezing and I'm not keen on water pounding down on my head.

We wanted to hike down the river away from the falls for a little exploring and adventure. It was beautiful with green jungle on either side of us:

As we were hiking back up the river to the falls, we all of a sudden started hearing some whoops and hollers and big splashes. No discussion needed. We were determined to figure out who and where people were jumping. We followed the sound and saw a group of locals jumping in this beautiful little water hole. We had to climb over/under two sets of barbed wire to get to them. Nobody spoke English and eyed us a bit while we walked up but we just acted like we knew what we were doing and smiled a lot and cheered for the other people jumping in and pretty soon they were cheering for us too. 

 The water pouring in over the rocks was warm. It was awesome.

I kind of look like a wuss since it doesn't look that high but it definitely feels higher when you're looking over the edge!

We had to take a shuttle from our resort down to the beach since it was on a pretty steep mountain side. It was beautiful and rugged with all the lava rock along the shore. That was the first black sand beach we'd ever been on. The sand was smooth and soft and the water was comfortable.

 Looking back towards the main beach:

 We did a zipline canopy tour which was really fun:

There was a tree full of howler monkeys. I kept having to remind myself in my head that these were wild and that we weren't at the zoo!

 I think I'll leave it at that for now and post the rest tomorrow since my house is about five steps beyond "disaster", we're all still in our pajamas and I've been working on this almost all day. More to come...

10.

He's reached the double digits! My goodness, what a blur it's been. (and I'm about 2 weeks late on this post, by the way. I can't even believe that because that means he's nearly eleven months! I would say I'd like to freeze time but his birthday brings spring soon after so I don't really mind if we fast-forward to that part.)  

The cutest, you say? Who me??

 Not pulling himself up yet. Purely staged.

 My sick little man, over Christmas:

At ten months, he is such a joy. Now that we got those two months of sickies out of the way, he's quite easy and happy again. Although the nap situation has been frustrating lately. I lamented on facebook yesterday that he was boycotting his second nap of the day. Both my other two boys followed the Babywise book to a T and didn't drop their second nap til 15 months. So Channing's really been throwing this self-proclaimed Schedule Nazi for a loop. Honestly, he's been pretty unpredictable since our trip to Florida when his schedule was thrown out the window. I have a hard time not stressing about it. Today went much better though, when we switched it up a bit. So I think I will figure out what suits his needs here pretty soon.
He's army crawling all over the place but thankfully he doesn't go very far or very fast. He's still my laid back little boy. He's still on all baby food and chokes on anything with too much texture (much like Bennett did). He eats Puffs and Cheerios and finally did bread today (seriously...crazy gag reflex). We switched over to formula a couple weeks ago as my deep freezer full of frozen milk was finally depleted. He seems fine on that, although he does spit up a little more. Not too much else to report!
Jon and I leave first thing in the morning for Costa Rica (he wheeled and dealed with some timeshare agency and got us an all-inclusive week for just a few hundred dollars). So the boys will be staying with Nana and Pop the whole time (bless them!!!). What a strange feeling to leave them there tonight, knowing I won't see their faces for six days. Its all kinds of nervousness and sadness and anxiety and relief and joy and giddiness all shaken up together. I'm thrilled to spend a week alone with my best friend, since its sometimes hard to remember you're best friends when you're parenting three wild boys who deplete every ounce of my energy every. single. day. So at that, I sign off. By some miracle, I didn't procrastinate this time and I can actually go to bed now (instead of at 1 am which is my usual bedtime the night before a trip). That 3am wake up call is gonna be nasty. But oh so worth it.

the blog post of Christmas past

Well, sorry this is so late. Seems a little extraneous at this point. I'm guessing there are a couple of you who have yet to even take down your tree though, so I'm probably doing ok in your book. (And the only reason my tree is down already is because it's 2 feet tall. I wrapped some saran wrap over it, ornaments and all, and carried it to the basement. Do I regret not having a big beautiful tree? Not for one single second.)

But speaking of Christmas past, let's revisit, shall we? Just to see how far we've come...

2007

 2008 

2009

 2010

2011

And our completely unsuccessful attempt to get a cute picture in 2012 (pretty sure Dawson could not possibly be smiling any bigger):

And outtake #6 of who-knows-how-many. This was even with bribery! I guess candy doesn't tempt a 9 month old like it does a 3 year old. Shoulda offered him chocolate milk. Oh well. Such is life. 

We had Christmas with the Colyer side the Sunday before. All smiles and poses here!! Where were your brothers??

Channing was already pretty sick at this point. Bennett had had a high fever the two days prior and Dawson was hit with a fever this day. (yeah, yeah, we're going to tackle the pacifier beast soon...and the potty-training beast....)

 Mr. Mellow Yellow and Mr. Go-Getter with their Pop:

 Rallied up some energy just long enough for presents:

 

You think this guy's tough? You should meet his grandma. 

And that's enough partying for one day. Sleeping with his new pet dinosaur, named Rudy. (Don't ask, 'cause I have no idea. He named the llama we pass every day on the way to preschool, Carcy).

My parents got into town the next day and Bennett and my dad wasted no time putting together the new Playmobil pirate ship that comes with fifty bazillion pieces: 

And our second Christmas with my side of the family on Christmas day (and yes, if you're keeping track, that would be the third day in a row our boys are in these pajamas):

So that one will definitely go down in the books as our sickest Christmas ever. I had all three boys into the doctor the day after Christmas. The big boys were doing fine fighting it off on their own but poor little Channing was pretty bad. He had RSV and the beginnings of pneumonia. We went from the doctor, to the hospital for chest x-rays and back to the doctor that day. Thank goodness my parents didn't have any other agenda and were there to help me the whole way through. It made a stressful situation much easier (although very unfortunately for my mom, she got it too). Channing went on two antibiotics and a nebulizer treatment for 5 days (the first I've ever used one of those). I figured out it was probably the first time I'd filled a prescription in at least four years. I'm so very thankful to have a healthy household again! It seems like the whole country had that nasty junk at the same time.