Costa Rica *June 23rd-30th*

Before leaving the kids for our trip to Costa Rica I made little gifts for them to have each day so they could remember that we were thinking about them.  I was really nervous to leave Samuel but he survived.
Saturday - money for McDonalds
Sunday - New movie with popcorn and treats
Monday-Water toy
Tuesday - a new toy for each of them
Wednesday things for a picnic
Thursday-play dates (Cole and Tinsley)
Friday-3d Chalk
Saturday-money to spend at the $ store

Day 1 June 23rd, 2012 
Happy Anniversary/travel day
Tim took us to the airport at 5:30am.  Once we got there Steven needed to hand out t-shirts to people in our group.  Eventually he sent me on my way to make sure I could get through security in time while he waited for their Office manager to pick up the rest of the shirts.  I was nervous that he would somehow get left behind but we were all good.  We had a layover in Houston.  At this time Steven sent people out on a scavenger hunt to stay entertained during our 7 hour layover. The first thing on the list (which I didn't know about) was to take a picture of the two of us kissing on our anniversary.  So cute of him.

After that we got some lunch in the food court.  We had pizza and chatted with the Thatcher's, Becky & Rod, and Tony and Rachel.  Steven ran off for a bit to film Keven and Allan do their best to win a dinner with Chad and Ria.  They really were quite competitive.  During this time I visited with Don and Mary about their daughter who was in a cycling accident and was currently in recovery.  Steven returned, did some more filming and got to know some more of our travel buddies.  Chad, Ria and the girls had taken the red eye so Steven and I were playing host.  Then we went to an anniversary dinner at Cat Cora's Cafe.  We weren't too hungry so we just got a couple of appetizers.  It was pretty good but the view wasn't what you would hope for on your anniversary...but we would remidy that in Costa Rica.

While we were there Jeff came by to tell us our gate had changed.  After we finished eating we searched for any lost people who hadn't made it to the different gate.  Then we were off to Costa Rica.  There was lots of turbulence on all the flights and that stressed me out.  It had been a while since I'd flown. We arrived in Costa Rica.  Got into our separate buses because there was a mistake and we had to stay at different hotels.  They didn't want people to be jealous of the other hotel.  I'm pretty sure we had the best one.  The bus ride included snacks and lots of nauseous passengers.  The roads were narrow and scary.  It was about a 2 1/2 hour bus ride.  At this point it was about midnight so we went straight to bed.

Day 2 June 24th, 2012 Arenal Mountain Paradise Hotel
Because of all the confusion with the hotels our rooms were upgraded.  We had our own little bungalow with a private balcony and a great view of the volcano.   Our bathroom even had a waterfall in it...it was cooler looking than it was functional.

We figured that we would be pretty tired from traveling so we didn't do any excursions in the morning.  We just woke up, got ready and had our yummy breakfast.  All the breakfasts we had included fried plantains (YUMMY!), rice and beans, and lots of fruits.  Sometimes we'd have eggs, hash browns, or omelets available.  Then we were off to our least favorite excursion...ATVing "in the jungle".  We had opted to go to a waterfall but it ended up that they took everyone to the same place, "The Farm".  We also had to share an ATV.  I was ok with that because I didn't know how ruff the terrain would be.  We made sure to let the next group know that they weren't going to go into the jungle so Chad did some complaining and all the rest of the people from our group got to go in the jungle.  While riding through the farm Kim had cow poo splash up onto her hand and it became a running joke throughout the trip.

After leaving the farm I told Steven that I wanted to drive so I did.  This is when we drove through the town and got to see how the locals lived.  We ended up at a river where we got to go swimming.  There were some very cute little kids that just kept talking to me in Spanish.  I did my best to communicate with them.  At one point the older boy (maybe 6) said, "Oh, you speak English?" I said yes and then he counted to 10 in English.  It was very cute and made me miss the kids.  I know that they would have done the same thing but counted in Spanish.

After ATVing they fed us some lunch.  Because we did a little complaining about having to pay the same price as people who didn't have to share an ATV we got a refund that we got to use later for zip-lining in Quepos.

Later that evening we all met up at Que Rico for dinner.  I wasn't too hungry so I just got dessert and it was FANTASTIC!!!!  It was called Bacio Perugina.  It was a pastry, kind of like a pie crust in the shape of a ball with Nutella inside it.  Yummy! I've tried to copy it at home a few times.  It's still very good but it's just not the same.  I will need to go back and order it again. 

Day 3 June 25th, 2012
This was the day I was most excited AND terrified about.  It was time for canyoneering.  Canyoneering is travel through a canyon by any means necessary.  Our trip included repelling down waterfalls, jumping into rivers, ziplining, and even a tarzan swing.  Heights and water are not my favorite things.  Our guide Mario was very helpful and would answer any questions I had like, "How deep is the water?"  Then he would have the other guys help me out of the water just so I felt safer about things.  After the first repel the fear turned to excitement and I was loving it!  This was my favorite of all the excursions...thus the plethora of pictures.  We also purchased the photo disk from them.

Before

Putting on a brave face.

During

My first repel. 

The master at work.

 Crossing the hanging bridge.  

Yep, that's a camera in his hands.  He had to film on this excursion which was fine because Chad paid for this one...but it was a bummer to be facing my fears and not having Steven right by my side.  Lucky for me we made some great friends who cheered me on. 

Me crossing the hanging bridge.

By the end I was such a pro that Mario offered me a job.  Well...I was a pro-until this...

Jumping into the water...this was my least favorite part.

Steven on the other hand liked it.

Then we ended with a zipline.  That's when I knew we needed to do a zip-line excursion in Quepos. 

This excursion also included the traditional Costa Rican lunch but this time our rice was shaped like a volcano.

After a day of adventure we headed out to Tabacon Hot Springs to relax.  I didn't take any photos because, well, we were surrounded by water.  These are some photos that I found online so you can see how beautiful it was.

There were lots of different springs.  Some were hot, some were warm and some were cold.  After spending some time getting nice and warm we ventured to the cool water where we visited with others from our group.  This is where we found out that Burt (Our 80 year old travel companion) had had an accident on a horse earlier that day.  His horse was sick and laid down on the ground but they still put him on it.  First it bucked him off but they put him back on it.  Then the horse passed out and landed on top of Burt. He was in lots of pain and hurt his back badly.  I gave his wife some deep blue and sent over some men from our group to give him a blessing.  They were in the other hotel so Steven couldn't help out.  After visiting and spending a long time in the water we had a buffet. 

June 26th 2012
We woke up this morning and made our trek to our next hotel in Quepos.  We made one stop for lunch/snacks.  Then we stopped and walked across a bridge.  Steven did some filming here because there were crocodiles all around for us to see.  It's was a very narrow pathway on the side of the road and people kept honking at us.  

After a bit more travel time we stopped in Jaco.  This was another chance to eat some food and explore the town.  This town was a little more rough around the edges.  Steven and I went into some shops trying to find some souvenirs but didn't have much luck.  Steven was also offered some weed.  Some guy stopped him and said, "He dude, you want some weed*9
?"  That was a new experience for me and I found it a bit humorous.  We slowly made our way down the road and ate at Quiznos.  When we headed back to the bus we walked along the beach.  Like I said this was much different than the other places we had been.  It wasn't very pretty and I held tightly to my belongings.  While walking along the beach Steven chased crabs and I walked along side him holding his hand. 

After our day of travel we got to our beautiful hotel with an amazing view.  We got settled and then headed back to the lobby to meet everyone for dinner at El Avion. On our way past the pool we saw Lisa and Jo who had found a little froggy swimming in the pool.

During the 80's the American government was secretly sending arms to Nicaragua.  One of the planes they were using had crashed.  When everything came to light they just left the plane there.  The airport took control of the plane but didn't know what to do with it.  That's when the owner of El Avion purchased the plane from them and transported it to Quepos and slowly expanded the restaurant from just being under the wing to surrounding the entire plane.  There was a lightening storm while we ate and it was beautiful.  One really cool thing about Costa Rica is that the restaurants don't have walls.  Everything is open to outside.  So we were sheltered from the rain but were still able to enjoy the sounds and beauty of the rain storm.  When we first arrived we were able to go inside the plane which is where the bar is.  They had music playing and fun lighting.  It was a really cool atmosphere.  During dinner we talked with Ron and Mary about their other travels.  Once they went to a Hawaii and visited a random island.  They knew they were going there and that there was an LDS branch in need of manuals and other supplies.  They would only be spending a short time on the island but they gathered together supplies but they weren't certain how they could meet with them to give them the supplies.  When the got off their cruise ship it was Saturday but on the island it was Sunday.  They went to the building in the middle of their Sunday meetings.  They were a welcome site to the members there.  Then after church they returned to their ship where it was Saturday again.  It was really fun to hear about their experience. 

Wednesday June 27th, 2012
After a yummy breakfast with an incredible view we headed off to Manuel Antonio National Park.  This was a walking tour through the jungle/National Park.  Our Guide, Edgar, would find animals and we could look at them through the telescope.  We saw several different types of monkey's, Halloween Crabs, spiders, iguanas, a sloth, and even a "Jesus Lizard".  We had some really good photographers with us but I was not one of them. 

After a bit of walking we arrived at a beautiful beach.  We stayed there for a few hours swimming in the ocean and relaxing.  Steven did some filming and then we jumped on in.  As I've mentioned, I'm not a fan of water but once I was in the water I was loving it.  It was very relaxing.

Then it was time to walk the rest of the way out of the park.  While walking we saw that some wild monkeys that had stolen someones lunch.  This isn't a very good thing for monkeys to do considering that they don't always digest human food too well.  We learned that even a banana eaten in its entirety can poison the poor monkey.  They were jumping around the trees scavenging all that they could and fighting over items from the lunch sack.  One even managed to poke a hole in a juice box and squeeze it into its mouth.  After their shenanigans two of the monkeys climbed onto a tree branch and posed for us.

Once we got out of the park we posed with the beautiful scenery and bought some fresh coconut water.  Then we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at the hotel with our cute little towel dog watching trash on the E! channel.  It was the only English speaking channel we could find.  And thus began my love of Bachelor Pad.

That evening we went to dinner at La Victoria where we were able to finally reward our scavenger hunt winners.  It was a good meal in good company, including the cute little lizards running across the walls.  Steven even ordered us a flaming dessert.  It was very cool but the alcohol they used to set it aflame didn't seem to burn off so I didn't much like the flavor. 

Thursday June 28th, 2012
 We woke up to another yummy breakfast of fried plantains (my favorite!), omelets, potatoes, fresh fruit and the ever popular rice and beans.  While eating we watched the birds steal food from unattended plates and pose on statues.

Then it was time for our Zipline adventure.  It was a lot of fun and mostly what you would expect from a zipline adventure.  We went on lots of ziplines.  One was 1500 feet long!  I was pretty frightened on the 2nd longest one which I believe was about 1100 feet long.  I feared it would never come to the end and that I would be stuck forever hanging from a wire in the middle of the jungle.  The views were incredible!  The other scary part was being up really high standing on what seemed to be very flimsy bridges.  There was also the time when there was a big huge spider on a web right in front of my face.  At the end of the adventure we got to do a fun Tarzan swing complete with the Tarzan scream.

These are the photos we took with our not great camera.

These are the photos we paid for.

That afternoon Steven needed to do some interviews with our travel companions.  He got a few in but the rain made it difficult.  So we sat on the balcony appreciating our view and listening to the rain. 

That evening we ate at the hotel restaurant with some of our new friends.

Friday June 29th, 2012

We had our final yummy breakfast and then Steven finished up his interviews while I packed up our things.  Then came another bus ride.  We drove into San Jose so we would be close to the airport in the morning.  On our way there we stopped for some lunch and some souvenirs.  They had these really comfortable rocking chairs that I really wanted but they were out of our souvenir budget.  Once we made it to our hotel we did some paperwork to save us some time at the airport in the morning.  The hotel gave everyone a free gambling card so we did some gambling.  We realized later that we should have just cashed it out right away and used the money for our dinner.  After loosing the money that didn't really belong to us we got some dinner and headed to bed.

Saturday June 30th, 2012

Unfortunately, we were unaware that there was a continental breakfast so we tried to find something to eat at the airport.  We didn't end up with anything too wonderful. We left Costa Rica at 12:45am and had about a 3.5 hour layover in Houston.  Once we got all checked in with customs we went to eat at Ruby's Diner in the airport.  We had planned to eat as a large group but they couldn't accommodate us so we were all spread throughout the restaurant.  We arrived in Salt Lake a little after 11:00pm where we said our goodbyes and Blake picked us up and brought us home.  We peaked in on the kids, thanked Grandma for all of her help and went right to bed.

Sunday July 31st, 2012
The kids came in in the morning and jumped on the bed.  Steven got Samuel out of bed and was greeted with the big smile.  Then he crawled into bed with us and was free with his hugs and kisses.  After that he crawled down the hall to pick up a toy ball and then never crawled again.

This was such a fun amazing trip for us.  I'm so grateful that Steven's job provided us with this opportunity and that Grandma's and neighbors were so willing to make it happen.  I wish we could do something like this every year!