s.a.d.

I love Oregon, but sometimes it doesn't love me back. The rain and clouds took their toll on my mental health this week. (Not to mention my aching joints.) The last week of summer break??? Come on! But yesterday? Sunshine and mid-eighties! I put on my cut-off shorts, loaded up the kids and headed to a lake for some fun with friends.


Heidi the-birthday-girl, Brenda, Becky, Jean, Jane, and Caitlin (Cara, not there yet?)


Why couldn't more of our summer days have been like this? Bliss!

And today...more sun. And a short but sweet visit with Grandma on the temple grounds.

Hope you Oregonians are loving the sun...and I hope your perspective on the rain is more mentally stable than mine.

happiest place on earth?

Well, no. Maybe the dirtiest, stickiest, or most rickety. Or most historic...which may not be the top feature you are looking for in an amusement park. But still, we love it for all its charms. Oaks Amusement park is an annual tradition. It's our "reward" for reading (what?...reading needs a reward? I know. Crazy.)



It's ten times more fun with friends. Thanks kids' friends' Aunt Heather, for being such a great sport and riding all the rides. That's her up in the sky on the ferris wheel.







I didn't get pictures of it, but in the roller rink, they have a groovy little museum with pictures of the olden days, when the park looked pretty much like it does now but with girls in poodle skirts. The original organ is there--can you imagine roller skating to live organ music? Good old fashioned fun.

playing school

I really try to keep my blogging upbeat, and focus on the nicest parts of my life. But under the shiny veneer there are some really bad days. Days where I don't feel well, everyone seems to be mad at each other, and nothing goes as planned. School doesn't start until next week, but it's rainy and everyone is out of sorts. We need a cat-in-the-hat to bound through the front door and teach us how to smile again. Or maybe most of us are a little old for that.

Does it seem to other Oregonians like school should have started yesterday? My girls seem to think so. They had some friends over and they made up a game called "report." They gathered around the kitchen table and talked about their favorite animals. Then they got into teams and drew animal names out of a hat. Then they asked if they could use the internet to research their animals so they could write their "reports." They proceeded to gather information and write out their little papers. Okay, so they are little angels. I feel better just telling a nice story about them.

It's much better than the story of the girl who wanted the light on at night versus the girl who didn't. Not so angelic. Or the girl who purposely gets her burrito all over herself because she likes to feel her food.

Yeah, angels or not, we're all ready for school.

i'm back

I woke up this morning feeling like I need an assignment. My kids and I have reveled in the schedule-free, assignment-free glory of summertime, but it's time to come back to reality. So here's the assignment: blog every day for a month. I've never done it before, but I'm up for a challenge. Finding blog-worthy topics each day may be difficult, so I welcome suggestions.

Wow--I'm so rusty. I keep beginning new paragraphs and deleting them.

I already know my mom is thinking: post pictures. Didn't a whole summer of bright, colorful photographs just happen? It's true. But I've also had some deep thoughts in the last three months, and I don't want to be merely "newsy." So tune in, if you dare.

I promise an eclectic mix, with something for everyone.

manuel antonio

drive to the beach
We felt the climate change as we came down from the mountain and headed through villages and little towns to the pacific coast. Who am I kidding? I was mostly sleeping.

Until we got to this point and Mike stopped. We wondered, why is everyone pulling off the side of the road and walking along this overpass?


...and looking in this muddy river...

Crocodiles!

Can you see them? Sometimes it's good to follow the crowd. If we hadn't, we would have missed out on the crocs.


hotel verde mar
This was my favorite place to stay. No restaurant or breakfast, but so much tropical charm.


We loved having a little kitchenette. Somehow it reminded me of college even though we never lived anywhere quite so groovy at BYU.


Our favorite thing about this beach town is the way they left a strip of jungly forest between the hotels and the beach. When you are on the beach, you don't see a strip of hotels. You see trees. This is the view from our hotel. There is a glimpse of bright blue ocean through the trees.





manuel antonio
This forested park was just a quarter mile down the road from our hotel. We saw a sloth almost as soon as we entered the park, then another, then a pair of toucans, and a little golden monkey. It wasn't that easy to see the wildlife, though. They are up high in the thick canopy. We spent a lot of time craning our necks in the unbearable heat and humidity. This is the trail we hiked.


Luckily there were three beautiful, nearly empty beaches to cool off in. Toward the middle of the park we entered the white-faced monkey zone. As we relaxed in the shade and in the water, we had to keep one eye on our backpacks because of the mischievous little critters.



A highlight of the day was making some new friends, Paul and Sarah, to walk around with. They took our picture at the monkey beach.


Here is one of the few iguanas we saw lounging on the beach.


And some more beach pictures.



I think I was happiest walking along the beach at sunset. And running down for one last plunge in the warm waves. Heaven! Thanks for the wonderful trip, Mike!

monte verde cloud forest

When we got to Monte Verde the temperature was about 15 degrees cooler, with strong winds and a cloudy mist in the air. This is Costa Rica's "cloud forest." Most restaurants, shops, and hotel lobbies we saw in Costa Rica were without walls. We weren't sure how they locked up at night. But not in Monte Verde. This is one of the few restaurants we went to with walls. Even so, there was still a local pooch to curl up at your feet while you ate. I just love Mike's blue eyes in this picture.


We communicated with the kids via email. This was a fun internet cafe Mike found.


This is the garden and lush view from the back of our hotel. I spent quite a bit of time reading there, while Mike explored and found a local barber to cut his hair.

We went to the cloud forest park, which featured several tours and experiences. We toured a herpetarium, where we saw indigenous frogs, snakes and lizards. Mike went on a hanging bridges tour while I went to a hummingbird garden.




Together we did an amazing zipline tour through and above the forest canopy. Thirteen different lines, the longest of which was 1000 meters, gave us a different view of Costa Rica's verdant beauty.



As if that wasn't quite enough excitement, the final experience was a terrifying "Tarzan Swing." They attach your harness to a rope and push you off a ledge, and you howl involuntarily, sounding not nearly as much like Tarzan as you'd like to.

I was pretty fulfilled at the end of this day, but Mike realized we could squeeze in a "night tour" of the cloud forest. I didn't take these pictures, but I want to give you an idea of some highlights from the "night tour."
The jewel beetle, which looks solid gold. No kidding.

This one's for you, Ken. The click beetle, which makes a distinct "click" when it flips from its back to its legs. That's not the coolest part, though. It has two tiny headlights that switch on when you touch it. Like two little leds. They slowly dim until you touch it again. Nature is so cool. Especially the stuff that glows.


Our guide was amazing. He pointed out frogs, stick bugs, all manner of insects, and birds sleeping in trees. He showed us swarms of nectar bats darting around the hummingbird feeders. At the end of it all, he zoomed away on his motorbike like an Indiana Jones adventure-nerd.

We finally got some dinner late that night. Beans and rice and the live music playing in our hotel restaurant capped the perfect day.

arenal (costa rica part 2)

observatory
Our first day we drove up north to Arenal. We stayed at the "observatory," the only hotel inside the beautiful national park. We hiked around and marveled at the groaning and rumbling from the volcano.







canyoning
We spent a day on this new adventure sport that involves rappelling, hiking, climbing, and traversing streams. Even getting there was exciting.


That's me, sailing down a waterfall:



And jumping in a deep, but narrow pool:



And Mike. I just love this face. I don't remember him being scared, but I do remember the guides joking around a lot.





volcan arenal
The most spectacular reason to visit Arenal, is of course, the active volcano. There is some activity about every ten minutes. During the day you experience smoke and rumbling, but during the night, if you're lucky enough to be there when it's clear (like we were!) you see lava and molten boulders crashing down the side of the mountain.