Monday, June 29, 2015

Sunglasses and Snow boots - and other June iphone dump photos

Maya's sense of style - and that she has preferences in apparel - is a frightening new development.  Before a bike ride, she requested snow boots and sunglasses.  
Selfies with Daddy.  The last 10 weeks have been full of travel.  Along with Costa Rica, I've taken 5 business trips, normally one night away, in May and June.  They've had plenty of Daddy bonding time!
But I've been taking almost every Friday off for the last few months as well.  My mom has met me twice at the Children's Museum -

In a room full of toys, Maya spent the most time with books, and two of the three books we have at our home.  
She'd let my mom read, but enjoyed "reading" to herself too. 
We are crazy about this little girl.
She is full of personality - the one who we expect will most keep us on our toes.  She found a page of stickers at my parents' home -
Typical  morning scene - pajamas, baby dolls, and a few surprising elements - 
On another Friday off, we visited a neighborhood park and took lots of videos.  Maya's first time on the tire swing -
Collin could spin faster once Maya was ready to get off (playing with iphone slow mode) -
Maya can spend 30 minutes running back and forth on shaky bridges at parks.
We ran out of water quickly the first week in June at 10am, so we headed home to swim.  Maya is becoming more and more of a water bug, which is exciting to see!
During a flood day in Houston, we tried some new art projects - water color for Maya and blow art / straw painting for Collin -
A few days later, Collin had a mild stomach bug.  It was my first time to stay home with Collin in ages and it was a sweet day.  Though he was sick in the morning, we had plenty of time to cuddle, plus he's so easy compared with Maya.  I was able to get a ton of work done from home, and then when he finally started to get his energy back, we finished our first 100-piece puzzle.
Maya "reading" to herself - which was exactly how I'd find Collin around this age!
Maya received pom poms from Aunt Debbie and immediately put them to use, cheering for my mom at her birthday party -
Normally I'm not able to convince Collin to skip school on Fridays because he'd be missing out on show-and-tell and soccer.  But a night at the grandparents' home and a Friday movie was incentive to join me.  My first 3-D movie with Collin, going to see Inside Out along with my best friend and her family -
Since Maya was still napping, we stopped off for sno-cones after the movie.  He was moderately happy.
 There are a few things we always come to expect when we visit Grammy and Brownie.  Collin will get to stay up late reading tons of books.  Brownie will cook amazing breakfasts.  Maya will visit all the neighbors' dogs.  Grammy's lap will be occupied with one or both children at all times.  And we will hunt for lizards.  On this weekend, Maya held her first one!
Father's Day eve called for an ice cream fest as we drowned our sorrows that Cas' trip was an extra day longer than expected -
 We took a video and snapped a photo of the kids on Father's Day morning, and then Cas arrived home for dinner and to help with the 7-8pm crazy period!

Saturday, June 27, 2015

Last stop in Costa Rica: Manual Antonio

A few weeks later, I'm finally wrapping up our last stop in Costa Rica - Manuel Antonio.  It was a national park on the Pacific side of the country with beautiful beaches and lots of monkeys and wildlife.  

First, we had to get there.  We knew it was going to be a 5-hour drive.  We didn't expect to get a little lost in the mountains of Costa Rica, out of range of cell phone signals and therefore completely in the hands of whoever we saw on the side of the road (and thankful for Cas' Spanish).  Here was our view which made being lost a little bit nicer - 

Once we got back on track, we made it to our amazing condo in time to hit the beach for an hour or two.  On the way back from the beach, we spotted our first howler monkeys at Manuel Antonio.  After one of our best meals, Cas rushed us back home for the Rockets game of course (it was playoff time).
Our first full day in Manual Antonio had nothing but the beach and pool on the itinerary (ie Cas' ideal vacation.)  Our condos had a private little beach.  It was beautiful but pretty rocky under the waves, which I quickly found out after trying to boogie board and coming up with cut feet.  I rode one wave in to shore and called it a day.
We kayaked a bit too, but spent most of the next two days alternating between the pool and beach.  
We'd stay until sunset for these views
And the other benefit is that the monkeys were the most active at dusk.  Here's this howler monkey I watched for probably 20 minutes, until my neck grew tired of staring into the trees.  
The howler monkey and his mango snack - 
Dinner complete with seafood and pina coladas.  
Our last full day in Costa Rica started with our last formal activity - a guided tour of Manuel Antonio national park.  We visited the park with one other family, and our tour guide had a tripod-mounted binocular system so we could see all the animals in detail, like this lizard we saw just outside the park entrance -
There were tons of hummingbirds, but most to quick to catch on camera.  
In Manual Antonio, they had three types of monkeys - the howler monkeys that we had seen at our condos, and then Capuchin monkeys and squirrel monkeys.   The Capuchins were the friendliest and most intelligent.  They were accustomed to tourists posing with them -
We were able to get so close to them, it was amazing to watch them move and interact with each other.  I probably took 100 photos of these guys I was so thrilled by the experience!


   The monkeys in action -                                                                                                                  

Oh the sloths - or perezoso in Spanish (also the word for lazy, quite fitting).  After the national park tour, I saw four more sloths around our condos, but the binoculars were amazing to see their features.  
The national park was full of lizards, frogs, and I spotted my first and only gorgeous blue morpho butterfly on the trail.  The park was also full of tour guides, and they were all friendly to show off their finds, which is how our tour guide was able to show us this frog napping in a leaf -  
Squirrel monkeys would leap from tree to tree, and sometimes took a rest for a photo opp -  
The beach at Manuel Antonio national park was gorgeous!
 Last wildlife shot, always thinking of Collin when we saw the lizards -
With the beautiful Pacific in the background -
We enjoyed one last sunset in Costa Rica and toasted a perfect 7 days with our final fruity drinks of vacation!  

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Canyoning - it's a verb

Our last full day in the rainforest area of Costa Rica, we went on an all-day combo tour:  canyoning and white water rafting.  Cas asked me what canyoning was, and I couldn't explain it other than to say a former co-worker said this was her favorite thing she did in Costa Rica.  So off we went to meet at the tour office at 6:50am.  And again we had a private tour - three guides and the two of us to rappel, hike, jump and free-fall down waterfalls.  After a short practice waterfall, we headed down one of two nearly 200 foot waterfalls.    
We rappelled a short way, and then the guide at the bottom would tell us to let go, in a controlled free fall to the bottom.
Posing in front of the waterfall we just rappelled down -
After hiking along the stream, we came to a pool of water.  Our clothes were dry, but we were highly encouraged the cannon ball into the little ravine.  
Soaking wet, we hiked a bit further, and then sat along the rocks, being instructed to hold on (clearly we blindly obeyed bizarre instructions that Wednesday).  
Down came the "tsunami"  they created by one of the tour guides lying down against the stream to dam up the waterfall above us and then moving out of the way -
Thoroughly soaked and ready for the next big waterfall -
Once again, started with rappelling (and posing) -
Then we let go and screamed our way to the bottom -
We had a blast on our first time canyoning -
After that, we went back to the tour office, picked up another couple, and headed to a class 2-3 white water rafting trip.  We enjoyed meeting them, trying some new fruit on the way to the river - and then along the river as the tour guide would pull off fruit from trees along the way.  We lucked out with a great, sunny afternoon on the river - there were higher level of rapids on other tours, but I preferred a fun trip over white-knuckle rafting.  We saw a sloth, bats, iguanas and I swore I saw a monkey but no one else spotted it.  It was a fun-filled final day in the rainforest.