Costa Rica Part 1

 Our trip to Costa Rica finally came! This vacation was truly and dream come true for me. I grew up devouring all the David Attenborough nature shows I could watch, and some of my favorite episodes were of the rainforests. I loved everything about the animals, but I especially loved learning about the plants and insects--especially spiders. So I have always wanted to go to the rainforest and Loren and Debbie helped me to achieve that dream. Thank you!

Lets start off at the airport. Our airport experience with the boys went flawlessly. Our planes were all on time and the longest we had to wait was an hour at each airport for our connections. We had one stop in Dallas, so we boarded two planes. Every time we got on I told the flight attendant that it was Zander's birthday so they would announce it over the intercom. When the announcement came, Zander looked at me and incredulously asked, "How do they know it's my birthday?!" and then everyone clapped for him. He loved it. He thought it was magic that they "just knew it was his birthday". We got to see a really pretty sunset too. 

I ended up with a horrendous earache on the decent into Dallas. It was so bad I thought my ears would explode and I was almost in tears. Apparently that same thing happened to Stephen on the flight into Costa Rica. We got our rental car and made our 2.5 hour journey to Esterillos Oeste where our condo was. At about 12:30 as we're quietly cruising along the freeway in the dark Stephen suddenly started screaming as he was driving startling all of us. His ear had finally popped. I knew how painful it was. We finally made our way to the condo only to find that we were locked out. It was now 2:30 am. Us and Loren's family were all outside waiting to be let in because Shule's family went to sleep and we didn't have cell service to call them. They were all dead to the world from traveling. We were finally let in and trapped on the third floor for the night, so we made due and ended up finally going to bed at 3:00 AM. 

Day One

We spent the afternoon exploring Jaco which was a 20 minute drive from us. We just walked around and looked and ate. When we got back the boys went for a swim in the pool on the balcony and I went to the beach with some of the girls.

Wednesday was Tirzah's birthday and she wanted Indian food, so went out for dinner and had a cake for her and Zander. This Indian was some of the best I've had anywhere. We had to wait for an hour before we could eat and the boys were getting really tired and bored from waiting. But is was worth the wait!

Day Two

Thursday we got up early to do a monkey tour up in Quepos which was about a 45 minute drive. This was SO cool! One of my favorite things we did because we got to see so many different animals, and the guide was really good at spotting things especially things that were camouflaged. We each got to sit at the front of the boat and feed the monkeys bananas. Lucas didn't want to feed the monkeys, but still had a good time. Besides monkeys we saw lots of different birds, a sloth, different lizards, and bats.

We tried to go the Manuel Antonio National Park, but ran into some issues like not knowing we had to pay first or that we needed to bring our passports with us, so we grabbed some lunch and then went back to the condo for the rest of the afternoon. The boys wanted to go to the beach, so Stephen and I walked down with them for bit to play in the waves. We found La Sirena looking over the sea! Lucas kept saying all summer how he was not going to get in the ocean because he didn't want to get eaten by sharks. Well that all flew out the window the second we stepped foot on the beach, haha! And then that's all he wanted to do was spend his days at the beach playing in the waves. I'm glad he enjoyed himself.