Farewell 2017

Guys, another year has come to an end. I'm not too sad to see 2017 go. As far as years go, it was pretty much a dumpster fire. I do appreciate any growth I had over the year, so lets break down my year-end stats.

• 1507 miles run over the course of the year, with not a single day missed! I was pretty proud of that. 
• Sadly, only 7 books read over the year. One of the books I read, Dragonfly in Amber, was over 800 pages, so between that and my school load, I didn't have a lot of time for books. Basically, my goal in 2018 is to read at least 15 books, lets see if that happens. 
• Many great places visited! Costa Rica, Costa Maya, Honduras, etc...I had a great bunch of family trips. I think that this upcoming year won't have nearly as many (tbh or any) trips outside of the state, but I am so grateful for the places I got to go to this past year! 

Now, that's not a lot to celebrate, probably, but I like celebrating the small things. I hope 2018 is much much better than 2017, and I hope that you guys all have a great new year! 

Card Makin'

It's about that time again, time for card swap. Technically it's in like, 2 weeks, but since school starts again soon, I wanted to get these done before that started. I had to make a love card and a thank you card. I liked what I ended up with, I think.

Aquarium Trip

Yesterday, my brother in law texted and asked if I could take his kiddos for the day - they just were worn out from the holidays and wanted a small break. Of course I would, what a fun time! I decided to bring along the small nephews (because Darth and my niece E-Money are the same age, so they're friends) and make a day of going to the aquarium. We started out nice and early, which was a good thing - the place was pretty packed! We started by snagging a pic in the giant shark mouth, of course. 

 We visited every land in the joint, and everyone's least favorite was the South American one - because of the heat and the yuck smells. We just grabbed a quick pic on the frogs in there.

 We ended our day in the playground, where tiny Samwise was too small to play on it, but she had a grand time sitting on the couch, eating cheerios and fruit snacks.

We had a lot of fun, and I'm glad that's what we chose to do for the day. Now that I know that I can survive with this many small fries, I look forward to our next adventure!

Trying out Dark Chocolate

On our recent trip to Costa Rica, I brought back many a chocolate bar. They just had such exotic flavors, and such delicious chocolate, I wanted to try them! So tonight, we tried one of them, Dark Chocolate Passionfruit. It wasn't too bad. I love dark chocolate, and while I had never tried passionfruit before, I definitely didn't hate it. We all tried a bit, including Gecko. You can see his reaction:

He hated hated hated it but at least we're introducing him to new things!

Happy Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all had amazing days. I had a great day of family and fun. And, I got a really great gift that I can't wait to try out.

What a sweet, sweet bike. Hope you all had some holiday love this year, with family and loved ones.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Darth and Gecko got some pajamas from their grandma. They came home in these pajamas, and honestly, Darth is the cutest thing I have ever seen. His pj's came with a small hat, and he looks so good.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Family Pictures

We got some family pictures today. I use that term loosely, because what was supposed to be professional family pictures turned into pictures taken by a niece, and weren't...great. I think I just had a different expectation of what we were doing, but oh well. Anyway, here are some favorites.

Darth and Gecko

It's been a while, but let's catch up on some pics with no stories.

They're just so much fun to be around when they're cuties. (As are all kids haha)

Casual Fellas

Well, I have made it home. I went to bed at about 9:00 the night I got home, and then woke up promptly 8 hours later, and was super awake at 5:00 AM. I took advantage of the sleeping household to clean all the bathrooms in the joint, and start some laundry as well. Then, I spent some time with the fellas, watching some Christmas movies as I caught up on work. Look how cute and casual these guys are.

Beach!

This morning, we left Monteverde. We left going down that one same road out, and unfortunately for us, they had shut that road down. So we just had to sit there on the mountain until they opened it back up again, about an hour and a half later. Oy. So we finally got out of that road and onto paved roads, and all of a sudden, the road was closed again. We then learned, down here was some sort of bike race, so they closed the road down for that. Great. Luckily for us, there was a coconut stand next to us on the road. We bought some coconuts, which they promptly opened for us with a machete and stuck a straw in to drink the sweet juice.

Y'all, coconut milk is gross. Did not like. Was not refreshed. But anyway. Finally they opened the road back up, and off we went. We stopped at this sign for a pic. 

Then we stopped in Jaco. There was a beach there, and we wanted to at least see the beach once while we were in Costa Rica, since it is a tropical, beachy place. 

 It was lovely. The water was so warm, and we stayed in as long as we could until we had to leave. Unfortunately, the hour drive back to San Juan (where our flight is leaving at 6:55 tomorrow morning) took about 3 hours due to garbage traffic. But we finally made it and are ready to go home. The trip was too short, but very awesome, and I am ready to go home. Being in foreign countries makes me so homesick so fast!

Monteverde

You guys, Monteverde is lovely. Was it hard to sleep with this wind? Yes. But, we still tried. The next morning, we set out to the "Cloud Forest". What this means is basically, the mountain we were in was so high we were pretty much even with the clouds. It was super windy still (apparently this is the windy season, I googled it) but it was lovely, it kept it from being too hot. It only took us about an hour to get to the top.

 Here's the view from the top, very nice

 This is us, with Steve, Adam's co-school-worker-guy. Unfortunately his family couldn't come, but we had a great time still.

There was a waterfall near the end of the hike, it was so lovely. We couldn't get in the water at all, but it was still nice.

After the hike, we went zip-lining, and went to the longest zip line in Latin/Central America. There was one that we went on that was 2 kilometers long! We did that one Superman style, on stomachs with arms out. It was amazing. I finished that by doing a sort of bungee-jumping thing called Mega Tarzan Jump, which you just straight up jump out of a 75-meter tall building, and just fall until your harness catches you, about 40 meters down. It was TERRIFYING but so amazing! I wish I had a picture or something of it, but alas, no phones! But it was the greatest thing ever.

Hola from Costa Rica!

You guys, I made it to Costa Rica! After my last post, when I was feeling down and depressed, I just went right to bed. I woke up the next morning, and luckily, the sickness had seemed to pass. (I should have mentioned, the kiddos had been throwing up the previous few days, so I knew it would be quick, I just didn't know it would be that quick) After laying in bed for a few minutes that morning, I had a voice...prompting...thought... that said, okay Vieve, head out to Costa. I called the airline, and they got me in a flight last night at 8:00! It was an overnight flight, I would wake up at 6:00 in Costa. I said absolutely, book me in. I spent the day running errands and doing necessary things, and then got a lift to the airport from Rory. After breezing through security (In which SLC security tried to steal my iPad maybe? I luckily barely got it back before the flight took off, I happened to try and read it before I left, and learned that they had taken it out without my permission, I have no idea why or what happened or why they didn't put it back)
But anyway! I had no luck in sleeping during the overnight flight (Despite taking Benadryl haha) but luckily, it wasn't a super long flight. I made it there around 5:30 AM, and then Husband picked me up and took me to the hotel. When we got there, I laid down for a few minutes, and ended up sleeping for a couple hours, thank goodness! But anyway.
Here we are at the first hotel in San Juan

After we were in San Juan for a couple of hours (just long enough for Husband's conference to wrap up) off we went to Monteverde. Let me tell you - it is hard to get here! There is only one road in - 20 km up a straight up hill, that isn't paved. Basically, it was about an hour of just bouncing around and trying not to die by other cars or falling off the cliff to the side. But we made it. This has got to be the windiest place I have ever been to , and the cabin we are staying in keeps none of the wind out, so wish us luck we can actually get some sleep!

Adios, Costa Rica

My finals are done. I took the last one yesterday, and I took the one that I was supposed to take today on Tuesday, so I have finished! I'm done! The reason I took it early is because today, Husband and I were leaving for Costa Rica! Husband had a paper submitted to a conference down there, and of course I was going to tag along. So I made sure all of my finals were done so that we could leave this morning. Our flight was set to leave at 8:00 this morning. Naturally, last night we went to bed at like, 9:30, since we would have to be at the airport a little after 6:00.

After going to bed, I awoke at about 11:30, feeling pretty sick. And then, it happened. I spent all dang night throwing up. I was so bummed! There was no way I could take a 9 hour flight to Costa, with how I was feeling. I was so sad, I just cried for so much of the morning. Husband Skyped me tonight when he got to Costa, and said that we could still use my ticket and fly me down tomorrow, but when I was thinking about it, I didn't feel great about it. Let's see how we feel tomorrow, and figure out what to do!

Bacon Thief!

This morning, for breakfast, we made some bacon. I was carrying Gecko in the kitchen, and picked up a piece for myself. Immediately, he took it directly out of my hands and put it in his mouth! Thief! But so cute, I had to snap a pic.

Don't worry, as you can tell, I got some of my own.

Foto Friday

Last night was Stamp & Chat, (I forgot to take pictures of the cards, can you believe it?!) and I took home some extra treats, for tiny Darth, I told him I would bring him home some since he couldn't come. Chelle had made some frosting graham crackers, which were delicious of course. Darth had one today, and just thought they were the bees knees.

Christmas Hot Cocoa

We went to the park today, despite the super chilly temperatures. We were there for not super long, but long enough that the boys were super chilly. We stopped for some hot cocoa, and then walked around Target while we drank it. Darth kept telling every person walking by that he was drinking coffee, hopefully nobody believed him! But then we saw this 'photo booth' in the Christmas section of Target, and he wanted a picture.

He looks so tiny! But he loves his hot cocoa!

Cool Cool Clothes

Now that the weather is cold, it's time to bust out the winter clothing. It's Gecko and Darth's first winters in a cold cold place (Washington just isn't the same in terms of chilliness) so they got some new stuff to wear. They look amazing.

Nobody will ever be as cool as Gecko, chilling against the couch here.

Movies are Stressful

Tiny nephew Gecko gets stressed by movies. When the action is plentiful, he is STRESSED to the max. I caught a bit of his reaction as we watched Polar Express. The part where the train goes a little too fast, its just too fast for him.

What a cutie!

A Night In Bethlehem

Tonight was our ward party, and then them was A Night in Bethlehem. They asked Husband and I to man a booth. They gave us the bakery, of course. This was one of the most stressful things I have ever had to do, so I don't know that I would have said yes in retrospect haha. But I think it turned out all right, and pretty much I am just excited to be done with it!
Here's our booth:
Husband is inside, setting up stuffs.

And then here are the treats I made, tiny brownie bites with a peppermint frosting. Yum! 

It was a cute idea, I really liked the execution. Unfortunately, being in charge of a table meant I had to miss about 90% of the activities that they had, but that's all right. It was fun to be at the bakery, "selling" my wares to people.