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Friday, October 30, 2009

Halloween at Work

The week of Halloween we always have the kids dress up for trick or treating during their playgroups. Ever since I have been there, no teachers have really dressed up. Last year several of us decided that we would dress up this year. A year later I didn't know if we would really do it, but here we are. I'm pretty sure we enjoyed our costumes much more than the kids.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

How Many Girls Does It Take...


...to build a fire? Some friends decided to have a girls campout in the backyard last weekend. I skipped the camping part, but the tin foil dinners, s'mores, and fire were great. Getting the fire going was pretty funny. I said from the start that I had no idea how to build a fire, but everyone else tried everything from hairspray to tiki torch fluid to try to get the fire going. We finally resorted to a duralog and had a great fire the rest of the night. I vetoed the tent when my bed was 2 blocks away, but the other non camping parts of the campout were great. Having the kitchen sink and bathroom so close to the campout sure was nice.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Thank You Jet Blue


Thanks to the Jet Blue all you can jet pass, I've spent the past month basically living out of a suitcase and traveling the world.

total cost...$599(plus $85 tax for the Costa Rica flights)
days spent flying....13
number of flights....20
hours in the air....57
hours in the airport....26
places traveled.....Seattle(thanks to Southwest and my job but it was in the month), NYC, Long Beach(airport only-several times), Chicago, Vegas, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Boston, Vegas again
mucho fun
totally worth it


Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Joining the Craze

Cupcakes and bundt cakes seem to be all the rage these days. I'm not one that likes to be left out so I got together with some friends and...

made some baby bundt cakes and one big bundt


isn't this the cutest thing you've ever seen?

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Puerto Rico...Costa Rica...Boston

When we first heard about the Jet Blue All You Can Jet Pass, we didn't really consider it until... we found out they fly to Costa Rica. I have been wanting to go to Costa Rica for years. This seemed like the perfect opportunity. Jet Blue has some crazy flight schedules so staying in Costa Rica the whole time wasn't an option. Instead we went to Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, and Boston and all our other little trips for the price of one. We tried to make plans before the trip, but it just got too hard. We decided to book our first night in Puerto Rico and wing it the rest of the time. It worked out really well. The trip was amazing! We had so much fun.

Day #1 in Puerto Rico-After a long night and day of travel we finally got to Puerto Rico. We got the rental car and headed towards our hotel. We had a little trouble finding it when the iphone almost sent us off a cliff. We finally found the Gran Melia. It was a great place. We spent the first day hanging out at the pool. The beach/ocean ended up being kind of gross right there. We wanted to find somewhat of an authentic place for dinner, but all we could find was fast food and Chilis so we ended up at Chilis.

Day #2 in Puerto Rico-We took a ferry to Culebra island. The island is amazing. The beach is postcard perfect. The sand is white and the water is clear. Since it's the rainy season, there weren't many people on the beach. It was a nice relaxing day on the beach. We took the last ferry back to Fajardo and raced to the biobay tour. We barely made it. When we finally got back to the hotel that night we were all exhausted from our day of fun and not too excited for the next day of travel.

on the ferry to Culebra

in the ocean

traditional jumping picture on the beach. finally gave up and took a standing shot

bioilluminescent bay with glowing algae. we kayaked through a mangrove to get to this amazing bay. we had a full moon so we had to see the glowing water under a tarp.

Day #1 in Costa Rica-We had a 6:00am flight out of Puerto Rico. With the advantage of the time change we arrived in Costa Rica around noon. We got our rental car and drove to Arenal. On the way we stopped at a soda (cafe) for an authentic lunch. We heard about Tabacon from a friend and decided to stay there. It was a nice resort and included the hot springs.

Tabacon-after checking in we were greeted with drinks and cool towels. we rested then hit the hot springs. we played in the water, relaxed, and took the traditional jumping picture.
outside our hotel balcony. arenal volcano-one of world's most active volcanoes

Day #2-We drove to Monteverde to the rainforest/cloud forest. The drive was one of the greenest places I have ever seen. It was so pretty. Once we got there we raced to find a place to stay for the night and sign up for our afternoon adventures. Carrie was really nice and stayed behind with me while the others did a zipline. We decided we needed to do something so we did the suspension bridges tour-basically a guided tour of all the plants and animals in the rainforest. We saw a grey fox, black squirrel, sloth, tarantula, and probably some other bugs but sadly no monkeys.

suspension bridge tour
our hostile. it slept all 5 of us plus the buffet breakfast for $35 per person.

Our last day we drove to Jaco, the beach town. It was the most touristy of all the places we went, but it was still different than I expected. It's the rainy season so there weren't many people. The ocean had good waves, but the beach was pretty rocky.

everyone else rented surf boards and did pretty well in the waves

Jaco-beach/surf town


some pictures from all the driving we did

thanks to the GPS narrator we stopped at this bridge to see tons of crocodiles

The last stop on our trip was a day in Boston. With Jet Blue's flight schedule we couldn't get from Orlando to Salt Lake so we stopped off in Boston on our way home. We were there long enough to walk the freedom trail and meet up with a friend for lunch.
Bunker Hill-we walked up all 294 steps and wanted to die. my legs hurt for 3 days.

walking the freedom trail

lunch with BYU library friend, Tara

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Road Trip

As part of my 30 things to do by the time I am 30, I made a goal to go to all the temples in Utah. Luckily I have already been to some of the further away temples (St. George, Vernal, Manti) but never Monticello. Since the big 3-0 is fast approaching, Anne and I took advantage of fall break and took a road trip to Monticello. It really was a road trip. That place is practically at the other end of the earth. It was totally worth it though. The temple is of course beautiful and very peaceful. I loved being there even if I did have to drive to the middle of nowhere to get there. Anne and I had a great time. We talked and laughed and even made a stop in Moab to eat at the Moab Diner. When we got home after our 14 hour day, we were both really glad we went to Monticello and happy to check one more thing off the list.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Yikes!


I can't believe I am posting this. I even more can't believe that my room really looked like this. I don't think my room has ever been this big of a mess in my whole life. I have been living out of a suitcase for the past month and a half. I basically dumped my suitcase in the washer when I got home and dumped the clothes back in my suitcase for the next trip. I am happy to say all my laundry and the suitcases have been put away.