Thanksgiving with Karlee

Once there is a kid, everything naturally revolves around the kid. I spent Thanksgiving weekend with Karlee (and Jeff and Chelsea and some extended family). She is as cute as ever.

swinging at grandma's house before dinner. due to grandpa not getting the turkey in the oven on time (little spat between the grandparents), dinner was an hour late so we took karlee outside to play.

chelsea ordered some new bows including this ginormous flower. of course she always wants this big one in her hair.

jeff found this fanny pack. karlee wanted it off immediately.

she loves all the christmas decorations.

she looks so big eating her sandwich.

Sewing Fun

A few months ago I bought this...

(the sewing machine. not the diet coke)

Good thing I have good friends to help me

learn to make this

Ok so it doesn't look like much in the picture, but thanks to Teresa's sewing lesson I finally started sewing my denim quilt. I have 4 rows done and hope to finish the rest this week. For some reason I thought it was a good idea to make all the squares different sizes which makes the sewing a little tricky, but it's turning out really cute.

Little Shop of Horrors

What do you do when work gives you 1 ticket to the Hale Center theater in Orem?

You get another co-worker who also got 1 ticket and go together. Anne and I saw Little Shop of Horrors the other night. It was well done and pretty entertaining but also the weirdest thing I have ever seen. Good thing it was free. Even better news we still have a $15 credit to the Hale. Looks like we'll be doing this again sometime.

We went to dinner before the show at my new favorite restaurant, The Smoking Apple, The food was yummy and we had a great time until I spilled my drink all over the floor on the way out the door. Oops!

Isn't She the Cutest?

Chelsea's friend Cherie is trying out photography and took a few pictures of Karlee. I love this picture and can't wait to see the rest. It's official. Karlee is the cutest!

Ragnar Relay...Vegas

I never posted about the Ragnar Relay-Vegas. Robyn loved Wasatch Back so much she wanted to put together a team for Vegas. I told her if she would be the team captain, I would run the race. With all the jet blueing, I sort of regretted telling her I would run. The race ended up being great. I ran as much as I could while traveling, but my training was less than impressive. Somehow I ran better than ever and had so much fun. I ran the race with mostly old friends and a few new friends. Even though it was my 3rd Ragnar race, it was a whole new experience. I loved it so much I already committed to a team for Wasatch Back next year.

Team Leap Frog

van 1 at the start and finish

Joe had a beautiful run in Valley of Fire/whole team at the finish

start line-I loved being runner 1/Maylene and Brian exchange

running with Robyn and co. was so much fun/in the "van"-Hyundai Santa Fe

Snow Canyon Half

I ran my first 1/2 marathon last Saturday. I've never been one to do things the traditional way so it's not all that odd that I ran a full marathon before a half. The marathon was over a year ago so it's hard to compare, but this race was great. The weather was amazing, and the course was beautiful. The course ran through Snow Canyon and into Entrada. It really was such a beautiful run. It was fun to run with and spend the weekend with some of the Generation Gap girls. I'm already looking forward to the next one in January.

Mary came to the finish line. So fun to see her.

back at the house after the race

post race lunch. i always eat way too much after a race.

Happy Halloween

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.

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.

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

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?

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