Costa Rica, Baby!

I realize that this will most likely be the longest post most of you have ever seen, so I'm offering fair warning that there are a lot of pictures to follow. However, this is scaled down from the 550 pictures that were taken, so it could be worse.  But if you get to the end, you honestly deserve a medal for endurance or something.  Hope you enjoy!

We went to Costa Rica for a week with my entire family. For those of you who don't know them or haven't seen them in a few years (Julie's now 20 if you can believe it) that includes (L to R) Julie, Scott with Avery, Jonny, Abby and Gabe, Peter and Austin, Geoff, Mom, Dad, Joseph with Sophie, and me.

We were on the dry side of the island so we were surprised at how brown it was, but it is the end of the dry season, so we had to drive a ways to get to the green and lush rainforests.

Still it was very pretty where we stayed with a great ocean view and lots available to do.

Peter and Abby with their cute boys Austin and Gabe.

There were 3 pools and Sophie spent most of her time in the kiddie pool, so we did, too. Avery just liked them okay. She's more of an it-should-feel-like-a-warm-bath kind of girl, so she wasn't too keen on the cold water, even if it was scorching hot outside.

This path led down to our rooms and eventually to the beach.

Here's Jonny and my Dad outside our place shootin' the breeze while they enjoy the cool ocean breezes.

We had 3 rooms all in a row which was nice. Geoff was lucky enough to be our roommate which meant that he got to put up with Avery's crying, but he was a great sport and hopefully wasn't too sleep-deprived the entire time.

We had some yummy buffet-style breakfasts our first couple of days in Costa Rica. I can understand now how Joseph could eat beans and rice for every single meal in Brazil. It's actually really good mixed with scrambled eggs, too!

On Sunday night we took a walk on the beach. The sand is amazing there. It's black (volcanic?) sand and feels so good, almost as good as the water. The water was warm and so inviting.

It was hard to keep the kids out of it. We tried to tell them that they'd get to go in for real the next day, but no amount of persuading kept them from throwing sand into the water and getting it everywhere.

Sophie and Austin both came home pretty drenched, but they were sure excited to head back in the morning!

Who doesn't like long walks on the beach? Joseph I took one just the two of us one night and it was incredibly beautiful.

We were having a hard time believing we were really in Costa Rica!

It doesn't get much prettier than this!

The long-awaited first dip in the ocean.

Avery came in the water for a little while but preferred just hanging out on the towels.

The guys played a lot of frisbee and games of 500 in the water.

We stayed out there much longer than we should have and most everyone got burned, even with our many coats of sunscreen. We figured that since it's closer to the equator that it's also closer to the sun, therefore you just have a higher chance of burning.

Scott should have stayed like this the entire time and I think he would've stayed safely white. Sophie and Geoff had a grand time burying him with mud. And to think women pay big bucks to take mud baths at spas and such.

We saw a lot of crazy creatures while we were in Costa Rica. Here is one we saw all over our resort. We felt like we'd come full circle seeing it there because we'd also seen one on Sophie's very first trip ever when she was only 3 months old in Florida. My Dad joked that it would be her first word: coatamundi. So to see it in Costa Rica was fate.

These handsome devils were also all over the place, sunbathing. It's a rough life.

And we also got to see a bunch of monkeys. This one carried her little one on her back for us.  I looked like this with Avery in the Bjorn!

This is totally out of order, but I just had to show you what Sophie decided she was going to bring in her suitcase. This is a stack of about 30 books from her bookshelf, along with all the bath toys. At least she was smart enough to throw in a couple shirts! She wasn't happy when I put them all back, but our luggage was heavy enough without her book collection coming along as well. Plus, when the entire bottom row of the suitcase is only diapers, you don't have much room left for the other essentials that have to go.

We took an all-night flight from Los Angeles to Liberia, Costa Rica. I will never do that again if I can help it. The girls got minimal sleep, the parents almost none. This was the second time Avery went down. She really does sleep better on her tummy, even if it's in a carseat. I guess when you're tired enough you can sleep anywhere.

Abby and Austin chillin' in the hammock while we wait for our rental cars. We couldn't wait to get to our place so we could all crash for a long afternoon nap.

On Sunday we went to church in a little branch in Liberia. Those who speak and understand Spanish (i.e. Scott, Abby, Joseph, my Mom, Peter, and Geoff) got a lot out of the talks and said they were excellent, but I unfortunately didn't understand much at all. I think Sophie got even less. :)

One of the things we were most excited about doing in Costa Rica was a Canopy Tour. Basically it's a bunch of zip lines that take you over the cloudforest. (Here's Jonny doing it.)

We could have done it where we were staying but opted to drive 3 hours each way to the center of the country so we could do it where it's actually green. (Here's Geoff trying out the lines.)

They hook you up to a zip line and tell you to lean back and lift your legs, and then you're off, sailing over a canopy of leaves, close enough you can touch some of them. (Here's Scott almost doing just that.)

It's absolutely exhilerating and nothing like I've ever experienced before. (Here's Abby taking the plunge.)

Even when you had to hike to the next set of lines, it was just cool to be in a rainforest!

This group went the first day while the other 5 adults stayed home and watched the kiddos. Then we went the next day and had the time of our lives!

Mom was a little bit trepidatious about the whole experience since she has a pretty good fear of heights. But they took good care of her so she ended up having a great time.

Our group of intrepid explorers just after getting our orientation.  Mom's trying to make her stomach stop doing flips, with little success.

Who is that incredibly handsome man swinging through the jungle?  His wife is so lucky! ;)

There's the lucky girl herself, having the time of her life.

My Dad is on the second to the longest line here.  The longest line is 1 km and they make you do it with a partner in order to have enough weight to get you all the way to the finish so they don't have to come out and get you.

This is how Mom did most of the lines, with a "taxi" as he called himself.  We had 3 guides and this lead one made sure she felt safe the entire time.

She finally felt like she could try one alone, and this is what happened.  She put her hand in the back too close to her head and it made her start to turn, which is easy to do.  But the guide told her that she wasn't allowed to do any more alone after that.

I think Julie was wishing the guides would taxi her. :)  Just kidding, Bug!  They weren't tall enough anyway.

About halfway through you come to a huge rope swing that they call their Tarzan swing.  Fortunately you're hooked up to this as well so you feel completely safe doing it, but it's quite a drop off that platform.  You really can't help letting a nice Tarzan yell escape your lips on that first drop!

Julie definitely had a great "Jane" yell.

My Mom's was the funniest to watch and hear, though.  She screamed so loud that the guides joked that she was scaring away the monkeys.  Here she is wondering what on earth she was doing up so high and was sure she was about to plunge to a certain death.

Our fearless leaders for the trip.  They seemed very young, but they have been doing these for years and were great and a lot of fun.

We had a great time on our Canopy Tour in Monteverde and would recommend it to anyone planning a trip to Costa Rica.

So what did the others do while we were gone?  Apparently mud was the order of the day.

Avery I guess couldn't seem to get enough.  She shoveled it in so fast.  Thanks, guys. :)

Avery absolutely loves to laugh.  She'll crack up at anything and get everyone around her laughing just at her laugh.  And she sure loved her cousin Gabe.  She couldn't get enough of him.

Unfortunately, though, she liked to lord over him the fact that she can crawl and he can't yet.  Even though he's bigger than her, she used her two months more of life to tackle him any chance she could get.

We really enjoyed all the food we ate.  We tried some Peruvian food one night and some of us had some truly authentic Costa Rican food at other times.

I'm not a seafood fan, but many in my family are.  I got the privilege of sitting next to my brother Geoff one night when he was having jumbo shrimp.  Yep, their little heads and eyes were still attached and everything.  Gross!  I just can't seem to eat anything that's staring back at me as I bite it, but to each their own I guess.

The Austin Dude is a complete clown.  He is so fun and Sophie always has a great time with him (in between fighting over each other's stuff, of course.)

When we weren't at the beach or the rainforest we were usually in the pool.  It feels good to get wet but not be covered in sand at the same time, too.

Sophie's really quite brave in the water and loves to jump into our arms.  One night Geoff taught her how to dive and she could do it off the side really quite well.  I was impressed.

Scott showing off his mad flipping skills off of Geoff's back.

A Lamb tradition in the pool is to create towers as high as we can get them.  We've put 4 adults on top of each other before, but now that we have little ones it's a nice excuse to put them on top instead.  So here's our twin leaning towers of Costa Rica.

We tried out a pizza place near our resort that had some really fun, exotic pizzas that ended up being absolutely delicious.

Sophie liked watching the guy put the pizzas in the huge oven and then slice them up.  One of her favorite books is "Pete's a Pizza" and she likes to make us into pizzas as well as be made into one at home.

We tried a lot of different kinds and I think were happy with all of them.

Some satisfied customers.

We also celebrated Jonny's birthday while we were there--#26!  We found the yummiest chocolate cake that I've had in a really long time.

Scott doesn't know how to take a serious picture.

Apparently, neither does Julie.

My parents were in heaven having all 4 of their grandchildren together.  Those kids love their Gramma and Grampa Lamb for sure!

They also love each other and have a ton of fun together.  I'm so glad they've each got someone their age on this side of the family.  Hopefully there will be more sometime in the not-too-distant-future from other members of the family! (hint hint!)

On our last day there we went snorkeling out by some white sand beaches.  Sophie loved the boat ride there.

I think Austin did, too.  But that kid loves anything to do with water.

I don't know what happened to whoever's camera this was, but this was the only shot we got of someone snorkeling, so there's Joseph after taking in all the beautiful fish.  We went over to those reefs and saw a lot of amazing fish.  A couple people even saw a little octopus!

Can you guess what the name of this rock might be?  Yeah, monkey rock.  From this angle it's quite fitting.

This was my Mom and Julie's reaction to seeing where Michael Jordon and Madonna both have homes. :)

Bug and Scott on the way back home.

We went to another little place where we saw a bunch of these monkeys.  They were eating unripe mangos and throwing them down after a couple bites.  Kind of funny.

Avery likes to hang upside down so Geoff affectionately nicknamed her Monkey on the trip.  Here he's trying to get her to go visit her other family.

This guy didn't think that would be such a good idea I guess.

The people there couldn't get enough of Sophie's red hair.  I heard them say "Que linda" a lot when they saw her.  They also don't have much personal space and were always up in the kids' faces and touching them and such.  It was pretty cute.  Sophie had a hard time saying goodbye to her new home away from home and to our family.  She loved Costa Rica.

We all had a great time and made so many wonderful memories.  Thanks for everything!  We loved our week in paradise with you all!  We love you!

Good news

We just returned from a very fun week-long vacation to Costa Rica that I will blog about once I get the pictures in order. Until then I thought I'd share with you our good news about Joseph's job and some pictures that we took a couple weeks ago when we all ended up matching after church one Sunday. The news is that we've known for a little while now that once Joseph's development program ended in June that Bank of America could possibly be moving us to another location elsewhere in the country. We felt like we weren't finished with LA yet and hoped that we'd be able to stay here, but we would've been okay if we'd been moved somewhere else, too. We finally got the word that we are in fact going to be staying. They're kind of making a position for Joseph since there isn't technically a place here for him, so we feel very blessed that it's worked out for us to remain here a little while longer. We don't have any idea how long it will be, but we're glad to know that come July we won't be having to move cross-country or anything. We don't see ourselves here permanently and I personally would like to own a home before I'm 40 which I don't think we want to do here in this expensive market (can you say half a million for even the smallest little places?) so we're going to take advantage of our great housing deal we've currently got going and save up some more money, then maybe in a year or so we'll feel ready to move on to a more permanent home for our family.

"I can do it, I can do it!"

Sophie says this at least 30 times every day. It doesn't matter how impossible the task might be, she wants to try to do it by herself first. Then if she doesn't succeed, she graciously allows me to help.Lately this need to do it all has spilled over into Avery's life as well. Sophie has recently commandeered the role of feeding Avery her solid food. She picks out what she wants her to eat, generously allows me to get it ready, and then promptly steals it back again to do it herself.

Then she crawls up onto this stool and begins the feeding. She actually has done better than I ever expected. I think she's only jabbed the spoon into the back of Avery's throat 3 or 4 times (which is 3 or 4 times too many, but what can you do?) And the mess at the end isn't too horrible, either.
I think this is what Avery thinks about the new set-up, though. I love how Sophie's mouth is open as she tries to get Avery to open hers. Is it possible to feed a baby without opening your own mouth? I've definitely never been able to do it. This is why Sophie's newest nickname is "mamacita".

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend was a busy one for us with lots of fun activities.We kicked it off by dying eggs. This was Sophie's first experience dying eggs and it was a huge hit as you can see by her purple hands. She had to put each egg into each color multiple times and it definitely made the end result interesting! I believe this was also her first time eating a hard boiled egg. One and a half of them later I think she was a fan.

Avery helped inspire the faces we added to the eggs at the end. Actually, she's way too sweet to do that, but we did like the final look of our 6 little eggs.

I got to co-host an Easter party for our MOMS Club that turned out to be a lot of fun. We made bunny ears and did face painting and played Pin the Tail on the Bunny and had bunny races and good food.

We ended with an Easter egg hunt outside and were grateful the rain held off until we could return indoors with our treasures.

It took Sophie a few moments to figure out that if she immediately sits down and opens the first egg she finds, there won't be any left to get. So she eventually ended up with her 6 and had lots of fun discovering the toys inside.

For some reason we have a ton of girls in this group. Those 3 boys held their own just fine, though.

Avery is always happy. I love it! She has a quick smile for everyone and is just fun to be around.

We had yet another Easter egg hunt the next day at my aunt and uncle's house who live about an hour from here. Sophie and Austin joined their second cousins and had a great time.

This time Sophie didn't mess around at all. She knew exactly what she had to do to find the most number of eggs and she went right to it.

Her basket was filled to the brim by the end and she was in heaven with all that candy (and fortunately didn't notice when I gave about half of it away.)

Even Avery got into the hunt this time. She just loves to crawl, no matter what it's after.

It was cold up in the mountains! It didn't feel at all like Southern California, even though it was! I'm definitely glad we live where we do even though it was very beautiful in Wrightwood.

Here are the girls in their Easter finery. They were adorable all matchy-matchy. I love getting to see them all dolled up, especially when Sophie actually lets me put a bow in her hair for 10 seconds while I snap the picture.

Love this girl!

Love both these girls! They make life so much fun and we are so blessed.

Fancy Nancy Sophie

Our Barnes and Noble had a Fancy Nancy party at their store on Saturday in which all girls were requested to dress up in their fanciest apparel.  Sophie and I were unfamiliar with the Fancy Nancy books prior to this party, but we went anyway and had a great time.

The fanciest thing Sophie currently has is a dress that will be her Easter dress this coming Sunday, so she got to break it out a little early.  

They started out by reading two Fancy Nancy books to the girls.

Then we made a necklace together.

Then we had fancy treats and they did a raffle.  Sophie won the grand prize: the newest Fancy Nancy book!  I think we've read it 5 times already and she loves it.  It's really cute with lots of "fancy" words and a fun topic about exploring bugs and birds and gardens.  We had so much fun dressed up in our fancy clothes going out together.  Love you, Sophie Girl!

Busy Bees

We have had a busy couple of weeks, thus the lack of posting.  Here are a few of the things we've been up to.

I have made some good friends here in Glendora who I occasionally get to have Girls Night Outs with.  For this latest one we went to a little massage place in Korea Town and had the most amazing massages.  (It's the first and only professional one I've ever had, so I have nothing to compare it to, but it felt so nice.)  Then we had a quick late-night snack at a Mexican restaurant after and had fun chatting the night away.  Here I am with Shannon H., Tenicka, Shannon S., and Lucia.  I'm so lucky to have a husband who stays home with the girls even after a busy day at work so that I can go do these occasionally.  Thanks, hub!

One of Sophie's favorite places is the park, and you can find us there just about any day of the week.

Since we can't go to the beach quite that often Sophie makes do with taking her shovel and pail to fill with wood chips instead of sand.  She makes me all kinds of food that I obediently gobble up for her.

She is such a fun girl right now with quite the developing imagination that's fun to see.  We often have to re-enact scenes from Cinderella and other stories she loves.  I'm usually the prince because she is, of course, always the princess. :)

March Madness hit our home with a vengeance this year just as it does every year.  Joseph's been able to see quite a few games on his big screen (the reason he bought it, really) and has been reveling in "the most wonderful time of the year" (his words).  Too bad his bracket stunk it up this year, though!

We enjoy making a big, master bracket to put on the wall.  Sophie and Avery had their own brackets in my family's challenge, and Avery just might pull off the win there!  (I picked Avery's, but Sophie picked all her own.  She was determined from the very start that Oklahoma would win it all, so it will be highly amusing if they do.  Too bad the rest of her picks were so bad that she can't win!)

I am actually currently at the top of Joseph's family challenge.  1st out of 46 ain't too bad I'd say!  But my pick to win it all, Louisville, lost already, so I only have a small chance of winning the whole thing still.  At least I had a small moment in the sun.  (And check out Avery's mad ball-handling skillz already.  Joseph's feeling very encouraged.)

We went to a little St. Patrick's Day party in our green.  Sophie thought the whole pinching-people-who-aren't-wearing-green thing was the funnest idea ever.  But we sadly didn't ever see anyone she could get all day.

I did tell her that this was her holiday since she's got the Irish red hair (though there's not really Irish in our genes) and she thought that was pretty cool, too.

Joseph's brother Willis and his family came from Flagstaff to visit us for a week.  Here are 4 of the cutest kids ever: Sadie, Clarissa, Susannah, and Aaron.  

We had fun with them at Disneyland for half a day, going to Toon Town and on It's a Small World for Sophie's first time since it just reopened.  They stayed the other half of the day and definitely got their fill and had a great time.

I wanted to get a picture of the girls with Mickey while we were in Toon Town, but Sophie is so scared of any character if she gets too close, and she screamed the entire time.  Oh well, we tried.

We also took them to the La Brea Tar Pits so we could check out the fossils that were trapped there for a few million years but have been reassembled to their original forms, like this mammoth elephant.

Aaron especially was in heaven looking at all the cool stuff there.

This entire wall is made up of the 400 or so wolf skulls they have found.

Sophie checked those out for a while.  It's neat because outside the museum there are still tar pits everywhere, closed off by gates of course, right in the middle of Los Angeles.  Somehow Joseph and Willis still managed to come home and find some tar in their shoes!  Weird!

This was outside the museum of Contemporary Art that's next door to the tar pits.  I won't even try to guess what it was, but Sophie liked it.  I will fully admit that I do not understand nor enjoy modern art, but I'm glad some people do I guess.

These were cool, though.  I felt like we'd stumbled into Narnia, but instead of just one lamp post we found dozens all stacked in neat rows.

The kids had fun chasing each other around and playing hide and seek in them.

One of the things the Jensens really wanted to do on their trip was go to the beach.  They had touched the Atlantic Ocean once but it was too cold to play in, so they've never really been to the beach before.  So we went even though it was cold and windy there.  Not exactly ideal conditions for playing in the cold ocean, but they still seemed to have a good time.  This is the one picture we got the entire trip with all of us together.  We had a great time with them here and Sophie still misses her cousins.

The last thing I'll mention is our most recent ward activity that we heard about for weeks beforehand because it's the favorite.  It's called Potato Racing.  Each family is given a potato to carve and then stick wheels into, then the potatoes are raced down a pinewood derby track in heats much like the March Madness tournament.  My brother Peter and his family were here for it, so Joseph did the initial carving and then Peter did more fine tuning until we ran out of time and were forced to have it ready.

We won the first round race but in the second round we went up against the potato that eventually took 2nd place overall, so we lost to them.  But it was tons of fun and we learned a lot that we'll use to hopefully win it all next year (if we're even still here).  Great idea and lots of fun.  So that's the last few weeks in a nutshell.  If you made it all the way to the end I'm impressed.

" Eye Love U"

Sophie loves that she can read this book word for word. Well, technically she can do that with other books that she's memorized, too, but she's got this one down pat. The reason? It's a rebus poem with pictures instead of a lot of the words, so it's easy for a 2-year old to read. Enjoy.