Costa Rica: Trip of a Lifetime!

Cannon and Amy have cemented their position as the most generous people on the planet. They wanted our whole family to have a vacation in Costa Rica, but they knew everyone was of varying means. They didn't want anyone to be left out, so they paid for the entire vacation for all 29 of us, including airfare. Unbelievable. Almost as unbelievable as where we stayed. We went to Manuel Antonio and stayed in two large houses, each of which had a couple casitas. Each house had its own pool, as well as private chefs, who made us breakfast and dinner every night. We stayed in a house with Cannon/Amy/Greyson/Easton, with her parents and the DH in casitas on our property. Everyone else was at the other main house and its casitas. Every day around 5pm, we would meet by our pool for happy hour: a bartender had been hired (his name was Jonathan and he was great), so all we had to do was relax. Our property also had an amazing tree fort and every day monkeys would come to be fed bananas by the kids...we joked that the monkeys got to have their happy hour, too! We spent most of our time at the beach, but also had a lot of fun white water rafting and watching alligators, and sailing. It was over Thanksgiving, so we even had a full Thanksgiving dinner by the pool The girls were too little for zip lining and surfing, so we'll just have to go back again!

Happy Halloween and 1st Lost Tooth!

(note to my regular readers: the months of May through October are not lost. Every month has posts in varying stages of completion. I keep wanting to get caught up in order, but it's not happening. So I am going to start fresh and current, and then just keep doing the old ones as I have time. :) ) --It seems that every single friend of Delilah's has lost at least one tooth...most have lost several. The dentist told her she was right on track, but she's still been very antsy to reach that milestone. It finally happened this week! It was very loose Wednesday night, but it didn't seem quite ready to come out. Silly parents. We put the girls to bed and about 20 minutes later, Red came running down the stairs, squealing with joy, "It came out! My tooth came out! I lost my first tooth!!!!!" Happy girl, happy parents, and the tooth fairy came and left $1 under her pillow.

And if Noelle's birthday and Red's first lost tooth weren't enough excitement for one week, we had Halloween yesterday! It was a bit of a crazy day. Noelle is in two preschool classes (one morning and one afternoon), and each had a party and a parade that I went to. Delilah's elementary school also does a Halloween parade every year, at 1:45, followed by class parties with crafts and cupcakes. I was there for that, and Delilah was very happy Noelle wasn't with me. She and Noelle are best friends and adore each other, but lately Delilah has been really wanting alone time with Mommy. I knew she would love having me to herself, but it meant we had to leave the class party a few minutes early to pick up Noelle from pre-school. We literally left 5 minutes early, but you would have thought the world was ending by the way Delilah was sobbing about leaving her classmates. Then, what should have been a 4 minute drive to pick up Noelle turned into 20 minutes because there was an accident and everyone was being re-routed. So Noelle was the last one to be picked up, which has never happened (luckily, she loves her teachers and was quite content to have them to herself). We came home and relaxed for a bit before heading to Delilah's friend Liv's house. We ate dinner with Liv and her family and then spent a good hour or more trick-or-treating. Tons of fun and we were all exhausted. Some pics from the day and night: Delilah was a witch and Noelle was Maleficent. I especially love the pic of tuckered-out Noelle being carried by Daddy. :)

Happy Halloween!!!