Happy Birthday Elliot

Dinner in the Bodega in the Mission Home with you and your family.

High on a wind swept hill overlooking a dormant volcano.

In a museum of old stuff in the Canary Islands

Cute you with cute brothers.

Cute you with your cute family.

Cute you.

In the Canaries again.

Remember riding that donkey?

Cute you with your cute family again.PP

Playing Duck, Duck, Goose with your family and cousins.

Remember the spaghetti?

Family picture on grounds of Mesa Temple. We really need more and recent pictures of you. Hope you have a Happy Birthday.

Happy Birthday Katie

One of your years at Shadow Mountain Preschool

Our trip to Europe the summer you and Ben got married.

Congratulations on your graduation from BYU.

Didn't you say you photoshopped in some extra tulips in this photo? Anyways this is a great shot of you and Ben.

I don't remember exactly where we were when this picture was taken. Looks like it is in front of a waterfall?

All set for a dance recital.

I remember the Esprit shirt, we can see the collar, but don't know the occasion. Anyways cute make up and jewelry on a cute girl.

The first Ben in your life.

Thunderbird High School cheer with Dusty.

Stars! Can you identify any of the other girls besides Britain Jacobs?

You in another cute dance costume.

You loved the back yard pool!

Happy Birthday Katie

Katie, these pictures aren't in any particular order, just a lot of cute pictures of you from throughout your life. We thank our Heavenly Father each day for such a wonderful daughter as you are. The pictures all bring great memories of different times in your life and our life with you. Much love, Mom and Dad

New Trecking Poles

I think I had told you that we found real trecking poles on the internet and thought about ordering them for me as I am not so sure footed as I used to be. But having them sent here to Costa Rica tripled the price so I said I could continue with the "found"sticks I had been using. But Laurie had his friend Franscisco order them with his code for ordering things for the church and that reduced the postage and the import tax, so he surprised me with real trecking poles. I used one of these for the hike through the Secret Garden. I will probably generally use just one of these at a time.

These are the ones I had been using. I know they don't match. But I hadn't been using them 2 at a time. The piece of bamboo I just picked up off the beach at Manuel Antonio and had used it several times. The other is like the one I used in Arenal for our hike around the volcano. It was muddy and slippery and I know I wouldn't have made it in one piece without the stick as a third leg. You should notice the clean garage floor. Laurie scrubbed it all down after the birds left. The little bird with the injured leg finally fluttered out of the garage and we wish him well. The other one died in the nest as it was there when Laurie removed the nest. We don't know how it died. We need to put something on top of the garage door opener before the next nesting season.

Oh and I got a new hat for sunny days. I usually just wear my red cap though. It hasn't been too sunny since I got the wider brimmed hat.

Interesting Things Along the Way

We headed south from Cartago, where we lost our GPS when the Bagleys and Austin were here, and soon found ourselves in the mountains. There must be some wind here as there were lots of wind turbines.

Close up of one of the wind turbines. By the way, the GPS worked well this trip.

Most of the soil I have seen here is black, volcanic ash. So I thought it was interesting this time that we saw many places where the natural soil color was red.

We also saw many very large boulders and rock formations.

I think I have shown these before. But they are all over in coffee growing areas. The coffee beans are loaded in by the growers up above and on the back side. Here there were just roads higher up, switchbacks. And then the trucks to take the beans away are loaded from the schute at the bottom.

We saw quite a few men riding horses in the mountains. I tried to take a couple of pictures of horses being ridden but they didn't turn out. This is one of the horses resting in his pasture. But I guess they make a good form of transportation where there aren't especially good roads.

We would have gone to these hot springs. We really enjoyed the ones in Arenal when the Bagleys and Austin were here. But this one wasn't open in the evening and we didn't take the time out of the next day to go back. Anyways, there was an almost impassible road to get there!

We saw lots of farmers wearing their gum boots and carrying their machetes. Only thing wrong with this shot is that you can't see the machete. But I didn't want him to know I was taking his picture so couldn't ask him to pose.

Lots of dogs all over Costa Rica. Everybody must have at least one.

Pretty church in the town just before San Gerardo de Rivas.

I told you before about the African oil palm trees. We had seen them on the way to Manuel Antonio. This time we saw more of them, all the way south to Dominical.

This was a load of the "coconuts"? on the way to the processing plants. We passed two of these processing plants, one south of Manuel Antonio and one north. There are mile after mile of these palm groves and they produce a lot of palm oil there.

I suppose you can guess why I took this picture.

I had to have a picture of this sign offering property "for sell". It was nailed to a tree by the Crocodile Bridge.

This is a pile of coffee wood which is what they use to do a lot of cooking here. Many restaurants avertise that they cook their chicken over coals of the wood from the coffee plants.

At home we have a hybiscus bush. This one is much larger and has pretty flowers in a peachy color. Ours are dark red.