Month: January 2012

We\’ve been on a wait list for a local gymnastics class with Quinn\’s school buddies B & B.  Quinn finally got in to the class and is having so much fun.  All the kids love their teacher Jorge who is a great big goofball and the three Sundance boys love having a fun morning together.

Quinn\’s favorite part of the class is doing the zip line.  He likes to do it backwards!

This class keeps them moving for 45 minutes straight and Quinn always finishes with a red face and a sweaty head.  A great activity for the indoor winter months.

We are having a great week in Jaco. Here are some shots from the last couple of days.

Sunset at our favorite fish taco restaurant, Bubbas.

And our favorite local beer, Imperial.

A view from the ocean to our hotel at low tide.

A view down the beach towards the town.

The Boy.

It was a really warm day today with not a cloud in the sky. We had a spectacular sunset. This is from our room.

Just a couple more days in paradise but we plan to make the most of it.

We had a rough start to our vacation with a couple of inches of snow in NJ. Our 9:30 am departure turned in to a 3:00 pm departure that included 3+ hours sitting on the runway and going thru 4 de-icings. But we made it.

I wish I could say things improved upon arrival but we continued with our bad luck. Our car seat cover got caught in the conveyor belt and it took a team of industrious Ticos to free it. We were happy to see our driver who whisked us away to Jaco (a 90 minute drive from the airport). We were about 5 minutes from our hotel when we encountered a closed bridge due to a drunk gringo driving his rental off the road. Our driver helped us haul our luggage to the hotel where we were excited to get our room with pre-arranged groceries including cold beer and sandwiches. Unfortunately they forgot to place the order and we arrived to an empty fridge. My hero Don hailed a taxi and got us enough food and drink to get us through to the next day.

Everything looked up from that point on. A beautiful beach, warm water, pool, sun, and absolutely nothing to bitch about.

A view from the pool to our room.

Quinn is having so much fun in the water and sand. He is absolutely fearless with the waves. After he gets knocked down by one he gets up with a smile ready to conquer the next one. Don rented a surf board and boogie board today. Quinn had a blast even though he took a bit of a beating from the ocean.

Don had great success on the surfboard catching a wave on his first attempt. He\’s 30 pounds lighter and much fitter than his previous surf outings in California. He had alot of fun out there!

Q even caught a wave.

My two favorite guys hanging 20.

We were looking forward to some much needed R&R and Jaco has well exceeded our expectations. It\’s going to be a great week. It gets even better tomorrow when Brad and his girls join in on the fun.

Hasta la vista!

{{Posted on the road somewhere fabulous}}

Someone got a way overdue haircut and is looking mighty fresh.

Today we are hopefully going to leave this behind:

And arrive to this:

Sometimes Quinn is in the mood to be a Rock Star.  Saturday was one of those days.  We pulled out the guitar and turned it up loud!

Making some noise!

Even the angry bird gets in on the action.

I should have listened to my mom instinct.  When I got Quinn up for school yesterday he was particularly unhappy.  It crossed my mind to keep him home but I just moved on with the morning and took him to school and went to Spin class at the gym.  For some reason, I took my phone in to spin (which I rarely do) and accidentally placed it where I could see it (which I never do).  45 minutes in to class I saw my phone light up.  It was school. Quinn had thrown up and was in the nurses office.   When I got to school the poor guy looked pathetic.

Once we got home and got in our pajamas he seemed to make a quick recovery and ate 2 pieces of honey toast.   Then it was a play day at home.  The hot wheels are still getting alot of play and Quinn frequently asks us to \’make them even more awesome\’.   These tracks get some frequent reconfiguration.

He loves to set up stuff for the hot wheels to knock over.

I\’m just not one of those moms that loves to get down on the floor and play with their kid for hours.  That\’s just not me.  Never was, never will be.  But sometimes I come up with a clever idea like this domino tower for the cars to knock over.

Success!

Don said that when he was a kid, he and his brother would run the hot wheels tracks all over the house.  I can see that Quinn will be the same way.  I snapped this shot the other day when Marli was babysitting.

Quinn finished off his day with a bowl of yogurt and cereal and seemed to have made a full recovery.  It will be home on Tuesday and hopefully a healthy day.

I love doing the December Daily.  I love it even more when it\’s finished.  And it is!!  December Daily is a project that was started by Ali Edwards.  Ali is a professional memory keeper and blogger whose work I find very inspiring.   And I love her modern twist on scrapbooking.  

You may wonder what happens to all the photos and layouts that I post on my blog.  I use Ali\’s templates and suggestions as a starting point and then add my own personal style.  My style is a little bit cleaner than Ali\’s and doesn\’t include as many embellishments.   This is how my December Daily turned out this year.

This years book is about a 7 x 9.  For the cover and back pages, I cut a piece of cardboard to 7×9 and glued on Christmas cardstock.  I added a couple of embellishments to the cover that came with the cardstock kit.

For each day in December, I created either 1 or 3 pages of photos (except the day I didn\’t have any sleep and created 2 pages).   This made the book consistent with a new day always starting on the right hand side.   On the left hand side I used the xmas card stock and sometimes embellished it a little bit.

The photo layouts are sized 6 x 8.5 and I printed them out on 8.5×11 photo paper.    I then trimmed each page to 6 x 8.5 so it was the photo layout only.  This year I decided to put all my pages in protectors.  I found some 6 x 10 page protectors that I cut down to 6 x 8.5 size and repunched the holes for the binder.

On some pages I added a couple of small embellishments (star on the left page, ornament on the right page).

I\’m really happy with the way the book turned out this year.  And I\’m sure next years will be even better!

Sunday we were all feeling a little lazy so we just hung around the house all day.  At one point Don and Quinn were sitting on the couch and Quinn mentioned something about \”his house\”.    Don reminded him that it was his house too.  At which point Quinn said \”But my pictures are hanging on the wall.  Are there any pictures of you Papa?\”.   Pretty funny!