Alex and Anthony!

Here's my beautiful boys!

Anthony Graham Cook!

Introducing Anthony Graham Cook!!!!! He is ours!!!

New Family Member!

This will hopefully soon be Anthony Graham Cook!!

Spring is My Favorite Season!!!

We have been doing a lot of gardening lately! Last summer we re-did our landscaping and it included 3 new raised brick garden beds. So we spent many hours this winter decideing exactly what we were going to plant and planning the layout and how we were going to grow all that we wanted in those 3 small beds! The beds are 18 feet long and about 3.5 feet wide. They sit about 1 to 1.5 feet high, perfect for sitting on as you work! We have been really excited to see what we can grow in there! We discovered a Trellis system that we think should be the best, but we will see what we think after this growing season is over! We plan to grow as much upward as we can since we don't have a lot of ground sqaure footage! I hope it works! And... Yes that is my computer you see out there... we garden like nerds! We have to make sure our layout is exactly what our plan specifies! We spent hours building an excel program that has our layout with pictures of every plant and vegetable, when you click on the picture it takes you to a tab that details out that vegetable. Its Awesome! Jerry designed it!

Tons of flowers are blooming now and they are all so beautiful! Every Spring I go around taking pictures of all my beautiful things in the yard! What i will do with all those pics, I don't know, but I love preserving the beauty like that! Here is my Spring house photo... I think this one will go in our photo album for the judge in Kazakhstan!

This is the stream of my pond... Every spring i have to rearrange the rocks alittle to make it flow like i want... Well... this spring i found a leak in the spring, so after i fix that i will post a picture of the stream with water flowing in it! The pond is looking lovely though, there are already tadpoles in it and the water lilies are growing too!

My Star Magnolia, it smells so heavenly!

Construction Equipment...

Here are some cool shots from our visit to the auction in Florida.

Last Days in Costa Rica!!

I can't believe we leave Tuesday already! It has been so beautiful here... even with the rain... i just wish we had been more prepared for rain... but we were not since it is supposed to be the dry season. I did not get to use my various camera lenses as much as I had hoped, but i did have fun taking pictures anyways! I doubt that i will post again, but if i get some really amazing photograph of something before we leave i will probably have to share it with you all! So here are a bunch of pictures from the last few days... There is a sunset picture over the ocean each night we have been here at the beach.

Friday...

We decided to rent a car so we could visit some of the less crowded beaches up and down the coast. We got an SUV a little bigger than the 4-runner. It is a Hyundai, i think... it is a diesel!! Many of our normal gas cars here are diesel, because diesel is cheaper here and they get better gas mileage! funny huh? and the best part? you forget it is a diesel, you can hardly hear it and you don't smell it!!

I had 3 amazing shots of the sunset i had to share!

This was the giant grasshopper that landed on my chest as i was walking back to the car... after i took his picture! He is about 5-6 inches long!!!!!!! He scared the woogies out of me! I screamed... and all the little people on the street turned and had to see what was going on!

Saturday...

Sunday...

This is a shack that we saw today! We couldn't believe it... as they say... location location location!

This is the beach we went to today before returning the car. We swam over to the island, it was cool over there... but we didn't stay long, the tide was coming in already, and it was hard swim with Alex on top of you!!

Playa Tamarindo!!

Here are a couple last pictures of the mountains before we got to the coast!

Playa Tamarindo mean Tamarindo Beach. That is where we are now.

The beach is beautiful... but the town is a little rediculous with touristy stuff. and roads in town are awful... so strange! The highway into town is really nice and new. Alex was so happy about the beach, that when our bus stopped to drop off some other people, he burst into tears because he wanted to go to the beach so bad!! We finally got to our hotel, and by then he was so tired and hungry that we ate and made him take a nap before we went to the beach. But the beach was lovely! Jerry and Alex went out and jumped the waves!

The sunsets are beautiful here!

MonteVerde, Costa Rica!

Finally our new hotel has internet! We spent the last few day (including my 32nd birthday!!!) at MonteVerde. On of the most amazing places on earth. Definately one of the most biologically diverse!!! Enjoy some pictures of MonteVerde area! Oh... it was still raining there... but the last 2 days we finally got SUNSHINE!!!

On our last full day there in Monteverde we went into Santa Elena the town nearby and walked around, we found the Orchid Garden. They have over 500 of the 1600 species in Costa Rica in their Garden. Only about 125 species were blooming now though... This one blow is the smallest orchid in the world... See the little flower? It is right next to my diamond!! Isn't it small!!!!? They actually gave us magnifying glasses to look at the flowers with... there were quite a few that were very small! This flower was actually about done blooming, soit was not looking so good.

We have internet again... sort of.

ok... these pictures areof our day at Volcan Arenal... when it did NOT rain in the morning... this was as close as we got to seeing the whole Volcano!
We took Alex Ziplining. We "ride" through the trees on a harness attached to a cable that can hold 7000 pounds!! Alex loved it! And was very proud to have all his gear on like mommy and daddy!




Everyone thought he was the cutest thing they had ever seen!!! We do too!






everyone thought he was falling asleep!




That evening we took a hike to the Volcano. Alex of course makes instant friends with all the tour guides! We still did not see the lava rocks coming out but we did hear them!




The next morning we took a hike through the jungle and crossed over a ton of hanging bridges that were lovely! He is on the back of the guide of course!