Happy Happy Birthday Max

Max is now almost 5 1/2 - but my computers been broken & wouldn't stay on long enough to load pictures, so now I have a new computer and much catching up! Max turned 5 April 7, so here are some facts about Max:

Max is usually either smiling or sleeping. He will fall asleep anywhere, and often does on playdates. Once he fell asleep in his friends car with food in his mouth. I had a whole bunch of pictures of his random falling asleep but he and his little friend Gavin were taking pictures of them throwing cereal all over (a post for another day) and deleted the sleeping photos (but not the ones of their destruction!!!)

Max LOVES to play dress-up in his sisters dresses- but refuses to wear a pink helmet to ride a 4 wheeler!

He is a ladies man. At his last preschool parent conference the teacher told us the girls won't call on anybody until Max raises his had during sharing time. And if he's in the bathroom they will wait. You can already tell he has a preference for blondes, but a few brunettes have caught his attention:)

He is a crazy man, but still has a healthy dose of fear. He will jump from any height, drives a jet ski with abandon, and watch out when he's on his scooter!

Max is a great brother. He takes good care of Brody and is concerned about "my girls" as he used to call them:)

He loves to make people laugh. Anytime someone asks him a question you can see his wheels spinning, trying to come up with something funny to say.

We love you Max!!!

Spring in Colorado

Just 24 hours before this picture was taken they were on the same grass, in their swimsuits running through the sprinkler in 80 degrees.

Ragnar SoCal pictures

Several friends and I are running the Ragnar relay in Southern California in April, so we had a little fun with our team in a photo shoot - taken and photoshopped by our fabulous teammate Amy. Our team is Mind over Mileage (M.O.M.) so we thought we'd have fun with that -- The race starts in Huntington Beach and ends on Coronado Island. Our blog is www.mindovermileage.blogspot.com to see my other awesome teammates pictures. It's definitely worth the visit:)

The rest of Costa Rica

So here is the rest of our time in Costa Rica. We drove around to several beaches and shopped a little ( and found the best headbands for boating !) on day 2. We shopped on this street and got stopped by a guy selling boating trips. He promised us a 6 hour trip, snorkeling, surfing (with a surfing guide - body boards for Darren and Cindy) a cooler full of drinks and fruit - an overall great time! So we met the boat the next day, it had 2 surfboards - no guide- 1 body board and a cooler with a bag of ice, a small pineapple cut up (which was REALLY good) and 4 warm water bottles. Even though it was not what we were promised we did have a really good time!!!this little girl was the cutest, chubbiest baby in her cute green bikini! We had to sneak a picture! I think this is the beach Ryan and I tried to surf(below) - White sand beach. It is soo pretty. We had to swim out from the boat to the shore, try to surf, and then battle the waves and swim back to the boat.I you look hard there is a sea turtle in this picture, kind of above center. So after the first 2 days we realized that the small tube of sunblock I had brought was not going to last the 4 of us, so we headed to the little gift shop at our hotel. It was really reasonably priced, it had cute t-shirts for $12, swimsuits for around $30, but sunblock - for all of us white North Americans, was $25.99!!! Definitely a supply and demand scenario!!!On the boat We had a bunch of dolphins come swim up around the boat, there were 10 or more. They stopped the boat and they were all around us! Super cool!

This is Witches head - from some angle it looks like a witches head, we didn't get a picture from that angle

Me and Cyndi having lunch before we left

This is Gorilla head rock, we snorkled around it, there were tons of colorful fish - it was pretty cool. There's a monkey up there!

Ryan thinking deep thoughts On our way back it was high tide so the captain took us up a river. Darren was super stressed out, he was sure the "crew" would make us get off the boat and leave us there - what was stopping them?!?! He was really funny - this is him worrying.

Our "crew". They were really cool! Our last day there we headed to "Playa Grande" or as we call it Beeg Beech. It was Georgous! It was really relaxing and rejuvinating. And as we left we noticed a little shack that was advertising surf lessons. oh well.

Our last morning, on our way to breakfast

Girls day

Riley has recently decided she's in love with Justin Bieber (to which I roll my eyes!) So Saturday Riley, Emma and I went to see his movie. Emma was very opposed to going, as she is NOT in love w/ J.B., but Dad told her the only other option was to watch the BYU basketball game on TV w/ him and the boys, so she grumpily came along. Obviously by the end of the movie she was not so grumpy. She has been listening to his songs all week too. It was a cute movie - I admit I'm a fan now too:) Afterwards we hit Which Wich and Red Mango for lunch and dessert -- yum!!! I'm so glad I have girls so we can have days like this:) In not too many years the dates can be at the spa!!!

Famous!

Last spring I was running on the Coal Creek Trail with some of my Ragnar Relay teammates and a woman stopped us and asked us to run down the hill we were currently running up so she could take our picture for a magazine - which turned out to be Sunset magazine (my favorite) - and our picture is in this months (March's) issue!!! I don't have a scanner so I took a picture w/my camera, so it's not the best. But if you get the magazine it's on page 26:) I am on the very right. How cool is that!!!

Costa R-R-Rica (Arriving, Zip slide, tubing, horseback riding)

So last week Ryan and I left the kids w/ his parents, (thanks so much!!), met up with some good friends (Darren and Cyndi), and left the freezing temps in Colorado (really it was almost 60 the day we left, but it's been a cold winter) and flew to sunny Costa Rica! After a huge mishap at the airport where Cyndi almost didn't make the flight (no-thanks snowy Utah and a really rotten girl who works for Frontier Airlines!) we took off at midnight and arrived I think around 6 am in Costa Rica. I said I think b/c all time ceased to matter once we were in the air:) Once we landed and went through customs we picked up our rental car (took 2 hours) and had breakfast at Dennys (for $60!) Then we got on the road for a 4 hour drive to the resort we stayed at - ugh. But we got to see the country a bit. When all was said and done Cyndi had travelled for 24 hours straight (and the rest of us were closer to 18). This is Liberia, about 15 minutes from where we stayed. All the comforts of home:) And this is the view from the reception desk. Our little bungalow rooms were to the right of this picture.We took our stuff to our rooms where this little guy greeted us, we saw him lots. Then we met up at the bar for lunch, apparently $60 at Dennys doesn't last more than 4 hours:) Check out the guy "throwing out the vibe" behind Ryan. That's really why we took this picture - (we're not that mature:) But the swimwear of choice for most of the older men was speedos. kind of gross! To the right of Ryan was a little sitting section that looked at the ocean. and to the left was the pool. None of us got in the pool once, it was all ocean baby!After a much needed GREAT night's sleep, we headed an hour and a half away to Adventure Tours where we were going horseback riding, zip lining and tubing down a river. BEST DAY EVER! We got stopped by a little cattle drive on our way. Notice the GPS on the windshield? totally saved us!!! We first went horseback riding to here. The horses were super mellow, almost to a fault. But Darren was still very nervous, he does not love animals:)
This is what was behind us in the above picture:
We could have swam (or swimmed or swum?) in it, but we were confused and didn't wear our suits for this part of it. Next was tubing , which we did wear our suits for - soooo fun!

Cyndi:
Me: Ryan and Darren:
After lunch (I swear Costa Rica has THE best Coke EVER! I became readdicted on vacation) we went on a zipline tour. Here we are getting instructions. Don't we all look HOT in our gear?!
I think Ryan and Darren have little man crushes on each other - thanks to their shared passion for BYU sports!Ryan taking the plunge - to what feels like death the first time you go! Darren had this concerned look on most of our "adventures":) - although he said he had a good time!
As part of the zipline we had the option to "rappel" down into the canyon (actuall they kind of dropped us, but only about 75 feet), swing across the river, and climb back up the side of the canyon wall, so we did it:)
This is Ryan about to drop:

The wall we climbed back up:

Then we had to go sideways over to the next platform.

In the end, the zipline was my favorite b/c it was a HUGE adrenaline rush, I was shaking the whole time! After this we tried to find the hot springs and mud baths, but they were under- impressive so we headed back to our resort and sat by the ocean and read:) Like I said, BEST DAY EVER! (until the next day:))