Happy Birthday Toribug!

It's Tori's 2nd Birthday!!! Our one and only niece. We Love you!

Garden

Ryan and I have a garden plot that comes with our apartment. We decided this spring to rip out all the overgrown weeds and plant our first garden together. It has been lots of work, but it's been really fun. We have really been reaping our rewards now with lots and lots of veggies! I can't believe how much it has grown.

First planted in April and now

We have tons and tons of zucchini. We don't know what to do with it all. They grow so fast, look at the ones Ryan picked when we got home from Costa Rica. They're HUGE!

We have a bunch of different pepper plants

Lettuce, onions and tomatoes too

This sunflower popped up out of nowhere, it's just started blooming!

What Ryan likes to do with our extra tomatoes

Costa Rica!

We went to Costa Rica last week and just got back on Saturday night. My cousins, the Clydes and my grandma and grandpa Clyde were there as well as my whole family and my brother's girlfriend Mitra. It was the first time my whole family has been together in a few years, it was so much fun! We all really had a blast. Ryan and I went to Costa Rica for our honeymoon last december, but we were in a totally different part of the country so we got to see all new things this time. Last time we went we forgot our camera charger and the camera died before we even got there:( So this time we were able to get some pretty awesome pictures. I posted a lot of our pictures on this website so check them out:

http://picasaweb.google.com/rachibabe/CostaRica?feat=directlink

The first few days we hung out at the hotel and swam in the ocean and pool. We stayed in the Los Suenos Marriott that was in a really pretty bay with a nice sandy beach. The airlines forgot to put my bag on our second flight so I didn't get any of my clothes until the second night, but Mitra was so nice to lend me some of hers. Thanks Mitra.

The hotel

Ryan and I decided to rent a car so we could get out and see the country side. We went on a drive with all my siblings and Nicole and Phil found an awesome country dirt road that lead up and over some of the mountains. We saw some gorgeous views and all of us got kinda camera happy. Before we knew it we had been out for a few hours and the sun was starting to go down and we were still up on the mountain. Luckily Phil had a GPS to help us know where to go and we barely made it down off the mountain as it got dark. It was so much fun to spend time with all my brothers and sisters.

This is a video of a plant that Matt found on our drive, it reacts and closes up when you touch it!

An orchard of newly planted palm trees that we saw on our drive. Palm oil is one of Costa Rica's largest exports.

During the week our families went on some really cool hikes and found some awesome animals! We got some great pictures. The forcast was supposed to be rainy all week, but we lucked out and were only rained on once or twice and the rest was sunny weather. It was very hot and humid though, as soon as you stepped out of your room you'd be sweating.

Heres some pictures of the animals we saw on one of our hikes:

Three Toed Sloth (I love his face)

Red Back Squirrel Monkey
Howler Monkey

Nasty Spider (makes me not hate the ones here so much)

EWWWWW

Lizard (only a few inches long)

Monkeys from our hike, so cute!

We all went ziplining through the canopy, even my parents and grandpa Clyde went! It was so much fun and we got to see some amazing views. Everyone loved it and did great. Everyone was doing tricks, my favorite was Andrew's Superman pose though.

Phil

MomDad

On our last day, Ryan and I went to a butterfly, snake and frog refuge. They rescued exotic animals that had been previous pets and people didn't want them anymore, or animals that had been injured in the wild. It was one of my favorite things we did in Costa Rica. Ryan and I got to hold a red eyed tree frog, which is my new favorite animal. It felt like one of those sticky hand things you get out of a quater machine. It crawled around us then curled up in Ryan's hand and fell asleep, it was the cutest thing I've ever seen. We also got to see some poisonus dart frogs, they were so vibrant. My favorite ones were the green and black ones, we acutally saw one of them when we were ziplining! I didn't know that these frogs get their poison from eating red fire ants and that in captivity if they don't eat any they will lose their poison after a year. After we saw the frogs Ryan held a miny boa consticter. Then we got to go into a cage with a white faced monkey that was named Michael Jackson! The guide told us they named in that because he has a white face and likes little children, haha. The second I stepped in the cage, the monkey jumped on me and in one swoop hooked his arm around my neck and swung from one side to the other and landed on my shoulder. Then he jumped back and forth to me and Ryan. It was so much fun!

Here's a Red Eyed Tree Frog, he's so adorable!

One of my favorite pictures that I took on the trip.

It's our family looking down at the crocs! Ryan and I are on the right.

It was the trip of a lifetime and I'm so happy to have been able to spend time with all of my family. I can't wait to see them all again!

New Blog!

Well, I've finally done it. I have been thinking about starting a blog for quite some time now, but I keep putting it off. I have never been one to keep a journal and when I have tried, the entries are pretty pathetic sometimes being months or even years apart. Hopefully my attempt at creating a blog will be more impressive. I guess I never really felt the motive to start a blog because I didn't know what I would write about and if anyone would read it. But today I am feeling up to a challenge, or maybe I am just procrastinating cleaning the house... either way I am doing it. I guess another reason I feel like making this blog is because we just got back from Costa Rica and I have some exciting things to blog about! Ryan and I are having such a great life together and I feel like we need to keep the rest of the world updated on what's goin on. Hope you enjoy!