Saturday, December 4, 2010

I Was Almost Done with the Nighttime Routine...

Yes, I almost had everyone put to bed...

We had read scriptures (had a great little discussion on 1 Nephi 11:17) and said our family prayer in the east room where Joe, Mel, and Hyrum have been sleeping. After giving each of those three a hug and kiss we turned off the light and moved onto the next room - the West room to put Abi, Wes, and Ethan to bed. All three of their blankets were on the floor, which makes me nervous. It was upstairs though, and I don't think bugs can make it up that far easily, except for the tree frogs that jump up on the roof near the window. I shook of Wesley's blanket and put it on him. I picked up and shook off Abi's. One more kid to go. Ethan's was over on the floor tucked under the bed a little bit. And here's where some inspiration came in. A little voice reminded me that the day before I had seen that blanket in the dark corner of the house by the front door that no one uses - our version of a storage area. In the kitchen this week the kids used a towel to wipe up some spilled milk and there was a dead frog in it, so I've been trying to keep large mounds of cloth material (i.e. blankets, towels) off the floor. Ethan's blanket, I think, had fallen onto the floor from having been set on the rocking chair over there (moved there to not take up room space?). So I pick it up Ethan's folded blanket and think I see a little squished tree frog on it. I squeal a little too loudly as I quickly drop it and say "there's a dead frog" - I shake it, tried to flick it off the little squished frog, it either dropped or was alive as it fell into a different fold of the blanket. I flipped it over again, still looked like a squished something (not very good lighting in these houses) and looked at it - it wasn't a tree frog. I yell "Aaahh!!! It's a scorpoin! (trying to look at it but not too closely...) It's dead..." I said and thought as I tried to flick it off with my shoe. I always wear my shoes. And I flicked it, and it started to run across the tile to anywhere where it could get away from us. I scream louder "AAHH!" as I give it a shoe smack trying to kill it. No effect and it's still running. It's reached the wall and turned left and is headed to disappear behind the closet - one more jump on it with my shoe and it sticks to the bottom. "AAAHHH!" as I give my shoe a whiplash to flick if off - it goes flying, hits the wall, lands on the floor, and starts booking it again. The three kids from this room are all on the bed freaking out, the other three have heard my startled yells and are all at the door wondering what's going on - the door is only slightly open and the scorpion has stopped and hunched down right in front of the door. I don't want to open the door more in case that sends it running again. I tell Joe/Mel/Hyrum "There's a scorpion, go get me a cup... don't open the door - just go get me a cup!" They return with a little blue Ikea cup, "No a big cup, a glass cup..." They return with it. I put it over the scorpion. I go downstairs and find something hard and thin to slide under the cup... Wesley's hard laminated ABC book should do the trick. We slide it under, flip it over, and examine our prisoner.

I did step on it twice. Hard. Or atleast I tried to do it hard. I'm thinking maybe it's hurt and is dead. And it looks dead, but it looked dead on the blanket too. The kids keep telling me it's alive. I look. It looks dead. "It's dead".
"It's alive!"

I saw it and then believed the kids - it is alive... every 30 seconds or so it'd briefly push up with it's tail and try to reach out of the cup. Glad it's a tall cup. We've all got the heebie jeebies and everyone wants to go sleep in my bed with me. "NO! - there were 2 scorpions in my room, remember! You don't want to sleep in there..." No, everyone into your own beds. Okay, fine, everyone into JMH's room. But I let Abi sleep on the couch. But first she came with me outside to cannon-shoot the scorpion out of the cup and into the dirt lot across the street. All the dogs came running thinking I had some leftovers. I thought momentarily that I'd like to see what a dog does to a scorpion, but then just throw it. Hopefully it won't find it's way back before Thursday.
Abi pointing a lazer light on the scorpion. Wondering if it will damage a scorpions eyesight to have a lazer shooting straight into it. Didn't seem to phase him.

So, everyone has different opinions - some say a scorpion will kill a small kid like Lily, other say scorpion stings just sting, maybe make you a little numb. Well, hopefully this will be our last scorpion visitor here and hopefully also we'll never get to find out who's right about what happens to ya when you get poked by these ugly guys. Icgh!

Friday, December 3, 2010

A Sunny Beach Day!!!


Today was our last Friday here in Costa Rica. Last I talked to the RMs on Tuesday, we decided to get together again this week and have a girls night out for the Moms. We thought it would be best to do it at our place, and if they are gonna drive all the way out here, might as well go to a beach too, no? So it was arranged. Playa Flamingo, and let's get all our American friends - the Martinsens and the Heathman's to come too. So it was. We got there around 1 and stayed until sunset (5:30). With our big group it looked/sounded like Raging Waters - water splashing, kids squeeling. It was great. Couldn't have asked for a better beach day, but we might still try to go one more time before we fly out. Flamingo is an awesome beach, and today it was a BEAUTIFUL DAY!!!! It was sunny! There were hardly any clouds in the sky.


The ocean looked SO BLUE - it was a beautiful beautiful day. Wow. My camera's battery was low, so I was trying to conserve and thus didn't take as many pictures as I normally would have, but still have a ton.


Lily fell asleep in the car on the way there, wasn't happy I woke her up and took her out into the hot and bright outside world. But she calmed down quickly and started playing with the other babies in the small slightly shaded area from the two folding chairs-


President Lopez from our branch came with the Martinsens and he was so cute with all the babies digging in the sand. He kept them quite entertained and the little ones seemed so pleased to have an adult freely choose to play with them.


Melodie sculpting her body again. Giving herself little troll legs. She's so funny.


Joseph started this - take a quick run in to the water and get wet, then book it up to the dry sand and coat yourself like a snickerdoodle cookie.

From Joe's macho pose here, I guess being a sand man makes him feel pretty tough

And Ethan as the Sand Man.


Rolling down the beach slope - making sure to get that sand everywhere!


Inspired by the other boys, Wesley also coated himself in sand. Wes was the only kid that I realized (at 4:00) that I hadn't put sunblock on. Luckily I think the dirt covering him did the trick. His cheeks looked kinda rosy though, so I rubbed the sand off of them and put some sunblock - made them look nice and pink. Glad to report that after the bath at home, I was glad to see that he wasn't not fried. As seen in Wes' photo above and hte following pictures, the sun was starting to get lower in the sky - it's more orange in color and longer shadows.

Lily was our designated beach b u m today. (I forgot her b o t t o m s - o o p s!) She wore a diaper at first, but when she needed a change I didn't want to waste a diaper that was just going to get filled with sea water, so she went without. Totally the norm here. :) I saw a grown man just take off his pants on the beach, right out in the open, to put on his swimming trunks! That wasn't here, that was at Samara. Maybe he was from Europe?

but Lara didn't seem to mind Lily's b a r e bottom at all and was so cute holding her and playing with her - thank you Lara! You are such a sweetie! As you can tell Lily loves her.

Lara also helped Abi find a hermit crab! We love and will miss the Martinsens! Maybe we'll come visit you guys in St. George since you all might be back in Utah before us! We'll miss you guys!

The boys spent the last hour of the beach making sand forts for their sandball fight. Ethan's head poking out - and up close...
Very impressive - this was packed dirt, so I thought it was really hard to dig in. Playa Conchal - now that's my kind of digging material. But the kids were determined and worked hard. when the mom's said it's time to go at 5, they hurried and had their mudball fight. We're doing the best we can to not miss out entirely on all the winter activities we're missing...

Sunset was beautiful!!!!

A great ending to our last week in Costa Rica.

More Pics of Samara

I already posted the pictures I had of Joe - having mud fights


Here are the rest of the kids:
Melodie first...


She's so creative - she thought of this feet sculpture on her own. Then I recommended she try and do it on her knees.
We were laughing at the pictures of her. Funny!

Then there's Ethan -
Looks like he got stuck in quicksand! Perhaps more appropriately called Sticksand. The kids would try and dig a hole in the mud, then let it sink all around them and they were held tight - it was really packed together sand.


Hyrum had fun in the mudfight, in the waves, and drawing in the sand.


as did Wesley - here drawing the face of a Ben 10 omnitrix watch.


Wes also got a small scratch on his heel as he played on the reef. He was sure he was fatally wounded.


He thought I was pretty mean for not carrying him back to our beach camp. I made him walk. "You can do hard things."

And here is our pretty Abi.

All smiles.


And the last and littlest one, Little Lil

Giving me lots of leg hugs during the day, eating lots of dirt, drinking lots of juice

Love that little face.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Pics of Samara

We parked a little far away from the RMs favorite spot, thinking they wanted to try something new, but then the kids all decided they wanted to play on the reef and watch crabs, so we walked west to the reef.


The reef behind the kids. Melodie drew a hopscotch game in the sand.

All right, now we're all set up. Who wants a sandwich? Melanie on PB&H (honey) duty

Lily and one of the twins feeding sand covered cookies to each other and to the RM's dog Sadie


Abi and Leah are good friends.


Here they are playing in the mud


And all the boys in the mud


Rachael and me

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