Mmmm. Something smells GOOD!

Scentsyland!!!

The happiest place on earth!

Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but my Scentsyland is a great place to be because I just got promoted to director! What does that mean, you might ask? Well, I don't really know for sure, but I do know that Scentsy is paying for Christmas this year! And that makes me happy. Really happy.Last Wednesday Jantzen was sick so she and I decided to just hang out in our pajamas. Things here have been very busy (see above pictures), so it was a welcome break. I knew that UPS would be bringing this very LARGE shipment that day, but they usually don't come until about 2:30. I think you can see where this is going. Yes, UPS was here at 1 o'clock, I was in my pajamas, and there was not ONE, but TWO good looking brown-clad guys on my front doorstep. They probably thought that I'm some lazy housewife that sits in her pajamas eating bonbons all day. Next time they drive past my house you can bet I'll be in the front yard doing push ups or something to try and redeem myself.

Moving on...


This is our nephew Jace. We got to see him and smooch on him at Thanksgiving. The good thing in my family is that babies come along only every 4 years or so, so there's plenty of attention for each of them. We had so many cameras pointing at him, I think he probably thinks he's a movie star. But the funny thing is...

Whenever you press the shutter button he goes to this "deer in headlights" look.



See? We were trying to capture a smile, but as soon as we would snap the picture, the smile would disappear. Maybe Jantzen could give him some lessons.

Or maybe not.

Thursday was Carson's Christmas program at school. Jantzen (obviously) was not excited about it. This year they decided to hold it at Carson's school rather than the much BIGGER (and better suited for 3,886,048,127,459 parents, grandparents and neighbors) high school. But this was actually good news for us. Because the third graders sang first. Then we went home. Then we went back 30 minutes later for the grand finale. Carson was none the wiser. But I think he suspected something because he kept quizzing us on which songs he sang, and in what order. "Mom, which song did we clap our hands and stomp our feet on? Did you see me in the kick line?"" We passed with flying colors. Oh, the benefits of living next to the school!

Friday was the PAX (Program for Academic Exchange) Christmas party. We spent about 30 minutes lost in West Richland, but we survived the big city and were treated to a middle school Calypso band. They were so awesome! They ALMOST inspired me to start fundraising for one in Hermiston. Then I remembered how much I hate fundraisers. And how I sneak anything with the word "Fundraiser" into the garbage before my kids see them. But anyways, all the exchange students were given a chance to try the steel drums. The rest of us were jealous.

Daniel, being the music dude that he is seemed to really enjoy it.

And after their time was up the real band played one more song. I don't know the name of it, but it goes like this: Duh da da da da da da duh da da da da da. Oh, forget it. It inspired an international kick line.


Hey, I never said they were the Rockettes!
Here's all the exchange students in the area that are here with PAX. All of them except for us live in the Tri-Cities, which is a bummer. But once in a while they get together for things like... A Crispy Kreme fundraiser this weekend!
I will not eat any donuts.
I will not eat any donuts.
I will not eat any donuts.
Deep breath.

New subject, please.
Saturday we went to the Irrigon skate park. For a town so small that they don't even have a McDonald's, they sure do have a cool skate park.


It was a gorgeous day, a balmy 50 degrees.Which means that we could stay outside for more than two minutes.It was a LARGE time had by all.

Does that mean anything?

Or is that just rodeo talk?

It's kind of hard to feel like you have anything exciting to say after you've blogged about such exciting things as jungle zip lines, surfing and deep sea fishing. But I thought I'd make an attempt at SOMETHING. But beware this may be kind of gross and a tad bit on the mundane side.
Wednesday was the day that we planned on going to my sister, Dana's house for Thanksgiving. Tuesday night was the night when my children started puking. Last time we tried to go to Vancouver (only a month ago!) they did the same. Do you think there's some sort of conspiracy here? Luckily, it turned out to be a very short lived illness and by Wednesday afternoon we decided that we were well enough to hit the road. But first we had to hit McDonald's because we were hungry. And to be sure that Carson would have plenty of food in his stomach to hurl in the back of the car as soon as we were stuck in Portland traffic. Aahhh, good times. Good times. But those McDonald's cups did come in handy at that blessed moment of upchucking. He and Daniel happened to be sitting in the third seat of our car, which is approximately 3 miles from where I was sitting in the front seat. So I could do nothing except pass cups, napkins and water bottles to our nurse, er, Daniel. I bet when he decided to come to America he didn't envision holding McDonald's cups for a puking child, did he? But he was great and luckily he isn't a sympathetic puker. That could have been bad. After it was all over, he put the lid on and passed the cups up front. Eeeew! Something about the warmth of those cups still haunts me.
End of story. You can all breathe a sigh of relief now. You survived the gross. Now it's time for the mundane.
You know how you sometimes write about the funny things your kids do? Well, I'm gonna do that now. Except it's about my husband. (Hi honey! Please don't kill me.)
So I got a little behind on the laundry and Chris found himself with no -uhem- underclothes to wear yesterday. So we gathered up some laundry and put it in the washer. But we decided not to start it yet because we were all trying to shower for church. Later on, he put the clothes in the dryer and then took what he needed to wear when they were done. Last night we decided to fold our Everest of Laundry, and when we were almost done I noticed a sock with a little bit of food stuck to the bottom of it. So I started to inspect all the other clothes and guess what...We had just folded a bunch of clothes that had been dried, but not washed. Doh!
Another fine example of the craziness that takes place behind these four walls. Sometimes I wonder why God thought I could handle three kids.

Surfing Day

Yes, you read it right. This old mama is a surfer girl. We rented a car, which included a free pet gecko on the ceiling, and drove to Tamarindo for a day of surfing. Rich and Dawn came with us, but said that they'd just watch us. They had never tried surfing and didn't think they were interested. But by the time we got there we had talked them in to giving it a try. So we all signed up for lessons, rented surfboards and headed to the beach.But before I could surf I had to try some coconut milk.Hey Chris! Take my picture with my surfboard!

Come on, Jodi! Show some spunk. Do something funny.

Ummm. Okay!

Surfing was awesome!! Dawn and I both got up on our first try, but after that I couldn't get up for awhile. Finally our surf teacher, Fau, told me to just relax. That turned out to be good advice because after that I had no problems. That was such a good workout that we were all so tired and sore by the end of the day. We were wishing we had saved our massages for surfing day. And by the way, Rich and Dawn are talking about buying their own surfboards now because it TOTALLY ROCKED!

That night we had reservations for The Italian Restaurant so we hurried home, did a 5 minute glam-up and went to dinner with salt water and sand in our ears and belly buttons. Shortly after dinner Chris started to feel really sick. We had a very long night that night and learned something...Don't drink the water!

This day was the long awaited fishing trip with Rich and Dawn. We had to get up early to meet our boat on the beach at 6am. Can you believe how gorgeous the view is at that hour? I normally don't think anything is gorgeous at 6 am, but this deserves an exception, don't you think? Oh, and yeah, it was already warm out too.

We had rented the boat for five hours and REALLY wanted to catch some fish. So right away there was a little bit of tension in the air. You can tell just by looking at this picture. These are two really tense guys. No fun going on here.

This is a mahi mahi. We hooked into this guy fairly quickly. And I use the term we very, very loosely here. I had no idea how this was going to work, but apparently our job was to sit and watch while the captain drove and the first mate worked his butt off changing out hooks and baits and things on all the fishing poles. Then when they get a fish on we, the overpaying tourists, have the privilege of reeling it in. It kind of reminds me of taking a four year old fishing. But don't get me wrong. We had a blast. And we probably wouldn't have caught anything if we had been trying to do it all ourselves. Especially since we've never fished for mahi mahi or wahoo.

After we caught the mahi mahi it was time to focus on some other types of fish. Rich was really hoping to get a wahoo. So we fished and fished and fished until our time was almost up. We were getting bored and hungry. But we all agreed that a bored and hungry day in Costa Rica is still better than a day at work. Now the tension was really starting to build because Rich hadn't had a chance to reel anything in yet, and Chris and I were feeling guilty about it. The captain was looking stressed and the first mate was changing lures constantly in an effort to hook a fish for us. Then all of a sudden, we had one! The captain could tell us what kind it was before we could even see it. "It's a wahoo!" The boat came to life and Dawn and I drew our cameras out faster than an old western cowboy. "Wahoo! Rich got a fish!"

We took the fish back to our hotel and they cooked it up for us that night. It was so good! And this is coming from a non-fish eater. So you KNOW it must have been good.

But before dinner, we had some massages scheduled at those huts I mentioned earlier. Chris was a little nervous because he had never had one before so I assured him that he would be covered the whole time with a sheet. OOPS! Apparently in Costa Rica it's customary to use only a beach towel to cover you. It was a bit... how should I put this? breezy.

After bearing it all to the massage therapists I was feeling extra care free, so I let Dawn talk me into Meringue lessons at the pool. See that guy and girl in blue and yellow? Their job is to make fools out of the American tourists. Job well done, guys. Job well done. I'm sure they have lots of good laughs in their break room.

Day 2

So after our zombie day it was time to get to work. There is so much to do there and we needed to figure out how much we could actually fit into this week. So we visited the tour office at our resort and did some research. The tours that we were interested in were surfing, rafting, deep sea fishing and a volcano/waterslide/jungle tour/horseback riding excursion. We hung out at the pool and did some asking around to find out what was best. In the end, we decided that we didn't want to mortgage the house in order to afford all these trips so we cut out rafting, since we already get to do that every year. We asked the tour dude if he could find someone to share the boat with us for deep sea fishing to save a little money there, too. He ended up finding a couple from Boston, Dawn and Rich, that were looking for fishing partners too, so we went to meet with them and make our plans. We really hit it off with them and ended up spending most of our week with them. For the remainder of that day, we took a shuttle into a little town called Playa del Coco for some shopping and exploring. It was kind of a cool place with shops selling jewelry, pottery and woodworks lining the street. You'll have to trust me on this one because I didn't take any pictures of the town, but this is the beach. Yeah, it was warm there.

While we were waiting in the hotel lobby for our shuttle we had some time to hone my wicked photography skills. And my subject was OH-SO-COOPERATIVE!
The next day was awesome! We took a tour through the jungle on zip lines. We even saw a toucan and a family of monkeys. So cute!

This Costa Rican jungle gangster was a little scary, though.

And this little wild pig was trying to get into the girls dressing room. Dirty old pig!

After the zip lines it was time for the world's longest waterslide. Or so they say, anyways. Again, no pictures here because it's kind of hard to take pictures when you're riding a waterslide. But take my word for it. It was long! It takes about 8 minutes to hike to the top of it, then about 1 1/2 minutes to ride it down.

Next on the agenda was horseback riding up to the hot springs. All the horses in our group insisted on walking VERY close together. We decided they must be Asian horses that are used to being crammed into small spaces.

When we got up there, we sat in a steam room, smeared hot volcanic mud all over our bodies and then let it dry in the sun. Then we washed it off and plunged into the hot springs. We started off with the hot ones, then slowly made our way into colder and colder ones.

After that we hopped on our bus for the ride back to our hotel. This little guy lives in a small town and loves to chase dogs. Someone kept him as a pet then turned him loose. So he's partly domesticated and might actually think he's a dog. We think he's cute.

This is the view on the way down. Someone on our bus had to stop to go potty, so we hopped out for some pictures. Hooray for small bladders!

We're baaaack!

OH. MY. GOSH. Costa Rica was like so totally rockin' dude!

We had so much fun, I don't know where to start. So I made a plan and I'm gonna stick to it gosh darn it. I'll post a little bit each day for the next several days. That way you won't get too bored and I won't be sitting here all night typing out all the nitty gritty details that you don't care about. But I probably won't get to go back there for a long time so I have to record every little cotton pickin' thing so that I can relive this vacation over and over. Bear with me.

I guess I'll start with this
picture of our pet gecko. He lived in the light fixture on our balcony. See his bulging belly? He eats all the bugs that go in there. I think he's pretty smart.

And this is a howler monkey that was near the beach at our hotel. I hear they're pretty harmless, but when they start howling you'll feel like you're in Jurassic Park or something.We had a long and miserable overnight flight down there and arrived in Costa Rica at 7 am. So our first day there was spent mostly sleeping, lounging by the pool and doing this:

We were at an all-inclusive resort, so it didn't take long for us to find the food. And it was good. And Jodi was happy. And she looked like a pig. A very tired pig. But a happy tired pig. And it was good. Did I tell you that it was good?

We wandered down this path and found the beach. On the way to the beach we saw these little huts where people could get massages. We took note of those huts and promised ourselves that we would definitely need to visit that sacred place.

Our resort had four restaurants. At one they served Oriental food. It was called The Oriental. At another one they served Italian food. It was called The Italian. The third restaurant was a buffet. It was called The Buffet. Now hang in here with me. I know this is getting confusing. Maybe I should make a chart so that you can keep all of this straight. Now here's the kicker. The fourth one was called The Snack Bar, but it wasn't just snacks! It was meals! So confusing, I know. All the guests were outraged because they couldn't figure out where to get the food they wanted. A cryin' shame, I tell ya. A cryin' shame.

So back to the subject of food. (This subject may be visited several times over the course of the next few days.) That night we ate at The Oriental. We had Mexican food there. HAHAHA! Oh, I can't fool you. We had....Oriental food there! But we were too sleepy to enjoy it. I think we were in bed and asleep by 8 o'clock. Party on!

I know this is a little delayed, but I wanted to get this posted TODAY because TOMORROW is a BIG DAY! Yes, it is finally here. We will leave our life, home and children behind in exchange for sun, sand, snorkeling, surfing, sunbathing, deep sea fishing, and all you can eat food. Although I am excited beyond belief, I know for sure that I'll be ready to come home to my rugrats when the time comes. And if not, we'll purchase some property down there (probably a cardboard shack) and relocate the whole family. Who needs jobs, anyways?

But anyhoo... On to other things...

I've got a question.

What ever happened to NICE Halloween costumes?

Even Jantzen traded in her princess costume for a witch. This year's collection of masks were very disturbing to her, and I'm amazed she would even sit on the porch with these monsters. I guess it's just that my boys are getting older and it's not cool to dress up as an elephant anymore. Go figure.



***ALSO***



These are some pictures from a couple of weeks ago when Jantzen's preschool was talking about fire safety. Chris surprised her with the fire truck out in front of her school. I love these pictures.





Each kid got a turn to spray water from the hose.

Then they climbed in the truck to check everything out.

You might think that she would be bored with the fire trucks because she can climb on them any day, but she was just as excited as the rest of the kids.

Oh, and one more thing. I wanted to come up with something cute to put on my front door asking people to take their shoes off. I wanted it to be fun yet stern. How do you think I did? So far I've gotten a lot of chuckles, but also some commandment breakers.

Obviously, they can't relate to my affliction of having white carpet.