Busch Gardens and Kings Dominion

I am still trying to beat my record of a post with the fewest captions and narration. This will be a close contender.

I did NOT go on this fun weekend. By choice:)). I just wanted two days of quietness, and the house to myself to do almost NOTHING. It was right after my mom left and we were in the middle of a crazy summer. So I am grateful that I got a short break. 

Robert took the kids to two amusement parks--Busch Gardens and Kings Dominion. 

They had a BLAST! Because they all love the speed and all the rollercoasters. 

Busch Gardens in in Williamsburg, VA and Kings Dominion is just north Richmond, VA.

And so this is a post full of summer memories with little explanation-hahaha.

Lyana. 

 

Costa Rica: La Fortuna

Costa Rica was our planned trip for April 2020. We cancelled it with hesitance, thinking even at the end of March that maybe things suddenly would get better. And here we are in 2021. 

Almost a year later since the original plan, we were able to take the kids to Costa Rica for their spring break. We used our airlines credit from previous year and because our tickets prices were half the price this time, we were able to do a lot more with our Delta and Southwest credit than fly to Costa Rica. 

We flew into San Jose, Costa Rica around midday.

A rental car was a must for us as we traveled to two different areas. It was a bit crazy as the shuttle that took us to the rental car place took about 30 minutes to transport us there because of all the construction going on in the area. We got our car and started our adventure in a new country. It was fun to see the temple a mile from the car rental place.

We were heading for La Fortuna, in the northern part of the country. Our drive was about 3 hours, with windy steep roads and some patches of rain and fog. 

We arrived to our airbnb which was across the street from the “hotel”.

This is our house. So green! It had two bedrooms and a very nice outside area!

We were quite tired after our traveling, so we found a recommended place for dinner and relaxed.

In the morning, I enjoyed the beautiful outside gardens while Robert took the kids white water rafting.

I hear it was amazing! I just didn’t want to risk going with my ACL still in rehab.

It took a lot of research to find all our activities, but at the end we made all the right choices. The kids went onto class IV rapids in some places, which is what they all wanted!

A Costa Rican lunch included.

This is me enjoying the rushing river next to our airbnb.

And while everyone was gone I ordered myself a spa lady to come over to the house and do a facial on me. It was very relaxing.

In the afternoon, we decided to go to the hot springs in the village--tickets were included with the accommodations. 

It was definitely a place where the locals went, kind of man made but with natural hot springs, of course.

The water was SUPER hot in some pools! It had slides and weird things to sit on in others.

For Day 2, we had more adventures planned! But first we had breakfast at the hotel. Plantains were delicious there!!!

The boys played a bit of ping pong waiting for our shuttle to take us ziplining!

Boy, was I nervous....yes, I am so afraid of heights, it’s not pleasant at all!

But they explained to us how to do it safely...

And we just hoped for the best.

The first time was TERRIFYING for me. It did get a little easier with each time, but still... Apparently, the kids were unfazed! They LOVED IT!

This is a family picture right before the long-long ride at the end! It was actually drizzling and raining the whole time we were ziplining. So we were MUDDY!

Katya before her looong journey on the zipline.

Alex is getting to “scream” down...

I, obviously, look super scared. This is not my type of relaxing!!!

Mark was all smiles! 

And since Robert was the one with a phone, we didn’t get a picture of him...

Katya shows you how messy we all were!!! 

A nice refreshing snack at the end. And the funny/weird part is that the other family in our group was from UT!

All day, the weather was on and off rainy. It was still warm but wet. We went out to lunch to a very nice plant based place which I absolutely loved. Alex looks ecstatic to eat there as well.

Kids did find food they liked there, besides smoothies.

Nice colorful outfit, Mark!

That afternoon we took a little driving adventure to explore the outskirts of La Fortuna. Seriously...usually, you can drive over to the VOLCANO (because really, there is a Volcano there) and walk around it, look at it, hike in the area. But the weather was meh....so meh...that obviously, you see NO VOLCANO!

This was kind of a non-pretty part of Costa Rica after all. I mean, it was all nature but nothing like what you imagine Costa Rica to be. Again, because the Volcano disappeared! 

Well, this snake was cool though!

So our full second day in La Fortuna was still very fun because of ziplining but I feel that the rainy and cloudy weather kind of gypped us of the view and the opportunities to REALLY see this area...sadly. Well, we might just have to come back!

Stay tuned for the next part!!!

Lyana. 

 

Our Random Pictures Post

I am pretty diligent about getting my phone pictures to our main computer. Sometimes I end up with a bunch of random pictures from our every day life. So here is a collection of some of them:)

Happy New Year! 2020!! This is when we went to the NY party at the Wests and I made everyone come home at 11:30 pm so that we could meet the New Year together at home;). Alex and Mark were less than thrilled. At least I let them stay up till after midnight! And I just wanted to watch London Eye’s Fireworks again:)

Mark surprised us all this fall and joined his school’s chorus! He diligently went to all the rehearsals and learned all the songs. He definitely needs to work on his concert face though. We laughed quite a bit because he was so funny to watch!!! Good job, Mark, for trying something new though!

Katya’s choir also presented a Christmas concert in December. It was fabulous:) These kids are so talented! 

This is our favorite group of friends to go out with--the W’s. All of our last names start with a W, so we make it a thing:) We are so busy though that if we find a date when we go out once in 3-4 months, we are happy. This is the place that Melanie suggested called Fiction Kitchen in Raleigh (a vegan place). It was good (and I liked it, personally) but most were not huge fans, so they said next time Melanie is not choosing the restaurant. 

Since September, when we switched our church to 9 am, we have been really good at taking walks on Sunday as a family. Most Sundays the kids whine and gripe about going and then when we are walking, everyone is having a great time;). Sometimes we bring Pepper but then things like this happen. 

And sometimes things like this happen! Mark is holding onto Katya!

But most of the time it’s Pepper pulling on whoever is holding onto the leash-hahaha. 

I love our Sunday walks! I have a list of different places we can go, and some are further than others. We love Harris Lake Park and Nature Park. 

While I am talking about Pepper, look at her new sweater with a unicorn:) She wore it once and looked quite fancy!

Robert usually has every other Friday off. It’s exciting because he gets to do a bunch of things now that normally he cannot! One of them is visiting Mark at school at lunchtime:). 

And one Friday, our high schoolers were off as well, so we got to go out to lunch at Diced with them! I love Diced salads! And surprisingly even the big kids liked their food! 

Oh yeah, a picture with my British scarf! It was given to me as a parting gift by Natasha and Victoria in England. I love wearing my trench coat too:)

Oh, and this is a picture of Alex and Katya before their Valentine’s Day stake dance in Chapel Hill. Alex absolutely loves dances! He had a group of friends go with him to this dance and they had a blast! Katya said she is getting too old for stake dances 😏 so perhaps this was her last stake dance, who knows?

Alex and Katya both participated in the speech and debate tournament this February. Our high school actually hosted it so it was nice that we didn’t have to drive anywhere! They both did so well! 

Alex got 3rd out of 17 in Declamation! 

And Katya got 10th out 32 in a more advanced group in Dramatic Interpretation! So proud of these kids! Love that they are involved in speech and debate as it’s such a useful skill to have no matter what they choose as their profession someday. 

Quick snippet of our Saturdays. Mark usually sits right there on a chair that he is vacuuming in this picture. It’s his “watching TV” chair. That rug is also very difficult to vacuum! Once something gets dropped in there...it might be forever:)

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Finally...here is a selfie of me and Robert on a late weekend night. We are those parents of teenagers now that have to stay up late because our kids are having a friends party or get together whether at our house or out somewhere. Katya has been hanging out with Cameron till 11 or so each weekend (in Feb/early March) and Alex has been getting together with friends to play games and chill. Mark still likes us while we are watching a movie or playing a game with him...for now:) We are too young to have teenage kids!!! 😛😆

The End!