Trips, Pics, and Tales

What a winter we've had so far!  Wait...it's not even officially winter yet!  The past couple of years in Southeastern, PA we've gotten pretty used to some fairly mild winters. Winters without snow!  As a matter of fact, my kids had started to believe we'd never even have snow again! All of that was actually fine by me! I'm a warm weather kind of person myself.  Give me sunshine and warm weather year round and I'm all set!  But this December has thrown my hopes of southern type winters in PA out the window!  In just a little more than one week, we've had snow every couple of days!   I'm pretty much over it by now - but the kids still love it!  Even though they're tween and teens now!  There's nothing like playing in the snow!  Making a snowman... Or a snow angel!   And as much as I can't stand that bone-chilling feeling when I walk outside, I do love to look out the window and see the beauty of the fresh fallen snow!

And now, back to 2010 and our trip to Costa Rica!  We just left off with our hike through the Waterfalls at The Peace Lodge.  Our next stop would be the Aviary! I thought this would be a favorite for my mom since she is a bird lover!  I had remembered the aviary as having so many birds, but when we walked in, they must have all been hiding- we didn't see any!  Hmmm...but almost immediately, one of the employees stopped my daughter, Megan, and asked her if she'd like to feed a Paca.  She was thrilled!  A paca looks sort of like a large guinea pig.  So both her and my son Alex got to feed the little guy some pellets through the cage while the guide told us about the pacas. Then the guide asked them if they wanted to feed the marmosets!  Well, of course!  So, he took us over to them and they were just adorable.  They would grab a piece of food with their hands and run off to eat it.  Sometimes they'd actually eat out of the kid's hands directly!   Next, the gu