Trips, Pics, and Tales

Here we are in the middle of January.  It's not my favorite month for many reasons.  The main reason is that my real job puts me smack in the middle W2 season.  In my dream job world I'd be traveling and blogging and living the life!  But in reality, I'm here printing W2s and preparing payroll tax returns for my clients.  Don't get me wrong...it keeps me on my toes!  But it's one crazy-hectic time of year, right on the heels of December and all of the hustle and bustle that the holidays leave behind!   And then of course, we have the weather.  This year has been a bit out of control for those of us who aren't thrilled about cold or snow.  Between the latest weather term to hit the news - the Polar Vortex, which has us expecting lows around 5 degrees or so all this week, without the wind chill, and then we have the snow....I guess I should be happy to have all of the W2's to keep me busy! So, instead of posting some pictures of the latest ...

Happy New Year!  And welcome to 2014!  Hopefully everyone had a happy celebration last night, on New Year's Eve....we did!  Some year's we ring in the new year quietly, staying home and just enjoying some family time.  Other year's we've spent the year with friends or family.  Sometimes we go out.   Last night Keith suggested we take the kids and go into Philadelphia, get dinner and check out the fireworks at Penn's Landing.  We had a great time!  But wow, was it cold!  We've done this before, it seemed warmer last time! We went to a special occasion favorite restaurant, Fogo de Chao, for Brazilian meat on skewers! And then decided to not fight the crowds at Penn's Landing, but head over to Camden and watch the fireworks from the Battleship New Jersey.   What a fantastic way to ring in 2014! The Philadelphia skyline from the other side of the river Megan's all aglow!   The Battleship New Jersey Y...

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 fa...

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 ...

A quick break in the Costa Rica trip to take a few minutes to come back to real time! Back to November 2013 and catch up for a minute.  Time is just flying by.  How can it already be the end of November?  As we take time to be Thankful for all that we have today and pause to spend the day with our families and friends and all that is great - hopefully time stood still for just a bit!  Sometimes it feels as though it goes all too fast! Part of what photography does for me is it allows me to capture those moments that just seem to speed by - those Moments in Time!  Last week we seemed to have some of the most beautiful sunsets.  I was lucky enough to be able to capture a few! So, while time stood still for just a few moments, and I was lucky enough to capture them....it's suddenly spinning again!  Tomorrow I'll likely be out shopping and we'll move from Thanksgiving to the whirlwind of the Christmas season!  After all - Sunday is...

We woke up after a wonderful night's sleep.  I love sleeping in the cloud forest.  It gets all misty at night and the clouds settle in the valley.  Our Villa had a wonderful balcony, complete with its own hot tub, and sitting out there first thing in the morning, just listening to the birds was a peaceful way to start the day.  Each balcony has it's own hummingbird feeder.  The birds would stop by often to have a little drink as I sipped my morning coffee.   Today our plan is to start with the waterfall hike and then to visit the other exhibits on the property. When we checked in, we were told that the trails to the waterfalls were all now opened again after the earthquake, and that the waterfalls were back to being visible.  And I suppose if you've never been there before, you wouldn't know the difference.  But from what I remembered from our last visit, the trail was much shorter.  The starting point was different, and there were few...

Another fantastic opportunity that The Peace Lodge offers guests is a night tour of their Frog Habitat.  We had reservations and shortly after our hummingbird feeding experience we were ready to see what the frogs were all about! We met outside of the Frog Building and our guide was named John.  He was fantastic!  The frog area is divided into a couple of different rooms.  We began in the area with the tanks that held the poison dart frogs.  He took out one of these frogs and held it.  He told us all about these colorful frogs and allowed us to take some pictures.   After learning quite a bit about the different poison frogs, we moved onto the middle room.  We spent some time here.  Actually a baby green eyed tree frog jumped right onto Alex's neck!  He wasn't too thrilled and had no interest in touching a frog from that point on!  We did get to see some frog eggs on the bottom of leaves in this room.   And then we...