Happy 100th Day of School! Happy Valentines Day! Happy Saint Patrick's Day! 2014

These little bugs love holidays and count down the days until each one.  The kids were allowed to dress up like they were 100 years old on the 100th day of school.  Madolyn really wanted to color her hair silver and so we found some silver hair spray and pulled her hair up in a bun.  We picked up some dollar store glasses and popped out the lenses and found a floral skirt and a sweater at home and out she came looking like a little old lady.  Of course once Avery saw that Madolyn was dressing up she wanted to as well so here they are in their outfits.  At school Madolyn made a hat and necklace and picture of herself as a 100 year old little lady and she loved it.

On Valentine's Day we surprised them with hearts on their door, Valentine's shirts for the girls, giant Valentine's pencils (which we ended up hiding again because Drew liked chewing on the erasers), window stickers, candy and gum.  Earlier in the week we made Valentine's sugar cookies and Valentines night they made more with our babysitter Brandi:)  

The Saturday before Saint Patrick's Day Aunt Kristin invited us to her house for a treasure hunt as well as leprechaun hat making and shamrock sugar cookie decorating.  The kiddles loved all of it, especially the treasure hunt.  They searched all over the yard for gold coins that the leprechaun had hid and when they had found them they turned them in for prizes- bouncy balls, candy, and rings.  On Saint Patrick's Day we had green German pancakes and Madolyn and Avery made sure that everyone wore green so they wouldn't get pinched!  Yay for holidays!

Here they are posing with their goodies before Madolyn headed off to school.

 Madolyn was super excited to wear green.  She didn't really have any green green shirts, so she wore a minty one and wore green green socks to be safe.  She even made a green piece of "hair" out of paper to clip in and wear all day.

 Other than licking the frosting, Drew actually really liked eating each individual sprinke that we put in front of him for his cookie.  He would pick up an individual sprinkle and yell, "green!", or "orange", or whatever color it was.  He was super excited that there were so many different colors he could eat.   He is such a funny and smart boy.

Drew's 2nd birthday party. January 21st, 2014

We decided to have a combined birthday this year for Drew and Grandma Peterson.  Dawn made a fantastic green chile chicken salad like you would get at Bajios.  Grandma Peterson loves them.  Drew had a great time with his new gifts.  He had such a fun time opening each gift that he would just stop and play with it and then we would have to convince him to come and open another one.  He loved it!

 Now he can walk beside Dad and mow the lawn instead of being carried in a backpack.

 Dawn and the little girls made some awesome Sesame Street cupcakes for the party.  Drew loved them.  He blew out the candles before we were even done singing Happy Birthday to them.

 He loved diving into the cupcakes.

Costa Rica Dec. 2013

This December, I had a work trip down in Costa Rica with our top distributors in our company.  We decided to take our wives and make a real trip out of it.  It was fantastic to leave 20 degree wintery Utah weather to go to 85 degree tropical weather in Costa Rica.  Dawn's mom and my mom watched the kiddles while we were away and we were glad to see everyone survived when we got back.

Since we were there on a Sunday we decided to attend church.  They were having district conference and it was good to see and chat with the locals and the missionaries serving there.

 Anybody notice the baby bump?  We are due to have a little one join the family the middle of May.  We are excited.

 Here's our group.  We love having them be a part of our company.

 We had a fancy dinner on the last night.  Although it looks like Dawn is holding hands with Frank across the table, she was actually there with me.  I'm just the one taking the picture.

 Got to spend a day with the guys and went fishing for marlins and sailfish.  We only got into the sailfish but we had a blast.  I ended up catching two of them.  They were about 6 to 7 feet long and around 100 lbs.

 When I caught my second one, they asked me if I wanted to jump in with it to take a picture and release it.  Only gonna live once, right?

While we were out there we saw a huge pod of dolphins.  They were awesome to see.

They dragged this behind the boat to make it look like a school of baitfish were following us.

Here's the bait.  It was about 12 to 16 inches long.

 The captains let each other know how they did by hanging flags when they go back into the marina.  We hooked up on 11 sailfish so he hung 11 red flags.

 Beautiful scenery on the way back in.

 Here is the group of guys I went with.

 Kendall is one of my partners at work.  He's showing off the slogan for the trip.

 There is our resort right on the beach.

 A trip to Costa Rica wouldn't be complete without a trip on a zipline through the jungle, right?

Due to Dawn being pregnant, she wasn't allowed to go on the zipline.

This is Dawn's crew of non-zipliners.  We have Frank in the back, Monica our tour guide in the middle and one of the workers there in the front.

Dawn heading up the tram.

Here are some views from the tram through the rain forest.

I'm the tall goofy looking one in the bright green shirt.

We went for a little nature walk after the ziplining was over, and saw this big colony of leaf cutter ants.

We also saw a bunch of snakes native to the area.

That little speck on top of the leaf the ant is carrying is a little ant that guards the leaf carrying ant from a fly that wants to land on its neck and lay eggs.

Can you spot the iguana in the tree?

Here is a local resident of the hotel we were staying at.

Here is a panoramic of the beach we were staying at.

We stayed and hung out in the water for a long while.  It must have been close to 80 degrees.  It was wonderful.

Eating lunch at the hotel.

Beautiful view, beautiful wifey.

We went for a before-dinner walk on the beach with some friends.

What else do you do but pose when you find a tree on the beach?

We found some cool seashells and cool formations on the beach.

Including little sand crabs.

We went to a national park one of the days and had to hike in a little ways to the beach.  Johnny decided to help Dolores out by wearing her hat.

We found some little friends in these little white-faced monkeys.

It was a beautiful beach to play at for the day.  The only problem was there were raccoons that would steal things out of your bags.  We lost a whole bag of cheez-it crackers to them.  Even while beating them with a stick they would still rumage through things.  They were a bit of a nuisance and we always had to be on guard.