Please recycle...

Monday night Jaxon's school was part of a town parade... I am still uncertain as to the purpose of the parade, some say it was to celebrate a Catholic Saint, I heard it was also Environmental Awareness Week, maybe the combination of both is a great excuse to have a parade!! Jaxon's school was one of five floats in the parade. Each child was to make an animal costume (the animal had to be one that actually lives in Costa Rica) out of recycled materials. Jaxon's first choice was to be a dragonfly but given the complexity of the costume, we opted for a scorpion instead. Aaron whipped the costume up in no time out of materials found at the office, some cardboard, some foam and some straps...

Upon arriving to the school the night of the parade, we quickly realized that "recycled materials" was defined differently by other parents as several costumes were simply animal costumes that most certainly were not made at home. I guess it doesn't matter how old you are, some people just can't follow directions. At any rate, our little scorpion got all set up on the float and we were instructed to head to the park for the start of the parade. An hour and a half later, the parade was finally under way! Jaxon did great despite the long wait and being a little uncomfortable, tired and thirsty. The other floats were really great as well, all the floats' components were made with recycled materials, newspaper, cardboard, plastic bottles, etc... it was a fun time and impressive to see what others did... here are some pics of the occasion...

The boys building the costume.

Riley got stung by 2 bees while "helping"

The little scorpion on the float getting ready for the parade.

Some of the other costumes, pretty sure those
bunny ears were not made with love in the garage...

Daddy and sick Riley

Jaxon making bear growls while
fiercely waving his claws at me!

Waiting for the parade to begin.

You can sort of see Jaxon next to the purple pants and
underneath the scorpion stinger...

Jaxon's float in action...

This was one of the other floats in the parade.

Another float with a suspended airplane made of cardboard.
The propeller even spun while the float moved...it was cute.

The end.

A new do!

After three years of pulling my hair into a ponytail to keep it from touching me, I had enough! When in the states, I typically changed my hair in some way or another fairly frequently so growing it out for so long was eventually maddening. It's too hot here to let it touch you, so hair cuts have to be such that the hair remains long enough to be pulled back, or short enough not to touch the skin... The photos below sum up my choice! I love my hair, Aaron...not so much, but he is dealing.

Meet Stella

Meet Stella! After having to put Nacho down a few months ago, we decided to get another dog... big dogs scare the crazies away, and Lily needed someone to romp around with since she is a little too big for Roxy!

We found a litter of Brazilian Mastiff/Boxer mixed pups and quickly scooped one up!

So without further adieu, here is Stella!!

(Totally not dog related. Just a great pic of Jax jumping into the pool!)

Grown-up for a day...

Aaron and I joined some friends and headed to San Jose for a wedding a couple weeks ago. Leaving the kids with Judy and Giff, we were able to partake in grown-up activities for the night including getting dressed up without the worry that your child will leave a trail of half eaten graham cracker crumbs all over your dress as you are on the way out the door! The groom, Sebastian, works for us as an architect designing all of the houses and buildings for the project. He is from Belgium and his wife is Costa Rican.

This was the dressiest we have been in ages. I don't remember being so excited to wear a dress and fancy shoes in all of my life. I live in shorts, flip flops and tank tops with built in bras so I don't have to wear too many layers... I think I tried my dress on three times the week prior to the wedding. Anyway, my dress was purchased the week after my own wedding, in 2003, luckily the quintessential "little black dress" never goes out of style. I wore it one time, to our good friends Ted and Rachael's wedding and have been holding on to it since. The shoes, ahhhh the shoes, were a stellar purchase for an event I did while at the Redskins and like the dress, have only been worn once... those sparkly wonders were dying to come out of the closet.

Aaron's ensemble on the other hand, was the icing on the cake. His suits, shirts, ties, shoes, everything for a formal occasions, as well as an entire wardrobe plus some, are in totes in my moms shed in Wyoming. Soooo, Aaron got to borrow clothes from his dad! Now Gifford doesn't have many formal occasions to attend and thus doesn't need to update his attire, and Aaron has maxed out the storage capacity of my mom's shed, so Giff has his duds on site. The shoes, a size too big, slipped and slopped around Aaron's feet, giving him a great excuse not to dance as he might fall down (not by the fault of the open bar). His pants, a couple inches too long, hung out and dragged around the bottom of the shoes; the shirt, a bit too big but unnoticed underneath the 1982 Mr. Rogers jacket! He looked like he was playing dress up...in his dad's clothes:) The good news is, he is so darn handsome you didn't even notice, and the fashion police weren't there, so no one was the wiser... he managed to pull it off well:) A great time was had by all and the next day we came home to our little graham cracker loving boys!

Here are some pics of the evening...

Putt putting around

A few weeks ago Aaron and I took the boys to play putt putt golf at the beach. The place wasn't great by any stretch of the imagination with no paths and cactus all over the rocks, but we managed to have a great time anyway. Jaxon had fun golfing, Riley enjoyed grabbing golf balls every chance he got and running away from me for the fun of it!

Enjoy the pics!