Christmas in Costa Rica...Yes, Please.

The best way to escape the cold weather blues is to leave the country. And that is what we did. The Helms vacationed to Costa Rica for Christmas this year, and it was fabulous.

Me and Zach spent Christmas eve and Christmas with my family in cold Utah and had lots of fun playing super nintendo (im kind of obsessed with super mario brothers, i think my family would agree), eating yummy treats (nonstop),
going to Sherlock Holmes (which I LOVED... the music made the show... i maybe stole that phrase from my husband...but its true), playing games, hanging out, getting homemade pj's from my mama, camelback water bottles from Ben(which i take everywhere now), and a cute hat (that zach says looks like a british police hat, which is fine, becuase i love sherlock holmes) from the little boys(which i may or may not have picked out for them to buy me..), and many great presents from my parents (including the knitted headband that every girl in provo now owns but i still wear proudly and homemade lotion that im in love with). It was a fun day which ended with me and zach being dropped off at the airport to meet the Helm family who was already in Costa Rica.

We left at 8 from the SLC airport and arrived in Costa Rica at 630 the next morning. Then took a 3 hour bus ride to Jaco to meet up with the rest of the fam. Quite a journey, but we did survive. After the bus ride we took a cab to find the beach house.after being on a bus with no air conditioning, running off no sleep, having no food in my stomach and having no clue where we really needed the cab to take us, a bus-like van passed us with 2 familiar faces.

Ive never been so happy to see Rob and Jon.

The rest of the trip was pure bliss (similar to the feeling described in my previous post).

We layed on the beach, swam in the pool, saw monkeys, freed baby turtles into the wild, ziplined through the jungle, saw a live volcano, went to a fresh fruit market, played under a waterfall, shopped, ate in an abandoned airplane restaurant, ate rice, beans, and chicken for (almost) every meal (yum), played mafia, watched zach and alex dance to justin timberlake (maybe not a highlight), and got to play with the babies and hang out with the helms all week. What a great way to spend the christmas vacation.

Altogether, this one one of the best christmas vacations yet, and one of the best moments was walking into murdock the day after we got back and finding that they had hired a new receptionist to work saturdays! what a great way to end the break.

I love christmas time and spending time with family and friends, and my little husband.He got me Up, the movie, for christmas because he knows i love it (and when we watched it i started crying because i often cry during movies and because i thought it was sweet and im afraid that zach will be like the old man: grumpy, but seceretly loves the annoying neighbor kid and every other living creature) along with many many early presents, trust me i was spoiled, just ask zach he will name each and every gift.... more than once probably.


Here are just a few of the pics that i took before my camera died:

more to come..