Cory Playing with Flickr Slideshow Tools

I've been playing with a slideshow program called Slideoo that connects to your Flickr account. Its pretty clean.




This one is called Flickr HTML Badge. You can create horizontal or vertical slideshows with up to 10 photos.

mrplough's Not Caden photoset

Caden Crawls and Costa Rica

Here is the newest video of Caden, crawling and attacking. Enjoy





The Kids in Costa Rica.

My Sicky Boy

Well, we returned home from Costa Rica on Friday and ended a great trip with a torturous day traveling. We arrived at the airport in CR at 4:30 in the morning and did not return home until 10:00 p.m. Needless to say, the 18 hours of airplanes, airports, bad food, and no sleep left us and Caden a bit grumpy (the 2 1/2 page letter that Cory wrote to Delta airlines provides the happy details of the adventure).
Although the trip was exciting and relaxing, we were glad to be home and settle in over the weekend. We were back to business as usual on Monday (just a little more tan) and things were going well. Yesterday Caden got a little cough and throughout the day it got progressively worse while he was at daycare. By the time I got home from work he was at home with daddy and he looked like a baby zombie. His eyes are puffy and red, he's got a raspy cough, runny nose, congestion, sore throat, fever, and to top it all off he had some projectile vomit last night all over the couch, floor, coffee table and mommy (yuk.). So, I took the day off work today and brought the little baby man to the doctor. Apparently he has an ear infection and RSV (some respiratory virus). Now he is on amoxicillin and 4 albuterol breathing treatments a day, which as you can see by the photo he absolutely loves. The doctor says he has to stay home from daycare for two weeks! So much for teaching this month - Cory and I will each miss a week of work.
Anyways, this update was meant to say that we really enjoyed our trip to Costa Rica... however, life has quickly shocked us back to reality. So, no more walks on the black sand beach or margaritas by the pool. Now it's naps between coughing fits and vapor treatments morning, noon, and night. Welcome to parenthood. :) I'm off to get my poor sicky boy to bed.

Pura Vida

Its 8 in the morning on Day 6, and this is the first time I've been on the Internet since arriving in Costa Rica. Considering I spend over 10 hours on the computer on a daily basis, thats quite a shock to the system. Thats par for the course this week, everything in a 3rd world country is a little shocking.

Im sitting in the outdoor restaurant by the infinity pool overlooking the dark blue Pacific Ocean at Bahia Paz Vela. Its certainly beautiful here but not quite what we expected. We are on the Northwestern coast outside of a town called Playa del Coco. There are lots of jungle like trees all around the beach that we are on, but just above eye level if you look towards the mountains, the green lush stops and its a dirty, dried out brown color. A lot of the roads are half paved and there is a tremendous amount of dirt and dust everywhere. We were definitely expecting more greens and less browns, but then again, this is the dry season so I'm sure that lush tropical look is coming back later this year.

There is so much to talk about from the people, the towns, the activities, the friends and so on. Maybe I will just cover a few things in this post.

Our biggest adventure so far was the jungle ziplining trip. The Canopy Tour interesting because we were completely off the main path and saw how a lot of locals lived. Sometimes the houses are literally tin shacks. Of course there is no running water and the way that people get electricity to their house from the road is something special to see. At one point in our drive the road took us through a dried out river bed. It was pretty cool. Sarah, Willy, Brian, their two older kids and me all went on the ziplining tour. We showed up at the gate at 8 in the morning and were the first ones there; they actually opened for us which is a great way own a business (don't have to open til the first customer arrives). While we were waiting for the tour guides to show up to work, we walked around the complex. They had a mariposa (butterfly) farm and a mono (monkey) house that we checked out from behind the fence. Once the main tour got started we had a wonderful time. The longest zipline was 400 meters and I did the Superman for that entire line. I also got to hang upside down about 80 feet above the jungle floor for a couple of the lines. We saw an Iguana that was about 5 feet long and lots of monkeys. Monkeys are everywhere was about a 45 minute drive from our beach house. 6 kilometers of that trip was spent driving down a bumpy half paved dirt road with little or no signs to direct us. It was really around here. Sarah had a blast too, I think she even did a Superman or upside down line, but cant remember for sure.









Yesterday about 7 of us (there are 13 total staying here) went into town for the day. We took a taxi and got dropped off a couple hundred yards from town then spent the next 4 hours just walking around and checking out local places. We did a little touristy shopping but mostly just took pics of life down here, spent some time on the local beach, ate at a local pollo shack called Pollo Crispy (KFC without the K), and got off the main road a couple times to see what was just around the corner. It was an exciting day but, as with all activities, came to an end when the babies got too frustrated (overheated).

We have spent a lot of time at the beach, pool, or just sitting around the patio at our little complex. Its about 85 degrees with 80% humidity (dry season) so muchos calor. I have been sea kayaking almost everyday and we both have had professional massages on the beach.

We have today and tomorrow then make our way back to the airport at about 4 in the morning on Friday. Will blog more later, hopefully from CR.

Pura Vida, life is fantastico, wonderful, pure

C

Almost Crawling

Caden's First Finger Foods

6 Months Old

Well, Caden recently had his 1/2 birthday and is enjoying being 6 months old. The doctor says he looks good but she wants us to fatten him up because he has dropped down to the 27th percentile for weight. Not too bad but he started out in the 80's so she wants to keep him chubby. As you can see, he is much happier now that he is old enough to do more on his own. He is eating solid food (if you call mush in a jar solid food), sitting up on his own, and scooting. I really think he will be crawling soon but for now he gets where he wants to go by rolling or scooting on his belly. He likes to make sure that he is the center of attention so he does a lot of screaming and squealing. He is definitely not a quiet baby.

Cory is still at home with Caden for one more week. It has been a learning experience for them both but we are all really glad that he was able to stay home for so long (our bank account is especially glad). Although Cory's happy to go back to work he's going to miss hanging out with the little baby man. He is really excited about the new ideas he has for work and hopes to improve the success rate for students at school. Between implementing all these new ideas, keeping up with his job, working on his masters, and taking care of Caden he's a little busy. But we know that it will all pay off in the near future.

I am enjoying being back at my school and working with all "my kids" again (after three years with the same students they really start to feel like they're mine). I'm learning what it means to be a working mom - balancing teaching, yearbook, fundraising, diaper changing, feeding, cooking, laundry, and cleaning leaves little time to do much else (especially sleep). Of course it's all worth it and I wouldn't change it for the world, but it's definitely a learning process. Poor Max certainly doesn't get as many walks as he used to.

Lastly, Barack Obama won all four states in the primaries today! Yes We Can!