We survived...

9 days in Costa Rica with the Smiths and the McGees! We all even still like eachother :-). What a great trip we had too! Such a fun time with friends... I haven't laughed as much as I did on this trip in a long time! I took wonderful pictures so that I could share our adventures with you, but our camera was stolen on the second to last day of our trip so now you just get to hear stories :(. If you're freaking out right now... don't. It wasn't my nice camera!! We were smart enough to not bring that along. It was an old camera that I wasn't a fan of anyway... I just wish they had taken the camera and left the memory card for us!! Our friends joke now that we "owe them some sort of penalty" for all the lost memories. So here's the story...

We flew out of Seattle on February 27th at noon and landed in Denver at 4pm. Since we had an 8 hour layover in Denver, Rich was able to talk his awesome Aunt Shari and Uncle Jeff into picking us up so we could hang out with them and the kids in Denver for the evening! We had such a great time with them. (Oh, sidenote, it turns out each couple had family/friends living in Denver so no one was left sitting bored at the airport for 8 hours). They introduced us to Cici's pizza and then we bummed around Bass Pro Shop for a couple of hours. Yes, it is possible to bum around a Bass Pro Shop for a couple of hours and actually enjoy yourself. We all ended up back at the airport between 9 and 10 so we passed time at a restaurant and then boarded for Costa Rica at midnight!

We arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica at like 6:30am, Sunday morning, and because I assumed we'd all be quite tired, we didn't have much for plans other than getting our rental car (actually it was a dodge caravan and Rich looked hot driving it! I also should add that I have NO IDEA why they rent out dodge caravans in Costa Rica... the roads are NOT minivan friendly! More on that later...) So we picked up our minivan and headed for our first stop... La Fortuna!

We ended up getting to our "cabin" before 11:00 but the staff was super gracious and allowed us to put our stuff into the one room they already had cleaned and sent us to the hot springs to start our vacation! We stayed at El Silencio Del Campo and let me say right now... if you ever go to La Fortuna... this is THE place to stay! I'm sure there are other nice places to stay too... but I just couldn't say enough good things about this place! We each had our own separate cabins, there were natural hot springs on site, FANTASTIC (for lack of a better word) staff, Amazingly delicious drinks at the bar and also amazingly delicious restaurant. Breakfast was included with our stay and they don't even slack there! We had a rice, beans, tortillas, eggs, fresh fruit... such good *included* breakfasts!! We also had unbelievable views from each of our cabins (more on that later and for sure a picture to come since I know Kim took some with her camera! Oh, we also got 1 complimentary facial with our stay so the girls made sure to grab those! What guy needs a facial anyway, right??

Sorry... work is calling my name... more later