Fun Family Visits!!

My awesome guys at the beach.

Brenner passed out on the beach. I am so jealous.

My cute family at the beautiful beach.

About 75% of the time I really like living her in Puerto Rico. It's crazy hot and I can't get Red Robin here, but on the other hand, it's so awesome that people want to visit. I'd like to think that they come to see my happy smiling face, but I know that's not true. They come for the beach. Maybe Sarah and TJ came to see us and the beach was just a bonus. Maybe. Either way, we had a blast with them here. They were here for about 10 busy days. We were all over the island having fun.
My favorite part was the day we went to San Sebastian and went to the waterfall. I've blogged about it in the past and Sarah wanted to go. It's so beautiful there. You hike down this sketchy trail to this waterfall. We were there for a while having fun and it started to rain. Within seconds, it goes from a light sprinkle to heavy pouring (and if you look at my last post you'll understand what heavy rain looks like here). The problem is that we're in a valley and it's pouring so the waterfall is going to fill up quickly. We got out of there, and fast. The problem is that we have Alyssa and two small kids in backpacks. Rhys did fine (we let him play in the rain all of the time) but Brenner had a melt down. He screamed the whole way up. The trail turned into a stream so we were wading uphill. Sarah's backpack was corduroy (not waterproof) so her stuff got soaked. Lightning started to strike around us and the kids were getting scared. It was serious craziness. After about 20 minutes we got to the car and threw everybody in and took off down the down the road before the road washed out. Just Another adventure in PR.

Memorial Day in Puerto Rico

We've had some excitement here in PR. It's been raining a lot lately and yesterday it poured! On top of that it thundered and lightninged (is that a word?) like crazy. It was like a strobe light outside. It started about 5:00 pm and didn't stop until sometime in the middle of the night. So about 8:00 Scott comes to me and says "uh, we might have a problem..." We open the front door and our street is like a river. It was crazy. Things were floating down the street, and cars couldn't get through. I stood there watching the water slowly rise closer and closer to our front door, and keep in mind that you have to go up a couple steps to get to our door. It's not flat. We were almost to the point of getting all our stuff off the floor and sealing up the door so the water wouldn't get in. I have a video here of the craziness. I know it's dark but bear with me here. The most amazing part was that our power didn't go out. That might not seem like a big deal, but if you've lived in PR you realize that that's an incredible thing. Anyway, not the sunny bright day you imagine on Memorial Day, but it was a crazy adventure!

Another fun adventure in Puerto Rico!!

We had such a fun adventure here today! We decided to go to check out the cave system here on the north side of the island. So we drove all the way there but their tours were full for a couple of hours so we couldn't get in. We decided to kill some time at the Arecibo lighthouse that we had heard about. We were expecting a tiny light house that you can walk to, climb up, etc. We've seen a couple like that already here, no biggie. Well, this was not what we expected. It was so much fun. The lighthouse is just a small attraction. It's a really cool park that has tons of stuff for kids to see and explore. There are a bunch of playground toys as shown by picture number one. This is Rhys' first swing experience. Mostly he enjoyed it, but occasionally his face would go from smiling to worried, to smiling again. We were pushing him pretty high though, so I guess it's understandable.

Picture #2 is me at the lighthouse. It was really windy, but that was awesome cause it was also really hot, so it was bearable. It was a lovely view.

They have a fun pirate cave you can walk through. They make it look like a pirates secret hideout where they stash their treasure and do...piraty things...Inside the pirate cave was this really cool aquarium with little sharks and eels and all sorts of fish. He really liked the fish.

Here's the pirate cave. Pretty scary huh?!

Cover your eyes kids! They had this part about the ancient indigenous people who lived here. You could look at their huts, among other things, if you know what I'm saying...

They also had pirate ships that people could climb up and play on. Scott was having a good time.

We had such a fun time playing around at the park today. It was definitely one of those times where we remember how awesome it is to live here and we are thankful that we can go out and have these little adventures. We spent all our time here and totally blew off the caves that we went out to see. I love days like that!!

My house is so quiet!!

My house feels so empty and quiet right now!! Scott's sister Kristi and her kids came to stay with us this past week. We went from having one kid in our house to 5 in one shot. It's going to take me a couple weeks to recover (just enough time to get ready for Sarah and TJ to get here, I'm so excited!) It was a lot of fun though. The kids really wanted to go to the beach and play outside a lot and it was a ton of fun. Here are a couple picts from their visit.
The kids were at the pool in our neighborhood but they had to leave cause the pool guys had come to clean it. Ashley was so sad!! She came home from the pool in tears. So I told her we could turn on the sprinkler and she cheered up. Rhys decided he wanted to play too (notice he's still in normal clothes). They had fun with the sprinkler but I think they mainly had fun playing in the muddy puddle that formed in the middle of the lawn.

We went to this town that have Lechoneras on every corner (the places where they roast pigs on a spit in the window and they cleave off a piece for you to eat). The kids really liked the creek running next to where we ate. We were hardly able to keep them in their seat long enough to eat.

Rhys loves the beach. I was surprised that he didn't freak when I buried him. He just had a funny smirk on his face the whole time.

Here are the kids having fun at Mar Chiquita! They had a lot of fun floating around this little pool. We brought our grill and roasted hot dogs for the kids. Too bad we forgot a lighter. Woops! Kristi found somebody to borrow one from so it all worked out in the end.

We took the kids to San Sebastian waterfall. I love going there cause not a lot of people know about it, you literally park on the side of the road and hike through someone's field with cows in it and suddenly you come upon this beautiful waterfall. Kristi and I jumped from here. It's not that high, I know, but I am a huge sissy and this is high enough for me. Kristi's son Blaine got really upset that she jumped, it scared him. He was in tears when we got to shore and he wouldn't let her jump again.

On the way home from the waterfall we stopped at this ice cream shop that sells really weird flavors of ice cream. They do a corn flavor, carrot (which Kristi got, it was not good) as well as beans and rice, rum and raisins, among others. I went the safe route with strawberry cheesecake. Scott did try the corn and he said it was good.

We had so much fun with Kristi and the kids here, even though it will take some time to get my house put back together! I hope these picts will inspire you all to come out and see us here in PR!! Thanks again for coming Kristi! We love you guys!!

So the baby discovered the hose...

I might be a bad Mom. I'm not sure. So today Rhys had spaghetti-o's for lunch and he made a BIG mess. Huge. So instead of putting him in the bathtub to wash off, I stripped him down and put a sprinkler in the backyard. He loves playing in the sprinkler anyway, he just got to do it naked. I wonder what my neighbors were thinking as they saw this butt naked baby playing in the yard. They probably all think I'm insane already anyway, so I probably shouldn't worry.
Anyway, I took the sprinkler off so I could really hose him down and I showed him how to drink out of the hose. He thought it was pretty cool. So this evening we were out playing in the yard again (yes, I let my son run around in a diaper a lot. It's hot here!!) and I turned the hose on again for him. I love the fact that he had the hose between his legs. It just makes it look really funny. Enjoy!

Check Me Out!

Easter Egg Hunting!!

This morning we had a ward Easter party. They did a Easter Egg hunt for all of the kids which was really fun. Rhys had so much fun looking for eggs. It was so hot though. Scott and I helped hide the eggs and by the end of hiding them we were both gross sweaty. It was really funny, Scott went into tell all the kids that we were starting the Easter egg hunt. He goes in and says, "The easter bunny finished hiding all the eggs and he got really hot so he left" and one kid yells really loud " Yeah, we can see your sweat!!"
Anywho, Rhys was so cute searching for eggs. This one is my favorite. Does it look like he's peeing to anyone else?