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!

Our Continuing Adventures!!

I've been meaning to post these pictures for a while now and I've been totally lame-o. These first pictures are some of Rhys cause, you know, it's really not a blog entry until I've posted pictures of him. So, here he is! This week we went to play at the little park in our neighborhood. He's getting a lot better at walking so I figured he might actually have fun on the toys now. He had a blast walking all over, crawling through all the tubes, and finding leaves to put in his mouth. He's so cute!!

A few weekends ago we went on a little jaunt to Ponce (pronounced Pon-say for all you gringos), which is on the south side of the island. It is such a cool little town. We went to this boardwalk by the beach where you can watch all the boats come in. There are pelicans all over this boardwalk. Scott was trying to get me to touch one of them, but I'm pretty sure if they wanted to they could bite my fingers off. That would not be awesome.
Oh, yes, and Megs, it's January in these pictures and we are all wearing shorts!! It is still so hot!!

We took a tour of this really old cool house. The owner of the house was an architect and very wealthy for that day and age. He had the coolest shower ever!! Back then you were lucky if you had running water period, and he had a shower. It was sweet. Here you can climb up this rickety spiral staircase to get to a patio on the roof. It was nice and breeze up there, and a pretty good view to spy on your neighbors!

Lonely Planet says that this is the most photographed building in Puerto Rico, so I had to take a picture! It's an old fire house. I have no idea why they made it look like this, but it's pretty unique. I dug it. Maybe Scott will let us paint our house like this one day!

It's October?

It's 95 degrees outside. I had to look at the date on my phone several times before I realized it said October. I still don't believe it. It's so weird not to see the leaves change. I think I might be homesick or something because the blogs with fall pictures and activities make me want to cry. I don't miss being cold but I am missing the fall. I really want to stroll through a pumpkin patch and eat corn on the cob and wear a soft comfortable sweater. I know a lot of you are hating me right now cause you're freezing cold and cause our family is going to go to the beach today after conference, but I can whine a little bit right?
Another reason I don't believe it's October is because next week I'm going to plant a garden. I bought one of those Topsy-Turvey things where you plant a tomato plant upside down and I'm excited about that because the tomatoes at the stores are really crappy. We're also planting some corn (cause I want corn on the cob and I can't find it here anywhere) and some peas. The soil is really sandy and sucky here so I have to dig a spot and fill it in with store bought dirt. next week we're planning on picking up some orange and lime trees as well. So I'm excited to try my hand at growing things. It might end in a huge dirty failure but I should at least try.


We had an exciting experience this last week. I have a friend here who lives in my neighborhood named Mariely and she LOVES my Great Dane Sasha. She comes over to see me and brings treats for her and lets her drool and climb all over her and they both love it. The other day she invited our family (and of course Sasha) over to her house for a swim in her pool and a BBQ. Mariely has a blue and green Macaw named Coco that she's had for 3 years, since before it even had feathers. She has taught Coco all these tricks and it might talk, I can't remember, but anyway, Mariely was having Coco show me all her tricks when in a flash of black, blue and green, Sasha POUNCED and knocked Coco out of Mariely's hands to the ground. It was chaos! Coco was squawking and throwing feathers, I was trying to pull Sasha off Coco, but that wasn't really working cause she's 120 pounds and I was holding Rhys at the same time. Scott heard the screaming and came sprinting across the lawn to help and between the 3 of us we pulled Sasha off the poor bird. It had lost some feathers and it was panting. My heart was like beating out of my chest I was so freaked out and I was super pissed at Sasha. I would have felt so bad if Sasha had eaten her bird. It would have sucked. It all turned out alright though and Mariely still loves Sasha and spoils her whenever she sees her.