End of School!

Makenna's teacher, Mrs. Roberts, was so awesome for 1st grade.  We have really lucked out on teachers!  She has had 2 great ones!  I went in every week to volunteer which was so fun to be able to spend so much time in the classroom, and also become good friends with her teacher.  She was so wonderful helping us through the whole gifted process and was so proud of her when she did so well.  She also tried her hardest to challenge Makenna and give her "special" HW every week.  Teachers like her make me feel so grateful since they are the ones that take care of our children for much of the day.   It was kind of bittersweet for Makenna to say goodbye to her old school (more on that later), but heck it's SUMMERTIME!!!  WOOHOOOO! 

I made her this cute necklace :)

Puerto Rico- El Yunque and San Juan

On our drive to El Yunque we saw some more cool sights.  This was a town we passed with bright colored houses all over the hill.  It was so cool!

This was as we were nearing the rain forest

We quickly realized that we went up the mountain on the wrong side, but figured we would get out and check it out anyways.  This was my fist time in a rainforest or anything like it so I was blown away!

Here's a leaf Rich found

We walked up this pretty road and it was just crazy!  Plants on top of plants on top of plants!

These huge leaves!

Pretty trees

So gorgeous

We went back down and had to drive around to the other side, and it was so worth it.  It was even crazier!  We went up this tower and looked out over the amazing views!  I taught them how to use their "deer ears" to amplify the sounds!  I'm telling you it works!  haha

Then we went on a hike.  It went downhill for a long time and we were a little worried because we knew we would have to go back up!  When we got to the bottom there was this gorgeous water fall!

Then we had to hike back up!  We counted something like 800 stairs, and lots more uphill hiking.  It was hard, but good!  Good thing I was in pretty good shape when we did this!

Next we headed to our hotel in San Juan called La Concha.  It was a gorgeous hotel with pretty pools.  Of course we had to go swimming right away.  We were feeling pretty gross!  We swam for a long time playing games and having so much fun!  Some of my best memories from our trip were playing games in the pool!  Nonstop laughing!  I stole this pic from the website since we spent so much time here.  We hung out in this upper pool that had a water fall into another pool down below.   It was so cool to hear all the Coqui frogs whistling while we swam!

 For dinner we went to this awesome restaurant called di Parma Tratorria.  We had the most amazing Bruschetta, and then an amazing veggie pizza for dinner.  I can't even tell you how good it was.  It was an amazing mother's day dinner!  It was kind of sad to be away from my kids for mother's day, but I was able to talk to them for a while, and we were having so much fun so it was fine.  :)  I mean can I really complain??

We grabbed some ice cream and went to the hotel and ate it on some loungers on a patio over the beach.  So relaxing.

The next morning we woke up to this... seriously amazing.  

 Here's the view with the window open.  It was so cool!

the view down the beach

Here's the lobby.  It was pretty cool and modern.  They had a candy bowl sitting out so we would always grab some as we went by :)

We grabbed breakfast at dunkin donuts (so fancy!) and then headed into Old San Juan.  We started out at a fort called Castillo de San Cristobal.  Learning about the forts was fascinating.  We found an awesome ranger that really brought everything to life and it was awesome.

View from the top

Then we took a trolley over to the large fort called Castillo San Felipe del Morro.  We flew kites on the grass there, and Scott got out the hacky sack!

Scott in front of the fort pulling a Rich pose

 The boys flying kites.  Such a beautiful day

 my husband is cooler than your husband

We went to check out the fort next.  Just hanging out while the girls took too long in the bathroom...

The view from the lighthouse

looking pretty cool

 A fort lizard

We hopped on another trolley and got off near a path called Paseo de la Princesa.  We grabbed some sandwiches and then walked along the path

Then we went through the San Juan gate and walked along the cutest streets with the cutest houses

Sorry I'm a little obsessed!  We stopped in this cute courtyard called Plaza de Armas to hang out for a while.  How can you resist a bunch of pigeons?? 

There was a cute old lady sitting in the courtyard by this statue.  It was rather adorable.

We did some shopping and I got something for everyone I needed to get souvenirs for!  We got some yummy coconut candy called dulce de coco that was so yummy!

We went back to the hotel and went to the beach for a little while, and then hung out in the pool and jacuzzi for a couple hours!  It felt so good after all the walking!  We finished the day by going to eat at this restaurant where we thought we could get some authentic Puerto Rican food for our last meal!  It was ok, but the beans and rice were awesome!  Katie's fish was an actual fish with eyeballs!  hahaha

We packed up and went to bed early for our early flight out the next morning!  Such a dreamy day!

On our flights back Scott and the Chavez' worked on some lame religious math puzzle (I'm not even going to explain this one- you'll have to ask them) and I read my book.  We had a layover in Florida and got some pizza.  The flights were not as exciting as the time before, but I did get a lot of my book read!  

It was so good to get home to the kids!  I forgot how much I missed them haha  They made us a cute poster on the garage door!

It was the best trip ever!!  I seriously don't know if we can ever top it!  We did so many things and such a variety of things, especially in one week!  We feel so lucky that we got to go with the Chavez' and had such a blast with them! 

 Thanks again mom for watching the kids!

The End!

Puerto Rico- Boqueron

Our airplane to Puerto Rico was the tiniest one I have ever been on!  I was pretty freaked out about it, but once we got up in the air, and I saw the amazing views (notice the HUGE windows), it ended up being a highlight of our trip.  We flew over the most beautiful islands.

Katie is in the back seat and is taking this picture... that's how small it was... and you could see right into the cockpit!

an awesome island we passed over... it looked amazing

Puerto Rico

San Juan, Puerto Rico

When we got to San Juan, we rented a rental car and then got in the car to drive 3 hours to Boqueron on the other side of the island.  The drive was so beautiful!  I saw the most beautiful places right outside my window.  So green the whole time too.  When we got there we had to wait for a girl to give us the key to her condo.  When she finally got there we got settled and went to dinner at Katie's friends' house.  Katie served her mission in Boqueron, so it was really cool to be able to go to someone's house and eat authentic Puerto Rican food.  The mom had one of the tiniest kitchens I have ever seen and made us a HUGE dinner.  We had stuffed plantains which were bomb, Puerto Rican beans and rice which are SO good, yummy meat, bread, and salad topped with mayo!  The salad was not my favorite, haha, but it was funny to see how much they love mayonnaise in Puerto Rico enough to use it as a salad dressing! (PS one of the restaurants we went to had mayonnaise on the table to use as a condiment :)  Another funny thing I learned about Puerto Ricans is that a lot of them have ties to New York city since there are a TON of Puerto Ricans there.  Because of that when they speak english they sound like New Yorkers!  Think Robert De Niro.  Carlos, whose house we went to, speaks like a New Yorker and it's really cute!  They were such a sweet family.  So humble and kind.  For dessert we had Flan- yum!  When we were getting ready to leave we were hanging out outside and you could hear the craziest sounds!  Tons of frogs called Coquis and lots of other animals and insects.  It was so loud and so cool!

We got back to the condo and then went for a walk in Boqueron.  It is so interesting because people gather in the towns at night and have a party!  There are people everywhere including families.  They hang out and socialize.  It was so fun.  Here's a pic I took as I was leaving which you can't see very well, but you get the idea.

The condo we were staying at was pretty cool but in the strangest location.  The building we were in was nice, but then right across from our building were the bones of a building just like ours that was never finished.  It was a little creepy, but our place was so nice so we didn't care.  We each had our own room and bathroom.

The next morning we drove to what Katie described to us as "the most beautiful place I have ever seen."  Of course we were excited.  We walked up to see this...

So beautiful

Then we went for a little hike, and saw this...

ummm are you even kidding me?!  So gorg!

 We hiked down to one of the coolest beaches I've ever been to!  So many treasures all over the place!  We went back in this cave and found huge conch shells!  Here we are going back to the cave

Scott's battle wound!

Some of the loot!  If you can't tell I was in heaven!  Finding shells is one of my favorite things ever!

These shells are way bigger than they look here in the pic!  I found a sea fan (on the right), lots of brain rocks (not sure what they're called!), and sea sponges along with all these pretty shells.

Then we hiked back up near the lighthouse

 Katie had one more surprise in store for us.  We walked on a path to the right of the lighthouse and saw this beautiful beach!

It was so pretty and the water was so nice!  The boys played catch and frisbee while Katie and I bobbed around in the water.  Poor Katie got stung by a jellyfish but not too bad.

We also laid out of course!  We got birthday pedicures together a week before... :)

They have all these man-made shelters on the beach in the trees where the Puerto Ricans set up their camps for the day.  I swear they bring enough stuff for the whole day and they blast music too.  I loved it!  Scott decided he'd had enough sun...

We went back to the town of Boqueron and ate at this yummy restaurant.  I got Puerto Rican beans and rice with Chicken and it was too die for!  My goal is to learn how they make their beans.  They are so yummy.

We saw this cool bird as we were eating

Then we walked around the little shops a little and the boys bought the racketball set that Scott is holding.  The boys played with it while Katie and I bobbed in the water again!  I'm sensing a trend...  haha it was so nice that they boys could do all the active stuff they wanted to do and we could just relax in the water and on the beach!  While the boys were playing I guess Scott ran right in front of a guy on his bike who yelled "Hermano!!" and then crashed!  He was ok so it was so funny and we joked about it the whole trip!

Check out this sweet ride!

 That night we went to a town called La Paquera.  We wanted to try to take a boat out to see a bio-luminescent microorganism that glows in the water when you touch it.  While we waited we went in the coolest little shell shop!  I was so tempted to buy some shells but we decided that it's way cooler to find shells than to buy them!

So we took this little boat out with about 20 people on it... As we were going along it was really quiet and it looked exactly like it was from Pirates of the Caribbean; the sights, the sounds, the humidity.  It was so cool.  When we got to the place where the microorganisms were, a guy got out to show us what it looked like when you swim in it.  I didn't get a pic, but it looked just like this...

It was so cool. We reached down and ran our hands through it too.  It was like a bunch of tiny stars twinkling when you touched it.  It was fun to catch some in your hand and move it around too.  It was such a cool experience!

When we got back to boqueron, we got some yummy sandwiches at a little shop in town and while we were waiting I did some major people watching.  It was so different from anything I had ever seen and was a lot more alive than it had been the night before too.  There were teenagers all over the place trying to pick up on each other, families hanging out and talking, little kids playing (it was really late too!), music blasting, and basically just a big party going on!  Katie said every town has a gathering place like that where they party every night.  I think we need to implement that here in the states personally...

 The next morning we got ready to leave Boqueron and our cute little condo.  We cracked up about this sign that said "let's do sunset."

We went to church at the building Katie went to on her mission.  She still knew a lot of people which was fun.  When we walked in, every sister there came up to us and gave us a hug and kiss on the cheek.  It was so sweet and we really felt welcome!  Another thing we need to do here in the states :)  They had Relief Society first, and they had something like a social minute, where all the sisters get up and say hi to each other and kiss on the cheeks again!  I couldn't understand the lesson but that's ok, the spirit was still there.  I love that the church is always the same everywhere you go.

We said goodbye to sweet Carlos (we went to his house that first day) and took off for El Yunque Rainforest.