Arm Circles

regular houseplants are lazy

remember these?!?!

i had a poinsettia one and every time it danced it made this really mechanical whirring noise like reeee-reeeee-rrrrrrrrrrr-reeeeeee-reeeeee

maybe it needed a tune up.

or maybe it hated mechanically dancing to only the annie soundtrack and hippo in the bathtub by anne murray.

hot alcoholic beverages knock you on your hot alcoholic bottom!

jeremy and stephanie and jennifer (me) decided to try to find some good hot drinks this winter as a fun seasonal activity.

i put the ingredients for hot toddies in jeremy's christmas stocking so we could get cracking on this plan and HELLO, they are full of booze. i think we got drunk from the steam.

i know two shots doesn't seem like much and i don't know if it has something to do with the hot tea or what but woah mammy. they're somethin' else.

i think stephanie said this a while ago on her blog when she tried to make something like a hot toddy but i have forgotten.

and anyways stephanie has a special houseguest staying over presently and so won't be online for a while to state the truth. STEPHANIE PERKINS I CAN SAY ANYTHING ABOUT YOU AND YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT THAT FOR PROBABLY SEVERAL DAYS! MU HU HA HA!

in summary, the hot toddy was a positive hot drink experience. just put in half the recommended booze if you want to remember it.

guess what?!

i found my earring!!

it was right where i should have looked when it went missing and did not; the vacuum.

oh joyous moment when i found it! i squealed, hugged it and kissed it, washed it off which i should have done before the hugging and kissing, and finally i reunited it with it's long lost life partner.

look at them here hugging! i turned off the light after this photo was taken to give them some private time for catching up.

i love you, you inappropriate for this time of year dress you

this was from you know where and jeremy bought it for me and i love it so much that i've been wearing it around the house at night cause i can't wait until the season it's intended for.

isn't it pretty?!?!?!!

it goes down below the knee which is a new length for me but i just adore it and everything it stands for.

also, could 2009 be the year i learn to smile not like a 5 year old? we shall see!

also also, notice i'm wearing my hair au natural except for the bangs now because it's much less work and i can tell people i'm doing it to save my energy usage and seem cool.

world's most amazing home video

according to me and i know best!

i love how all of us are making our own monkey noises in excitement in the background.

deep thoughts

last night when i was walking to ballet with jared i thought, what is the point of going on such an amazing trip and then ending up back where you started with only your photos and your memories and a 75 cent plastic frog.

and i think, what the point is, is you don't actually end up back where you started. i think you end up someplace different.

even though it looks like home i think it's somewhere new because you've changed, because what you've seen has changed you.

it's like that saying 'you can't go home again' only you can, you're just tainted by the sand in your toes and the warm breeze that still lives in your head when you close your eyes.

happy new year

2009 is the year of the ox.

it's also the year i'm getting married, the year i'm taking some courses to finish my early childhood education, the year i continue with my new love of ballet dancing, the year we plot further about living somewhere coastal.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!

do with it what you most desire, the time is now. (8:23 EST)

xox

i love you jeremy, costa rica, hammock, jungle, animals, beach, christmas.

very, very much.

now quit sleeping and talk to me so i can stop pretending to read.

do you like my new glasses?

i made them myself.

they don't really work well per se as they aren't exactly what you would call 'prescription' but they sure smelled nice.

you know what's graceful about me being in a waterfall?

nothing.

HA HA HA the last one with me and robynn!!

why is everyone so nice to me with regards to my special needs? maybe for their entertainment value?!

i don't know but thank goodness for that for as you can see here, clearly i would have drowned if it were not for robynn rescuing me from deaths watery clutches.

be sure to click on the picture so you don't miss out on the extra graceful expressions.

speaking of doing anything

jeremy can also rip open a coconut with his bare hands.

HOLY!

what a catch.

like a fish.

but one you don't ever put back.

my soon to be husband is the best fisherman in the whole wide world

he caught lots of these things

and two of these things

the sword nosed things you put back in the water but the bump head things you eat and they are deeeeeeee-licious. like butter. but a fish.

yay jeremy! you can do anything. xo

i heart giant trees

ever since this guy, i feel i have developed a bit of a thing for large, magical looking trees.

this fellow was just a short walk from where we stayed. apparently if you have a stomach ache and you eat some of him, you feel better. i didn't have a stomach ache so i just climbed him a bit and gave him a little hug and looked up into his branches for monkeys and stuff.

you sit there and think about what you have done!

when a monkey throws it's excrement on you, you know it either

a) loves you

b) hates you

c) just likes throwing around it's excrement

i choose to believe it's A and i can believe whatever i want since i'm the one it happened to.

ps the monkey pictured above did no such thing. the monkey pictured above is very busy being rehabilitated back into the wild. although i don't know how eager she should be to go back into the wild when she knows it means she has to leave her swing by the sea.

christmas day 2008

will forever be remembered as the day i hiked 20 kilometres into the jungle. or, as jeremy likes to call it, the day i said i hated 'costa rica, christmas and the sun'.

HAHAAHA ok it wasn't that funny at the time. which was 4 am to be specific.

please see below for more amazing (but way too early) feats of physical stuff we did when most (sane) people were opening up their christmas gifts and drinking a mimosa.

5:30 am - 45 minute hike across the beach to the park entrance commences after hour and a half trek through the jungle by jeep like vehicle. the heat on the beach is very intense which is why the early start is recommended.

5:31 am - something that died from the intense beach heat.

6:15 am - more things that died from the extreme heat. these ones apparently right at the park entrance and neatly, in jars.

7:00 am - hike through corcovado national park reserve begins after a short snack break. (dear jeremy's quesadilla leftovers, thank you for being so tasty). we followed the marked trail for about ten minutes then followed our guide off the marked trail through the wild wild jungle.

8:00 am - oh hi, i'm just fording some rivers. i think we had a second snack on the other side of this one.

10:00 am? - stopped for a third snack. and to reflect. on being in the middle of nowhere.

10:30 am - jer does some more reflecting after some more river fording while cooling off his barking dogs.

11:00 am - time for lunch. also time for us to realize we aren't going in a loop, rather going until we tell our guide we're ready to turn back and return the way we came.

11:01 am - we tell our guide we're ready to turn back and repeat the last few hours in record time.

2:00 ish - the only thing more refreshing than this head hosing was the icy cold beer we stopped for on the way back across the now lava covered beach. just kidding! about the lava. the beer was the best beer ever. and only slightly kidding about the lava.

what an amazing experience though, truly. even though we didn't see much wildlife considering the abundance of it in our own backyard, i did feel like sigourney weaver in gorillas in the mist. minus the terrifying monkey poacher parts.

god, are you there? it's me margaret.

costa rica is the pits

unless a unicorn walked into our yard to announce the arrival of a flock of those half lion half people creatures, nothing could have topped the wild flora and fauna we saw in costa rica.

scarlet macaws, toucans, giant tarzan vines, tropical turkey thingers, toothed pigs, four kinds of monkeys, crocodiles, snakes, sea turtles, dolphins, 100 foot waterfalls, 30 foot bamboo shoots, giant bugs that could double as fashionable hats at the ascot races - it was truly incredible.

i did get stung by a stingless bee (what a horribly misleading name) but other than that, you can basically walk amongst all this concentrated nature in harmony, (or yell at it through your snorkel).

to be in that kind of place and to feel you aren't just outdoors but part of the outdoors is something i will never ever forget. it hurts my heart a bit that now when i wake, those hundred nameless nature noises are absent.

undoubtedly, they will stay in my heart until we find our way back there. as you always do when a place speaks to you so directly.

for those of you who read that snorkel post and were all "WHAT IN GORDS NAME IS A PARROT FISH"

here is one.

doesn't look like a parrot does it? no, no it does not. i think it should be called 'blue baboon fish with some other colours'. or '80's fish' because it looks like a bead spread i had in grade four.

he looks like he's ready for caribana. i wonder what he does for more somber events? maybe this is just his going out and mingling with tourists coat and underneath all that teal he's wearing something much more conservative.

like a grey pantsuit.

PA HA HA hem

sometimes, it hurts to be so cool.

LOOK-A LOOK-A LOOK!

despite my multiple super powers and corresponding experiences doing super powered activities, i have never been snorkeling.

perhaps because strong swimming is not one of my super powers and perhaps because jeremy always makes me want to try new things even when my super powers aren't working and i'm a little bit scared, this trip included my first ever snorkeling experience.

at first i put my nose in the water and said i was finished but after jeremy explained to me you have to put your whole face in there and look around for stuff, i started to 'get' that snorkeling was fun and not an activity destined for death.

and boy did i get it!

did you know if you yell with your snorkel mask on it sounds really hilarious under water? i felt like jacques cousteau. jacques cousteau who yells.

i saw parrot fish and long nosed fish and big huge fish and little bunches of fish and fish that looked like rocks and rocks that looked like fish and even though we were getting stung by jellyfish while we swam about, it was one of the best times of my life.

especially the part where jer held my hand the whole time. mostly to stop the yelling, but still.