Christmas Vacation

Well, I finally took the time to post some pictures from our trip to Texas for Christmas! Blogger has been going a little slow for me all week, but what better than to enjoy blogging on a Sunday afternoon! Enjoy :o)

This first picture is actually on our last night in Pleasanton. We enjoyed a beautiful sunset at the Poth Ranch. The picture captures Fred in his element...I love it!

What a cute couple...Sandra & Fred...

Ginobili LOVED his vacation. He got to run free, chase cows/rabbits/hogs/etc. etc... and swim! He was truly a dog and loved it!

Here he is checking out the cows. He finally got up the nerve to play with them a little and then would get scared and hide behind us or the truck. It was pretty funny!

Here is another picture at the Ranch. We really enjoyed driving around on the Mule and Ginobili loved running and running...

We open presents in Pleasanton the night we arrived. We all got a lot of great things...my favorite was the Kitchen Aid Mixer - I've already made some cookies! Thanks Poth's! Lex got a lot of hunting stuff too and can't wait to put it to use!

We went to Dallas on the first half of our trip and had a great time there too. A lot of our time was spent playing Wii. I think my Mom is boxing in this shot! It's really a great workout! My favorite was tennis - but I definitely need some more practice!

Here is Cindy in her bowling stance...and we all thought she wasn't athletic :o)

On Christmas Eve we went to the candle light service at church and then came home and had a Panini Party! We all got Panini makers from Shane & Valarie, I would highly recommend them!

Shane loves Starbucks and seperately we all got him the exact same present from Starbucks - guess he's set on coffee until next Christmas! :o) haha!

Our Family

Our crazy family...don't ask me why there is so much orange in this picture - it wasn't my idea :o) GO AGGIES!

We also got a chance to go see Mom play at North Park Mall with her band. They did a really good job and drew a really big crowd too. Lex actually learned a few things about music too.

On our way back home we were lucky enough to get to stop in Houston - we met up with Karen, Brooke, Allison and Lex's friends Brian & Tessa. We ate at Barnaby's - which allows dogs to sit with you at your table outside. We had a great time seeing all our Houston friends!


Overall we had a great trip! Happy New Year and we can't wait to come back to Texas to visit again!

It's that time of year again...

The Christmas parties have already started. I had my company party on Friday night and Lex's is this Thursday! We had a great time at mine, the food was great, there was dancing and much much more :o) Check out a few pics...

Some of the girls....

Getting down on the dance floor...

Lex and Mel

Here is also a pic of Lex's new grill. Lindsay got it for him for Christmas! We love it...Thank you! And it looks pretty in our new backyard too!!

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving week and have a lot to be thankful for!

My Mom flew in early last Saturday and we did a lot of shopping and relaxing the first part of the week. I took the first part of the week off from work to enjoy her visit.

On Tuesday night, the Poth's came in and then Thursday, my Dad made it too! We had a full house and lots of cooking to do!


First thing Thanksgiving morning we gave Ginobili a big bone to celebrate his birthday. He is now Two Years old! Happy Birthday buddy!

Then the boys fried the Turkey outside.

My Mom and Sandra helped a lot in the kitchen. I couldn't have done it without them! Thank you both!

Gathering around getting ready to eat....
Clayton & Julie, our Aggie neighbors, came down to spend the day with us too! We are lucky to have such great friends and family!

We had so much food...anyone want to come over for left overs? We have a lot of pumpkin cheesecake!

The flowers were sent all the way from Singapore by Lex's sister, Lindsay! They made our buffet very festive! Thanks Lindsay!

The Poth Family

On Friday night we went downtown Greenville and ate at an Italian Restaurant! They already had the Christmas tree up and had a live band playing too! We had a great time!

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!!

Big Fat Greek Wedding

Marisa's Bachelorette Party - last Saturday night!

Tonight my friend Marisa, from work, got married! It was a Greek wedding, which was new to me and very fun! Opa!

The three recruiters...Betsy, Marisa and me!

Columbia Zoo

I went to the Columbia Zoo with work last week. We had a great time!!

Costa Rica

We had a wonderful time in Costa Rica! We stayed at the Paradisus in Guanacaste, which is on the West Coast/Pacific Ocean side. It was an all inclusive resort, which means we ate way too much food. We do have to say though, they probably have had the best food out of all the resorts we have been to! It was great! The only bad part was that it was rainy season, so off an on every day it would rain, but we seemed to catch the weather just right for most of our activities!

Flamingo Town - which was right down the beach from us.

Costa Rica, as most of you know, is known for it's exotic wild life and flora. Here is a beautiful flower!

One of the most rare to us, but very common animal to them are monkeys. We saw them every where. This picture is actually from our first shuttle ride in from the airport. Our driver pulled over to let us take some pictures! We then saw more on our ATV tour, rainforest hike, and just hanging around in the trees on our resort! These turned out to be the best pictures we got of them though.

This is a white faced monkey that we saw at the end of our Canopy Tour.

More wildlife....butterflies...

Crazy little animals on the side of the road, they told us what they were, but I can't remember! They were really hoping we would feed them...

This bird actually flew up and landed here along with a few friends while we were having lunch at the resort. The animals are definitely not afraid of people. Dogs and cats roamed the beaches and sometimes our resort looking for food. They were all very tame, but wild.

This is a picture of the rainforest. We went on a hike through the rainforest around the Arenal Volcano. Which is one of the 10 most active volcanoes in the world!! Sadly, we didn't get to see any action, but it was still steamy and beautiful! This rainforest is where we saw more monkeys. Howler Monkeys and Spider Monkeys. While we were watching them the spider monkey stole the baby howler monkey away from his mother, it was very interesting to watch them fight!! Lucikly though, the howler monkey ended up getting her baby back! Nature is cool!

Here is a picture of us in front of the Arenal Volcano.


After our hike through the rainforest and viewing of the volcano, we took a two hour break in the natural hot springs! It was amazingly beautiful and probably one of our favorite parts of the trip.

One of the other adventures we went on was an ATV tour. We rode through the streets of Costa Rica, which I might add were mainly dirt or broken rock. It was a rough ride. We took the ATV's from our hotel for about an hour and a half ride through the streets and up the mountain, where we then took a canopy zip line tour.Riding through the forest on our ATV's!

Up in the canopy, swinging around like monkeys!
Lex went upside down on one of the zip lines...And I flew like superman!! :o)
It again was beautiful!

Every morning we tried to walk on the beach. We saw this crab one day...

And this beautiful rainbow the next!



Here we are after dinner one night. As you can tell, I think Lex had a little too much wine :o) But hey it was free!!!

Our resort had a gorgeous golf course surrounding it, this is what you saw when you drove in. Here is a picture of our pool. We spent many hours here!

Here is our room. It looked just like the picture we saw online!
The resort was so big that they would always have these shuttles driving around to pick you up and take you to the other parts of the resort! Very convienent!
Lex by the pool!

Here is a neat picture from the plane. You can see how undeveloped most of the land is around there. A lot of mountains and rainforest!

I had to take a picture of the Liberia airport too. Look closely, Lex is the only one in there. Our resort made us go 3 hours early, so we were the first ones there. But also notice that this is an open air building, with a large fan to keep us cool. They only had these two terminals and two others. While we were there, only two planes landed, one of those was ours!

Good bye Costa Rica, hello real world!