i know you´re all waiting for this... :)

Coming Soon...

photos of the new students!!! :) I just have to take some photos first and then I will introduce you!

Volcan Irazu

Judit and I ventured to another Costa Rican volcano today... there's so many to see! We could walk all the way to the edge of the crater of Volcan Irazu! It was very strange to see the land... almost sandy, but the sand was black lava rock, and only a few plants growing. Also, it was at an even higher altitude than the city (at 4000 feet) so it was really cold. There was lots of fog and cold winds. Most of the plants were considered lichens too... which I thought were only in Alaskan tundra or whatever those are called! Who knew there was everything from palm trees to lichen in Costa Rica??

We thought this plant looked like a nest...
Cute flowers, but not so nice to touch... they have thorns in the petals!
One of the craters had this emerald lake in the middle...
Me modeling with the landscape and fog.
Judit laying an egg on our so-called nest plant
Crater #2
It was so foggy we couldn't see the top of the satellite tower 50 yards in front of us!
Judit

On the way back we stopped by a restaurant with business cards tacked all over the walls... and when I say "all over," I mean "all over." We didn't have any business cards to leave, and I decided it wasn't a good idea to leave my passport copy... :)

Austin's First Day of... High School!

I was glad to be around for such a monumental moment... and I just had to capture it. Here he is, my baby brother headed off to high school...

Fireworks with the Fam

Gramps and Gram with the little grandkids. :)

While I was home in the States, the Siscoe's had a belated 4th of July (and summer birthdays) celebration, complete with Grandpa's choice toys... fireworks. 3

Kallie and sparklers.

Wes was "big enough" to help with the fireworks this year... I think he thoroughly enjoyed it!

and cousin Chloe in the pickup headlights...

Forgotten Photos... that are no longer forgotten

I forgot to post more photos from my US visit! I took about a 1000 photos while in the States, ha, so I thought I would share a few more... these are some of my friends I was able to spend a morning or afternoon with...

Chelsea Winn and I at my house...
Dick and Chris Ratliff and I at the John Deere Pavilion in Moline...
and Jenny Olson and I at her house...

The Battle of the Bichos

Bichos equal Bugs.

I've been having battles with bugs. Serious battles.

3 nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night suddenly. Not sure why, I just did. I turned on my bedside lamp and there, looming in the upper corner of my room, was the largest cockroach I've ever seen. Not kidding... I hate killing cockroaches as they just crunch too much, so I didn't do anything about it. But then I couldn't sleep for fear the cockroach would burrow in the covers with me. So I slept with the light on all night so I could see where the bicho was...

2 nights ago, I walked up the stairs to my room and turned on the lights to find a huge moth clinging to the ceiling... like, each wing was the size of my hand, not kidding. I had found one previously, about 4 months ago (ha, I thought it was a bat at first because all I could hear were the wings flapping!), and I knew that if I didn't get it outside, it would just flap all night and I wouldn't sleep again. So I resorted to throwing my wadded-up socks at the moth to direct it back out the window into it's dark feeding grounds... I threw all my socks and was collecting them to throw again when the moth found it's way out the window...

Last night, I darted into the room to find my cookbook and froze when I saw it... a HUGE grasshopper on the wall above my bed. My first thought was, ¨Seriously??¨ I had 5 guests downstairs waiting, so I returned to the kitchen and told them what was up, and we plotted before returning to my room with a bucket and sheet of clear plastic to transport the grasshopper to it's proper home. ... We succeeded after I gave up the main position of ¨catcher¨... I'm a bit too squeemish for this sort of endeavor.






It's not as big in the photo as it is in my memory.