theparkerfamily.org – Page 209 – The quick brown fox jumped over the good, but lazy Parker family.

“prepare to feel the wrath of my pool noodle!”

December 7, 2010

the blue ninja, weilding her terrible pool noodle, with her fearsome companion “el pato” at her side.

See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
“prepare to feel the wrath of my pool noodle!”
hike: parque nacional volcon arenal, costa rica

December 7, 2010

we are lucky people.

putting aside the fact that we can afford to come to costa rica, that we both work with such awesome people that we can just dissappear for 10 days during the run up to year end, and that we have a (mostly) happy, healthy and charming little girl …

… during the roughly 108 hours that we’ve been in Arenal, we’ve been able to see the very top of the volcano for exactly six hours — and three of those hours happend to be when we were hiking around the base of the volcano.

i don’t want to run the statistical odd of this ever happening again, but i do feel like i should buy a lottery ticket.

the main hike in the parque is about 2km from the primary parking lot to a (now fully cooled) lava flow from the 1993 eruption, which goes through a whole series of overlooks of both the volcano and the lake beneath.

we knew nothing about how strenuous the hike was, but started feeling good when we saw two Russian grandmothers hobbling off the mountain as we made our way to the trail head.

sparklet was a happy (and well fed) camper in throughout — and even hiked a bit herself on the way back.

she’s a good egg.

See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
hike: parque nacional volcon arenal, costa rica
found: puddles

December 6, 2010
firsts: drinking straw

December 6, 2010

first drinking straw, with a blackberry smoothie at la choza del laurel, la fortuna, costa rica.
rain day

December 6, 2010

the weather channel says it’s not raining outside right now, but i’m afraid that it is. accuweather says it’s rained this morning, but would stop before breakfast, but i’m afraid it hasn’t.

the costa rican weather service says it’s going to rain, but gives out it’s forcasts by thirds of the country — which is a bit like saying that it’s going to rain somewhere between michigan and maine today.

all of this appears to have made the costa ricans into weather philosophers. when we asked for the weather outlook, the nice young lady at the front desk said:

it looks rainy today, but it was beautiful yesterday. it could be beautiful tomorrow, too. who can say?

awesome.

See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
rain day, arenal, costa rica
photos: lost iguana resort, costa rica

December 5, 2010

See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
photos: lost iguana resort, costa rica
lessons learned

December 5, 2010

with great power comes great responsibility, and sparklet’s new found power of walking are starting to have great impacts — to her cranium.

in the last twenty four hours, she has walked into two walls, collided into both the bed and the crib at full ramming speed, and fallen over about a dozen times.

this afternoon, she did a full double gainer into the pool and then tried to breathe underwater — neither of which turned out well.

(i’d give the flip a 4.2, but there was a discernable splash when she entered the water…)

in semi-related news, she invented a new game today — called “toss mommy’s shoes into the pool.” she clearly thought it was the best game ever. so did mommmy.

so did i — until she started to reach for my stuff.

See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
swimming, lost iguana resort, costa rica
travel: arenal, costa rica

December 4, 2010

holy crap, we’re in costa rica.

i don’t think the lady sparkler or i really thought we were leaving the country until we landed in costa rica, looked around and saw a whole bunch of costa ricans.

even then, only the temperature — 80 degrees, sunny — made me think that we weren’t just in some undiscovered part of our neighborhood in d.c.

sparklet’s been quite the trooper during our day of travel. a three hour flight to miami, a two hour layover, a three hour flight to costa rica, and then a three hour car ride to arenal — all without anything approximating a meltdown.

we rented a big honking land-rover-type monstrosity, which i was thinking was a comical level of overkill on the part of my beautiful wife, untill we drove through half a dozen landslides in the last 20 km to the hotel.

See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
travel: arenal, costa rica
found: ominous sign

December 4, 2010

it’s 4:15 am. we’re leaving for costa rica in a couple of minutes. in the “you are here” text directly under it’s clock, my phone is telling we are in the Orlovskaya region, a small oblast in southwest Russia.

even my phone thinks it’s way too early in the morning to up.

UPDATE: I left my phone on the flight from DC to Miami, and didn’t realize it until I was 40 gates away. I ran back, tried to get about a half dozen people to help, and finally got on the plane with AA’s Miami operations manager. No phone. The Russian this morning really *was* a bad omen.

UPDATE 2: I’m sitting on the flight to Costa Rica, and who to my wondering eyes do I see — but my new friend the American Airlines Miami operations manager. With my phone. She said it was in the overhead compartment of the earlier flight (which is funny, because I never was) and gave me a little eyes-down-nose-over-spectacles astonishment to be more careful with my belongings. And, that’s okay by me because it looks like she might be right.

UPDATE 3: It’s the layover of return trip to DCA now, and I’ve still got my phone — but I just left my wallet, camera and computer unattended for 10 minutes next to an ATM I had attempted to use. In semi-related news, it’s increasingly hard for me to believe that there is no competency test before you’re allowed to reproduce.
nanny shots

December 2, 2010

See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
nanny shots with the boyfriend, washington, dc