Freede Family Christmas 2009 in pictures!

I have done my best to "condense" the pictures for the sake of this post. But here is goes. Christmas 2009 with my family....in pictures. Enjoy!

The first pics are from our short time in Houston where we had Christmas ever with the extended family! It was GREAT!! I miss everyone so much and love when we can all get together! I have the greatest family ever. :)

Us in our traditional Christmas pj pants! We were happy to finally have Cody in this pic!

Some of the girls of the fam acting weird! :) Love them!

And some of the boys...

and my Aunt Cheryl & sweet Josiah.....

and some of us at the table pigging out on Mexican food! Delicious!!!

Trying to take a picture with the timer!!That's better :)

Putting all of our Christmas goodies in tins to take with us on the plane Christmas Day! Are we artists or what!? Oh and don't let me forget the shirts Betho made for us to wear! Our faces were on the back. That's cool right?? :) Cute little Men!

This part begins the portion of our trip that took place in Arenal. Arenal is a town that is the home to one of the only active volcano's in Costa Rica. Unfortunately the clouds were too low to see it too well but we could hear it rumbling the entire time!You know you are in Central America when 9/10 churches have this! A 15 foot tall Jesus hovering over the congregation!!

Canyoneering! This is pretty much repelling down waterfalls!

Listen up....you don't want to die!! :)

The volcano. We were super close. We actually stayed on the site that keeps track of all the volcano activity!

How about a coconut??

Wonderful family!

Here begins the part of our trip that took place at the beach! We went Deep sea fishing.....boogie boarding on HUGE waves & ate the best fish I have ever had in my entire life at the best restaurant I have ever been at in my entire life! After a long day of riding the waves on little boards!

Ready.....set.....jump on and paddle! You can tell we have no idea what we are doing!

Go Betho Go!

And in comes Dougie!!

I rarely made it in with all parts of the swim suit intact!!

Out of order....but one of the fishing guys literally took part of the fish I caught and fed us sushi right there on the boat. It was amazing & the entire family partook in the little feast which was a stretch for some at first, but everyone loved it!

Dad caught a huge sailfish!!!

Jumping shot

Betho, Cody & Lance's fish! Mine was turned into suchi!

Hey, it's harder than it looks!!

Enjoying some Pina....as they say in Costa!

"Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day!"

SO this is not in the correct order. But this is the part of our trip where we went white water rafting in the jungle on the Paquare River. Which = AMAZING!!

Here is the amazing hotel we stayed at in San Jose (which is the capital city) before and after our rafting adventure in the jungle!!

Some of the cute hotel decor! Don't you just love Christmas!!

I need those at my house!

Cute little restaurant

A little sloth....can you see him up there??
( I accidentally deleted the pic of the sloth when I was editing and couldn't it to reload but we saw a SLOTH!)

6am bird watching tour. We saw some Tucans!

Dinner at the Jungle Lodge on New Year's Eve. There was so electricity in the rooms, no judging the hair!!

What a cute fam I have!!

The main lodge. Picture Perfect. Right on the Paquare river.

Dougie looking over his open air shower to say hello!

Cody & Lance playing some "futbol" with the natives. USA=1 Costa Rica=4

Quick snapshot

Love them!!

Risked my life on that little yellow boat of death!!

My shoes & I made it out alive!

Pocas....one of the guides showing us his moves!

Cody survived too!

And so did Dougie!

and Lance.

Canyoning again!

He had to catch her. No amount of words can describe the situation. You will just have to ask her about it!!

Breakfast one morning. Oh how I miss the fresh fruit!

Repelling

Ziplining!

Oh don't worry....he is just telling me not to move b/c a "Bullet Ant" AKA it hurts so bad you feel like you were just shot, is right in front of me on the tree!

The lodge again! So amazing.

Casa de Girod!

The view from my parents room. Did I mention that this river was rated #2 most beautiful in the world!?

Casa de Freede

These are on the drive to the jungle lodge. Sorry they are kind of out of order.

Ok these are out of order too but it is a progression of me flying out of the raft!

Quick break to take a quick hike to a waterfall!

Back to the rapids!

Go team Churro!!!!

Check out Betho's face!!

Ok thats it. If you read until this point I am impressed! I hope everyone had as great of a time with their families as I did this Christmas. I am so thankful that I have these people in my life & so thankful that my parents were generous enough to take us on this amazing trip!

So Happy!

It is over!! It is all finally over. If you don't know what I am talking about I am talking about the tests that have been keeping me from having a life for a month now! This week I had 5 hours of testing every day and today at 5 I walked out of my LAST one.

Today actually went kind of horribly. I think it was a mixture of extreme sleep deprivation and malnutrition but I got really sick & shaky at the beginning of my tests and got sooo behind I barely finished the entire 2 last tests. It was definitely a very unfortunate situation. BUT now that I am home and am in my pj's and about to split a pizza with my hubby I don't care so much. Tonight will the the first night in almost 2 weeks that I haven't studied until I fell asleep in my books and got up at 6 am to start again. This week literally consisted of me getting up and studying until noon, test from 12:30-5:00, dinner, studying until my eyes wouldn't stay open anymore and starting it all over again! In hindsight I would have been MUCH better served to get some sleep and cut the studying short due to the aforementioned disaster today but what can you do.

Now I just have to wait until Feb. 8th to see if I have to remediate which means take the test over again if I fail! :( Yuck. However, I know this information so well I am not worried. If I failed today it was more due to exhaustion than not knowing the infomration so it shouldn't be too terrible if I have to retake a handful!

Ok onto better things. Like what am I going to do now that I have a life????? I guess I should start by taking down my Christmas decorations, but I think the chances of me doing anything that involves work isn't going to happen for a while.

Lance & I are going to Abilene tomorrow and are going to get to stay with Lindsey & Jason. I can't wait to see the nursery& spend some time with them!! Then I am getting my hair highlighted in Abilene in the morning (I have officially sworn off Lubbock hair people.....my hair is SO blonde right now with some killer roots!), and then we are heading to Austin to see Betho and Cody. I have already requested:

1. Going to Chuys

2. Going to a movie

3. Getting a pedicure

4. Going shopping

I am super pumped!

So if you can't tell I am quite excited for my life to go back to normal. I only have two classes in addition to my clients and all of my clients this semester are 70+ years old which is what I love!!

So I am worry free until Feb. 8th when I could possibly get the news I failed some tests. Whatev!

Have a nice weekend.

Happy MLK Day! :)

Thanks God.

I know I have renounced blogging for a while b/c I need to be focusing on more important things but I just had to share a quick thought. I got up this morning at about 6:15 to start studying. I sat down at the kitchen table and prayed....."God, please be with me today. Like literally give me a physical sign that you are with me because I am starting to feel really negative and need a change of heart." Anyway, about 45 minutes later I went outside to check on the weather b/c my apartment was freeeeeeeezing and the sky was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen! Lubbock is completely flat, and when I looked up all I could see was the most beautiful sunrise stretching across the sky as far as you could see and lighting up the ground under it as far as you could see, leaving everything a pretty shade of orange and pink. Amazing.

Thanks God!!

Baby Shower.....and short blog hiatus!

My friend Carli & I had a baby shower for a friend last month. I am a tad late on posting pics but needed a short mental break from studying & thought blogging would be a good "break". The shower was for our friend Stacy who we are in grad school with (who by the way had the baby and still has to take all tests that I do the week after Christmas....YUCK!). Below are the pics of our shower that we did on a TINY budget and if I may say so myself it turned out pretty darn cute. I was super sick with some mystery illness that was making it really hard for me to breath and I was running a 101 fever. But when you are 1 of 2 hostesses you can't really decide to stay home! Aside from the sickness, it was a huge success and we were both a little shocked we were able to pull it off with our crazy schedules! Carli, Mindy & I. Mindy is in grad school with us and is Stacy's sister. I am SO jealous that they are in school together. I think I could possibly enjoy grad school if Betho was in it with me!!
Cute little blocks

Some of the guests. All of these girls are in school with me. I am going to miss them when I leave in May!!

Carli showing off her balloons!

Me posing by the balloons and our tissue paper balls (thank you marthastewart.com)

Me & Carli waiting on the guests....looking a little sleepy!

Our homemade mobile!

Didn't really go with the theme or blue/yellow & planes but I thought it was too cute to pass up!

Some more of the table

and some more table......the end.

I am probably not going to be back to blogging until after my COMPS on January 14th. We are going to Costa Rica which I am extremely beyond pumped about but it means double time on the studying until Christmas and triple time when I get back. But don't you worry I will return!!! :)

Thanksgiving!

So this year was our year to have Thanksgiving with Lance's family in Belton and it was so much fun! We both managed to get a good amount of time off school & headed down to Belton after class Tuesday and stayed until Sunday. We got to spend time with both sets of Lance's grandparents and pretty much spent 5 days eating! On that note, I am going to be in a swim suit in T minus 21 days for our Christmas trip to Costa Rica so that was definitely my last hurrah (if you are reading this Ellen I am not happy that I have a pie in my fridge right now)!

My life has been pretty consumed with school and studying for the 13 comprehensive finals I have a week after Christmas (thanks Texas Tech!) so it was SOOO nice to take a break and just relax with family. Below are a few pics from the weekend. As usual I am super lame and NEVER take any pictures. My poor little camera rarely sees the outside of its case! I promise to be better and put more pics on my blog next time I post.

I have pretty much resigned myself to studying from tomorrow until Jan. 14th.....except for Dec. 25-Jan 2 when I will be basking in the Costa Rica sunshine!! However, if I don't post much that's why. But come January 14th at 3pm I am a free woman and may just post every day!! I hope everyone had a great time with their families this Thanksgiving. BRING ON CHRISTMAS!!

Lance & Jake. Jake is one of Lance's best friend from growing up and ACU. Jake and his wife Emily live in Belton and we got to hang out with them a little one night!

This is on a walk to find Lance's grandma's Donkey "Spot". They live out on the country and have a donkey that is over 40 years old!! We searched for FOREVER trying to find him to feed him and were a little worried he may be dead! :(

Here is Lance's cute little grandma once we found him. Priceless picture!!

Late Wishful Wednesday!

I wish I could re-live my wedding reception over and over again!!!!


I don't have time to say a lot but this came right to mind when I read this weeks topic!! I know everyone thinks that their wedding is wonderful so I am going to sound a little cheesy, but I had SO much fun at my wedding reception. It was perfect in every way and we danced and danced and danced the night away until almost every single person there was drenched in sweat! I know that is kinda gross for a wedding, but to me it meant we all had fun!! It was the perfect night and the perfect way to start my life with Lance! :) Please excuse the terrible picture quality. I didn't get my pics on a CD so these are just some random ones from Lance's computer that ppl took.