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!!