Dear God, please find us jobs some place warm.....

It has been WIIINTER here lately. It hit us really hard Thursday morning in the form is freezing rain, and I do mean freezing rain. It took some very careful walking to get down the steps in our apartment that morning b/c not only were the steps frozen, so where the hand rails. Scary!! About midway through the morning I was sitting at my therapy table playing domino's with some ladies and I looked outside and saw the biggest snowflakes I have ever seen and in less than an hour all you could see was white! So pretty!!

However, at 12:00 as I was driving home (school got cancelled!) it was quite different! If you don't know I have a little Volkswagen Beetle and a drift blew up behind my car that was taller than me and I was stuck! I finally got a guy with a shovel to help me carve out a driving path and then was able to get the remaining snow/ice out from behind my car with my coffee cup from that morning! Amusing I must say but VERY cold!!

This was my front porch when I got home. We live on the second floor! Crazy right!?
Some more pretty snow outside the apartment. This was nothing compared to the next morning!

and some more.

This was my car window the next day as I got in to have lunch with a friend!

Taryn to the rescue after lunch!! I was so glad she had a scraper b/c I had kind of a long drive to a hair apt!

I have seen the terrible side of snow though! Now that it is starting to warm up the snow is all melting and GIANT icicles are falling everywhere at my apartment. Like no exaggeration, they could hurt you! And it is slush everywhere and my feet have been wet for days! Yucky!! How can something so pretty turn into something so nasty in just a few days??

God, if you are preparing me for life up north please reconsider! Thank you! :)

Perfect baby girl!! :)

The highlight of this week has of course been the arrival of Miss Ava Reese Campbell!!! Can you believe how absolutely adorable and chubby this little baby girl is!? I was able to drive down to Abilene and spend a few hours with little Ava and the family and it was SOOO worth the drive. She is perfect, cuddly, makes the cutest little sounds, and has the best chubbiest cheeks I have ever seen on a baby (probably b/c she was almost 9 lbs!). Lindsey & Jason seem to be doing great as well and are already such great parents!!

(In case you don't know Ava is my cousin Lindsey's baby)

Cooking......

I have a request for all of my blog readers....male or female, but I am guessing the responses will be mainly female. :) But I was on the phone with my mom the other day telling her how I cook the same things over and over. I actually got a cookbook from my aunt as a wedding gift and it's full of family recipes. However, I ONLY cook from it and think I need to branch out. However, cooking kinda overwhelms me and I get nervous trying new things.

SO if you have the time and would like to post your "easy, do it all the time recipie" I would LOVE it!!

Thanks in advance!!

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!