Christmas Trip - Day 8 Rio Grande

We got to the jungle house last night have settled in for the next 10 days. It’s a great house with plenty of room and an awesome deck and pool outside the front door. We all took a walk this morning up the long walkway and admired all the different flowers and fruits growing along the road. I wish some of these would grow in Utah! The scenery around us is pretty incredible with lush green as far as you can see. It’s gorgeous. We’re in the rainforest so true to its name we’ve had a few rain storms pass through here last night and today. I’m sure we will see small spurts of rain most of the days we’re here but it keeps everything nice and fresh and we don’t mind the rain at all!

We drove down to Luquillo this afternoon to play at the natural way slides made from the rocks. But when we got there we found that it is closed due to covid. Bummer. It’s a really fun place and we were sad to see it closed! So we stopped at the beach and found the place basically deserted. We paid the $4 entrance fee and walked out to the beach to play. There is a mandate around the island that allows for exercise only on the beaches. Basically meaning we can walk, run or swim at the beach but no sunbathing or sitting. There were lifeguards patrolling the area and letting people know the rules. That explains why the beaches are deserted I guess. But we walked along the sand and the kids played in the water and we were fine staying active. The life guard came back around to us and told us that around the point of the beach not too far up there is a shallow area where the ocean meets up with the mouth of a small river. He said it stays shallow and is a good place for kids to play. And he said “you’ll be able to be there longer than you are here.” He was giving us a way to stay at the beach and be in an area that is past his patrol! It was so nice of him to show us somewhere that we could spend some time there but not get in trouble. So we took him up on it and walked down the beach a little ways and around the point. It was a beautiful spot and we had fun finding fish, hermit crabs, coral and playing in the water. We spent a good hour or two there and even got caught in a warm rain storm that came through for about 5 minutes. It was the coolest! 

After we were done there we walked around the small shops and tiendas along the beach and had some yummy Puerto Rican food and found some fun souvenirs. The kids bought hats and purses and shirts and small things that they could take home with them. We got back to the house and we’re tired and slightly sunburned from our day! Success in my book!



And because we’ll be in this house for christmas we hung our stockings! Not by the fireplace, but by the air conditioner...that’s equivalent in this part of the country!

Christmas Trip - Day 7 Coamo to Rio Grande

One last thing we wanted to do before leaving Coamo was try the natural hot springs they have. So we got up early this morning and drove the short way to Las Aguas Termales. It’s a small spa like place that has outdoor pools that are filled with water from the natural hot springs. It was fun and relaxing and it’s a pretty famous spot here in Coamo so we wanted to do it before we left.  

We are super sad to have to leave this wonderful place. It has been such a fun few days and we have loved every minute of being here. The view from the top of this hill is almost unbelievable. We’ve been marveling at it since we got here three days ago and driving away we are still in awe that we got to stay here. The patio with the lights and the barbecue, the big grass area, the deck with a view to the town below...it’s all incredible! We head out to Rio Grande now and have 10 days in a house in the jungle. We’re going to stop along the way and pick up a bunch of groceries and stock up the house before we get there. One week in and we have all fallen in love with this island!

Christmas Trip - Day 6 Coamo

Today we took a drive down to the town of Ponce to explore a little bit. Ponce is the largest town in the south end of the island and was hit by 3 earthquakes earlier this summer. We saw some of the damage done by the earthquakes and the repairs going on to fix things back up. We also saw a lot of closed stores, restaurants and businesses from the covid pandemic which was even more sad to see. I really hope this island can recover from the craziness that has been going ok this year and they get back all the tourists that they need to keep this place going! We did get to see some cool things while we were there and loved seeing a new town that we hadn’t seen before. 

We got to tour through this old fire station that was super cool. 

The kids loved looking through a souvenir shop and the boys were immediately drawn to the swords of course. We also ate at a delicious lunch spot with the best Puerto Rican food. We had mofongo, tostones, mozzarella sticks and rice and beans. The kids all loved it too! Definitely a hit. We also found an ice cream spot for dessert before we headed back home. 

We finished up our day doing a little bit of laundry (the old fashioned way since the house has no washer and dryer) and hanging out at the house playing frisbee and football. We have loved the open space up here on the hilltop and the view is almost unreal. Both nights we’ve barbecued outside on the patio and listened to music and played games until dark. We have loved every minute of our time here in the country! We leave tomorrow morning to head to our new place and we almost don’t want to leave this little piece of heaven. 

Christmas Trip - Day 5 Coamo

Today we slept in and woke up to the sounds of the rooster crowing. It was delightful and I want to do that every day! It was a gorgeous morning so we took the kids on a walk down our long driveway and along the road that leads up to the house. There are hundreds of flowers and fruit trees and it’s wonderfully green everywhere! It was a warm morning so of course the boys took their shirts off to run down the road. 

Josh is awesome and gave the kids a Spanish lesson as we walked. We learned the words for road (calle), flowers (flores), dirt (tierra), tree (arbol), boy (nino), girl (nina) and electricity (electricidade).  He had the kids repeating the words back to him as we walked and they all were awesome to repeat them back and learn them. Desh has been repeating calle and nino all day! They also had an impromptu lesson on spiders and webs and how they catch their food. Josh showed them how something falls onto a spiders web and they immediately go to it to determine if it’s food or not. Super cool for those boys to see that! We have a few lightweights when it comes to heat and exercise and before long all the boys were sitting in the middle of the road taking “a rest”.

This evening was awesome weather as a storm rolled through and we watched the rain come, then the sun and the a rainbow to finish it off! We played frisbee on the lawn and had a hot dog roast tonight out on the patio. We couldn’t have asked for a more gorgeous setting to eat out. Desh is rocking his Fanny pack that grammie gave him and josh and I stumbled upon some extra tall cans of Dr Pepper that we were sure we wouldn’t see again until we got back home! Overall a great day in the country here in Puerto Rico!

Christmas Trip - Day 4 Loiza to Coamo

Today we had to check out of our beach house in Loiza and we didn’t want to leave this beautiful spot. Josh and Liev got up early this morning and watched the sunrise from the beach. Such a cute, fun time for them to be together while the rest of us were snoozing at home. After breakfast and before check out we all took one last trip to the beach and played for a couple hours to get our fill of the sand and salt water. We packed up and headed away from the house that has been so much a fun starting point for our trip!

Just a few last things before we left the north side of the island 

- We watched the sand crabs go in and out of their small homes in the sand this morning on the beach. We didn’t realize how many there were until we sat quietly and very still. Then there were hundreds!

- We had a small leak in one of the tires on the van so we stopped in for that to get fixed. While we waited, Liev climbed a tree and Beck did his best karate kid interpretation. 

- The trees down our lane had the coolest flowers and foliage hanging from them. After running past them every morning I finally got the chance to get a picture as we pulled away. 

- This mercado just down the street was our go-to every morning doe fresh bread and food supplies for the day. 
We did love our time here in Loiza!

We drove about an hour and a half away from the north side of the island and the city of San Juan down to the south to a small country town called Coamo. The drive was gorgeous and the south side of the island has a slower feel to it. Not as much hustle as the bigger city and the homes are spread out between the country and farm lands. We drove up a windy hill to the very top until we reached a gate that opened up to the house we were staying at. We could hardly believe once we got here that this was actually our home for the next few days! It is absolutely crazy to look from the back deck of our house and see down to the whole valley below and the beautiful view that it is! We have so much open space around us to run around and play and hang out for the next few days and we can’t wait!

Tonight we had a tour at the bio bay in Parguera booked. It was about an hour drive from Coamo so we once again loaded up in the van and drove down for the evening. We got to Parguera just as the sun was setting and climbed into the boat that was waiting to take us out to the bay. We had told the kids about it and how cool the bioluminescence was going to be but I don’t think they actually knew what to expect. The ride out to the bay was warm and it was such a perfect night. We chose a night with no moon so that we could see the glowing better. It worked out perfectly! Once we got inside the bay we loaded into kayaks and were able to kayak around and see all the glowing organisms in the water. Josh and I have done this before but it never gets old. It is the coolest thing to see the water for a second or two! Our tour guide gave us permission to swim in the bay as well and once we got in the water it was even cooler for all of us to see. The kids kept swing their arms and feet side to side and the water glowing beneath them was so awesome!  It was like a million tiny sparkles wherever you moved and it’s pretty magical. We had about an hour in the water together and we just couldn’t get enough. Beck and Desh would just float on their backs and “relax” in the water while staring up at the stars above them. It was super cute to see how much the kids loved being there and definitely something I will remember forever! 

Christmas Trip - Day 3 Loiza

Day 3 in Puerto Rico was spent on the beach. The house we are staying at in Loiza has a private entrance to the beach about 100 yards from our front door.  We walked down first thing this morning and had the beach to ourselves! We played and built sand castles and sunbathed and lost ourselves in the beauty around us. It is one of the most beautiful places I’ve been and we feel so lucky to be staying so close! The kids could not get enough of the ocean and the boys especially LOVED playing in the waves.  

We did take a break in the afternoon and the kids had some school work to get done and zoom calls to join. Josh worked as well and Desh and mom took a nap :) We took a short trip to the mercado and Desh dropped a liter of orange Fanta on the ground that immediately exploded everywhere! He was super embarrassed so of course started to cry. He felt better as he figured out that no one was mad at him and the store owner gave him a chocolate bar!  And keen became the bar tender and mixed up our favorite drink Gin and Juice (ginger ale and orange juice). We’ve become Latinos as we get fresh bread from the bakery each morning and love the smell of fresh air mixed with the salty ocean and a little bit of open sewage :) It takes josh and I back to our mission days where we fell in love with Latins and everything about their culture. 

We finished off our night back at the beach until the sun set. We feel so lucky to have this adventure and be able to be here as a family!

Christmas Trip - Day 2 Loiza

We rented a condo near the beach just outside of San Juan in a little town called Loiza. We didn’t see much last night as we drove in so today we drove around the small town looking for some food and to get to know our way around. We found a small mercado just down the street from us and got enough food to last us through the day until we could find a supermarket or Costco. Today is Sunday and not much is open so we know we might have better luck another day this week. To be honest we are all so exhausted today that we slept in late and later had a nap before we finally started feeling like normal people again. After our nap we zoomed into our church meetings at home and then  walked outside and found the beach about 50 yards from our front door and went for a walk along the sand.  The kids promise they wouldn’t get in the water but...you know how that goes. It is absolutely gorgeous and the weather is perfect. We spent the evening playing in the water and strolling along the sand just taking it all in.  Keen said to me today “I think this will end up being my favorite thing we’ve ever done.”

Christmas Trip Puerto Rico - Day 1 Airport

Josh and I have been planning a Christmas trip this year for the kids instead of doing presents. It turns out that flights are pretty cheap right now and a few months ago we found some good flights to Puerto Rico that left Christmas morning and came home New Year’s Eve. We jumped at the chance for some good and inexpensive flights and bought them!  So all these months later we’re so excited about taking the kids to one of our favorite places on earth! About three weeks ago the covid cases at both of our kids schools were high enough that the classes all went online for a couple weeks and all the kids were suddenly home full time doing school. Again. After about a day josh and I looked at each other with the same thought on our minds...If were all home doing school, work and social distancing then why not just leave for our trip early and social distance, work and school from Puerto Rico? Lots of things fell into place at just the right time for it to work out: flights were super cheap and the airlines had no problem switching our flights to the earlier date (including a big fat refund from them for the difference in ticket prices), one of the houses we had rented had availability early so we booked an extra week with them and extended our stay, the kids’ teachers were super accommodating and gave all the kids work for the extra couple weeks, we all got negative covid tests which were required for us to enter Puerto Rico and we even figured out that we could rent our house out while we were gone since it would be empty for three weeks! We went to work making all the plans to leave on the 12th of December instead of Christmas Day! It was a crazy rush of a couple weeks but we finally got it all figured out and done and our house ready for renters while we were gone (we ended up getting three different renters to cover 16 of the days that we would be gone and they all booked within the first two days of us having the ad up on Airbnb.  It was so crazy and easy!)

The night before we left we finally told the kids that we had a surprise fir them and told them we were leaving on an airplane the next morning early. We didn’t tell them where we were going but gave clues that night and all the next morning for them to figure out the final destination. They all figured it out by the time we got to the airport and they were excited but also didn’t quite know what to expect. But we were off!

This was the boys first plane ride ever and they were mostly excited to just be able to ride on a plane. It worked out great that we were flying during covid cause they have the seats spaced out so much that no one is ever booked in a middle seat. So we ended up having two full rows for our family. And the kids loved having their own personal screen for games and movies. They were completely entertained the whole way. Josh and I were pooped so we got some good time to relax and sleep on the flight. We had a layover at JFK for a couple hours and by that time everyone was tired from being up early and flying all day. We played games while we waited but also slept wherever  we could find a spot. Desh loves watching the other airplanes take off and kept saying he was watching them “blast off”. We were happy to get on our next flight and after a few hours we finally made it to San Juan! Our flight touched down at 11:30 pm and we gathered our luggage, rented a car, showed the guard our negative covid tests and that was that. We had made it all the way there and we’re so excited for it! We had a good surprise come from the car rental place when they realized that they no longer had any 8 passenger mini vans only 7 passenger ones. They upgraded us to a 15 passenger van for no charge! I was already trying to figure out how to make it through the 3 weeks crammed into a mini van with all our long legged kids, so that was icing on the cake to be able to have some extra room for the trip. We had a short 20 minute drive to the house we rented and we fell into bed around 1:00 am. Day 1 of our Christmas trip was over!

Rhen's crazy friends

Rhen has a cute little group of friends that LOVE to get together.  They often go to Mountain View Village and walk around and shop and have lunch.  Today was their day to do that and they had fun like always!

 

Christmas with Papa and Grammie

We had our Christmas with Papa and Grammie tonight and it's always such a fun night!  We ate some delicious Indian food and opened gifts together.  Mom gave the boys a fanny pack, wallet and some money inside and the girls got a purse with some money.  So crazy that Christmas is right around the corner!  And we love kicking off the season with family!

 

Virtual band concert

Rease had her Christmas band concert virtually this year.  We zoomed in a watched them which was fun to see.  They have made a lot of progress this year and sounded actually really good!

 

Ceramic projects

Rease is taking a ceramics class this year and has really loved it!  She has made some cute projects in class.  But her teacher also lets her bring clay home to work on anything else she wants to do.  So she has been making these little instruments for her friends in Jazz Band for Christmas.  They turned out so cute and such a thoughtful gift!

 

Rhen's gift

Rhen has been working hard to get this gift done for Grammie for Christmas.  She has crocheted her little fingers to death, but finally finished it.  It turned out darling!  She's so thoughtful and creative and we are lucky to have this girl.

 

Baby Remy

Garrett and Rachel had their baby and she is this tiny, precious little thing that we already love so much.  Remy, welcome to the family!

 

Christmas card

 

Christmas Tree

This year we had our own personal helper when we went to pick out our Christmas tree.  Rease was awesome showing us around the tree lot and showing us where the Charlie Brown trees were located.  We picked out the perfect one and she helped strap it to the top of the van!  It's so fun to have the house all ready for Christmas!

 

Candy Day

I love candy day!  It's a day that we can all work together on a delicious project that we know will bring lots of joy to our neighbors and friends!  We've been doing this long enough now that certain people know that their treat box is coming this weekend and they always mention how much they look forward to it.  It's a fun tradition and we have a great crew to work on it together!

 

Thanksgiving

We had a small-ish Thanksgiving group this year as some of the family were a little nervous to gather because of covid.  But we hosted whoever wanted to come and we ate a most delicious dinner with even better pie afterward!  Rhen made 6 pies for her Cupcakes on the Corner customers and we made 4 others just for us.  We spent some time playing basketball and football at the church and watching movies and playing games into the night.  It was such a fun day and we are so grateful for the family we have!

This week we've been working on a "Give Thanks" board leading up to Thanksgiving.  It has been great to remember all that we have been blessed with and remember to be thankful for it.  Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Working the tree lot

Rease started working at the Christmas Tree lot this week.  For a couple years now she's talked about being able to work there when she's old enough.  She followed up with the owner and he said this is the perfect year for her to start.  Her and Josh went to the DI and found these old overalls and some boots for her to wear and bought her some new gloves.  So she had her first weekend of working and realized that it's good, hard work and she's learning how important it is to talk to and be friendly with everyone that comes to the lot.  She is adorable and told me that she earned $40 on tips just tonight!  Love this girl - even though she's growing up too fast for my liking...

 

Rease and her friends

Rease has the cutest group of friends and they are good girls that I totally trust and love having them around.  Tonight they went to Mountain View Village and ate dinner and shopped.  They took these cute pics trying on clothes at Old Navy.  The best girls night thing to do...

 

Desh

Desh is my guy and is the only one that is home with me for a few hours during the day.  He goes to preschool twice a week but the rest of the time we're home together.  It's so fun to have this caboose by my side for now!

 

Rhen and Tilley

This silly dog loves each of the kids and the love that they give her!  

 

Sunset

We had the most beautiful sunset out our back deck this evening.  We love our unobstructed view of the mountains and the many sunrises and sunsets that we get to enjoy!

 

Crimpy hair

Rhen and Rease did tiny braids in each others hair this week and it came out looking so cute and crimpy!

 

Desh preschool

Desh has been having such a fun year at preschool and was just recently the Star Student of the week.  He comes home every day and tells me all about the songs they sing, the letters they are learning and loves when he gets to be in charge of the lollipop drum.  It's so crazy that our caboose is off to school and growing up just like that!