Costa Rica!

August 15-22 We were in the beautiful country of Costa Rica! It is a very well developed country for Central America and is supposedly the wealthiest of them all. Justin and Dad Smith had a business conference here and invited us wives to go with them. Soon enough, my brother & sister in-laws, and Justin's Grandma were coming as well! It was a blast to have them all there and to have company while the boys were off doing their business thing. We got to travel and see some of the country and were not dissapointed. Costa Rica is very green and lush. Unfortunately, during the months of April-January they pay for it with tons of rain! Enjoy some of our pics! Sorry there are so many, but I couldn't choose just a few....
This was the view from our hotel room. Quite the view eh?!

At Volcano Poas. You cant tell in this picture but in the middle of the volcano (where all the smoke is) is a beautiful, sky blue lake. It appears to be tempting to swim in but in reality, it would boil you up pretty quickly.
So I pretty much love this picture because it shows Ethan and his little personality to a tee. When you say "Ethan, smile!" He will get this cheesy smile showing all of his teeth and will throw his head back as shown. It cracks us up every time!
Again, another cheesy grin! I love the age he is at, it's so much fun!

The family about to hike up to the Volcano
Ethan was ready to hike too with his walking stick that he stole from somebody.
The leaves on the trees were huge! We wanted to compare them to Ethan. As you can see, the leaves won.Ethan loves to ride on Grandpa Smith's shoulders
This monkey was way cool. He saw Ethan and I walk up and stuck his tail out for us to touch. He sat there for about 10 min letting us play with him. Ethan really liked playing with it and would touch its tail and then crack up- and don't worry I had some Germ- X handy:-)Toucan Sam??Beautiful waterfall! We hiked to 3 different ones and all of them were just as beautiful! From where we were taking this picture you could still feel the spray pretty well- that's how powerful they were!
Believe it or not this kid was actually super tired but could still put on a smile for daddyI had NO idea he was doing this when we took the picture, but I think it's hilarious! He has just recently realized that he can shove his fingers into places like, noses, ear holes, eyeballs, etc. If he's not sticking his finger up his nose it's usually somebody elses.. what a crack up! Dont worry, we are trying to teach him that this is yucky.
Aunt Chanda took this picture... Ethan loved the butterflies but unfortunately wanted to touch them a little too hard. We still have to work on that whole "soft" thing.
The beautiful beaches of Manuel Antonio. It was well worth the 4 hour drive it took to get there!
These monkeys were all over the beach! They will open up backpacks and hunt through your things to try to find food. We saw like 4 or 5 of them there. They will come right up to you and await food- its a little scary because you know they are starving and wild animals!
At the end of the day when the clouds started to roll in. We had a blast jumping/getting thrashed by the waves at this beach. It was some of the best waves to play in we've seen!

It was quite an amazing trip and an experience we wont forget!