We are seriously #blessed.  My parents decided a few years ago that they wanted to spend their money while they were still here, making memories with their kids and grandkids.  So every other year they splurge and take all of us on a vacation.  We are spoiled I know!  But trust me, we do not take it for granted.  We have had so many wonderful vacation and built so many amazing memories together.  It is such a blessing.

This trip was AMAZING and I can’t say enough wonderful things about it.  It was seriously like a dream.  Here are a few highlights.

#1.  The kids are all old enough to cart around their own stuff!  Moms of littles…take heart.  It gets easier and all of that work pays off.  I can’t even tell you how awesome the kids were.  Our travel days were long and on our way home one of Costa Rica’s volcanoes decided to spew some ash so we had some delays until they knew which way the ash cloud was going to go.  Which meant a 2 hour wait to check in with United.  And you know what?  I NEVER once heard any of the 6 kids complain or whine.  I mean…I wanted to whine, but they didn’t.  Thankfully our flight was only delayed and not cancelled.  However, it made our connection in Houston REALLY tight.  Picture us Home Alone running through the Houston airport.  That also meant that we didn’t get to eat dinner so the kids went over 9 hours without a meal.  Again.  NO complaining.  And this was at the end of our trip.  I was so impressed, amazed and thankful for their good attitudes.  Also, they can all swim.  Huge that they didn’t require concentrated watching while swimming.  Of course we always made sure an adult was present, but we could read, chat or play cards while the kids played in the pool.  For those of you with children…you realize what a blessing this is.

#2.  The house.  My dad found an amazing house that we rented for the week.  It comfortably slept all of us and was seriously impressive.  The pool was to die for, the kitchen was fully stocked and it had everything you could want including porch rocking chairs, hammocks, a pool waterfall and 2 story slide.  I am pretty sure that the kids are permanently wrinkled from the amount of time that they spent in the pool.  I am talking 6-8 hours a day of pool time.  It was so fun to see them playing together for hours on end with only inner-tubes, the slide and some empty pop cans (which also meant VERY limited screen time all week.  YES!!!).  The other great thing about this house is that is it is really spread out.  We all had plenty of room to spread out and do our own thing.  We weren’t on top of each other and therefore we still enjoyed spending time together even after a week of constant time together.  Usually there is fighting or annoyance but not on this trip.

#3.  The wildlife.  This country is so beautiful.  There aren’t even words to describe the beauty and creation that are abundant!  From our porch we saw toucans, a sloth, howler monkeys and tons of Capuchin (they call them Cappuccino monkeys) all less than 10 feet away.  It was so much fun to see the monkeys play in our pool most afternoons.  They wrestled, jumped, played in the water and even played peek-a-boo in the towels.  We also toured the Manuel Antonio National Park one day and we saw lizards, frogs, sloths, raccoons, birds and all kinds of different animals, birds and reptiles.

#4.  The people.  The people and culture of Costa Rica can’t be beat.  They are so friendly, always waving and saying hello.  Every tour we went on had wonderful, friendly guides who were proud to show off their beautiful country.  They truly made you feel like friends!

We did some really fun activities.  We went deep sea fishing, did ziplining and repelling into waterfalls, Atv-ing through the river, spent time at the beach, snorkeled and jumped off of a Catamaran into the ocean and many other things!

  This is the last time these swim trunks were seen.  There was a pretty big riptide and Makai lost his shorts in one of the waves.  Such a funny memory!!!!

Fishing.  Just Chris, Lisa, Noah and Tanner.  Only caught one Mahi-Mahi but it was DELICIOUS!

Snorkeling and Jumping.  The boys loved it!

#5.  Quality time with family.  I loved spending time with my sister, nieces and nephews, my parents and my own family.  We laughed so hard we cried, played games, cooked together and just enjoyed being together.  It was a lifetime highlight.

The pool and slide were definitely the favorite spot for everyone!

The only down side to this house was the stairs.  I didn’t really mind them too much (even though from the kitchen to our bedroom it was 50 stairs and then the kids were another 25 stairs down from us).  However, if you want to go to this particular house be warned that anyone with knee problems might have a hard time!

If you have a big family and want to take a vacation together, then this is the perfect place for you!

It was really hard to narrow down the pictures for this post, so let me know if you want to see more and I will do another post!  I took over 1000 photos so there are plenty to choose from!

As always, for more pictures you can visit www.photolilo.com or my Facebook page.