Happy April Fool's Day!

Hi all - here are the promised pics of the new garden beds the Sandman and I built yesterday and today. Right now they are just laying on the hillside, but we hope later on today when it warms up a bit to sink them into the ground on the uphill side so that they are level. We got the wood from a Mill near here way up in the woods - which was an interesting experience - the miller was a character with chrome sun glasses! The past few days have been really beautiful here and it's been really nice to be outside with Sandy working on something fun.

Also I'm adding some pictures of Phoebe after a bath! Love you all and happy 1st of April!!!

Katie

PS: My new Moon House Art site should be up tomorrow afternoon - so go check it out and let me know what you all think!

To the Volcano!

Today we're heading towards an active volcano, the Arenal Volcano, which first erupted in 1968.
Here is a rather atypical Costa Rican house because it is two-story.

We frequently saw palm trees - either growing in individual yard's or growing in acres and acres of plantations.

One of our first good views of the volcano, with the peak shrouded in clouds.

And here is our lucky view of the volcano. Apparently many who visit the area never see the volcano as its usually cloaked with mist and clouds. That is a gas plume seen at the peak of the volcano, not a cloud. 30 minutes after we arrived at our hotel, a BIG BOOM was heard. We assumed it was thunder. Our guide rushed us outside to see the volcano. A giant yellowish mushroom smoke plume was rising out of the peak. For a full day, we had a clear view of the volcano spouting smoke and sending rocks tumbling down its sides.

Our hotel windows looked directly out to the volcano.

Green Mansions

The boys thought the waterfall walkways reminded them of the computer game Myst.

Pippin reflectively writing.

This was just one of at least 5 waterfalls along the walk.

The intrepid hiker.

Were we not in Paradise?!

LaPaz Waterfall Gardens

We enjoyed a lovely lunch, tour through the butterfly house, reptile rooms, and orchid gazebo prior to hiking the waterfall trail. Below is the butterfly house.
Inside was a storehouse of butterfly pupa - many many of the chrysalis were shimmering gold - they were amazing!

Butterflies of all sizes and colors were flitting about and resting momentarily so we could capture their beauty.

A view inside the butterfly house.

Jonathan starting down the waterfall path.

down the road in Costa Rica

A "tipico" Costa Rican house - small, usually brightly painted.
Pippin overlooking the coffee plantation where we had a coffee break on the first day's drive.
Pippin absorbing the coffee aura under the coffee plant.
Part of the La Paz Waterfall nature conservatory which included a butterfly house, frog/reptile house, orchid gazebo, and a restaurant with a humongous tree inside the restaurant. Notice the traditional hand painted ox cart and oxen.
Our guide Antonio - able to answer most any questions - even those posed by the expert biologist.

COSTA RICA!

Our first early morning peek at the tropical rainforest world awaiting us in Costa Rica! This is looking out the french doors in our hotel in San Jose - a quiet refuge away from the noisy city streets with a first class french restaurant that provided our first two in-country meals.











Below is the hotel walkway from our room.



















Our faithful "Tourismo" van with our "excellente" driver Marcos tying down the luggage. 10 of us spent a lot of time in this van the next 9 days bumping along the unpaved mountain roads. Along with our driver, there was our very knowledgeable and pleasant guide Antonio, Bob and Ann Barry from Washington state, and Catherine and Leigh, two long-time friends from San Jose, California. All proved to be great traveling companions. You will see pictures of them as we progress on our tour.



















One of the many mini-vans we saw manuevering through the busy San Jose traffic - looks like a handy van to have!














"Tipico" Costa Rican scenery - we were leaving the San Jose area!

A 2006 Reminiscence

A Merry Chris - mas eve birthday celebration
dreaming of many tasty bones to come
How did I get all wrapped up?
It would be fun to get the trio together now to compare how they've grown!

Cool Comics program...mhah hah a ha

Past

A couple of recent artworks...
Past is in my new style I am experimenting with. So far I have three paintings in this style. For this one, I also cut out words from the newspaper and layered them into the picture. The other picture is the poster I designed for our Wonder art show. Love you all,
Bet

P.S. for some reason, the poster is showing up as blue. It is actually red! If you click on it, you can see the red version if you click on it.