Our LifeBook

With two weeks to go before our next big trip, I'm anxiously trying to finish several little projects that I started during the past several weeks.  One of those projects is our LifeBook.  I got the idea from one of my favorite blogs, Young House Love.  The young couple who writes the blog creates a professional photo book to chronicle each year.  Think: Yearbook.  I thought this was a great idea except that once we pass three or four years, we'll never look at all of these books again.  Hence: Lifebook.

I bought a scrapbook at Michael's and my goal is to create one full spread (two pages) for each year of our lives starting with the year we got married, 2011.  I finally finished picking last year's photos that best reflect our year and the LifeBook is underway...

This is actually one of our honeymoon photos but I might change it because I think it looks like a stock photo :)

Please excuse the poor photo quality.

Our first home, climbing 14ers, the wedding, honeymooning in Costa Rica, and Mr. Pugsley.  Pretty good representation of 2011 for the Sperr's.

One project down, 2,324,457,324 more to go...

Groupon SCORE!

I haven't found many blog-worthy items from Groupon lately but we hit the jackpot yesterday.  The Mister actually sent me the link with the preface, "these look pretty cool."  Expecting a singing Justin Bieber toothbrush or worse, something bacon related, I cautiously opened the link.  Beauty awaited.

They're wood photo boards... aren't they cool?!  I snatched that Groupon right up for $39 and am currently debating which pictures to have printed.  If you haven't signed up for Groupon, you can do so here.  You still have four days to buy the photo boards (in the Groupon Goods section)!

YAY!!

Honeymoon Photo Shoot

The Mister and I are getting ready to head to The Great State Of to enjoy a Passover celebration with the family.  Since this will ensure that I won't be blogging for several days (as if I blog everyday... ha!), I thought I'd leave you all with some pretty, pretty pictures from our honeymoon photo shoot in Tamarindo, Costa Rica.  These are just a few of my faves...!

Day 14: The End

What an amazing day!  We had an early morning photo shoot with our new friend, Toh, and had a blast playing on the beach.  We then did absolutely nothing for the next four hours.  It.Was.Glorious.  The beach is beautiful, the drinks (pina coladas) are cold, life is good.  Travis even got himself a little massaje on the beach.  Pura Vida! 

Our nearly 5-hour drive from la playa to San Jose began at 2:15pm and wasn't as bad as we were expecting.  We're now back at El Rodeo, our same hotel where we stayed during our first night in Costa Rica.  We're drinking the 2nd - and last - bottle of vino that we bought in Nica. and eating chips and salsa that is way too caliente for our gringo mouths.  I thought I'd be ready to go home at this point but I'm not exactly ready to leave this beautiful country.  I am, however, ready for some puggle love!!

Coming next: Outcome of The Epic Photo Shoot.

Day 13: Escape

We ended last night with a rousing game of Catch Phrase with the Canadians, eh, and started this morning on a high note... we escaped the island!!  We sprinted down the street to catch the 7am ferry.  We didn't think it was a big deal to ride the medium-sized boat rather than the big ferry but boy were we wrong.  It took everything in me to not yack on that boat and I've never been sea sick in my life.  It was miserable.  The boat did, however, travel a bit faster than the ferry so it took just over an hour of holding my head in my hands to make it to the mainland.  We had some trouble finding our transfer van but thanks to some nice, almost-English-speaking Nica's, we got to our van and made it quickly to the Penas Blacas border crossing to finally get back to C.R. 

Officially off the island!!

We had more sketchy experiences on the Nica side ("I get you now line, you give me mo money" - this one cost us $7 inadvertently) before we walked to the C.R. side and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Some sweet girl tried to help us but the language barrier wasn't getting us anywhere.  She did help me use her cell phone to call our ride who informed us that we'd have to wait another 40 minutes and, because of yesterday's cancellation (Act of G-d rule!) it was going to cost us $100 to get to our beach hotel.  I was so stressed/pissed at this point.  When our driver arrived over an hour later, I've never been so excited to climb into a van with a stranger.  Two hours later, around 2:30pm, we arrived at Tamarindo.  Hola, playa!  We rescheduled our afternoon plans, put on our swimsuits and spent the rest o the day (until dark) on the beach.  Dreamy.  Except... Travis is still sick.  Poor guy is feeling miserable but trying to suck it up for the sake of the beach.  We're already planning another trip back here... perhaps one longer than 24 hours.

The view from our room.

Happy.

La playa.

Day 12: The American

Starting a bad trend of not blogging for several weeks and then making several posts in one night... sorry!  #2 here we go...

I seriously don't even know where to start with this day.  We slept off our suspected food poisoning and I woke up feeling slightly refreshed and very light headed.  I made my way to the bathroom, sat on the toilet, tried to look toward the bedroom rather than around the bug-infested bathroom, and, oh! what is that?  A FROG??!  There is a fucking frog in the bathroom! With that, we decided our stay at the Finca was over, quickly changed clothes (sort of), packed and were out of the room right around the time our alarm went off.  We ordered french toast for breakfast thinking it was the only thing we could stomach and I waved goodbye to my G-free diet in the name of easy traveling. 

This is how we felt during breakfast.

Our homie from the Finca drove us 40 minutes to the port, said Adios, and we were left by ourselves to complete a journey for the first time in our trip.  I tried to buy our ferry tickets only to be told No and then completely ignored by the woman as she answered the phone and rattled away en espanol.  I waited for several minutes before heading back to Travis who was talking to a tour guide.  The T.G. informed us that the boats weren't running this morning because it is too windy but they will continue to evaluate the weather and, when the Nica. army gives permission, the boats would start again.  An hour and a half later, we found a group of English speakers and learned that they had canceled all boats for the day and the weather service is predicting similar weather for the next 2-4 days.  In other words... we're stranded.  On a f'ing island.  Tears ensued.  I was not about to spend another night with the insects and amphibians. 

Stranded.

We ran into the woman who was on our shuttle ride from Granada to the San Jorge port.  She tried to dry my tears by inviting us to their hotel, the American, that is right up the street from the port.  We made our way to the hotel and secured their last available room for $35/night.  We have since made friends with the other stranded tourists, including a group of 4 Canadians around our age, and are trying to make light of the fact that we're stranded on an island.  At least we're not stuck in a blizzard and can still enjoy the tropical climate.  But I'm still upset that this little island adventure is cutting into our romantic ocean-view time on the beach at Playa Tamarindo.  The good news is that we were finally able to shower without fear of being bitten/attacked.  This place isn't so bad...

The island.

Writing in my journal (wind blowing my hair) in frontof our much cleaner hotel.

Day 11: Sick and Sicker

My how things have changed.  Remember the fireflies that were dancing in the grass yesterday?  Turns out they were actually sending flares to warn us about what was coming next.  We went to bed listening to the sounds of the geckos - that sounded like they were close enough to be in our room - ignoring the mysterious stains on the wall and wondering why the bathroom had such dim lighting.  Shortly after we woke up, we had the answers to all of our questions.  Watching another little Wuggle scamper up the wall didn't bother me as much as the BIG ASS spider that appeared out of nowhere while I was taking a shower.  I thought we had left our jungle days behind in Tortuguero but boy was I wrong.  My shower was short and will definitely be my last one here.  Travis tried to play exterminator in the bathroom but thinks there is no shower drain - just wooden planks above the dirt for the water to seep into.  Lovely, right?

Travis and I both got a little sick this morning so I had to call off our coffee bean tour because I was not feeling well.  I think the culprit is the food we ate here last night which should make the remainder of our stay interesting.  The good news is that our amiga Lorena, at Costa Rican Trails, arranged to get us out of here earlier than expected.  The thought of being at Playa Tamarindo tomorrow is the only thing that will get me through the next 19 hours...

Side note: The average annual salary in Nica is $1,300 PER YEAR.  The average monthly salary on the island is $300.  The people who pick the coffee beans get paid $3/day.  Our tour guide and Finca worker is a little gay man named Naftali.  He is hilarious.  He is also enamoured with Travis and his muscles and asked several questions about his "training."  Naftali then explained that he's happy with his "Julia Roberts legs and J.Lo rear."  And, this is not a joke, Travis was laying in bed and felt something land on his arm.  Thinking it was a bug, he tried to brush it off.  Turns out it was gecko poop from the little Wuggle crawling around our ceiling.