The Rest of the Story.....

Okay, let's get this vacation wrapped up! We enjoyed most days just by the pool, drinking pina coladas and reading books that we've been trying to read for years (well, maybe months, but it seems like years)! My goal was to finish the book I started back in the fall and to read my Southern Living from January. Check, check! I even started a new book!

These guys hung out with us and scared me to death each time they crept up by us!

We even tried out the slide for the kids. I LOVE this picture that I captured of Phil!

Of course, I had to take my turn, for the kids, of course, and it was actually really fun! Just not quite hot enough outside to temp me further.

We didn't spend much time on the beach, but notice how dark the sand is. It was really windy the first few days we were there, so we stayed by the pool.

There's the birthday boy!

We had dinner one night at the Japanese Restaurant on site at the resort.

I think day 3 we drove around the island a bit. This is what the typical house looked like. They were right on the street, surrounded by fences and gates, and they all had those metal shutters on the windows. Couldn't figure out if those are for hurricanes or security, or both.

Here's another one. They were all so colorful! It was beautiful to drive down the street and see them all.

This was our destination- the ferry. We wanted to check it out because we thought about taking the ferry over to another island, Culebra. It is known for it's perfect, white sand beaches. We decided, instead, to hang out by the pool and not be "busy" all day with traveling. We did say that we do want to come back here and maybe do a cruise where we can just stop at all the islands.

A view of one of the marinas as we drove around. The island is huge and we only saw one corner of it during these 4 hours or so that we were out.

The island is also very hilly and mountainous (hence the rain forest). In order to get to our resort, we had to drive up this really big hill and then back down into the resort. This is one of the views of our resort from the top.

We ate locally again and enjoyed another great view...right from our table. They had these restaurants, called kiosks, which were basically a bunch of really small restaurants in a row, like a strip mall, but they were open air. So you could see straight out the back from the front. Well, out the back was the ocean. It was awesome! And we happened to be there right at sunset.


I had a stuffed pineapple-yum! I actually ate almost all of that food!

Phil had filet mignon with shrimp. I got a couple of bites of that and it was gooood!

Our last night we ate at the Country Club Restaurant, on the property, but a shuttle bus ride away. It was very formal and very nice. Our service was not the greatest, but the food was good! I had just a steak and potato, but I had a cup of cream of asparagus soup for an appetizer and that was awesome! I'm gonna make that one day soon.

Phil had a steak also, with asparagus. I guess we ate 'American' that night, but we forgot to take pictures. Actually, I don't think we would have inside that restaurant.

Our flight home wasn't until late afternoon on our last day, so we headed into the city of San Juan, to Old San Juan, for a few hours before we went to the airport. We definitely could have spent a lot more time there, so if we are able to come back some day, we'd like to stay in that area and see some more of it.

This is an old ship, we called it a pirate ship and had to take a picture for Chase, who is in a pirate phase right now. They actually filmed all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies in some form on the island, but I don't think they used this particular ship.

The city was very quaint and much bigger than we anticipated! Lots of walking, lots of narrows streets and not a lot of parking. Hence all the walking. We were sweating by the time it was all over with!

We ate lunch at a cool local restaurant that day, which had an open air area and then an air conditioned area. We chose the air conditioned part! We were blazin' hot, as Phil would say, so we needed to cool off.

The one thing we needed to do was buy gifts for the kids, so we were racing the clock to look through all the stores to find just the right thing.

Parker got a set of mini maracas, which he loves!

Chase got a handmade pirate ship pencil holder, made out of bamboo. He also loves his gift!

And JuJu got a baby doll. Some might call it a Voodoo Doll. I was afraid that it might scare her, but she loved it! It has lots of braids with colorful bows and she loves that!

This is one of the forts in Old San Juan. There were two, one on each point, but we didn't make it to either one. We took this picture as we were hoofing it back to our car before our flight left. Next time, right?

All-in-all, it was a wonderful trip and we can't wait to have another trip alone. Right now our plan is for Hawaii for our 10 year anniversary. So that gives us two years to save up.

We're Back!!

We spent six wonderful days in Rio Grand, Puerto Rico for Phil's 40th Birthday! Thank you honey for turning 40 so that we had a great reason to get away.....alone! It was wonderful, truly wonderful! We are already planning our get away for our 10th anniversary, which is in two years. We really want to go back to Hawaii!

Stateside, the kids and all the grandparents survived and did really well. No one even missed us, except maybe for Parkie. Chase and JuJu wouldn't even talk to us on the phone for the first few days we were gone because they were so excited to be doing new things. That was actually great news for me!

We spent our first full day in PR hiking in the rain forest. It was really cool, literally, and it did in fact rain on us.

There were two waterfalls that we saw. This one was just right off the road.

The trails were paved, so it sure wasn't as rustic as I had imagined. But it did make it much easier to walk on!
There were informative plaques along the way. One talked about the roots of these tress and how they grow like that on purpose to give the trees a stable base once the soil starts to erode on the sides of the mountains.
Look at these HUGE leaves!! I was playing peek-a-boo in these pictures for Parkie. He loves that game! Where's Mommy??
Peek-a-boo!
Second waterfall that we actually hiked to.
That water was freezing but there were lots of people in it.
After the second waterfall, we hiked to the top of the mountain. We went about 600 ft at a very steep incline in 30 minutes to reach 3100 ft altitude. This is when it started raining on us. It was not easy, for sure! I don't think Phil broke a sweat though.
As you can see, we are in the clouds. It was about 10 degrees cooler.
At the top of the mountain was a cool, stone fortress-like tower. It has an awesome view!
View from the top. If you look closely, you can see the ocean in the distance.
We think that this is our resort in the distance here.


We finally made it back to our resort, before heading out to dinner on the night of the first full day. This is a picture of the adult-only pool. There was another pool for families and whoever else with a water slide. We tried to stay at the adult pool and hot tub as much as possible, since we were sans kids!
We ate at the resort on the day we came in, but on our first full day, we left the resort, since we had our own car, and tried a local restaurant, Hacienda.
They were known for their Sangria, so we each had a glass...or two. It was good!
This restaurant also had horses and did horse back riding during the day. One of the horses came over to entertain us with some dancing. It was really cool! We took a video for the kids.
This restaurant had such a cool atmosphere! We sat outside, but even the inside of the restaurant was open-air. We arrived just before dusk.

PR is known for a dish called Mufongo, which is mashed plantains with some spices and peppers, along with meat of choice. I cannot say that I am very adventurous with food, but I really did want to eat as much local food as possible, so I went for it! I have never had plantains before, but they were good.

Another dish that was poplar in PR was a skirt steak, which is a beef steak. This particular one was marinated in apple juice for three days and was the most tender thing ever! Parker could have even eaten it!

Okay, that's all for now. It takes forever to go through these pictures, so hand tight!