Our new puppy: Gunner

About eight weeks ago I got a phone call from my mom (in Ohio) asking we would want a chocolate lab/german shepherd puppy. They were just born and the owner wanted to give them away for FREE!

We said YES right away. Not knowing any details about how we were going to get the puppy and when we could get him. 

We would get pictures every few weeks of the puppies and an update of when we could get him.

When we were in Ohio after our Costa Rica trip picking Carly and Emma up from my parents, we went and saw the puppies. We met the dad and mom of the puppies. The dad is huge, the german shepherd. The mom is the chocolate lab and was quite a big lab. So we will see how big he gets!

The lady with the puppies said that she wanted them all placed in homes the weekend after. Yikes! I was thinking about driving back, meeting my mom half way, or flying the puppy. Well, my sweet daddy and super helpful sister drove the puppy to US! They picked him up Friday night and drove him to us and got here Saturday morning. (Like the Saturday morning we were going to the Field of Dreams with Jim Pitchforth=Crazy and exciting weekend for us). 

Emma first meeting Gunner.

Even after their bath the girls wanted to be outside with him.

watching him eat.

We try and let the girls 'walk' him around the yard so he gets used to listening to them and used to walking.
They love it! And so much that they fight over who gets the leash.

Carly loves her puppy.

They love putting sticks, mulch, flowers, grass all over him. He doesn't even mind. He just lets them do it, gets up and shakes it off.

We had ANOTHER visitor over the weekend. My little brother, Clayt, just graduated BYU-Idaho and was on his way home to Ohio. He stayed for the weekend as well. I mean, slept on our couch and helped with the girls. I snapped this picture before he took off Monday morning. 

He loves to snuggle up next to someone and fall asleep. This time he chose my back. Usually it was on our shoes/feet, under our legs, or the kitchen table.

My life. Two girls and a pup. 

Emma loves to climb into Gunner's doghouse to play. He followed her in and licked her. I couldn't help but take this picture before saving her. The first few days she was so scared of him. She is just at the right height that he just knocks her over and licks her. Or if she is already on the floor he will just nip at her fingers and lick her face.

Even during his nap she loves to pet him.

Gunner is under the slide and the girls went down together!

She is warming up to him! She actually seeks him out to play and pet him.

I never thought I would hold him so he could fall asleep on me.
It was adorable.

Rain won't make us stay inside!

Ugh. trying to spot clean the carpet. Our white carpet.
With taking him out every 30 minutes to go pee there is a lot more dirt that gets tracked in.
(We would stay outside all day, but these last four days have been rainy).
And not to mention the number of times he went pee on the carpet. Ugh.

Sleeping by the sliding glass door.

Diaper changes for Emma just got harder for us!
I usually have her on the couch now just so I don't have to worry about Gunner making her upset.

Jeremy got on the floor and Gunner would come and jump on him.

Sleeping by the sliding glass door again.

Emma playing tug o war with Gunner. 

If you can see it, he is black so it's hard to see in pictures, but he is all sprawled out.
Just sleeping away.

Emma letting him lick her. This is a HUGE step for her.

I didn't know how hard a puppy would be! I am just constantly worried about him peeing and pooping in the house! He will be an outside dog once he gets a bit bigger and stops whining when we put him out! Two days ago I had a really good puppy day. NO accidents inside!!!! It was awesome. But that day was not a good mommy day :( Emma got her hand smashed and burnt. Both while I was taking Gunner outside. So because I had all my attention on Gunner, my girls were suffering :( 

Emma is healing and Gunner is getting better. Right now he still sleeps a lot, so after he wakes up I just take him out right then. It is a big change for us! But in the end, the girls are totally obsessed and that's the first thing they want when they wake up. Gunner!!!!

Jim Here!

We had the pleasure of having Jim (Jeremy's dad) here for a few days. 

He flew in Thursday night and left Sunday night. 

Friday: Park! 

Carly has been asking to go to a park all week! 

Since we got home on Sunday night and Jeremy returned to work that Monday. 

I had so much laundry and cleaning and grocery shopping to do before Jim came on Thursday. 

The girls loved how Grandpa would lay on the floor and they would 'kick' him. 

We got the dog house in the mail and so he helped put it together. 

Carly and Emma used it as a play house.

We went on a walk. Emma rode in the wagon for most of it and then got out
and held Grandpa's hand.

Saturday: Field of Dreams!
We actually met some of their cousins there who live in Wisconsin. Rob and Katie with their little one Ellie.

We only drove an hour and they drove two. It worked for us. We were there by 9:30 and we were the first ones! It was nice to have the field to ourselves. Carly loved running the bases.

And of course their favorite, was playing in the dirt.

Ellie, Carly, and Emma.
It was pink day!

Grandpa and Carly :)

Love this picture. 

The rocks were another favorite for these three girls. It was fun watching them 'play' together.

Carly loved climbing the bleachers and jumping holding Grandpa's hands.

For some reason she wouldn't land on her feet. Just her bum. 

Costa Rica!

In January Tyler (Jeremy's brother) and his wife Jodi invited us to go to Costa Rica. They found a deal on Groupon through a company called Monkey Tours. After convincing (Jeremy) to go, we booked it and bought our flights! 

We made it to Costa Rica!! When we got to the airport in San Jose we had to go through customs, which took forever. Tyler and Jodi landed about a half hour before us but were the first plane there and it didn't take them long to get through. They waited for us. We first spotted Jodi when she was walking back and forth on the other side of customs to try and spot us. We waved!

We got our luggage, we flew Southwest and so we brought a big suitcase and a small basketball bag.

Outside the airport there were all these different drivers with papers with our names on them. "Yody" and I found our drivers and we each got in our own vans to be driven to the Double Tree by Hilton hotel.

Tyler said as we were waving good bye, 'well if we don't see you again, have a fun trip in Costa Rica!' haha it just seemed really shady to us that we found our names on a sheet of paper not signing anything or showing any kind of i.d. and then getting into different vans with complete strangers.  But it was fine! We both ended up at the same hotel and were fine. 

Jeremy and Tyler in front of a super nice car we found on our walk to find some food.

Our first meal in Costa Rica. Jeremy got a burrito and I got a chalupa. They were both really good.
Their main food in Costa Rica are beans and rice. 

In most of our rooms we had two separate beds. In Tyler and Jodi's they usually had a king size. haha. They came into our room and we played Phase 10 and talked.

Our first first from Costa Rica to try. We bought bananas because they are one of their main exports. Their pineapple is a 'melt in your mouth' kind. It was sooooo good.

The first night we walked over to the country club where the temporary pool was for us, only to find out that they didn't have a hot tub. So we walked back over to our hotel and found a hot tub (the pool was being renovated) and we sat in the hot tub for a few hours just talking.

Just about every night we were in our own rooms at 9:00. We were always so tired!

Breakfast before our first day in Costa Rica! Every day we were given breakfast at the hotel/resort we were staying.

The entrance to our hotel. It is open! No doors!

Day 2: Poas Volcano
Hiked to the rim of Poas Volcano in Poas Volcano Park. From Poas, we went to La Paz Waterfall Gardens. US News and World Report ranked this nature park among Costa Rica's top attractions. We saw butterflies, jaguars, and tons of birds.

They call this the Poor Man's Umbrella.

Hiking to the volcano. It was more of a walk on a paved road. 

Jeremy, me, Jodi, and Tyler. Don't worry, we took a few more pictures but Jeremy's selfie camera didn't work. Oops.

Costa Rica at it's finest.  Super green, leafy treetops, and mountainous.

Jeremy and I brought two pairs of sunglasses for each of us, somehow we forgot them in our car! Dang it!
We each bought a new pair.

I love Jodi's face in this. 

Their claws are huge! They wrapped around my whole wrist.

Pretty bird.

They had a beautiful butterfly pavilion. They kept landing on us while we were walking through.

The jaguars were fun to watch. The keeper had a piece of meat on the end of the stick and was raining it high so the jaguar would jump up on the cage.

Some of their cows looked like this! Donkey ears with a camel hump. So weird. But most of the cows that we saw while driving were normal looking.

Catching some waterfall. 

It was just gorgeous. Sometimes pictures can't depict how beautiful something is, and this is one of those times. 

 Day 3: Arenal Volcano
Whitewater rafting on the Balsa River. In the evening we spent in the Bahldi Hot Springs which was part of our hotel.

Rafting was so fun! We had six people in one raft. Jeremy, Tyler, Jodi, and I and then we had another couple from our group Jo and Kathrine. None of us flipped out. There were a few parts that we could jump in the water and just float with the raft. Jeremy has video from this. We were able to borrow a go pro from his buddy which came in handy for this.

We had a guide name Adan during the whole rafting trip. He would yell 'forward' and we would all try and paddle forward. He would yell 'stop' and we would stop. He would yell 'back' and we would paddle backward. I was glad I was sitting closest to him because it was hard to hear him if you were at the front. Sometimes he would yell 'down' and we would all get down in the middle of the raft because we would be hitting a rock and he didn't want us to flip.

Before the raft trip.

Adan, our guide for rafting, with us. 

(sigh) Costa Rica!!!!!
I love that the flag is in this picture. They are very proud of their flag. Our tour guide, Giovanni, had a little strip of it on his pants. 

A typical picture of a house. Gates on everything, big fences, and no grass.

Ice cream! 

Day 4 & 5: Guanacaste
Beach days! We were at Samara Beach. Our little villas we stayed in were right on the beach.

We walked '20 minutes' to a little town to get some food. I say '20 minutes' because Costa Ricans have no sense of time. When they talk how long something will take they always talk in how far it will be. The walk was definitely 45 minutes.

Samara Beach
We actually didn't swim here.
There was hard coral at the shallow part that killed our feet. The sand was a darker color too.

This is where we spent most of our time while here at our resort. The pool! We just swam and talked and at one point we played a game of volleyball.

Making our second '20 minute' walk to get some food.

Nothing like eating lunch on the beach.
It was so hot here! I put sunscreen on four times this day and still got a little burnt.
I kept getting burnt on the top of my forehead.

 Day 6: Monteverde Cloud Forest
This is the day we went ziplining!!!! This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. It was so high up, so fast, and so beautiful. Oh and SOOO fun. Probably the most adventurous thing I have ever done. Jeremy has video of this from the go pro. We did eight different lines. Six of them by ourselves and the last two were so long that we needed to double up people so we could make it the whole way. But with more weight you go SO much faster. I was holding onto my handles and hooked, and then Jeremy held onto his handles and was hooked, and he wrapped his legs around me.

Ziplining is definitely something that looks more scary than it actually is. The first bunny hill of the trail was the scariest to start out. But once you did that it was SO fun after that. I would say being so high up and waiting in line was nerve racking as well. We had to climb flights of stairs a few times to get to the top of the tower to get hooked on the line to zipline to the next spot.

This was taken after we went ziplining.

Their money had sloths on it!

 Day 7: Manuel Antonio National Park
The National Park was a little hike into the beach. This is where we saw three different kinds of monkeys (white face monkey, howler monkey, squirrel monkey) and a sloth!

Our room. Two beds of course.

Our view outside our room. Leafy treetops. Just beautiful.

It is tradition to walk this bridge. We saw crocodiles in the water. Some people were throwing some meat to make them move around. 

Our second sloth that we saw this trip! We saw our first one while rafting. He is just sleeping in the tree with his arm over his head.

We didn't spent much time on this beach.
But it was gorgeous! The sand was a lot lighter color and the water was warm.

Our last night! Hotel Tramonto.

Our stay the last night. The ocean is beyond the balcony behind us! We spent some time in the ocean and then played games over on that balcony for our last night.

Our last sunset in Costa Rica.

Jeremy and Tyler catching some waves. These were the biggest waves we saw! 

We are a little more tan. A little more ready for summer. And a little more in love.

On the plane on the way to Costa Rica, I was scratching Jeremy's back. I said it's weird just worrying about him! He said it's kind of nice. haha.
Thanks for an amazing trip Tyler and Jodi! Costa Rica CHECK!