I’ve shared before how important it is for my mental well being to take the time to enjoy the little things that bring me peace and a feeling of joy. Life in the last week hasn’t been easy in our household: having elderly parents is not for the weak! One of the top things that brings me joy is the beauty of God’s creation. Morning drives to the middle school can offer some beautiful views. Last week, we had a couple foggy mornings that gave the landscape a cool vibe. Going over the bridge always offers a pretty view: seeing the steam/fog rise from the river is cool, isn’t it?…

We had some magnificient sunsets on the beach this year! Of course, there were a couple cloudy nights and no wondrous sight, but the last sunset sure made up for it. I realized that I had not written this post as I was finishing my last Thanksgiving beach trip post for next Thursday: it would have been strange to publish this with one sentence and no pictures! We were greeted with a beautiful sunset when we arrived at the beach the first day. We even had time to drop off our luggage in the condo before walking down to the water. My oldest took this beautiful shot of his dad…

30A is a county road in South Walton County, between Destin and Panama City Beach. It is known for some of its upscale towns like Seaside, Alys Beach and Rosemary Beach. We have been staying at the Adagio condos for the past 4 years in Blue Mountain which is about 5 miles from Watercolor and Seaside. We always enjoy biking there if we rent bikes. On this particular day, we had not rented bikes yet so we drove there. We’ve always like the park in Watercolor with its waterway and fountains. Watercolor also has a pretty blue fountain that appears on my beach outfit post where I take a picture…

I had two goals for myself on this Thanksgiving trip to the beach: soak in as many sunrises as I could and make sure to move more. I was very grateful to fulfill both goals. The first 3 mornings were the best for admiring the sunrises as the cloud coverage was perfect. One morning, I couldn’t see anything while I slept in on another morning. I couldn’t believe I slept more than 10 hours that night! One way to exercise on the beach is to take a walk: I definitely do not run on the beach, it is difficult enough for me to walk on the sand, so running is…

Last month, we stopped by the botanical gardens after church to take advantage of our yearly pass one more time. It was before the scarecrow exhibit, but the pumpkins were out. It was a beautiful day and I took blog pictures for our Ageless Style link up (see my post here). There is less in bloom in the fall so I end up taking pictures of the cool lilypads. We took our time to find all of the frogs in the little pond. The large lily pads are so cool. For the first time I paid attention to the different stages of opening: very cool! Of course, I didn’t take…

One of the places I wanted to visit in the La Fortuna area was this park with hanging bridges. We did not visit the waterfall that is well known (La Fortuna Waterfall) as I wasn’t sure how busy it would be and I wanted to feel more like a local than a tourist. That is one of the reason we did not eat in town but at the resort and the roadside sodas. We had wonderful weather for this outing and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I always worry about how the children will react to walking for a couple of hours but the hanging bridges and wildlife kept it interesting.…

When choosing a place for us to stay near Arenal Volcano, it was very difficult to make a decision: all resorts have incredible views of the volcano and most had great reviews. I ended up choosing this particular resort, Arenal Spring Resort and Spa because of the pictures of the pools. This vacation was definitely not a budget friendly vacation (accomodations and food sure added up) but we were able to save some money only having to purchase one plane ticket (+ taxes for the other 5) thanks to Delta Sky Miles. Picture perfect: I told my family this picture is like a postcard: what a great spot to put…

Ah, the joys of traveling using GPS in a foreign country! After this particular day’s adventure and a conversation with a local person, we now understand the struggle and harships we encountered! We traveled from Manuel Antonio to La Fortuna for the second part of our trip. We used the app Maps.me, a map system that uses your phone satellite location instead of wifi to travel since we did not want to pay international fees. At the car rental, we were encouraged to use Waze instead of Google but from what I understood, all apps would have probably ended up with the same detours. We departed from Quepos before 9…