KTMusings

I need to stop telling you that Lauren is asleep in her crib... She always wakes up right after I post! We had a lights-on party at midnight last night for over an hour. Anyway, it's all kind of a blur but Jeff got up around 9 and went down to eat; brought me up some eggs and fruit. And coffee (good man!). We got ready and packed up. New arrangement for the trains today (I thought it'd be to hard to get the two suitcases strapped together on and off trains)... suitcase with stroller attached and suitcase with hiking backpack attached and then I rolled the little one and carried Lauren. It worked pretty well. I keep thinking we have so much stuff! But glad we have Lauren with us even if it means lots of extra stuff. I am typing these updates on my phone, btw, and the autocorrect is super annoying, in case you see and super weird words thrown in. So the trains went well. We caught the train Zurich>Bern first. It was an express and only took about an hour, which was nice. L...

Last night was a little rough, but we all made it. Slept off and on from 8p to 1030a. I was awake with Lauren for an 11pm play date and Jeff spent lots of time with her sleeping on his chest. She slept great from 4-730, woke to eat and slept again until 1030. I read for a few minutes after I fed her at 730 and then thought "why am I the only one awake?!" and went back to sleep too. By the time we were all up and showered it was close up noon. We walked back towards the train station and then along the river. Found a place for lunch, we stopped cause we saw people eating fondue, but then both ended up getting something else to eat. Jeff had a brat and rosti ("glorified hashbrowns" he said) and I had crepes with spinach and cheese and a fried egg on top.  Everything is expensive like we had heard; each of our meals was about $25.  Good, though. Lauren has been trying tons of new foods this trip...I had a short rib sandwich in the airport that she loved! The beef was...

Well, we made it. I will say, the last 45 minutes of the flight I wondered what we were doing and why we didn't just stay home. Lauren was an absolute trooper, as usual, but between all the people watching at gate, the excitement of boarding, serving drinks and dinner, by the time they turned the lights out on the plane she was wired and over tired. She took 2 20 minute naps with me and Jeff got her to sleep for about an hour. Between that she was mostly content, but occasionally made us get up and rock with her. Anyway, international flights with little sleep are bad enough, but with her Jeff and I got less than an hour of sleep each. Arrived about 30 minutes early, got thru customs and got luggage uneventfully. Then Jeff lost a contract (luckily packed extras) and I looked at all our luggage (Jeff did an amazing job bungee cording the stroller to one suitcase (great idea, Dad!) and Lauren's suitcase to the other, so he can pull all that with two hands while I carry Lauren i...

We are going to Switzerland! Tonight I put Lauren in her hiking backpack to get it all adjusted for her. And decided to give her her passport so she was all ready to go :) We fly direct from O'Hare to Zurich this Friday evening, landing Saturday mid-morning. We have two nights in Zurich at the Marriott - right on the river and close to the train station. We can walk to Banhoffstrasse and old town. We might visit the zoo, botanical gardens, University of Zurich. Hopefully it just gives us a couple of days to get acclimated. Monday 9/4 we take the train to Wengen, in the mountains above the Lauterbrunnen valley, south of Interlaken - check it out on Google maps 3D . We have 6 nights at the Beausite Park Hotel . We plan to take the trains to neighboring towns (Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, Murren) and mountains (Mannlichen, Kleine Scheidegg, First) and do a lot of hiking. The weather looks rainy for most of our trip, but hopefully we can still do lots of sightseeing. Sunday 9...

Here are a bunch of photos from our trip. They aren't necessarily a great photography effort (it's hard to get good photos in a dark rainforest :) ), but you get the gist of what we did!  http://www.shutterfly.com/ share/received/welcome.sfly? sid=0AZuWzNq3YsWb7I Here are a video of the windy roads in Manuel Antonio and two of Jeff zip lining: https://plus.google.com/ photos/108218433780811850698/ albums/6007516762079499713? authkey=CN38gI23uoC_ogE Enjoy!

Last night we had one of our favorite dinners...we first stopped at a place that turned out to be Mexican, which neither of us was really in the mood for, so we just had a drink there. Then we went a few doors down to an Italian place I'd heard was good. Turns out I'd heard right. Jeff had pizza, I had pasta (and fulfilled a huge craving I'd been having for red sauce...I think I'm low on sodium with all the sweating, cause that's all I've been craving!). And our waiter was fantastic...younger guy who was very chatty. I asked if they learned English in school and he said "no, you are my teachers!" Anyway, they gave us brueschetta on the house, so we left a huge tip since he'd been so fun to talk to. So, either he thinks we left a nice tip or can't convert colones to dollars correctly :) Today we left the hotel around 1030 for our atv tour. I just made coffee and read in bed before then while Jeff slept in. There were just three of us in our gro...

Zip lining. Was. Incredible. Easily one of the top five coolest things I've ever done! We went to the Lava Lounge for dinner last night. They had incredible nachos! I wasn't feeling great over dinner, so I crashed with two sleeping pills when we got home. I was nervous for today and wanted to sleep. I still didn't sleep great (and had crazy dreams about taking Grammy to church and her sliding off the pews...??). Anyway, wake-up call at 630 (Jeff was a barrel of fun at that time, let me tell ya) and the van came to get us at 7...only it didn't come for us, it came for another couple and there was lots of confusion about our reservation. It took a while to get it sorted out, but it all ended up working out well. We started at 8 with the zip lines with the other couple from our hotel. All the guys working the platforms rode up on the tram with us, we were definitely the first to go. They get you in gear, then you take the tram to the top, and then you see this crazy long...