Saturday, September 30, 2006

Where did the time go?

Wow--hard to believe its been a month and a half since we last posted something here. After the ceasefire, we left for vacation-- had an incredibly busy 3 weeks in NY(3 days), Costa Rica (9 days) and Chicago(7 days). Then back to Haifa where we got back to work and all of a sudden 3 more weeks goes by!

Anyway, along the way we saw lots of friends, family, nature and animals. In Costa Rica particularly we saw just about every cool animal in the country: howler monkeys, white face monkeys, 2 and 3 toed sloths, baby turtles running from their nests in the beach for their first-ever swim in the ocean, toucans, big irredescent blue butterflies and the list goes on (although not a whole lot longer). The good news is we captured most of them on film--the bad news is that most of it was on video! So unless we have the time to capture it to YouTube, you'll have to take our word for it. We do however have a few photos to share of the Costa Rican part of our trip and just a few of the animals we saw!


Costa Rica is an incredibly beautiful country. Here is a view of the mountains we saw while we were on our way to the eastern coast of the country.


Here is one of two baby turles that we saw heading to the ocean! You can't believe how cool it was to see them getting more and more excited as they got closer to the surf. GREAT video!


This grasshopper was about as big as a car!


Jordan and Shana walking along the beach...


We got caught in the rain during a walk around the beach. Brian toughed it out while Christine, Shana and Jordan tried to find protection under huge leaves. I don't think it helped much ; )


This just about sums up how much we enjoyed the trip!


The requisite awesome family photo.


OK--this is an incredible photo of a bat. This is actually from back in Haifa. In mid-September, there is a holiday in Israel where virtually everyone in the County (including children under the age of 3), shoot off fireworks. It's really fun (as long as you like that kind of thing and have good reflexes to dodge the incoming firecrackers that are hurled everywhere by children) but the bats just go nuts from the confusion. We were walking home from work that night and the bats were swirling overhead. Just for fun we thought we'd try to capture them using the flash. This was the result--pretty cool shot!!!