Costa Rica: Anniversary trip!

We got back from Costa Rica last week and it was the most amazing week of the year! We went during over 1 year wedding anniversary and about one month prior to Trevor deploying to Afghanistan, it was truly perfect timing! I posted pics on Facebook already, but wanted to have a few on my blog as well!

These pics are from the first day we got to our resort in Guanacaste, Costa Rica! This was our little private villa that we had in the back of the resort and our view from the villa :) This was absolute serenity... love!

Hubby decided to rent a car and drive us around the Costa Rica countryside, which was so fun! What an incredible experience to be driving around a foreign country on your own...we got to see different beach towns and local areas! Def a fun day :)

These pictures are from an all day tour that we went on that took us to the Arenal Volcano, one of the most active volcanos in the world.  It was amazing! It was about 3 hours away and we took a tour bus up the mountain! These pics are from the hotsprings at the base of the volcano as well...it was so so cool! 25 different pools of hotsprings with 12 different temperatures...it was SO relaxing!

These are right before we went ziplining! We rode on the gondola up the mountain and into the rainforest...this was such a CRAZY experience to be in a REAL rainforest...when we looked down, we couldn't even see the ground, just trees because we were on top of them all :) Amazing views!

Wheeeee! This was absolutely insane! We ended up zipling down about 8 different cables! We started off with two "test" cables to make sure we knew what we were doing and check the safety of the equipment. On the third cable, we came out into the middle of the rainforest and I just remember thinking "Oh my goodness, I could actually die right now if I fell" and I was terrified to look down. Trevor said I pretty much screamed the entire way through the rainforest LOL! But in my defense, he was completely freaked out at that first real cable too ;) We also got stuck in a thunderstorm on about the 4th cable...absolutely terrifying because we were about 700 feet in the air in the middle of the rainforest with rain, thunder, and lightening! One of the cables we actually zipped approximately 2,200 feet at about 50mph in pouring down rain...

Just us :) We got to take a TON of pictures while we there with my new camera and Trevor was so very patient with me ;) He knows that pictures are so important to me, especially for our anniversary and right before he leaves.

This trip was incredible. It was exactly what we needed for our marriage and for the pre-deployment stage that we were about to begin. Our life at Fort Hood has been pretty fast paced since we got married and I moved here about a year ago and this vacation was such a blessing. We were able to shut the rest of the world out and just focus on "us" time. Instead of laying on the couch on our phones or laptops at night, we sat outside on our porch and listened to to the waves hit the rocks and state out at the ocean outside of our villa. Thank you God for providing such a relaxing and much needed vacation for our marriage :)

A late post from last Tuesday...Preparing our hearts

Let me just start by saying that this week has been one of the hardest weeks we've had in a while. Our dear friends who are like family to us here at Fort Hood are about to walk through the most difficult thing they have ever experienced. Trevor and Dale have been friends pretty much since they joined the USAF and have been stationed together for 3 different assignments around the U.S. When Trevor and I first started dating, Quinn I became close, very quickly! I remember when Trevor told me he wanted the 4 of us to have dinner together, I immediately started "stalking" her on Facebook and Trevor thought I was nuts and threatened to tell her about my craziness. Little did I know, Quinn was doing the same "stalking" as I was...all that stalking ended as we very quickly became close! They were a huge part of our dating relationship and me getting used to being in the Fort Hood area and were our only friends when we got married and I moved her. Dale was the best man in our wedding and they were a huge part of our special day. Once we moved here, we all became even closer having "family" dinners once a week. Their precious girlies, Isabella and Sophia very quickly became like our own little girls. We got to experience being the first "friends" to Izzy and got to see a lot of Sophia's "firsts"...steps, talking, etc...what a blessing it has been to have those girls in our lives :)

I remember in Dec/January Quinn had just not seemed herself. I started getting a bit concerned because we hadn't seen them nearly as often. Then one night, Quinn called me in a panic. She told me that they finally took a pregnancy test to see if she was pregnant and sure enough she was...since she was on the IUD, she began freaking out because of the possible effects of getting pregnant on it. She told me that her and Dale were heading to the ER to find out what the next step was. To make a long story short, it turned into a long journey for the next 9 months.

It's now Sunday and I wrote this blog on Tuesday with every intention of finishing it before Lilianna was born. Unfortunately I didn't, and now I'm not quite ready to blog about this weekend. I was so emotional on Tuesday that I broke down in tears 3 times and felt sick to my stomach all day. So I am going to end this blog how I started it... I started it by giving some background to our friendship with Dale and Quinn and I'm going to end it by saying that best friends are very hard to find. We are so blessed to say that we have found best friends here and we have now shared some the most intimate moments of our lives together. We are so incredibly grateful for their friendship. To be continued... I have to end by simply saying that God is so good to us.

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas

This was a recipe of my mama's that I made for the first time this week...delicious! :) 

Ingredients

12 Corn tortillas

4 cups green chili sauce

3 cups minced chicken

1 lb Monterrey Jack

3/4 cup onion

1-2 cups sour cream

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon flour

1 cup water

1 garlic clove

1 cup green chiles

Sauce: Saute garlic and onion in olive oil. Blend in flour, add water, and green chiles. Add salt. Bring to boil, then summer for 5 minutes.

Casserole: Heat tortillas in oil until flexible. Mix chicken with 1 cup chile sauce. Put 1/4 cup of mixture on each tortilla and roll up. Place rolled tortillas in baking dish. Cover with shredded cheese and onion. Pour rest of sauce over enchiladas and bake @ 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Top with sour cream and bake an extra 10 minutes. 

Makes 6-8 servings :) Enjoy!