NFC Chapionships

I came home early from work this morning not feeling good. I spent the rest of the day in bed.  Emily came up to watch the NFC championship game between the Seahawks and the Packers.  I dozed on and off in bed during the game and thought that it was pretty quiet out it the living room.   I checked the score and the seahawks were down.  I turned the TV on to watch the last quarter and the last two minutes of the game were pretty intense and then overtime for the win!  Brandon was so excited, he came in and booked an airline ticket for the game!  He will go down and stay with his best friend Brandon Carr.  I came out of my room to snapped this photo after the game, not sure where Tabitha was.

Sledding

 

 

We have had a great winter this year weather wise.  We need the moisture but we have been loving the warmer temps.  We had a huge storm Monday and the girls really wanted to go sledding.  We have a small hill just up the road we took the girls to today along with out friends kids.  The kids had a great time.  We used Brandon's ice fishing sled along with two tubes from the White's.

Rain Forest tour

 

The reason we were in Panama was Brandon had some work meetings with the insurance company that his company uses for their buses.  We flew out a few days before to enjoy time by ourselves.  Today we met up with the group and went on an organized tour of the rain forest.  We went up a gondola ride to a overlook that you could see the canal.  We saw a Toucan, Iguana and some other rodent type animal running around the ground.  The view was pretty at the top.  We had lunch and then took a boat road out on the canal.  That was cool being out there among the large boats.  We went to several areas where the guide would coax monkeys out for us to view.  We saw Howler Monkeys and Capuchin,  There was another type of Monkey but our guide could not get it to come out of the trees.  The Capuchin at one point jumped on our boat for a quick second to grab the banana the guide had.   It was a fun day!

Panama Canal

We took a tour of the panama canal today.  It was very interesting.  Boats have to wait up to at least 24 hours before entering the canal.  The last two pictures were taken from our hotel room balcony and you can see boats lined up.   It can cost $50,000-500,000 depending the on the size of the boat.  It takes about 8 hours to get through once entering the locks.  The locks systems was introduced by the US but the French had the idea of the canal but ran out of money to build and so many workers were getting sick.  The water way the boats travel through Panama are two man made lakes whose water come solely from the rain.  They just celebrated 100 years of operation in 2014.  They are working on another entry lock that should be done in a year, you can see in the first picture the dirt hill in the background where they are working.  We then walked around old town, some of which is fixed up really nice and other buildings are completely run down but they are slowly working on it.  There was a great view of the downtown Panama City, which most of the high rises are residential.

Snorkel

Our hotel is on the Pacific side of Panama.  I had read that the snorkeling is better on the Caribbean side.  The company picked us up at our hotel in the morning and drove us about an hour and a half right through Panama to the other side.  It was fun to see more of the country.  Driving through a small town we drove passed to sister missionaries walking down the road.  We had fun snorkeling, seeing some good fish, but wished there were more.  The water was very choppy and I got a little seasick out snorkeling.  We enjoyed a yummy lunch and then drove over to the town of Portobelo.  We walked around buying some jewelry from one of the stands set up.  We found a fort that dates back to the 17th century that was built to protect them from pirates.  This area was very popular for transatlantic trading.

Day #1 in Panama

 

 We spent the day relaxing by the pool and reading books.  The weather was perfect.  The swimming pools were just the ride temperature to cool off after laying in the sun.  We did walk down to the ocean but it is not a very nice beach.  The view is great but the sand was kind of muddy.  We then had a nice dinner and walked around the hotel grounds.  It was so nice to just take it easy and not worry about anyone else!

New Years Day

 We woke up to this weather this morning and drove to the airport for our flight to Panama City.  We had a lay over in Atlanta...

...and landed to this weather!  It is going to be a fun couple of days.