Wedding on the beach... and Isla eats a giant beetle.

In High School Taylor lived with these cousins for 6 months.  He went to their school and played sports and made friends with all their friends.  So when Maren decided to get married in Costa Rica, Taylor was all excited to see her and the family, but also a lot of old high school friends.
Maren was gorgeous and perfect for the beautiful beach setting.

Maren and Pedro were beaming and the wedding was just perfect.

Unfortunately this little princess and one of Taylor's cousin's 1 year olds weren't that inspired by the scenery so Taylor and I missed a lot of the ceremony while we took them someone they could explore.

The family.

After the wedding we all hung out on the beach waiting for the sun to set.

Isla wanted to get down in the sad and get dirty but was placated a little by being allowed to play "where's Isla".

Peaceful and perfect.

Not so peaceful- but definitely perfect.

After the sun set, they broke out Chinese lanterns for everyone to light.

I will confess I was singing the Tangled theme song the whole time in my head :)

Then it was time to party.

And I do mean party.  Lots of food.  Lots of drinking- which was interesting to be around.  Lots of dancing.  And lots of bugs.  This is Costa Rica after all and the smell of food and all the bright lights certainly attracted them.  Isla was good for a while- eating, dancing with people, playing my iphone, but then she'd been held for so many hours that I just knew she wanted to get down and crawl.  And since it was dark and we were almost going to leave I decided she could get dirty.  So I set her down to crawl on a wood porch.  I will admit I was talking and only somewhat supervising her so when she crawled over to a half-dollar sized object on the ground and popped it into her mouth, I walked over calmly and made her spit it out into my hand.  When she deposited a giant beetle in my hand I about had a heart attach.  And that was the end of crawling.

The next morning we met up for breakfast and then everyone had to head out.  So sad we don't live closer to these fun people but at least we'll get to see them at Christmas.