What began as purely speculative, became reality when we got the time off from our work and bought plane tickets to fly halfway around the world to Sri Lanka, which is just off the southeastern portion of India in the Indian Ocean. We flew Singapore Airlines out of San Francisco and changed planes on a four hour layover in Singapore before continuing on to the capital of Sri Lanka in Colombo. While in Singapore, we enjoyed the free movie theatre, sunflower garden, and Wii video game room. We pretty much had no idea what time it was since we had left San Francisco at 8am and had pretty much watched movies, ate, played video games, read books, and "tried to sleep" during the sixteen hour flight. We arrived in Sri Lanka around 1am, which was good for us being really tired and going to bed after a little conversation with our wonderful hosts and the reason we went all the way to Sri Lanka: Aaron and Kaarli (we would see Kaleb and Logan after we woke up and after they got out of school). Then we were off on our adventure to our four destinations across the island, which included some amazing hotel resorts, a visit to our compassion child and compassion site, safaris, surfing, trapeze swinging, bike riding, food eating, temples visiting, and mountains climbing.
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| Enjoying some leg room and space before the long flight. |
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| Three meals on the airplane over 16 hours and unlimited access to food in the galley... |
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| Putting ourselves in the video screen (you can see us on the other side). |
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| The long awaited Lego building with the cousins: Kaleb and Logan. |
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| A big no-no before we knew it was, standing with our back to the Buddha in Central Park in Colombo. |
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| Garrett reads a night-time story to the cousins and even Aaron and Kaarli listen in. |
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| Looking out into the Indian Ocean from a bridge we walked on, below were numerous black crabs. |
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| Arrival at our first hotel: water slides that we could all go down at once. |
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| Standing in line for the trapeze, belts on. |
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| What a platter we are sharing on date night while the boys were in Kids Club watching movies. |
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| Experiencing golf at the hotel...we were dangerous. |
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| Beautiful sunset at the resort. |
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| Adult table for breakfast...and the kids were not too far away at the next table. |
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| Adult bike ride along the coast with a guide--good workout and great sights. |
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| Kids club: attack the parents, don't let them take us away? |
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| The entrance to our second national park where we will enjoy our first safari. |
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| Wild boar and spotted deer |
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| There were lots of opportunities to study herpetology. |
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| Sloth bear approaches: witnessed by Joy, Bryce, and Griffin. |
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| Our two safari vehicles meet up: there is Aaron, Joy, Bryce, and Griffin. |
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| Thanksgiving dinner was spent on the beach with a special meal and service. |
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| The glow lights became a hit with the kids as we waited an hour for our food, even though we pre-ordered our meal at noon...so the kids also dug a huge hole in the sand, that one of the waiters stepped in while bringing our food, fortunately he didn't drop any of our food. |
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| cousin fun in the ball pit |
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| There was also cousin fun on our family van rides around the island. |
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| The hotel water slides, especially while waiting for meals, was a huge hit. |
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| Loving our time together. |
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| Baby turtles just makes you smile. |
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| More learning about sea turtle on the island at the hatchery. |
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| Drawing with the cousins and teaching them some of our favorites was a favorite activity. |
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| Watching a new sport: Cricket. |
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| Visiting the historic sites of Galle. |
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| Waterfall in Pundaloya, the site of our Compassion Adventure. |
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Pink Angel Trumpet Flowers
Joy became a bit of a flower fanatic on the trip. |
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| Enjoying some local food for lunch before our Compassion visit using the boys' favorite Sri Lanka utensils: their fingers. |
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| Selfie with the Compassion kids. |
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| They all wanted a turn taking their pictures with us. |
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| We all made instant friends. |
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| Several of the girls made special flower arrangements for us. This special lady handmade me a special bouquet of flowers. |
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| Visiting the cousins at their British School. |
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| An amazing view from the hotel. |
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| The monkeys were a favorite to watch. But we didn't get too close as we didn't spring for the $500 rabies vaccines. |
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| We had several opportunities to learn first hand about Hinduism and Buddhism at several temple sites on our journey. |
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| Group picture before our hike to the top of Sigirya. |
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| The base of the temple where the lion's head was. |
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| We climbed up and down a few stairs. |
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| Romantic photo in the infinity pool. |
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| We were able to take in two different safaris to continue our zoology experience. |
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| There weren't always seat belts on our safaris, so we had to hold on to our precious cargo. |
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| Now this elephant wants a selfie with us too! |
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| We survived the mudslinging adventure with a great driver who managed to not get stuck in the mud. |
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| More cousin power. |
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| We all made it too the top. Our guide made it in flip flops and at times even carried Logan on his back. |
