Back to Thomasland, Kite Flying, and the Beach at Marshfield

Back to Thomasland! Two years later and they are more refined since 2015. Elia is at the ideal age and Curie, while she didn’t want to go initially, also had a great time. 

The girls were old enough to ride by themselves for the most part and it was really cute to see Curie taking care of Elia on each of the rides. It meant the adults did not ride on as much. Elia was so proud to be above the ride height.

More fun in Marshfield.  We should explain, the babushkas are because it was so cold the one day we went to the ocean. And the bottom photo we said “it is time for a silly picture,” to which the kids immediately reacted, but the grandparents perhaps not so much. 🙂 The contrast is fantastic.

Strangely the most relaxing thing on our trip was flying a kite as high as it would go.

Huntley Meadows 2017

We have been waiting until the girls were old enough to walk the boardwalk without worrying that they might fall in. They loved the walk, especially the look-out observation tower which they used as a castle. We saw a lot of animals, more than normal, even baby beavers though those pictures didn’t really come out.

We saw a number of different reptiles. Here are a lizard and three snakes.

Amphibians, three kinds of frogs and three kinds of turtles if you look carefully you can see the turtle’s whole head.

And insects, we don’t have a picture of the dragonfly and butterfly, but we saw a lot. The spider is in front of our house.

Birds, we didn’t get a great picture of the ducks.

Crawfish, Boating, Bowling, Friends, and More…

The crawfish were very active, it was like Candace said, it was like “the claw” in Toy Story, every time you came up to them, all of them would raise their claws.

The girls loved it, Elia said “I crawfisher-Belle.” Both of them took their job very seriously fishing out every live crawfish and putting them in pots. They took out ten dead ones, without a flinch.

In the sink to be washed, sorted and ready to cook, cooking, and done.

Sunday we went to Burke Lake after finding out we missed the Tulip Festival this year. You can only have three people in a boat so we took out two and took the ones with motors. Very relaxing, blowing bubbles, having a snack on the water and generally having a good time.

You would think boating was enough but the kids wanted to go “balling,” luckily Nahal and Navi are game for anything.

Misc-more… we had dinner with Isabella and her family on Friday at Chuy’s, saw Bella’s play Get Smart at her middle school, had play dates, made popsicles, saw the Tamanahas, drew pictures (yes, we are drawing My Little Pony with little colored pencils for the girls), and had dinner at A&J’s with Navi and Nahal.

Disneyland Castle Made Beautiful

Anyone who has gone to Disneyland after Disney World is usually disappointed by Sleeping Beauty’s castle because it is smaller and older and less impressive than Cinderella’s Castle (note we  have not been to the other Disney properties to compare other castles, but we will get to them). But the other night when walking through Disneyland we saw Sleeping Beauty’s castle in a new light, literally. Here it is adorned with lights to make it look like it is covered in snow and frozen, and for comparison, a night shot of Cinderella’s castle taken a few years back.

Here it is by itself for a closer look:

Miranda’s Drawing

Miranda drew this before dinner at Curry House, Albert is the one with pink eye

At three years old, Elia has the appropriate level of sass, when talking about my pink eye, she spoke up and said, “don’t touch dada’s yucky poo poo eye.” And then proceeded to laugh knowing she told a funny.

Staycation

14100318_10209838113565226_1514742232795248122_n

What do you do when your house is too messy, and things seem a bit too overwhelming to clean and be responsible?

Staycation! We went to our go-to hotel where we get regular upgrades to jr. suites and got an amazing deal for $71 a night. We then arrived and were surprised to be given, for the first time at this hotel, an upgrade to the Presidential suite. Living room, dining room, bedroom, palatial bathroom and another half-bath.

All-you-can-eat sushi lunch, two visits to the pool, afghani dinner in, great sleep, breakfast buffet, no phones or Internet, no chores, and no desire to see the sights; more relaxing than vacation. 🙂

Steve and Julie partook of the fun; thanks for coming out guys!

#spgplatinum #whyweobsessaboutpoints