Staycation

We had planned to go to Island Park, Idaho for a few days while Kennedy was out of school. My aunt and uncle had a free two-week condo rental, but when they gave us a report on the place and the weather forecast, it just didn't sound like such a great idea. Instead we had a staycation at home! I took two days off from work so that we could have some fun with grammie and pamp. We went to the children's museum for some fun playtime. I'm not sure who had more fun - Kennedy loved shopping in the store, and Macy loved playing at the water table.

After naps and a trip to the fabric store to find the material for my "new" chairs, we went to Garden After Dark at the arboretum. Kennedy and I made a lantern to float on the goldfish pond - she drew a smiley face that looked a lot like Cookie Monster and added her name and Macy's. The lanterns looked so beautiful all lit up on the pond. Then she drew on an Australian Mimi doll made out of a clothespin. The garden is so different at night, and they had some great decorations for Halloween. Luckily nothing too scary because lots of things are scaring Macy right now. She says something that sounds just like, "No, that's not scary" about ghosts, witches, skeletons (but I think she means that it IS scary). We finished the night with some pumpkin painting, which Kennedy has been begging to do since we painted the pumpkin for Michelle. (these will just have to do for our pumpkin patch pictures this year.)

When we got back to my parents' house, we hear an owl in their backyard. And then there was a second owl hooting back. It was so amazing to hear them talking to each other! It sounded like who-who-who, who, whoooo (kinda hard to translate into words!)

The next day's adventure was a trip to the downtown library. We went to see an art exhibit about the pigeon from Mo Willems' books. The show was small, but cute. It was drawings by kids and librarians of "the pigeon wants..." and "don't let the pigeon..." Macy was very interested in looking at the drawings, and her face brightened when she found one with Gerald the Elephant and Piggie. The highlight, for the girls at least, was playing in the children's area. They were not interested in the books, just in running and climbing in the attic and the crystal cave rooms. Before we left we enjoyed a warm drink and some people watching in the cafe. In the car on the way home, I read the girls the two Halloween books that I picked out. Macy, of course, told us, "that's not scary" when she saw the illustrations of the skeleton.

We ended the weekend with a fancy brunch at La Caille (we had a gift certificate that we needed to use). Kennedy and Macy were absolutely perfect. We were seated at a table next to one of my co-workers, Jessie, and she later told me how she and her fiancee were both so amazed at how good our kids are. (Really they are almost always good when we go out, but just a week before they'd been running around at Pat's barbecue and dancing with the waiters - maybe they sensed that that behavior wouldn't fly at La Caille.) It helped that they loved the food, especially Macy. She was in heaven with sticky croissants, french toast with berries and cream, and pumpkin creme brulee for dessert. After we ate we walked around to see the beautiful grounds, even though it was raining. Then we drove up the canyon to see our first snow storm of the year.