unexpected fun

my sunshine

On the 23rd we decided to continue our anniversary celebration (with kids, of course) so we packed up the car and headed to a town about an hour away. When we arrived, we knew we wanted to go out to eat, and the first place we pulled into was a buffet place, with kids eating free on Saturdays...score!!! The food was decent, but we were SO hungry, so everything tasted better than it probably actually was.

Julian was delighted to sit in a high chair and feed himself, which he never gets to do here, for lack of a high chair and fear of ruining the furniture. He was determined to use a spoon, but just couldn't get it down. He instead, would pick up a garbanzo bean, put it in his mouth, and then put the spoon in his mouth to get the "effect" of eating with a spoon. He ate an entire bowl of garbanzos, a ton of broccoli and finished it off with a massive bowl of fruit, pineapple, papaya, cantaloupe and watermelon.

Annabelle loves anything that is covered in sauce, which totally grosses me out, but her plate was filled with saucy foods, fruit, pickeled olives, and other random things that she thought looked yummy. Her highlight was getting a piece of flan for dessert...these are totally Dustin's kids when it comes to eating.

Coincidentally, across the street from the restaurant was a carnival. Annabelle was freaking out, wanting to ride the "horsies" (carousel) and was convinced that there would be a "prapoleen" (trampoline) that she could jump on. After dinner, we crossed over, and bought tickets for the ferris wheel and the carousel. I was a little nervous, as these rides looked like they were straight out of the 60's. OLD, rusty, and quite scary. I prayed fervently as the ferris wheel went around and around, carrying my Dustin and Bella inside. She laughed and yelled, "Look at me Mama!!! I'm high!!!' I just smiled and waved and prayed harder. The ride seemed to last forever. At one point, I yelled to Dustin that the conductor looked like he was sleeping, Dustin gave me a nervous grin, and just kept smiling, as he has a tendency to get sick on rides, especially one that lasts more than 2 minutes.

It finally ended, and we moved onto the carousel. Annabelle chose a simple horse to ride on, even though there were elephants and giraffes to ride on. She and Dustin rode around and around again, and this time, the conductor stared at the top of the ride the ENTIRE time, as though worried that it would fall apart at any moment. Not too reassuring, but I felt better knowing that my daughter was less than 3 feet off the ground.

As we were leaving, we noticed a trampoline, sitting alone and unused. It had a big hole that had been patched up, and was missing several springs, but Annabelle was insistent that she get to jump on her "prapoleen". We gave in, put her on the trampoline and she just walked and danced around. She was afraid to jump, but was convinced that bobbing her head up and down counted as "jumping on the trampoline".

All in all, a great night. The kids slept on the ride home and went straight to bed, and we watched Oceans 12. Great anniversary, day #2!

posted by mindi11 @ 4/24/2005 11:27:00 PM