Long time no see on this blog. Busy busy, finding the Higgs-like particle. Meanwhile many very nice stories have happened but I really did not have the time and quiet to write them down. On Friday our oldest, Ivan, turned eight. He is starting 3rd grade in September and we do not even realize how time has flown by. The birthday really started on late Thursday night when I received a very nice postcard from my mother for Ivan. He was still asleep but I showed it to him right in the morning. He trained his German reading skills and did not need much help. He was glad to see his grandparents and his uncle Martin’s greetings. Friday though for me was a normal day of work and we did not really spent a lot of time with his birthday. We had agreed to do it all on the weekend.
The trendy boots Seb loves, I found, but did not buy.
Saturday came and after some quick garden cleanup (Saturday morning we still had almost two complete trees lying in our backyard from the last weekend) we all got ready and dorve off. The goal was the Marshfield fair, a big fair with lots of attractions, rides, petting farm animals and many, many other things. We had been there, I believe last year Ana claims we had never been there, probably we have really been there two years ago…. 🙂 Anyway, before we swung by our beloved Dunkin Donuts got our fix and made a quick stop in Northstrom Rack. Tax free weekend is always a good occasion to buy new shoes. I wanted to get myself a nice pair of ‘summer shoes’ as I had been using my old worn out crocs because all my other shoes were not anymore in acceptable shape. As usual we found lots of good shoes. I got myself a pair of flip-flops (green), a wonderful pair of Kickers (all leather) and a very nice light pairs of Lacoste shoes (grey leather) and I found a T-shirt I could just not leave in the store. We also found this absolutely beautiful Timberland boots, that Seb was so desperately looking for, but the price tag was a little to high for me, and I do have two pair of leather boots still in the shelve at home. But I took some photos for Seb 🙂
The kids were reasonably quiet and now it was time to get going for the fair. Down North on 93 through Boston was the usual traffic chaos and when we were about to get into calmer traffic, Ana saw a sign indicating the Marshfield fair but it was supposed to start on August 17…. bummer! Luckily we had talked about alternate plans and we had also considered the Rhode Island Zoo (Roger Williams Park Zoo) which was basically so far the same way. So, we quickly changed plans, Ana checked on my phone that the Zoo was actually open (usually it closes at 4pm, but in august Saturday is family weekend until 9pm). Excellent, now we just had another 50 minutes to drive and we arrived without major incidents, the minor incident was a quick visit to DD to get some bagels etc. The zoo is easy to find just past Providence well indicated with the typical brown signs.
The zoo crew at the zebra terrain.
The whole family got in for under $60 not so bad. The zoo was not too crowded and the kids, in particular Blake had a blast, each carrying their own map trying to navigate or just watch the pictures. Blake loved the elephants and the giraffes, they are so tall, he was completely excited. We did of course also the zebra’s, the antilops, the big turtles (Ivan’s favorite), the red panda, the tukin, the snow leopard etc. etc. It was a great 2-3 hours until we reached the tree house…. where the kids could play with water (Markus loves to get wet, for no reason whatsoever), improvise a puppet play on a little stage (Gisele loved that one) and watch the periscope inside the tree house. When we went home there was just one hour left for me to continue my garden cleanup, I finished to put away the small brush from the two remaining trees and left the big parts to cut for Sunday. When the kids went to bed all were happy and Ivan was content with his birthday and… he got one of Papi’s old laptops that still works but not 100% so I had to retire it from work duty (after almost 5 years). Let’s see what he will learn.
And now you thought that was it, no it was not. Sunday morning I went on with my tree cleanup of the garden, and Ana and Gisele went for some shopping. They came back after almost five hours, Markus was starting to get restless with a wonderful cake for Ivan, Strawberry with lots of whipped cream, very good! We sang a happy birthday and Ana and I started the chillaxing by opening a beer and marveling at our new backyard. Three more tree cutting projects remaining and all would be done and our garden in excellent shape. Apart from an eight year old we now can also see the sky in our backyard, but more about that in another post.
