This morning Buddy and Sarah were creeping from one of the beds. It was a little unsettling.
Today’s Jurassic World Advent Calendar surprise was another Velociraptor. They could at least paint its eye…
The LEGO City Advent Calendar had two tiny toys for the tree! A rocket and a rocking-horse.
This evening was fun. We continued watching Christmas movies (I wore my Pikachu Christmas pajamas again) and building our Home Alone set.
I also had Marzi and Molly nearby. Marzi wore the beautiful handmade ribbon that Shelly gave me as a present!
I didn’t make as many mistakes this time, and had more fun. We take turns with the bags and pass the trays and book around.
Molly tried to help but it was a little overwhelming for her.
Side note, I’ve been reading the Molly books, and she really is a lot like me, which makes me both like her and dislike her more (lol) but mostly like her more. I also looked a lot like her when I was little. There’s probably a photo of me somewhere, pigtails, glasses, bangs and all (but I rarely wore pigtails, I just know it happened at some point).
While the guys built their bags I finally had some fun with my Bluey Christmas activity book:
Here’s some details we built this evening:
Christopher made me mac and cheese for dinner. After watching Home Alone, I’d been craving it. It’s a detail that is even included in the set!
One more sitting, I think, and the set will be done!
Happy Monday, everyone! I didn’t mention this anywhere because I didn’t want to broadcast to the world that I would be alone in this massive house for three nights and days, but that is what happened. My husband and our partner went to visit Christopher’s sister (my sis-in-law) along with Christopher’s mom way up in the Florida panhandle.
I decided to stay behind for a number of reasons. One of them was that I had a massive mountain of presents to wrap, a lot of accumulated chores, and I didn’t want to stress out the animals by leaving them alone for so long right before the Thanksgiving holidays.
I was also looking forward to it. I can be a little bit naughty and eat tons of junk food, order takeout, watch cartoons, play video games, blast any music I like throughout the house… it’s a dream!
On the other hand, at night it is very lonely and scary. This house is very big, so I sleep with one eye open. But I had a good time. Now my guys are back! And I can tell you all about my weekend home alone.
๐ Friday Night ๐
As soon as everyone was gone I sat down to relax with a little reading:
Kotoko kept me company nearbyโฆ
I really adore stories about toys, from the toys’ POV, so I am loving this book. I even have my own Raggedy Ann and Andy:
After some stories and a Christmas cake, I began to work on a vast backlog of housework, some of it delayed by weeks. I wasnโt done until 8:00pm. I made the house all merry to enjoy the evening…
Then I placed my order with Wahbi Sabi and jumped in the shower. I saved my brand new Pikachu Christmas pajamas to wear this weekend!
I finally got to get cozy in them while I waited for my food to get there…
…then had my coveted Spam sushi and corn cheese on a Christmas bowl and cup. Of course, I had my Coke on my Bluey Christmas cup, while watching some Bluey Christmas shorts, as well as Verandah Santa and Christmas Swim on the CRT!
You can’t tell in these photos, but my cutlery was Bluey themed too. Also, the placemat!
The food was delicious, a cheap but huge treat from my favorite Korean restaurant:
For dessert I had a Christmas cake and some almond milk!
Then with the dishwasher going, it was gift-wrapping time! I watched the original How The Grinch Stole Christmas cartoon since I’d never seen it before, and then watched the movie, which I’ve seen a thousand times and utterly love.
I wrapped presents until I felt just tired enough to go to bed with the cats and with Pokemon Violet on my Switch. My bed looked so cozy all lit up!
And Rosie was already waiting for me…
I didn’t play too long, I was so tired. I set up my character and then cuddled up with Rosie and was out like a log.
๐ Saturday ๐
This was a very long day, and one on which an incredibly rare occurrence happened: I stayed in my pajamas all day. I normally hate this, even if I’m sick. But they are cute and comfy and I was so busy. To give you an idea of the job I had in my hands, even after hours and hours of gift wrapping last night, I wrapped pretty much non-stop from 9:30am to 8:00pm tonight. I stopped only to eat lunch. That is a lot of presents. I didn’t count them but there must have been over 50, maybe 60. Here’s some of the mess…
I’ve been buying presents for my family since August. They are all presents from me and also from Christopher, to all our family and friends, and then there are our partner’s presents to Christopher, and Christopher’s family, and I wrapped that, as well. It was a lot of work but I can’t wait to see happy faces when the surprises are revealed.
Here’s the results. The stockings are full too. There are a lot of small presents hidden everywhere so it’s really a lot more than you’d think at first glance.
Alas, a ribbon has already dropped. I reattached it.
For the entirety of the weekend (but most of all on this day), I had vintage and not-so-vintage Christmas and/or Thanksgiving cartoons playing, and it was lovely. Here is a collage of GIFs from some cartoons I watched throughout the weekend.
In the middle of my gift wrapping, Christopher surprised me with these photos…
I SCREAMED!! How to choose just one? But I had to. It was hard because I always wanted a Furby Buddy and this one is an obvious match to this Furby, surely they have always been together. But I wasn’t about to leave this little voiceless guy abandoned in a thrift shop! Christopher got him for me. I can’t wait to have his voicebox fixed.
After that, I had yummy snacks and drank wine while playing Pokรฉmon Violet. I made a separate post about my early experiences with the game, which you can read HERE.
๐ Sunday๐
With all the gift-wrapping fully out of the way, today was a more normal day. I did my chores, including taking care of the snailies, sent some Trellos, worked on holiday cards, and wrote my letters to Santa as well as to thank and welcome Buddy and Sarah:
I ordered takeout again, and had it while playing more Pokรฉmon Violet. It was really good!
The cats haven’t spent much time with me, but Tomoyo eventually did come to see me… here she is sitting on my lap:
With all commission information retrieved, and especially with multiple unsavory permabanned people having their Twitter accounts reinstated, I decided to officially delete my art accounts as well. I’m all gone from Twitter, again. It’s an amazing feeling!
And, I’ll be really active elsewhere! I’ll be active here, on Telegram, on Discordand on FA. So please don’t be a stranger! ๐
Anyway, it was actually at the end of the day that I began all my chores. But before bed I managed to get the snail tank and litter boxes cleaned, the animals all fed and watered, dishes done and put away, and the laundry too. Trash taken out, showered. Before bed, I had one final little feast. Wine, a sandwich, and Elf sugar cookies:
It was a fruitful day. And fun too. I even had a Zoom call with my mom and made some art progress! Plus posted old art too.
And then it was bedtime again, my last night alone.
๐ Monday ๐
My guys FINALLY came home today! I feel like I’ve been all alone for forever. Anyway, today was a calm day of chores and prep. I prepared for my passport and doctor appointments that I have tomorrow. I also plan to drop by Target Optical and finally get my eyes checked. I’m really worried about some drop in my eyesight, and about intense pain in my breasts. I hope some of those worries can be set aside after tomorrow.
Another thing I did was prepare a seasonal outfit for Igloo, since she will be joining me in some upcoming travels:
I also shipped out a couple of badges, chose, scanned and printed some coloring pages from my collection to have fun with during the season, worked on art, and was able to make some more decisions regarding online stuff. As it turns out, every Discord server I checked out is pretty dead. Telegram is okay… I lurk on one busy community chat. I disabled automatic media downloads for groups, which helped with some issues I was having.
I also realized that Reddit is AMAZING at solving my FOMO issues: I can do a quick daily browse of the subreddits I follow, maybe post a little here and there, and all is good. And it feels FAR less toxic than Twitter. So I may delete Discord again, with intention to actually put effort in being active on the Telegram chat I’m in, and from time to time, I will check Reddit.
That aside, after a weekend of utter indulgence, I’m back on my fitness wagon, so you’ll see those posts begin to pop up again.
I dressed up nice to greet my guys…
I also made the house very merry and festive…
…and served a comforting, good meal –chicken curry on rice. So when they got home, everything looked beautiful, the house smelled amazing, there was Christmas music softly playing and everything was in tip top shape.
I really, really missed them so much. I felt bad for missing out on the family trip, but when I think of all that I got done, I simply have no idea how that would have been doable without this long weekend all to myself.
I hope you found this post entertaining! I’ll update after tomorrow’s errands.
This weekend my mom in law visited us! She had to leave way early today but we still had fun. On Saturday I got to have lunch at Nine Five Pho which is one of my favorite restaurants!
In the evening, the four of us went kayaking! ๐ถ It was interesting to do that at night. Didn’t get good photos of the actual kayaking but we got a couple of goofy selfies.
Kayaking at night was very different and fun. The water was so warm!
This post is about our flight to Seattle and the first day of the cruise. We got up very early, so we would have plenty of extra time if anything should go awry. We got McDonald’s breakfast from the drive-through and drove the two or so hours to Orlando Airport. There we took a shuttle from the parking lot, and in no time at all we were ready to board the first of two flights to Seattle!
Orlando Airport was busy, but everything moved speedily along, no delays, no issues. With that said, we also did not have much time to spare. This was a bit of a bummer, as while we were in the TSA line, I saw the Universal store and almost lost my mind: it was full of Jurassic World stuff! I was unable to go in, but I did have *just* enough time to have my picture taken with this fantastic statue of Blue! It was so cool.
In what seemed a blink of an eye we were on the plane. This was the only time I had a window seat. I really hate flying, the takeoff and landing scares me a lot. So I was definitely apprehensive, and basically crushed our partner’s arm until we were on the air.
On the one hand I was happy because Christopher, our partner and I got to sit together during this flight. That was a big relief for me. But we were also on the very latest seat: we could not recline our seats and we smelled the bathroom all the way to Denver. Still, we were going on a cruise! So we were smiling all the same.
Here are all the pictures I took during the flight:
I bought a little snack at the airport which I shared with my guys:
Our partner was SUPER uncomfortable in his seat, it was so cramped and he was tired. Christopher played on his Switch a lot.
As for me, while I’d brought plenty of things to entertain myself with, I could do none of them. I was too excited (and occasionally scared by the plane). It felt like forever, but eventually, we landed!
To go from the mid 90s to this was mind-blowing…
Next flight –to Seattle! This time my sis in law got the window seat, but I got to sit next to her, and she let Dante look out of the window:
I hadn’t seen my sis in law since Christmas (I think?) and I missed her so much!
Airborne again! Lots of mountain views on this flight.
During the takeoff and landing, it was my sis-in-law’s turn to be crushed by me as I sought comfort. Soon, this flight, too, was over, and we were in Seattle. Mount Rainier in the distance!
After landing in Seattle, we went out to dinner at Olive Garden, and then walked around a really pretty mall. Eventually everyone but our partner and I returned to the hotel. We still had energy so we kept walking, I bought a present for Christopher and a coloring book for myself, and our partner bought macarons for everyone and a really pretty truffle for me that looked like a jewel.
(Seattle was actually VERY hot, which was unusual. This would make our last day in Seattle, on the day of our return, even weirder, because it would be cold as balls then!)
I was up early the next day. I showered and changed into my nautical outfit for the day. At the time I bought this sweater, I felt it was so expensive (over $40) and by this day I had already enjoyed very much the times I wore it. But for this day alone it would have felt worth the money. Not only did I match with Dante, but I got SO many comments on it! I felt very cute.
Everyone was already downstairs having breakfast, except, of course, for my sleepy men. Actually I think my sis-in-law was upstairs in the shower. I’m not sure. This day was a blur.
In no time at all everyone was downstairs, all bags packed, ready to take our shuttle to meet the ship. We were actually super early and did not think we would be able to board yet, just check in. But it turned out leaving ASAP was a great idea because we boarded as soon as we got there.
Anyway here’s Grandma and our partner as we waited for the shuttle. This photo makes me a little sad now. In the photos of this day Grandma still looks happy and energetic, but she would get so sick later during the trip. ๐
Shuttle is here! Off to the dock! The shuttle smelled a bit funny.
I always find docks really cool. Interesting things are happening everywhere and everything feels larger than life.
We saw our ship from really far away. It was so massive!
The closer we got, the more surreal it felt. The ship is a floating city!
I took a couple of photos after our shuttle dropped us off. We gave our luggage to NCL staff and then it was off to check in.
A kind fellow tourist took this photo of us in front of the ship. Like this, it hardly looks like a ship at all. More line an apartment building behind us.
After check-in, we got out room keys! We would use this constantly to get all food and drinks during our stay. It says “welcome back” because our cruise was canceled twice. But it’s actually my first time.
Once we checked in and after a slight delay due to my paperwork (I wasn’t able to get my passport in time) the fact that this was actually happening became real. I pretty much dissolved in tears on my mom in law’s arms after holding all my excitement and worry in for so many months. She cried a bit too. And then we were given our group boarding card and sat to wait!
Very shortly after we were inside. Those moments stepping into the deck are unforgettable for me. What a feeling! And inside, it was so massive and sparkling. This is a brand new, barely used ship, and it showed!
The views of the water were already stunning to me, and we were still docked… I was certainly going to be plenty more stunned, particularly the next morning!
I took lots of pictures as we walked around. I’m sure I looked like a very dumb tourist, clutching my teddy bear, open mouthed and snapping pictures of everything.
Dante loved looking out the windows, too. It was so pretty, even though we were still docked:
In the beginning we sat around waiting a lot, as my mom in law talked to guest services a bunch of times to get some things sorted out. We were also still waiting for our luggage at this time.
Since our rooms were not ready yet, we decided to go have our first meal on the ship!
We ate at The Local Bar & Grill. This was the most lackluster food option aboard, we only ate one meal here. But we didn’t know that when we sat down, and the view from where we sat was great, so I was excited!
Slowly as we ate the ship became busier and busier. Eventually it was announced that everyone was on board, and still, the ship did not feel packed, which was nice.
By the time we were done with our meals, an announcer let us know that our rooms were ready, so we went to check them out.
The rooms were very comfortable and cute. The beds were hard though. But the view from the balcony was amazing!
After checking that we had our luggage and all was good, we decided to meander around the ship. At this time, we were still docked. It was very hot.
They had a model of our ship next to the Garden Cafe. It was very pretty and detailed!
We just kept walking around, snacking, drinking, and sitting in random places. We were relaxing but also waiting very excitedly for the journey to begin.
When it was almost time, we went outside to huge comfortable couches, got fresh drinks, and waited there.
And then we were off! It was time to say goodbye to Seattle and its heat.
Once we were officially at sea, we went directly to dinner.
The restaurant we ate at was called The Manhattan. It was a lovely meal.
There was more sitting and waiting around after dinner. I’m not sure what we were waiting for here. We might have gone to a show on this first night, I can’t recall. We went to many shows during the trip. Magic shows, comedy shows, musicals.
The day began to draw to a close. We were exhausted! For me, this was the prettiest sunset of the trip. Most days sunset and sunrise was kinda weird. Night would usually only last a few short hours and not get too dark. The sun wouldn’t set until 10:00pm and would begin to rise at 3:00am.
It began to cool down pretty fast as the hours went by, and we went to bed to recover and get ready to enjoy our first full day aboard. That’s coming on the next post!
Tonight we went to Cinรฉbistro on a very special date night! ๐ฅฐ Finally it was time to see Jurassic World: Dominion. After literally not shutting up about it for months on end, the big night finally came! I got treated to a really wonderful meal, the seating was super comfortable, the screen was huge… and the movie was all I had hoped for and more!
I brought my T. rex, Frijol, with me, and had my usual Jurassic getup (shirt and backpack, and a triceratops baby necklace):
He was excited, too! ๐ฆ๐
I will say that as far as this film was concerned, my expectations were modest, and my desires simple: I wanted awesome dinosaurs to fill the screen and alternatively rampage things, be awe-inspiring, be cute, be conniving, and/or be loud, or a combination of all of these things.
I wanted to see the old beloved cast (hello Jeff Goldblum, boy did you age well ๐คค๐) interact with the new cast, which really grew on me over the years. I wanted to see Blue’s baby, Beta, be adorable. I wanted to stifle a scream each time I recognized a favorite dino. I wanted a movie I’ll want to rewatch. Suffice to say, I got all of that!
The following picture was, of course, taken before the movie started and before we got our food –this was the pre-show and I put my phone away when the trailers started.
NOTE: After the photo, there will be a cut (unless you’re reading this in email form, I think). After the cut will be my thoughts on the movie, which WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS. You have been warned!
Hello, everyone! I had a really lovely outing today. It was raining hard (a tropical storm is passing by this weekend) so Christopher dropped me off at Dollar Tree before work, and I took a car back. It felt so nice out with the rain. It was early, too, and I’d gotten up at 6:00am so most of my chores were done when we left the house shortly past 8:30am. I felt very happy and light.
This was my outfit for this rainy day! ๐ธโ๏ธ I didnโt actually take my Build-A-Bear bearlien with me, but I held them for the photo because I love them so much.
I was rocking a bit of subtle pride with my new Pride month kandi necklace and pan socks. ๐โจ๐
I only went to Five Below and Dollar Tree, but I found SO so many things, I was so very happy!
On a weird random note, I saw this at Five Below. Youโre welcome. ๐ง
(I really wanted to know if they tasted like cheese, but not for $4.00.)
After shopping there and at Dollar Tree, I went inside Publix for a small lunch and ate it outside watching the absolute downpour and reading Twitter. ๐๐ฅค
Then I came home with the groceries and all my treasures, which I’d like to share with you now. First in my haul is this whole bunch of Arthur stuff! Itโs all from Dollar Tree.
I intend to paint the suncatcher with Poscas, and probably the canvas too. Some stuff is for relaxing, one of the books is for my library, while the other two are for scrapbooking. Might use the Colorforms for that as well.
Next, and one of my favorite things, is this massive variety of playing cards and flash cards:
Cards such as these are one of my favorite scrapbooking/collage tools! Thereโs Disney, Fisher Price/Little People, Dr. Seuss, Crayola, animals, dinosaurs, nature, and more!
Next, here’s some Arthur and Berenstain Bears puzzles!
Believe it or not I use this for scrapbooking as well. ๐
More scrapbooking supplies โa few cute greeting cards; rainbow, snail and space squirrel cutouts (can you imagine my luck?!) and a little book with very nice pages for making my collages:
These next ones were very interesting and I had never seen them before. Fantasy, dinosaur and space felt scenes by Crayola! ๐โจ Will probably be used for scrapbooking as well.
Here’s some cute stickers โจ๐
Next is this dry-erase pocket. I wanted it to hold my daily to-do list!
Which, by the way; looks like this:
And nowโฆ for the real treasuresโฆ the Jurassic World Dominion goodies!!
Finally, FINALLY found some!! ๐ญ๐๐๐ The photo speaks for itself! There’s a mini dry-erase board, a velvet art poster, figurines, a towel, Captivz eggs, and stickers! Here is a close-up of one of my favorite finds:
And of the Kinder Joy “egg”:
The figure in the Kinder Joy egg was honestly a real disappointment but I was still so excited to find it anyway. A much better prize are these coins from the much bigger eggs I shared recently, which come with some really good gummies too!
The coins are just like the Mario Wonder Ball ones (same company). Heavy, real metal. Beautiful!
I’ll end this photo set with a final pic of Squeak, the candy warden! ๐๐โจ
I hope you enjoyed this post and that you have a very lovely evening and weekend!
Hello, everyone! First of all, I want to apologize for my absence/commission delay which I hinted at but did not fully explain. Being sick three times (never COVID but always sucky) having a weekend-long Easter visit with family, an almost week-long visit of my dear friend Mwako during which time I did not work at all, dealing with important travel paperwork AND having my period on top of it all, meant that no commission work got done whatsoever.
I am now back at the tablet and getting things done, so you all will be getting your WIPS and/or finished pieces over the next few days. But before that –here’s this week’s summary!
๐ Monday ๐
Monday was a special day. It was the Jurassic World Dominion street date for the new toys! Christopher and I made a deal: I could spend up to $200, and anything I purchased would be set aside for my birthday and Christmas. This suited me fine! I went to Target and Walmart and came back with a cart full of things. ๐ Although, the new displays were not out at Target, a very nice employee got me everything I wanted from the back.
I also passed by Five Below on the way back and scored a few nice Super Mario finds!
A Super Mario Easter egg and Mario Kart UNO cards! The UNO cards I plan to use for scrapbooking. I loved that the puzzle below had Bowser Jr. in it!
It was otherwise a quiet, busy day, prepping the house, doing chores, and drawing.
๐ Tuesday ๐
On Tuesday, it was more and more prepping. I had a lot to do. But I did take some time to myself in the morning, walked to the mall, had a snack there, and bought some pins to decorate my new Galactic Pal bags:
๐ Wednesday ๐
Wednesday I was up at 5:00am to finish prepping the playroom. It took more work than you imagine, simple though it looks (lots of lugging stuff downstairs, plus putting the mat together, moving furniture, building the tent –tricky on my own) but I think the end result turned out really nice!
The couch looked cozy…
Stuff for outdoor play!
Ricky Parky had not been down to play in quite some time!
Tomoyo was really interested in all the toys…
At least she couldn’t bite this. She definitely tried to bite other things.
I used my travel pillow as a chair for Cookie:
Everywhere you looked it was colorful and full of toys and things to do, games to play, books to color…
Out of the Jurassic World Dominion release, there were a couple of cheaper dinos that I bought for myself so I wouldnโt have to wait to play with them, such as this cute Imaginext gal. Sheโs really expressive! You can move her up and down and side to side by the tail, open and close her mouth, and change her facial expression! Her arms move too!
Coloring books and games…
I love this Jurassic World version of TOMY’s classic Pirate Pop-Up game!
My new T. rex friend was looking for trouble…
Here’s Ricky all ready to โpretendโ camp indoors!
Bluey was ready to welcome Mwako, too!
Crayons!! ๐โจ
More friends and fun things to do! ๐๐๐ Socks was a little surprise gift for Mwako.
On Mwako’s first night with us, we went to Blue Ginger, a fancy sushi restaurant where the food is served in little floating boats. It was wonderful, I was so happy we got to go because it’s one of Christopher’s favorite places that we can so rarely afford, and Mwako treated us all.
๐ Thursday ๐
On Thursday we took Mwako to my (currently) favorite park, Marhham Park. I picked a very colorful outfit, and brought Cookie along on her first outing:
First we did a quick Starbucks run for breakfast at the house.
Cookie tried her first cake pop!
Once at the park it was time to explore. I love this place, with its pine-needle covered floors. It looks kind of otherwordly in places. The more I explore Florida the more I find beauty I didn’t know it had.
Here’s a couple of pics I got of me and Mwako:
It was overall a super nice time. I did at one point get chased by a few bees and really panicked and ran for a long, long stretch, leaving Mwako and my partner well, WELL behind. Later they told me that as I did that, they heard what had to have been a gator jumping into the water, mere feet from us. They said it definitely sounded like something bigger than a grown man.
What makes that a bit scary is that on recent Googling I found out a woman was attacked by a gator during a jog at this same park. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was that same area. ๐ฌ I guess it’s a good thing that I was running!
Anyway, I’ve been doing stops at Walmart/Target/Dollar Tree/etc, and here are some finds. First, a couple of Uncaged Wild Pop-Ups:
A couple of super cute cups from the dollar store, Berenstain Bears and Arthur-themed:
And some Jurassic Wold stickers:
๐ Friday ๐
On Friday, we went to Butterfly World. This is truly the perfect time of the year to go! The amount of butterflies was off the chart, like stepping into a fairy tale world.
First, here’s an all-butterfly set of photos. They were just so pretty.
A cute caterpillar friend!
The birds here are very tame and friendly:
This one was taking a little bath:
This one was… feeling territorial?
I didn’t know canaries ate lettuce, did you?
This little guy was tucking in for a nap. ๐
In the museum and insect area, the moths were my favorite, but everything was beautiful and interesting:
Here’s a wriggly mealworm. These guys are small, but they can bite! If they didn’t I might want to have them as pets.
We bought a couple of plants before leaving. An almond bush which was part of the reason behind the trip, and a mimosa plant as a gift for our dear Christopher. ๐ฅฐ After Butterfly World, we went back to the house to play some games in the playroom I’d set up.
We played the T. rex pop-up game first. It was lots of fun! I jumped every time. ๐
Then we played Yeti In My Spaghetti for a while, before it was time to set the table for our burger dinner.
I had special fancy dino paper plates for the occasion! I had to get another one though because someone spilled his drink all over me and my T. rex… ๐
๐ Saturday ๐
Let’s start this day with a photo of Tomoyo, laying elegantly as she does:
Mwako continued to humor me by driving me to Targets so I could look for more Jurassic World Dominion stuff. So in the morning we were off, first breakfast at Starbucks and then to Target.
I was very excited at this particular Target because it was my first time finally seeing a Dominion display!
Some neat things I saw (but didn’t buy) were this Pokรฉmon themed Labyrinth game by Ravensburger and this Jeep Wrangler R/C car, Jurassic World themed. I was really tempted by the car… ๐
Ultimately, I came home with this super cute Elmo backpack and Jurassic World Dominion set of minis, both of which Mwako was kind enough to treat me to:
Once home, it was time to move on to some backyard fun! Well… back porch fun. We blew some bubbles, for starters, but I don’t have photos of that. It was fun, though. Ricky sat and watched, it had been a while since he came out to play, as I mentioned:
New T. rex was excited to get into the chalk so we quickly moved on to that.
Playing with chalk was so much fun. I never got to do this as a kid, believe it or not. Chalk was something we only had at school, and colored chalk? What is that, anyway? So, silly though it may seem, this made me really happy.
Ricky Parky had a blast too!
The cats were very curious about the chalk, smelling it, rolling in it, and just being generally very interested and wanting to be involved in our playtime.
Rosie was arguably the most interested of all:
I tried drawing Mwako, a snail and a subrosian for Christopher (that one ended up being my favorite):
I also drew one of our house “soots”:
Mwako did a pretty spiffy job of drawing Stitch!
After that it started to sprinkle, so we went back inside to continue our fun.
A pause for more Tomoyo, this time giving me a half-hearted but playful air-swat:
Time to play some more! First some Jenga…
We each had a cute snack. Since today was special, I picked one of my Good2Grow Podz. Grogu is so cute!
I had my veggie chips in my Bluey bowl, not that you can tell…
The movie for the evening was Brother Bear, an old favorite. It’d been a while since I last saw it. We colored with crayons while watching and just had a nice time.
After the movie, Mwako, my partners and I all went to mini golf. That was a lot of fun to do late in the evening! They closed just as we left.
๐ Sunday ๐
Today, Sunday, was the last day with activities, since Mwako is leaving tomorrow.
I opened my minis in the morning while having some quiet time to myself. They are so cute!
Look at that adorable tiny carnie, a perfect little chonk:
Being time for another outing, I got dressed up, new backpack and all:
I picked Dusty to accompany me today:
We took Mwako to Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park today. This was a lovely setting to take photos of Dusty in, just like Marham Park with Cookie:
Here are some random pics without Dusty in them. Of course I still have to add stickers.
Here’s Mwako looking super cute in the outfit I picked for him to wear. Pink looks great on him, I think!
Our time at the park was fun but exhausting because it was so hot. Once we got back home and freshened up, we sat down to have some “kiddy time” again. First we laid down the Richard Scarry’s Busytown Eye Found It! board game:
It’s a high quality game, with a massive board and very cute pieces:
It’s a collaborative game, either all players win, or the “pigs” win. We enjoyed it, and it certainly has lots of replayability.
At some point, I don’t remember when, I ate this cute chocolate Easter sheep:
After the board game, we played with blocks. It may seem silly, but don’t knock it til you try it. With LEGO, you still have to “think”. There’s something incredibly relaxing about playing with big-ass blocks. Once you let go, all your adult worries melt away, if only for a little bit.
I “play” in a bit more of a conventional manner, making “houses” for my Thomas The Tank Engine Mega Blok figures: