The next hurdle was keeping her occupied over a four day weekend once she was feeling better and most people were out of town. Luckily, some of our good friends were around, so we teamed up for keeping the kids busy. We got in some pool time,
and we played at each other's houses. Elena was particularly entertained by their cat.
Tuesday was Valentine's Day, so for a special treat, we took the big kids to see the new Lego Batman movie at the mall, complete with a stop for pretzels. We had offered to take Elena too, but at the last minute she changed her mind and decided to stay home with Yaya.
We really enjoyed the movie. The next day, it was back to reality for Vivian. Luckily, it was only a three day week, followed by a fun weekend. Saturday was her Girl Scout ISB camp out.
I learned several lessons from our camp out last year, so we were ready this year with bug spray and bug killing rackets. I also had the tinfoil dinners all prepped and ready to go. Vivian's favorite part was the s'mores of course, but she enjoyed the crafts and dinner as well. This year, I have two great co-leaders, so I didn't have to spend the night. I stayed through bedtime prep, and then went home to sleep in a bed, which was marvelous. I was back bright and early the next morning though to help with breakfast and clean up. Viv was a great clean up helper too. She prepped our breakfast area and helped clean up the leader tent.
Elena was super impressed with big sister's camping. She was gung ho to try it herself until she saw how heavy the backpack was.
Jeff and I had made sure that actual Valentine's Day was a family celebration, but he had the following Monday off for Presidents Day, so we decided to do a staycation just for us on Sunday night. We have a lot of Centara points, so we got a good price on a club room at one of our favorite hotels, the Centara Grand at Central World. They even upgraded us to a fancier room.
The room itself had incredible views.
But we didn't stay there long. We went to check out the afternoon tea service at the club. They had orange scones and the workers there made me a yummy late. The only thing keeping it from being completely perfect was a lack of clotted cream, but we made do. We weren't suffering ;-)
After our scone snack, we went to check out the pool.
We found some nice seats in the shade, where we could enjoy the breeze without being roasted. It was us and the Asians in the shade, while all the white tourists lay in the sun turning crispy brown. We always watch the tourists in amazement and wonder what happens to them after a few days of doing that. Maybe some of them tan better than us, but the sun this close to the equator is no joke, and we've seen lots of burnt red tourists walking around the city.
After the pool it was time for club happy hour and "snacks" which basically constitute a meal. It was a Japanese themed evening, so they had sushi, gyoza, and tempura, plus free flow drinks. I was in a super happy place.
We stayed until the sun set, and then went to explore the mall. We had a lot of fun at Toys R Us, but have decided that we don't want to introduce the girls to regular Legos any time soon. Those things are expensive!
Breakfast the next morning was yummy,
and we stuck around until the final check out time to try out what the club schedule called "midday soup." It turned out to be a pretty yummy cream of broccoli soup.
The only food fail was the mini macaroons I purchased from the bakery downstairs.
The cookie part was pretty much cardboard and the middle was overfilled with flavored butter cream icing. I'm still a Mandarin Oriental macaroon girl.
The rest of the week was filled with highs and lows. After getting off to a leisurely start downtown, Monday finished rough, with the golf cart getting a flat on the way to Girl Scouts. When the golf cart people came to look at it, they said I should probably replace both of the front tires, because the other one looked like it was about to go. It was a pretty sad golf cart for a while.
It's all better now though, and with the golf cart up and running again, I was able to take the girls to see the elementary school play, Frog and Toad. It was Elena's first play, and she really liked it.
Elena is so ready to be a big kid like Vivian. The other day, Viv was doing her math homework, and Elena said she wanted to do math homework too, so I printed her out a numbers sheet. She worked on it very seriously.
She also helped Viv with a weekend science project using our Snap Circuits set. Vivian wanted to try one where water was used to conduct electricity.
We warned Elena to be careful and not touch the water with her fingers, but little miss stubborn just dove right in. Luckily, she only got a little zap and recovered right away.
I feel so lucky to have so much love in my everyday life.
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