Jeff, Giraffes and Elephants

I wanted to post a few more pictures of my newest nephew, Jeff. He is such a cutie, and I think his mom is pretty photogenic too!

Love this one- he is so cheerful and engaged.


And now on to the animals. As previously mentioned, Lucy and Sam were quite brave, feeding the giraffes with foot-long green beans.

Do you see how long the giraffe's tongue is?? Amazing!!!

Another sideways view of "the tongue".

And feeding the elephants was a hit too, though Lucy and Sam preferred to stick with the baby elephant- more of a manageable size.

Lucy let an elephant put a hat on her head and take it off- she thought it was quite fun.

And here we're watching them get a bath- she was fascinated.

What fun adventures for a 2-year old!

Tea at the Chedi

One of the highlights of our time in Thailand was afternoon tea with my sister, Caitlin. We had a wonderful few hours talking and enjoying delicious tea, scones, and views. What a treat! The Chedi hotel is one of the most beautiful I've ever been in- every view looked like a spread from a design magazine. This is the outdoor area where we had our tea.

And this is what we saw from our table (notice the swimming pool!).

Another dining area.

An indoor pond and spiral staircase; apparently they light the floating lanterns in the evening.

I loved the symmetry and elegance everywhere we looked.

What more can be said? Ahh...

And on the way home we saw a rainbow- so cool!

Party time

As a finale for our celebrations of Lucy's birthday, we had a little party over the weekend. My good friend Laura and her girls Sabrina and Naomi were the party guests; just the right size. The girls get along really well, and had fun playing together. Lucy enjoyed wearing her birthday crown earlier in the day.


And we practiced putting on our party hats with piggy. Lucy loves the book "If you give a pig a party", and had fun picking out streamers and balloons and party hats just like in the book.

We played a lot with the train table, made some tissue paper sun catchers, and had fun dancing along to some kid exercise songs, including waving ribbons, pretending to be turtles, and hopping like kangaroos (shown below).

The girls (and piggy in her party dress) getting ready to eat cake and ice cream. It was so cute to see them eating cake and later dinner together at the "kids table".


Lucy did a great job blowing out her candles.

Our little star!

Fun with sunglasses

I love Lucy's creativity- what will her sunglasses do next?

2 Years Old!

Happy Birthday, Lucy! We're so thankful for our special little girl, who brings so much joy to our lives by just being herself.

We've had some fun celebrations for her 2nd birthday, starting with an ice cream party with John, Caitlin, Sam and Jeff in Thailand. Lucy ate her whole scoop of ice cream and most of the cone too!

Lucy's been getting good practice blowing out candles since then, on a cupcake at home and then on a delicious cake at Grandma & Grandpa's over the weekend. She even blew out a candle that was all the way in Morocco!

Lucy picked out some sunglasses in Thailand, which have been coming handy on these bright winter days (and making quite a fashion statement as well).

Back home

After about 30 hours in transit, we made it back home, to snowy New England (it is actually snowing now as I post- quite a change from 80s and sunny)! Lucy again was a great travel partner, cheerful and easygoing on the flights. And she even slept a total of 7 hours on the 14 hour flight, which was wonderful. We're both exhausted, of course, having pulled the equivalent of 2 all-nighters (we left Thailand on a 2am flight). The highlight of being back is being with Matt/Papa again- we really missed him!! He was so sweet, cleaning up the house and getting us pink tulips to welcome us home.

I'm not sure how soon we'll get around to posting pictures, but in the meantime my sister did a great post with some more pictures and videos from our visit.

Lucy's words

Here's a fun video of Lucy talking, from a few weeks back. We should be back home soon, and will post more after we get over jetlag!