Edaville Railroad

Today we took Henry on his first trip to Edaville Railroad.



This is a former cranberry plantation that has a 5 1/2 mile train loop around it (previously used to haul the cranberries). They still have cranberry bogs surrounding it, but now Edaville is a small family amusement park, with an emphasis on trains. Naturally, we knew our little train lover would enjoy it.

Henry went on LOTS of rides. The Red Baron:


The tilt-a-whirl:



The Ferris Wheel (this is the view from the top - I managed very few photos seeing as how I am afraid of heights and thus had a death grip on Henry and the bar in front of me the entire time):


The miniature train:



The handcars:



The Flying Caterpillar:



And the flying elephants:



Along with many more.

The kid is fearless. Anything that went really fast, really high, or spun in such a way as to make you sick just thinking about it he LOVED.

They also had a fun indoor play area with lots of train tables and model trains:




A "cranberry bog" ball pit:


An indoor maze:


And, randomly, Humpty Dumpty:



The biggest draw for him, of course, was the train ride:







Henry had a fabulous time - it is definitely worth a repeat trip at some point!

Swimming and sunglasses

Henry is doing REALLY well in his swim classes! He swims "independently" for most of the lesson (meaning with no one holding onto him - just using noodles, a kick board, etc) and seems fairly fearless throughout. His teacher told me that he does an excellent job combining all skills - arms, kicking, and blowing bubbles/breathing - at the same time, something that she said a lot of her students don't fully get until age 5 or 6. Way to go Henry!





She said the next step is teaching him how to basically fall in the pool and back float/get himself to the side of the pool on his own. Yikes!

At dinner tonight Henry decided to be the "cool kid" and wear sunglasses throughout:




He has that "disaffected youth" look pretty much down, doesn't he?

In other news, I ran my first 5K this morning! Here are my friends and I before the race:



And, due not just to the run, but also the almost 90 degree temperatures and extreme humidity (at the end of September!), a tad sweaty at the end:



I did it in 31 minutes, which I think is great for never having done one before (plus, it took me a while to cross the starting line and to get going due to all the people, so I think I can realistically shave a little time off of it). We are already set to do another one next month, so we will see if I can do that one in under 30 minutes!

Music Class

With the start of preschool this month there were a lot of schedule changes for Henry and his friends, resulting in the fact that we couldn't get together as often as we used to. A group of us decided to remedy that situation and figure out a class that the kids could take together once a week. We decided to set up a music class to meet every Friday at our house using the same teacher, Sarah, who taught the music class Jake and Henry used to take at Laurie's house. Today was the inaugural class and the kids LOVED it:





Our downstairs neighbors may never recover, though.

In other news, Henry is doing pretty well at pre-school. This week was his first full week since starting, and while he is still pretty clingy at drop off, he is getting better and always had a good day when I pick him up. He loves show and tell (every Friday - so far he selected to bring a Lego airplane he made and his garbage truck), and loves the art projects they have been doing. The bad news is that he hasn't taken a nap since starting. WE are attempting "quiet time" where he is in his room for a while and can read or play quietly if he doesn't fall asleep, but thus far it isn't working that well. He tends to open his door every 10 minutes and yell, "MOM! I'M PLAYING QUIETLY!" or else loudly moan and yell "this is taking TOO LONG! TOO LONG!".

Hopefully he either figures out quiet time or miraculously goes back to napping soon.

Halloween Preview

Yes, we are already getting ready for Halloween. Henry is EXCITED about it this year (he is in a holiday frame of mind in general - he also asks when Christmas will come on a daily basis now.) This is the first year that we let Henry decide on his costume, and there was much debate. First, about 6 months ago he started talking about how he wanted to be a giraffe. Then, more recently he decided he wanted to be a dinosaur. That stuck for a while until he saw a fairy princess costume in a catalogue and decided that was the costume for him (I said no to that one). Then, he went back to giraffe and held firm on it. After repeatedly saying "we can't change our mind once we buy the costume...are you SURE you want to be a giraffe?" We went ahead and bit the bullet.

He is now obsessed with wearing his costume:





Of course, after wearing the costume for about an hour the other night, making me bring a full length mirror into the living room so he could preen, and generally adoring it, he suddenly said, "But, I want to be a DINOSAUR for Halloween!" Sigh.

Bedtime Story

Henry is very much into an "I'll do it myself!" phase. For some things - like getting in the car seat and tying his shoelaces - this can be a touch aggravating for all involved since it takes about 20 minutes to do what should be a 30 second activity. Other things are fun. For example, he now has decided to read his bedtime books to us instead of the other way around. Here is a video (bad quality - I had to sneak it since he yells "don't do that!!" at me when he sees the camera these days) of him reading his bedtime book to Mike this evening. Yes, "The Polar Express" is a year round favorite in this house.

Fall Fun!

Autumn technically doesn't start for another few days, but we have had some really nice, cool, fall-like days recently that have put us in an autumn frame of mind. Therefore, we decided to officially start our favorite season today with a trip to the apple orchard - Connors Farm in Danvers:




Mike managed to find a place that wasn't just any old orchard. Oh no. This place had it all. A bounce house:




An apple cannon:





A "jumping pillow":



Rubber duck races:




And, most importantly, Henry's first corn maze!







Here he is jumping out to scare me. I'll give you one guess as to who taught him that:



And yes, we did manage to squeeze some apple picking in:

Santa Barbara

We are back from an amazing trip back "home" to Santa Barbara! Every time I visit I wonder why anyone in their right mind would choose to move away from such a gorgeous place - beaches, mountains, palm trees, great food, great friends.....then when I see the Boston skyline as we drive home from the airport I remember how much we love where we are now.

We stayed with our good friends Kristen and Tom, and their two adorable girls Cyanne and Maritt. They live on a ranch, so Henry had a ball enjoying the scenery and picking (and eating!) tomatoes, carrots, green beans, and oranges:









Cyanne and Henry picked right up where we left off after seeing them in Cooperstown this past June and were fast friends.


(yes, Henry is modeling a very short, girl's bathrobe)

On Friday, Mike and I took Henry down to Stearn's Wharf:







Where we met my good friend Karen and her daughter Anna at the Sea Center:





That afternoon, we got all the kids together at a park:






Saturday morning, Kristen and I were up bright and VERY early for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer!



It was very foggy to start the day - fairly typical for Santa Barbara:



We walked past one of my childhood playgrounds:



And the Santa Barbara Mission:


Kristen and I did the half-marathon - 13.1 miles on Saturday!




We decided not to camp out on this Walk for various reasons - lots of young kids at home, me flying 3000 miles in part to be able to spend time with people who were not on the Walk, etc. I admit to missing the experience, but feel better knowing I will be camping out next May when I Crew the Boston Walk!

So, on Saturday after walking all day we had dinner at Karen's parents house, and the kids went nuts playing in the backyard together:





Sunday morning Kristen and I headed back out very early to meet the Walkers at the Wellness Village (held at the Polo Club) and start the day's walk:





Henry met me at the lunch stop:


And we got to walk along the beautiful bluffs of Carpinteria:





And after another 13.1 miles, we made it to the finish line:



The Santa Barbara Avon Walk had 2800 walkers and raised $6.4 MILLION to help the fight against breast cancer:



This was the seventh Avon Walk I have participated in (3 times as a staff member, once as a Crew member, and 3rd time as a Walker) and as always it was an amazing experience - I am so glad I got to share it with one of my best friends.


After Closing Ceremonies we recuperated by watching the kids play at the beach:






Monday, we took all the kids to one of my favorite places - the Santa Barbara Zoo. Those who know me know of one infamous story:



This picture should give you some perspective on the distances involved:


Henry was not impressed:



The kids had a lot of fun looking at the animals:





And playing on the "anthill" at the kid's playground:





Of course, the highlight of the trip was the train ride:






In the afternoon we took a final trip to the beach(Henry got to walk Lucky the dog, and was very excited):










That night we had a last dinner together and laughed as the kids chased each other outside:





Henry did a great job on all flights. Yesterday was a touch dramatic as we were delayed in Santa Barbara for a few hours and had mere moments to catch our connection (we landed in San Francisco at 11:14 and our flight left for Boston at 11:30). Thanks to some luck and a nice sprint through the airport, we actually made it, as did (miraculously) our luggage! None of the drama of previous flights was repeated. Henry pretty much did this the whole time:



A huge thank you to Kristen, Tom, Karen, and Zach for being there with us this weekend. We loved being able to spend time with you, and seeing our kids play together was a truly wonderful experience that I hope we are able to repeat soon.

I took hundreds of photos - anyone interested in seeing the full scope of our trip can see it HERE:

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