Happy birthday to Olivia...

So, today is Olivia's birthday and what she wants to do is go ice-skating, so we are off ice-skating later. Right now, we are hanging out waiting for Uncle Steve to leave to go to the airport - he's been here for about a week. Which is part of the reason I haven't blogged much - not just Uncle Steve being here, but Grandpa Karl and Grandma Nancy, too. So we've been busy! On Friday we went up to Baltimore to a place called Port Discovery, which is a fun kids place, kind of combination adventure playground and museum - it has a three-story climbing thingy in the middle, and the fact that Daddy and Uncle Steve were both here meant that I actually didn't have to climb around in it.

Saturday was a lovely day, so we just packed a small picnic and went to one of the large playgrounds in Columbia, Centennial Park, and the kids spent an hour or two climbing around the playground stuff, before we went over to Columbia Mall to ride on the restored Carousel and have the grandparents buy presents. (photos from those events here) Sarah decided she'd rather go back to the house with Daddy and Uncle Steve, who was planning to make a lasagne for dinner. She adores her uncle and he's been very good at putting up with them, I have to say. Even if he does tend to make them hyper - I guess that's uncles for you, though! Geoff was due to fly home later that night, so after dinner, Karl and Nancy left to go back to their hotel (they were due to leave early in the morning anyway) and the kids and I took Daddy to the airport. They don't really miss him too much when he goes, because there is so much exciting stuff still to do after he leaves - including Halloween this year, of course.

On Sunday, we met up with my friend Kristen and her mom, sister & niece, Kestrel - Kes is four and a half - at a Fall Festival at Homeland Gardens (a large garden centre). Lots of little rides and things. It was really sweet, actually, and again the weather was fabulous, so the kids had a great time. Then we went out to dinner together - a lovely day. Yesterday we kind of took it easy, just ran some errands, including me getting my drivers' license renewed, and some shopping my mom needed to do. I love being here and visiting, but there are so many things to do and people to see that in some ways, when we get back we need a holiday to recover from our holiday! (Tried to upload a pic from the Fall Festival here, but Blogger wasn't cooperating. Or it might be my mom's connection, which is slow. Anyway, lots of photos here...)