A simple day out

What made for a simple and happy day out?

When we went out yesterday, we gave the girls choices. Sure, they were tired, sometimes grouchy, but they had choices, and that made all the difference. Here are some snapshots.


Sophia having a long awaited real ride in the car. I think the girls understand our less is more approach to toys. And I think that they dont really need too many as they often bore of toys and games which are store bought. On the other hand, I fill the house with rocks, stones, seashells, seeds, beads etc and since I also spend a significant portion of my times at home getting my hands dirty in terms of using recycled stuff, Anjali, atleast has more or less stopped asking us for toys.

But sometimes they are very impressed with something and you can see the longing in their eyes, and we let them have it. In this case it was a ride on this musical car.



A couple of weeks ago it was a car ride at Vivo city

"What was the best part of your day? " I asked Anjali when we were getting back. "Was it going to Art friend, the elephant parade or the Jacob Ballas garden?"

She thought a moment.

"It was holding Sophia's hand"



The elephant parade was good artistic fun. I learnt a lot and got motivated to do the paper mache sculpture of the elephant that I saw at ultimate paper mache and paint it like one of these. What a hige, emssy and fun project that would be?









They had miniature hand painted elephants on sale all they way from 5 cm elephants to ones under a meter long, and the 5cm elephants were about $50 and the 75cm one was selling at close to $4000. BHut they are beautiful. I am getting more and more tempted to sculpt that elephant.

Of course, no trip to Jacob Ballad is complete without the time at the water playground.



But for Anjali, tree climbing took the cake. We are rather dissappointed that there are no climbable trees in downstairs our block. There was a single tree that Anjali and Sophia could climb if husband gave them a boost, but it was not as vast as the trees in this garden. Should I write to Nparks?



Tree climbing is such a wholesome and imaginative activity that I am surprised that of the many trees that grow around our block, none of them have low, reachable branches. I suppose that it is so for safety, but is not a playground structure just as dangerous without supervision?

Pasta mania for dinner kind of capped it all up. It was a rather impromptu decision, and a well enjoyed one





We thought that the long and eventful day would make the girls sleep as soon as we returned, but no, they had to play princes and dragons with daddy.



Here is the prince fighting with the dragon (note the filthwizardry inspired newspaper sword)



And the princess egging him on. We threw costumes in for good measure