May 12 – 13, 2018

John’s 3rd birthday!  I cannot believe he is turning 3 already, time flew by as we all know and this is exactly why we are taking this trip, to spend as much time together as we can.

We had a fun weekend celebrating.  On Saturday I took him to Wells International School for their annual Splash party.  This school was for kindergarten and pre-school aged children so everything there was perfectly sized for John.  They had a huge indoor open play area with 3 playgrounds, turf field, class rooms surrounding it with large halls to ride tricycles through, child friendly bathrooms, and a large kiddie pool.  Over the course of 2 hours we checked everything out, John loved the pool and tricycle. On our way out they gave us a goody bag consisting of a big blow up ball, 2 sets of crayons, coloring book, and a small stack of sticky cards.

On Sunday, his actual birthday, I took him to see his first movie, Sherlock Gnomes, at the Central World movie theater.  This theater was perfect for us because we bought tickets to sit on a 2 person reclining couch instead of just single chairs.  They are also located in the back of the theater so this minimizes any noise we may make to avoid disturbing others, although there was only 1 other family there watching the movie so this really wasn’t an issue.  He did great with the help of letting him play with my phone during the numerous amount of previews.  I forgot how long they were!  He munched on popcorn, dried mango, and water and actually watched the movie.  He did move around a little bit, standing up, sitting on my lap and asking to play on his iPad!  The kid can’t stop talking about it.  But I kept distracting him back to the long tv show we were watching and he got back into the movie.

Later on that day we gave him his new Mickey Mouse watch and he was so excited.  He was saying ‘Ooh’ and ‘Ickey Mouse’.  We showed him how to hit the small button to eject the clock and he immediately started playing with it.

For dinner we all went to one of our favorite restaurants, Pala Pizza, and Bob joined us.  The food there is always amazing, even if you do not get pizza. Our favorite waitress surprised John with a small chocolate cream puff with a candle on top.  It was so sweet of her but John started crying as she brought it out singing.  After some tears, he finally blew out his candles and he eventually ate some after I smeared a bit of chocolate cream on his lips so that he could taste it.

I definitely missed celebrating with family and other friends but I am so grateful to have each other, Bob, and our friends at Pala Pizza.  I am so proud of John and so excited to spend the next year with him every day!  I wonder what country we will be in for his 4th….