Our last few days on the East Coast

 After our trip to Block Island, Jeff only had a few days left and then he had to fly back to South Korea. On his last night we went to a cool new restaurant in town where kids can design their own pizzas. They loved it. C'mon Ted, slap some more cheese on that pie!

Mema and papa live only a few blocks away from this amazing bike path that runs for MILES between Bristol and Providence. We like to walk and bike to downtown for ice cream at the daily scoop or a fresh seafood lunch. This summer I hope to log some serious miles on that bike path training for the Disneyland 1/2 marathon in September.

 2 days before we left Rhode Island the kids and I went back to Boston to meet up with my pal Joe. He is a Geologist that I met in Oregon and is now a professor at UNH. It was so fun to catch up with him. We walked all over the North End and checked out the old buildings and monuments.

 Then we headed to the Boston Aquarium. Everybody do your best penguin imitation!

 We stopped for a mid-afternoon break at the Cheers bar in Faneuil Hall....

 ....and Joe took this pic of the 3 of us. Teddy's gettin' squished!

 Finally we headed over to the Museum of Science to take a Duck-Boat tour. These old WWII Amphibious vehicles tour you all around the city and then drive into the water and head up the Charles river! We said hello to the old T-rex in front of the Museum while we waited to take off.

 Sasha and Ted got the front row in the Duck boat and began their tour with some lobster pops!

 We saw the Old North Church:

 And Teddy didn't think it was very exciting. He fell asleep mid-lobster pop and I had to catch his sucker in mid air as it fell out of his hand!

 In the Boston Commons there was this huge Revolutionary War re-enactment going on. They had an entire battalion camped out to celebrate the history of some famous battle.

 A red-coat? I thought we ran those losers out of Boston centuries ago!!

 Then we drove into the river!

 Teddy woke up just before we hit the Charles River and he thought that driving a street vehicle into the water was the coolest thing ever!

 We drove right past the M.O.S., my old "Home away from Home". I did my Master's project there!

 Then our hilarious driver let Teddy pilot the boat up the river! Questionable judgement to be sure!!

 This is the coolest!

 We were lucky enough to have one of the original old Duck-Boats, not the "fake" modern ones. That's bona-fide!

 At the end of the ride we had an awesome dinner at one of the numerous pubs in the North End. It was such a fun day!

Philippines

Ok, Ok, Christmas in the Philippines... it's been a month right? Let's DO this! It WOULD have been a good trip had sickness not come our way, but the beginning was good anyway. We got in late Thursday night on Dec 23rd and went straight to bed. Got up the next morning and headed out to explore the resort.

Found an awesome Breakfast buffet and did some serious damage. Teddy ate his weight in bacon and Mangos each and every morning!

The kids of course wanted to head straight to the water after b-fast so we headed to the largest of the freshwater pools. It had all these cool little grottos and caves and bubbling areas. Really cool! We went there almost every morning.

It was shallow enough and the kids are such good swimmers that Jeff and I were even able to hang out in some beach chairs and relax!

That night was Christmas eve. We headed out early for some Christmas carols in the lobby. It was weird to see Christmas decorations and have it be so warm out!

Then we headed to one of the beaches for a big Christmas eve dinner/show. The tropical decorations were beautiful and very Christmassy!

This was my favorite tree, all full of stars!

The dinner was great, the show was fun, and then Philippine Santa showed up! Sasha was NOT fooled, but she knew the guy had connections even though he was clearly not the real thing. She made sure that she gave him our deets so he could let the REAL Santa know where we were.

And Santa came through!

We had a really nice morning opening stockings and looking through everything.

Sasha wanted a picture with each and every thing that came out of her stocking!

When we checked in they had upgraded us to a 2 bedroom for our entire stay since the place was full. The kids had this huge room, then we had a living area equally as large, and then Jeff and I had our own room. Kids in a separate room = vacation heaven!!

Christmas afternoon Jeff went on his first SCUBA dive and Sasha and I went to get mani/pedi's.  Ted came and hung out with us for moral support. Having your toes scrubbed tickles!!

 

Later that day we went to a kid's Christmas party on one of the beaches. Santa hats and coconuts.... weird combo!

The next day we discovered one of the true hidden Gems of the resort: our Personal Assistant Irish! She was so nice and amazing and you could call her the night before and say, "can you come from 1-4?" and she would be there. Once we figured this out we didn't have to tag team SCUBA dive anymore.... we could go together! On our first dive Sasha, Ted, and Irish were playing on the beach when we finished our dive.

This is the little foot washing station that was at the bottom of our stairs. It was refilled each night by magic fairies. Ted never did get the hang of standing on the bottom step to wash off his feet. I tried to tell him that washing off sand ON the sand was counter-productive....

Sunset across one of the freshwater lagoons:

On Tuesday we headed out on a big catamaran for a 1/2 day snorkeling/picnic excursion.

Ted was HYSTERICAL!! He said he did NOT want to snorkel and that he was NOT wearing a mask and that he was NOT coming with us. We were like "yeah, yeah, just put this on, um hmm, and put on this life jacket, yup and oh look over there and nope that's not a mask we're putting on you..." and then I just stuck his head in the water as he was mid sentence. There was a big pause and then we heard "WOOOOWWW!" all muffled and from under the water. He grabbed his snorkel, stuffed it in his mouth, and didn't pull his head out of the water for the next hour!

Sasha was a snorkeling expert and we saw Nemo, Dory, and the drop-off! She always gets cold fast though so she had to warm up.

That afternoon Jeff and I went to the Spa. It was AMAZING! Here is one of the hot pools:

The spa is like a Japanese village and there are all these little winding paths to different areas.

When the wind blows it moves all these bamboo pieces in the railing and it sounds amazing! I want to build a railing like this in my house some day....

This pool is where we started. We had a pool massage while sitting in the hot water. Then some kind of scrub down, then a full body massage. Heaven!

When we got back the kids were riding the trolleys around with Irish. They thought that was awesome because of course their mean parents make them walk everywhere....

That night we went to a Philippine beach party cook out. There was dead pig and everything. We had a good show and great food.

Teddy fell asleep and kept almost falling out of his chair so we used his napkin and tied his head to the chair. It worked really well!

The next day, Sasha was Sick. We didn't realize how bad it was yet so we took turns taking Teddy to the pools. You gotta hand it to Ted, the kid always comes out on top. He really had an awesome vacation!

Here he is rocking one of the big slides:

That was the end of the fun for Jeff, Sasha and I though. The last 3 days of the trip for us was a nightmare of doctors, figuring out what to do, and trading off with a very sick kiddo. She had pneumonia and got through her IV antibiotics and got cleared to fly just hours before our flight home. It was incredibly stressful and soo hard having a sick kid in a country where the medical system is less than what we are so used to at home. Makes you really realize how lucky we all are that we have access to such great medical care. Also makes you grateful that you have healthy kids 99.99% of the time. So Sasha got better, we went home exhausted and stressed out, but all's well that ends well, and I got a cool henna tattoo:

I have a billion pics from the trip and I tried to put some on here that are different from the ones I put on FB. For more pics, go HERE:
More Philippine Photos