Visit with grandparents

Last weekend Ally and I went to my parents for a short visit. She is always so excited to go anywhere and do anything. Ally is also such a joy to travel with. 3 hours in the car on the way there - no stops no complaints and she slept about half of the time. On the way home it was about 3 1/2 hours and she slept for only 1 hour. Still no complaints - and no DVDs either way. It was an easy drive with my fantastic daughter! Becky stayed home to spend some time with her sister and do some school work.

Reading books is always a favorite activity.

My dad and I took Ally to a park I heard great things about. It was a great park, but we had a little incident. Ally climbed all the way to the top of the ladder - all by herself and was so excited and proud.

Then she slid down - and came out all twisted, backwards and bumped her head. She was pretty inconsolable for a while and we had to leave - she refused to play on anything after that, or to leave my lap. I felt pretty bad for her.

On the way to the park we went for a drive to look for animals. I grew up in a area with lots of farms - horses, cows etc. Seeing animals was an everyday occurrence. On the way to my parents' house we drove by some horse and Ally was so thrilled. She yelled out in the car "I see horses...I'm going to tell Grandma Barbie I saw 2 horses!"

It made me remember that while I grew up in farm country with things like taxi cabs and city parks and zoos as uncommon occurrences. (I did not ride in a taxi until college). For Ally these city things are normal (we took a taxi to school on Friday b/c the weather was crummy). Its interesting to raise a child in such a different environment than the one I grew up in. Different is not better or worse, its just different.