in awe of life: Summer's Here!

I'm starting to become uber pregnant. So we decided that given my due date is August 25th, and there is a possibility of me being induced early, I should be 'grounded' closer to my date... at least a month in advance. So we're going to try to cram as much summer into the next month and a half!

We came up to the cottage yesterday midday and after a nice boat ride last night...

... we decided to do a day trip to Santa's Village today. So we packed a picnic lunch, loaded up with sunblock, and set off, stroller and gear in hand!

First stop, the reindeer!

Daddy bought some cones that were filled with deer feed.

The deer gobbled it up right away and Caitlin tried to convince us that he needed 'just one more'!

Then we stood by the fence for a while because Caitlin heard a train way off in the distance and wanted to see if it would come by.

And it did!

From far away, she decided she wanted to go on the train. But it was a bit of a struggle once we got in line and boarded the train - she started to chicken out. However, we got going though, she really enjoyed it. It took us all around the park, and Caitlin got a preview of neat things to come :)

We walked around a bit after we got off the train and found some spaceship-like discs that you could whisper in, but the other person - 100 ft away - could hear you clearly.

Then the path took us towards the rides. Caitlin wanted to go in the ferris wheel... except she decided it looked like one of grandma's garden art pieces - the doom ball!

It does sort of look like it...

Here's the real 'doom ball':

The airplanes were next...

She LOVED them!! She really wanted to go on them with daddy for a second round, but it was lunchtime, so we found a place to have a picnic. Right on hole 18!

After a quick bite of tuna sandwich, cucumbers, yogurt and apples...

It was back to fun time!

And not surprising, she wanted to go mini-putting.

Except she was more interested in collecting all the balls from inside the hole...

Then we went to say hello to the animals in the petting zoo:

Caitlin received a cute little elf hat on the way in, and she enjoyed walking around wearing it. So funny because it had curly elf ears! Here she and daddy are looking up at some people climing trees.

And more silliness :)

Pit stop: ice cream with gramps!

On our way out, we stopped by Rudolph's Sportsland; it's an area for bigger kids and has things like baseball bats, a treetop adventure, and go carts. Guess who got excited and wanted to go driving??! (Aside from daddy of course!)