Baxter County Fair

This being our first year as residents of Baxter County, we were excited to check out the County Fair. We had a great time. It was a perfect evening. When we entered, I asked the ticket lady how much it would be for the three of us, and she said "Fifteen dollars". I replied "That sounds like a fair price" and she gave me what I now call the Baxter stare. Declan went on to earn his very own Baxter stare by telling the owner of this 4H goat, that he was sporting a "Nice Goatee". Made me laugh.

Our favourite stand was a wagering game, wherein you put a quarter on a particular colour, and then they release a rat, like an actual living, breathing scurrying rat, and whatever colour hole he scurries into on the spinning colour wheel is the winner. I have never seen such a thing in all my days.

Post-Target Life

Now that we have moved to Mountain Home, we are more than 2 hours drive from our nearest Target store. This takes me back to my life before Shane, when I lived in benighted Canada, and only got to go to Target when I was passing through Bellingham. I would always stop for stationary and wrapping paper. Now, it is a rare occasion indeed and Declan misses it to. So when I picked him up from Camp Mitchell, we were both keen to stop in Conway to hit up the Tar-gay. It was too hot to leave Livvie in the car, so we smuggled her in. Which is to say, we rolled her in in a regular red cart. As if they were expecting us, they had a selfie area set up where you could have your picture taken with Bullseye. We did.

Submarine Sleepover

Declan's Cubscout troop had a sleepover in the USS Razorback, a decommissioned submarine that is parked on the Arkansas River. First off was a very interesting tour, where we saw all the bells and whistles and guts of the submarine, including the bridge, where the internal temperature was usually well above 100 degrees. That lets me out for a submariner career. Well that, and the blood chilling claustrophobia. The boys played then had a thematically appropriate dinner of submarine sandwiches and then played games and watched a movie: Das Boot. Oh it wasn't actually Das Boot, but it was something nautical I'm sure. 

 

They spent the night in the bunks 3 or 4 stacked high, and in the morning dined on doughnuts and chocolate milk. Declan insisted on buying a bucket of army men the next day. I told him that the military life is not all doughnuts and movie nights. But maybe it is, I've never enlisted. There are lots of sleepovers, I know that much.

Spring Break - St. Maarten

We had the most fun on our last stop - at St. Maarten.   We had opted to take a powerboat tour of the island, which is not the sort of thing we normally would go for, but it was super fun.  We had a uber-German boat driver, to whom the whole sea was an autobahn. I've never gone so fast in a boat.  It was crazy, and Declan loved every minute of it.

Look at Declan's "I can't believe how fast we are going" face!

 We stopped at a variety of different snorkel spots and beaches on both the French and Dutch sides of the island.

Declan was excited to spot some sea turtles- this one had fish hitching a ride on his back.

We got some good beach time in too.

At one of the beaches we came upon a heap of iguanas.  Here Declan tries to feed them a blade of grass.

We had much better luck after getting a tray of kitchen refuse from a nearby restaurant.  The iguanas came a-runnin' after that!

We did make a stop at the famous "Airport Beach" which has St. Maarten's airport runway immediately adjacent.  I did not capture in the photo how thrillingly close the airplanes really do come to touching down on sunbathers. It was off the chain.

This just looks like an airplane flying by.  Was way more exciting than that in person.  I'm just not a great  photographer! I used up all my action shots on the iguana.

Spring Break - St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands

Our next port was St. John in the US Virgin Islands, but we wanted to head over to St. Thomas, because National Park.  So we chartered a sailboat and headed over for some National Park snorkel action!

This was Declan's first time snorkelling in open waters and he did amazingly well!  I made him wear his puddle jumper against his will, but we had to swim a long way from the boat's anchor point to the beach at the National Park.

At the National Park beach, not to crowded!

We were joined at the boat by a 4 foot long barracuda.  Declan opted to get out of the water, but I couldn't bring myself to get out.  

Needs something to scale, to recreate the terror!

Let's get out of here!

Spring Break - Puerto Rico

Our first stop was Puerto Rico, and we opted to spend our time at the San Juan National Historic Site of the Castillo San Cristobal, where we learned about Puerto Rico being the Gibraltar of the Caribbean.  

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Declan became a Junior Ranger here, which was extra challenging because the workbook was in Spanish.  We muddled through somehow.

Exit through the Gift Shop

Declan opted to take some of his very own souvenir money to commission some avian novelty photos. He is a boy after my own heart!

Spring Break - Caribbean Cruise

We took a last minute spur of the moment trip to the Caribbean over Spring Break, and ended up on the Celebrity Reflection. going to Puerto Rico, St. Maarten and St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.   We got a very reasonable price, with none of the expected school-holiday-price gouge.  Apparently because Celebrity doesn't target families as their preferred demographic, they don't charge a premium for school break holidays.  The time we took a Royal Caribbean cruise at Spring Break on the Oasis of the Seas, I think the premium was almost 100%, ie. we could have taken the same trip a week later for half the price.  The cheapness of the Celebrity pricing made me worry that it wouldn't be nice or family-friendly, but we found it to be nicer than all the other ships we have cruised on, and, surprisingly, had the best kids club programming- better than Disney even.

At Sailaway.

Obligatory towel animal shot.

 Our room was lovely, but Declan had to sleep on the least comfortable pullout on the Seven Seas.  The whole ship was only a year old, but they seemed to be using pre-War technology on the pull out.  There was sharp exposed metal that Declan had to climb over to get in and out of bed.  Poor baby looked as though he'd been mauled by a cheetah by the end of the week!  Anomalous crappy thing in an otherwise lovely ship.

Celebrity targets the spa-loving demographic, which apparently includes Declan.  

Food was very good- I would say noticeably better than the other ships we've been on, but we didn't eat in the main dining room, opting instead for the spa cuisine specialty restaurant.  

One night we had dinner at a different specialty restaurants- Qsine, which was a molecular gastronomy type establishment.  Declan loved it- especially how playfully all the food was presented, like the sushi lollipops.  This dinner had a terrible, unforeseen consequence:  now whenever Declan is asked what his favourite food is, he will say "molecular gastronomy" which is so punchworthy, I can't even.  

Breakfast on our balcony - if you look carefully you can see the beauty of the natural surroundings- Senor Frogs in the background.

There were a lot of fun adult activities onboard too- including a faux Amazing Race type game that Shane and I took way too seriously.  In the final round, I actually committed battery against a stranger in the ship's elevator.  In my defense, he kind of started it, and it clinched the silver medal for us! Super fun.  

Obligatory Bingo game