Watching Hockey with the Boys...and Other Mschief

Steve's been avidly following the Stanley Cup playoffs- that's ice hockey for you non-American/non-Canadians. His team, the Boston Bruins, have now made it all the way to the finals! The playoff games have been on at about 7am here most days, and a local restaurant, owned by a Canadian hockey enthusiast, has been showing the games as the local hockey gathering place. Steve's been getting up early and taking Griffin with him, both allowing me to sleep in, and of course, to teach Griffin! From what I can gather, Griffin spends half the game cheering with the guys, and half the game hanging out with the restaurant owner's wife and mother-in-law....

 In other mischief, the other day after Steve got back from a bike ride, Griffin managed to find his Camelback hanging on the back of the chair, and figured out how to suck on it to get water out! And all over himself! But he was pretty proud of himself, for sure.

And....He's figured out how to open the drawers in the cabinet and take everything out. That's his new favorite game. Of course, this morning it ended up with a sliced finger when he got it caught in the door hinge, which resulted in some pretty big tears! For about 5 minutes anyway....

Island Tour

Last Friday we took the afternoon and drove around Phuket Island. With so many hills and windy roads, it can take a long time just to get a few towns South even. It took us almost an hour to get from Bang Tao on the West Coast, to Nai Harn area, at the Southern-most tip. We were in search of good "photo shoot" locations for a family photo. For most of the time that we've been here, I've been going to a ladies "boot camp" workout session on the beach 1-2x a week in the mornings (along with hot yoga on other days). Turns out that one of the ladies at boot camp is an amateur photographer, trying to build her portfolio. I had been looking for someone with a decent camera to take a couple family photographs of us while at the beach, especially since Griffin will be turning 1 year old in a few weeks. She agreed- and stay tuned to have a look at those photos. (I've seen a preview already and they're amazing! can't wait!). In the meantime, here are a few pictures of our "recce" trip...

This first set is of Ya Nui Beach, near Nai Harn, in Southern Phuket. 

We stopped for lunch and one of the women who worked at the restaurant had her small son there as well, and they totally enjoyed playing with Griffin, which was nice, because Steve and I had a relaxed lunch! It's hard to see in the picture but Griffin was just laughing and laughing. He's really into other kids right now- very fascinated by them!

These next pictures are of Siam Beach, just South of Kata. It's a strange little place that we'd never noticed before- a small turn off the main road. They had a beautiful pavilion with one of the nicest views of the West Coast that I've seen!

MMMMMmmmmm love my banana mango shake!

Not quite the ball crawl but....

Although Griffin wasn't that excited about getting into the ball crawl in the playroom at the local coffee shop, he was really into the balls themselves. Turns out that most little shops at the beach selling pails and shovels and floaty things, also sell little bags of plastic colored balls. And man do they supply endless hours of fun at home! Too bad we will have to leave them behind in Thailand as they would take up too much room in our suitcase.

A perfect day a the beach

If you haven't figured it out yet, we really are beach people. I mean, we love the pool too, but there is nothing like a low key beach shack serving up beers and yummy Thai food late on a Sunday afternoon while we hang out at the beach with good friends. This week we decided we needed a change from our usual spot in Bang Tao and headed to another local beach (Phuket island's coastline is curvy, around the hills, and thus is made up of a couple dozen coves of different beaches and small beach towns). Kamala beach is the next beach South from Bang Tao, and on this particular day was just lovely, as was the spot that our friends Claudine and Robin found. Later in the afternoon we decided to venture to another spot on the beach and found a little beach shack restaurant where we enjoyed a nice sunset. People always tell you how much your life will change with a baby, and although we are usually willingly slaves to his schedule (it's worth it!), we also have attempted to maintain our "normal" life with him along for the ride. On Sunday, Griffin had luckily taken an extra long morning nap so we decided to throw caution to the wind and skip the afternoon nap, hoping he'd just crash in the stroller. By late afternoon he started to get fussy so I put him in the stroller where he had a short, but full-on meltdown, and then after 5 minutes of strolling, crashed and slept for a solid 40 minutes. Mission accomplished! We had arrived at the beach just after 1pm and were thus able to stay until about 6:30-7pm when we had to head home in order to at least hit a decent bedtime for Griffin. All in all, it was a really great day!

The toothless one.

11 months old today and Griffin is still toothless! and on the move- so getting a good shot of him is really, really hard. We will likely need to upgrade from our sturdy awesome point and shoot to some sort of fancy SLR thing if we are going to capture him on the move going forward. We leave Thailand on June 6th to head back to the US and are wondering if all the teeth will pop through right at that moment, AND he'll start walking just before that. Ensuring a fabulous eternal flight home.