Spring Break Trip to Sri Lanka Part II: Unawatuna

The girls' suitcase had arrived with no problem, and so they quickly changed into their swimming suits and spent the morning in the pool.  Our sun screen hadn't arrived, and so the girls got quite crispy.  Yulia went out and found some sun screen in the afternoon so they were protected from then on, but they were crispy the whole vacation!

One of the two outdoor pools at our hotel. The other one was for smaller kids, so our kids didn't even consider it.

Life is great!

Sophie and Lexa

Twins!

King coconut tree. They are yellow, and the milk is very refreshing.

Our hotel had a restaurant in it and we decided that we would try it out on our first night.  We were very glad we did.  The girls all ordered yummy food - Nika ordered crabs and Lina ordered lobster! Sophie ordered spaghetti and Lexa ordered curry chicken.  All of the meals came with delicious salads and with dessert and they were really good.  After trying it the first night, we pretty much decided to just eat there every night.  Yulia had a different fish entree every night, and I tried a variety of sea creatures as well - with a plate of calamari my last night and a seafood risotto on the third. The meals cost about what a casual dining place would charge (think Chilli's or Olive Garden), but so much better.

Happy with their orders

We loved the salads there!

Lina with her zebra lobster. We actually do not know what it is called, but Lina was very happy to eat it! Especially because she got to eat it without any utensils. A win win situation for Lina!

They had two huge German shepherds hanging out in the dining area. Here is one. They were super calm and very friendly.

Our hotel room was two suites.  They were on a separate balcony with its own entrance and a private little pool.  The only problem is that the power went off in the girls' room the first night and wouldn't stay on after that.  Yulia and I slept in their room on the second night so they could have air conditioning, and after that, we told the hotel that something needed to be done.  They seemed a bit surprised that something as little as a lack of electricity would make us unhappy, but eventually they gave us another room in the balcony next to ours.  No problems with electricity there. The owner of the hotel was very apologetic and gave us our family dinner for free on the night they moved us into the new room.

Our little private pool.

Girls hanging outside of their door waiting for the lights to be fixed. Again.

Our bag arrived early on Friday morning, and so we had toothbrushes, changes of clothes, and most importantly our swimming suits.  Yulia and I joined the girls in the pool in the morning, and in the afternoon we went down to the beach and played there.  The girls mostly found shells and waded.  Yulia and I also did some swimming.  I swam more, but we both went in and swam. The waves in Sri Lanka are quite high - better for surfing than swimming, but it was swimmable and very warm. We stayed at the beach until about five when it started to lose a bit of light, and then cleaned up and ate a lovely dinner.  Our second day in Unawatuna was much better than the first!

Ocean!

There were quiet a few stray dogs hanging out at the beach. Here is one of them. The beach itself wasn't super clean, there was garbage that the tourists left.

Spencer swimming

They were so excited to get into the ocean but the salty water stung their burnt skin, so they quickly changed their plans to castle building and shell hunting.

Building something that in the next minuted turned to ...

...this!

Lina watching the ocean.

Finding treasures!

Double trouble!

After 5 pm a lot of locals came to the ocean with their kids. Some of them would go swimming right in their clothes!

More locals coming to the beach.

Coming to our hotel from the beach along the narrow village road. Had to be very careful because those tuk-tuk drivers are sometimes down right crazy!

Not sure why we took this picture but here it is...enjoy!

Our little fruit stand close to our hotel. We got bananas from them a few times. They are cute little bananas that are really tasty!

Yep, perfect for the kids!

Summer Vacation in Utah - Palisade Park and Snow College Activity Center

Our next water adventure was at Palisade Park in Ephraim, Utah. That is where we had our family reunion with Spencer's brothers and sisters and their families. We stayed at Willow Creek Inn for a few nights and had adventures during the day at various places, our favorite being Palisade Park. Palisade park is a reservoir and state park that is located about 12 miles south of Ephraim, near Sterling, Utah.

Palisade Park, Ephraim.

When we got there were quite a few campers, but we found a great spot for our base, and then the kids all went into water. And that is where they stayed all day until it was time to go. The water was really warm, the temperature was about what you get in an indoor pool. It was a beautiful day and we even rented a paddle boat for the kids and grown ups to take on adventures!

Checking out the water

This tree was a popular base for kids' water adventures including fishing. They caught a lot of little fish and saw a few big gold fish that were hanging in the roots of that tree.

Catching fish with the cousins.

Chilling on the pier.

Even Spencer got into the water.

He is pretty hot!

And that's me watching him from a safe place. Yep, he is pretty hot!

Jumping off the pier - what can be better?!

And, of course, riding on a pedal boat. I think our kids're having a pretty fun summer!

 While in Ephraim we also went a number of times to the pool at Snow College. That is where Sophie and Lexa really learned how to swim. The older kids were jumping off the diving board, so they wanted to do the same,. We told them that they needed to be able to swim across the pool on their own before they could try diving. And... they did!

Happy Lexa

One of the twins (probably Sophie) jumping off the high dive.

Spencer comforting Lexa after she accidentally did a belly flop. One of my favorite pictures!

And there she goes again!

Sophie - I just love that face!

 While in Ephraim we also took the kids to Manti to show them the place where our biggest life adventure started 13 years ago - the Manti Temple!

Manti Temple - just as beautiful as on the day Spencer and I got married!

And here we are, 13 years later!

Summer Vacation in Utah - Water Fun Part II

During the first two weeks of our Utah vacation we put our kids into swimming lessons at the Payson outdoor pool. When we lived in Iowa our kids would always take swimming lessons throughout the year and especially in the summers but we didn't have an opportunity to do it when we lived in Las Vegas (though we did visit the pools there once in a while), and in Astana our first year was so busy that we didn't even find a pool to go to. The only exception was Thailand where we spend every day of our vacation in water. Needless to say the girls were very anxious to start swimming again. We arrived right before the new session started, so everything worked out great especially because it was around 104 F every day for those first couple of weeks or so. The girls loved it, and this time they actually made a huge improvement!

Nika and Lina practicing swimming using just their legs

Sun + water = happy kids

We also got together with Spencer's brother Ben's family a couple of times for an afternoon at the pool which is always a lot of fun!

At the Payson outdoor pool. I know our girls are somewhere in there.

Sophie is going down the slide

We had a great time swimming in the Payson pool while we were there.  The girls got good enough at swimming that we are comfortable with them in the water now.

Spring Break Vacation to Thailand Part V

We spent Thursday just relaxing.   We slept in until we woke up, had a nice leisurely breakfast, and spent the afternoon at the pool.  In the evening we went down to the beach after dinner to watch the sunset.  The sunset was beautiful, and we had a lot of fun watching the crabs scurry around on the beach.

Sunset at the beach

Looking for more shells

We were trying to have a photo taken of just the two of us but Lexa jumped right in!

Sunset!

We saw hundreds of little crabs after the sun went down. This one was the biggest of them all.

The hotel was having a movie night at the pool.  We told the kids they could watch the movie.  It was "Guardians of the Galaxy" and so the girls weren't interested.  We let them watch "Brave" on the DVD player and television in their room instead.  While the girls were watching, Yulia and I went for a walk and to get ice cream.  One of the things that we loved about our vacation was that even though we were there as a family, it also felt like a romantic vacation for the two of us.

Watching the beginning of the movie outside by the pool

Pretty cool setup

Our main activity on Friday was to go to downtown Phuket.  Yulia had wanted to look around.  The girls were a little less enthusiastic about going, but were good sports.  We walked through the market and down a few streets.  We stopped at a 7/11 and bought some Slurpees for everyone.  It was much hotter in town away from the ocean, so it was nice.  We also found a second hand show store where Yulia found a gently used handbag that was just what she wanted to have for traveling.  We also stopped at a little mall where we found a few souvenirs and bought some fruit pastries for a snack later in the day.  We spent a few hours downtown and that was enough to get a bit of a feel for life and for the kids to see and smell what it is like in a developing country.

While waiting for our taxi to come and take us to Phuket City the twins found a nice sofa in the lobby to relax

And Nika and Lina found these two big chairs to do the same.

We first stop by a market and the smell was overwhelming! You see Lexa pinching her nose, we all felt the same!

A lot of stores in Phuket are open like this. It was kind of interesting.

On the streets of Phuket City

Enjoying our Slurpees.

Shrine. We saw them on just about every corner.

These bird cages with birds were everywhere! 

See those shoes outside of the door? We noticed that in a lot of places people would leave their shoes outside before going in. We noticed it at the cafes, photo studios, and hair salons.

Cowboy boots! In Thailand! What?!

We went to the pool in the late afternoon so the girls could have one last chance to swim.  While we were there the staff invited the children over to fish in a little pond.   The girls all tried, but only Sophie and Lexa caught fish.  Sophie caught the biggest fish, and caught it twice.  I told Nika and Lina that they might have my luck as a fisherman (bad) and that the twins might be more like their Uncle Ben, who is a gifted fisherman.

Nice coconut! We fell in love with all of the fruit in Phuket, most of which we've never seen before.

Fishing at the pond

Lexa caught a fish!

Sophie caught this big baby! And two minutes after releasing it back into the pond she caught it again!

After getting cleaned up and changing we went to the beach to watch the sunset one last time in Thailand.  We had fun watching the crabs scurry again.  We stopped by the cafe where we ate breakfast to see about dinner.  It was a buffet that cost 1800 Baht each (about 60 dollars) each.  That was what we were paying for all of us for each breakfast and was a bit steeper than we wanted to pay.  We went to the Thai Express for one last meal (and it cost us just under 1600 Baht for ALL of us).

Last time at the beach looking at all of the little crabs running under our feet.

Looking at sunset

Last time with the waves.

One observation that we made about restaurants in Thailand was that they brought food whenever it was ready.  This was okay when it all came relatively fast but was a bit strange when we would get one dish for one person and then wait 10 or fifteen minutes for the next thing to come.  We like the American way of getting things all at the same time (or appetizers first, then main courses).  On Friday night my dish came last - after the girls had all finished their dinner for 10 or fifteen minutes.  We ended up sending the girls home to get ready for bed while we waited for my plate to come and to pay the bill.

Here is to show that the two of us are enjoying the food and the rest are still waiting. Twenty minutes later four of us were almost done with our dinner, and two were still waiting. Forty five minutes later five of us were completely done, and one still hasn't gotten his food! Crazy!

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Saturday morning we were up early - 4:45.  We dressed, ate a quick snack, and went to meet our taxi.  We left for the airport at 5:15.  Our flight left Phuket at 7:30.  We spent a full day traveling.  Bangkok was busy - we had to get from one side of the airport to the other, leave the terminal, check in, go back through passport control area, go through security, and get to our gate within an hour and a half.  We made it to the gate just as boarding began.

Air Astana is awesome! Look at the leg room this tall fella has on our last flight from Almaty to Astana!

We ended up flying back from Thailand with a group of single professors from my school who had also done vacations in Thailand.  One of my students was on the flight from Almaty to Astana (one had been on the flight out last week as well).  Almaty was plus 13 degrees Celsius.  Arriving in Astana was a return to winter.  It was -9 Celcius when we landed and it got down to -20 later in the night.

Hello, home! Lots of snow and -20C!

We arrived home, got the kids in bed, picked up Yuki from our friends, the Petersons, and got back to life.

****

We had a wonderful time.  This was the first time we have ever taken this kind of vacation and it was quite nice.  We reflected that it was quite a privilege to be able to travel so far from home just to experience a different place and culture for a week.  We really felt blessed.  Our trip to Thailand was definitely a week that we will remember for a long time.