Highs (and lows)

To celebrate the great week we had, we decided to cave into the twins' demands and finally take a trip to Antigua. It's one of our favorite cities and it's just 40 minutes away. It's an old colonial town that is flooded by tourists but is otherwise a place with great history, food, and of course, photo ops for the twins.

The twins love Antigua because it's a great opportunity for them to run wild get wet, and really, what more could a couple of 2 year olds ask for? When we came a year ago, the twins got soaking wet splashing around in the town square fountains and it was funny because all of these Guatemalans crowded around to warn us that if we didn't get the twins changed out of their wet clothes immediately, they would die. seriously, death was actually mentioned.

Here is one of the twin's favorites--you can just hear Linda saying, "Look at that lady's boobies, Mommy!"
Although this one (Linda) was delighted to be around the fountains, there was some hesitation at first...
Expecting it to take a minute for them to get a little more comfortable with the water, I turned my head to soak in the beautiful scenery. When I glanced back, I saw this:



And when we told them that they had mistaken the fountain for a pool, and that they could only splash, and not swim in the fountain, we saw this:


The twins then proceeded to find ways to still get soaking wet while not technically swimming in the fountain.

Such determination lead Lucy to discover this:


The day just got better and better for the twins and pretty much peaked at the horsey-ride around the park. They hopped on Napolean rode with no fear. Linda, in front, never took her eyes off the path, and Lucy held on fiercely, and both enjoyed every minute of this fantastic adventure.
My mom walked beside them as I took pictures, and Dave walked around the park giving them someone to waive at every 100 yards or so...


We had some delicious quiche at a little French restaurant and Lucy and Grandpa Holmes had a good time smelling the flowers at our pretty little table.


Later on in the day, we stumbled upon this old man who was wearing a crazy outfit and playing music on what only tourists supposed to be "native instruments," but were in fact NOT-- he was playing drums on tortoise shells for crying out loud and blowing on a trumpet that looked like it came from a stick he had found on his way over there--- anyway, it was funny because all these tourists were oohing and ahhing at him like they were witnessing this "native" moment when in fact, it may as well have been my dad out there wearing some hippie clothes just trying to find a way to keep himself busy on a Saturday afternoon.

Anyway, the music caught Linda's attention and when the girl hears music, she stops in her tracks and starts to dance. I don't know what it was she was doing-- a mix of ballet and break dancing I guess, because one moment she would throw her arms gracefully in the air and throw her leg backwards and balance on one foot and then the other minute, she'd be rolling around on the floor but stopping really abruptly in any given position just in case we wanted to take a picture (which I would have done but the camera battery had died at that point...sigh). Anyway, people started crowding around Linda and clapping for her and it was just hysterical-- she didn't even realize people were watching her because people would walk right up to her and smile and wave and she'd just ignore them completely. Lucy was so proud of her sister, too-- at the end of a song, people would clap and Lucy would yell, "hooray for Linda!" It was pretty funny.

All in all the day was great. We all had a wonderful time and I would say if not for a couple nasty incidents that occurred in the closing hours of the day, it would have been just fantastic. What happened? So this was little Linda earlier in the day:



And this was Linda at the end of the day:

Linda ate it running around the pool. I wasn't there, but apparently it didn't sound that good since you could hear her head hitting the pavement. She cried for about 2 minutes and then was fine-- no sign of concussion and there wasn't even a bump the morning after. Anyway, I'm hoping this is the first and LAST head injury we ever have to deal with...

The other incident was all Lucy.


Judging by the look on her face, I think even Lucy had some regrets about this one...