Maine: 2

This is Nancy and Francis's house. Because it wasn't designed to host the invasion that we constituted, Maryanne and Theodore slept on the lawn in tents. On air mattresses, so I'm told they were comfortable. :)

Elsewhere around the property was some beautiful lilacs and roses, and lots of nice lawn for Ari and the Papke clan to sword fight and roll around in. It also had a gravel drive that Ari was fascinated by. She kept running out there, picking up rocks, and transporting the rocks to other parts of the drive.

This is Ari and Francis and Bunny hanging out together. Ari had a great time with Francis- especially when he was showing her his slideshow of cats. She liked it so much that we went ahead and made a cat slideshow here, too (mostly of pictures from this trip!).

And again, there's Bunny, willingly being near that noisy little bundle of chaos that is my Ari.

I was really worried about how Ari would do in a strange house for so long- both in terms of us having to prevent her from destroying things and in terms of her being happy and okay with things. As it turned out, though, she was totally fine with Nancy and Francis's- she totally made herself at home- and not in the pouring flour all over the floor way, either, thank god.

This is us at Cod End, having our first (and I think, the best) lobster rolls of the trip! We're all squinting because it was shockingly bright there. It didn't seem like it was that bright, but by golly, we couldn't see anything.

They had big, open tanks of lobsters on the floor in there. Ari kept wanting to play and splash in the tanks- I'm not sure what she thought of the delicious, delicious doomed crustaceans there.

Maine: 1

We recently went to Maine, to visit Thad's grandparents. They have a lovely (gorgeous, stunning) house in Thomaston, and we spent the week touristing around the area and generally getting to spend time with Thad's extended and immediate family. It was a great trip, and here's some pictures. I picked the ones I liked the very very best, and I figured I'd take the time to write some stuff about what I remember about the trip. It'll probably take a while (a number of entries, anyhow) but if you don't want to, no one is making you read. ;)

This is Ari playing with pots and pans. She very much liked going in the kitchen and playing in the cupboards there- perhaps because she has no cupboards at home? Eventually, we had to tie the cupboard with the bleach and cleaning supplies in it shut- although, all she seemed to want from there was the scrub brush. Go figure.

Also, the liquor was kept in one of the cupboards, and she thought it was great fun to grab the bottles out! Marcus had hopes for getting her to bring them to him, but it didn't work out that way. ;)

This is where we slept on the trip- in the music room. It's one of the few cat-free rooms in the house, which was nice. It was full of windows and beautiful plants.

If you look closer at this picture, you'll notice that Ari and Thad both have pen marks all over them. Thad stayed up with her the night before this, and she apparently got hold of a pen and went to town. I snuck in and took these pictures for posterity.

This is Ari with Bunny, a very tolerant Manx cat (hence her name). Ari loved the cats at Nancy and Francis's, but most of them decided that this loud little creature was too much for them, and they were steering clear. Bunny was most willing to put up with Ari.

Not that she was too bad, as toddlers go. She was generally very gentle and reasonably respectful of the cats- but in that loud, clumsy toddler sort of way. Anyway, Ari liked to lie on the ground with Bunny or pet her or follow her around. This is her pointing at Bunny and saying "dat! dat!"