My baby turned 7 yesterday. We celebrated as a family at Alparamare, the biggest covered water park in Europe. It was a fitting venue for my water-loving girl, and we all had a blast riding the water slides, catching waves in the pool, relaxing in the sauna pool, and floating in the lazy river. The facility is open year round, and many of the slides are indoors. I'm not sure how the sneak peeks of the outside would be during a snowfall, though. Fortunately, Abbie had a gorgeous day and we all loved our ventures outside. We topped off the day at McDonalds. It was nice not to cook, but absence isn't making my heart grow any fonder as far as fast food goes.
As much as I try to plan family traditions, they seem to be born from spontaneity. I had a random squirt bottle of chocolate left in the fridge, so I wrote "Happy Birthday" on Abbie's breakfast crepe. Others got "Love", "Cute", "Star", etc. Who knew it would be such a hit. (Duh, chocolate for breakfast!) Everyone is already talking about what will be on their crepe for Brendan's birthday. And thus a new tradition is born.
The water park highlighted a few cultural differences for us. First, the changing room was co-ed. Yes, there were private stalls you could use to change, but the benches, lockers, etc. were shared by all. It was actually quite convenient as the family could stick together. Second, all the slides were regulated by traffic lights. You pushed off on green. With the exception of one group of teenagers, everyone stuck to the rules. Either teenagers are the same across the world, or it was a group of expat teenagers.
Happy Birthday to my beautiful, adorable, spunky, active 7 year old! I love watching Abbie's face shine with excitement and how she embraces the world. She is my planner and needs to know exactly what is happening every moment of the day. Case in point: she didn't know what to do with herself all day Saturday as she was worried we wouldn't get the Happy Birthday sign hung or the bow on her chair. There was no way this child could go to sleep trusting that I would take care of staging the birthday setting.
2 comments:
Abbie is adorable. She is lucky to have you make her days special.Mom
The water park looks cool. Definitely interested in going in Feb if time permits. There is lots of different stuff there including the wellness section.
Glad Abbie had a fun birthday.
Was nice chatting with you all for a bit.
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