Adventures in Leavenworth-- River Walk and Munchen Haus Edition

One fine day a gal named Bonnie woke up and realized that it was a blissful Monday- her day off. With a song in her heart (and let's be honest, coming out of her vocal chords) she got up and began to get ready for her day. With her wonderful little outfit and fun matching accessories she went out of her camper only to be greeted by her equally happy sister. It would seem that the little girls next door had Strep Throat (which these gals were of course not happy about because that would be heartless and bad) and as a result Dieuwke had the day off as well (which these gals were very happy about). These facts were then combined with the fact that Ethan was off gallivanting with his Auntie Valerie and there were only Dieuwke's two little darlin's to be watched. As often happens in these situations 1 + 1 = 2 and a glorious day began to form.

As you may have already guessed (and as I'm certainly hoping you already HAVE guessed) I was one of those gals and Dieuwke (which you BETTER have guessed since I named her by name) was the other. As we were throwing around different possibilites for what we could do with our sudden freedom I suggested walking around Blackbird Island which has always been one of my favorite- if indeed not my very favorite- walks around Leavenworth. Dieuwke was amenable to this suggestion and thus our adventure began.

I LOVE the fact that Aurora has already started practicing flirting with a fan! (And the fact that it's an Avatar- The Last Airbender fan just makes everything that much better)

Arrival at the beginning of the trail!

We saw a park...and then we got distracted for a good 1/2 or so....

And Aurora our ever social butterfly would cheerfully stop her swinging or sliding to call out a greeting to whatever passerby happened to be, well, passing by

This was her "I'm finished sliding and I am now going to pose a super cool pose" Pose

Have I mentioned that I love swinging? 'Cause I totally do. Alot. In an episode of 'Bones' (which I also love alot) there is a date where they go swinging.  I saw that and fell in love with idea. I figure that I now will be able to tell which man I should marry easily because he'll be the man who takes me on a date swinging.

Then we made it to the river (which by the by is where our journey effectively ended- we had so much fun at the river that we spent all our time there and never actually finished the walk- but we had tons of fun with rocks!)

EPIC picture! Aurora was skipping rocks and someone (read ME!) got this awesome photo not only of Aurora skipping a rock but the actual rock in the very act of skipping! I was pretty stoked....

So then of course I had to give it a try

And then I had an 8 year old giving me instruction on how to do it and watching me to make sure I did it properly (I'm telling you, my ego takes so many bruises from these kids)

I'm fairly certain this is the only picture we have of me actually skipping a rock (possibly because it's the only time it happened...I had some pretty fancy splashes though!)

And then- we found the PERFECT skipping rock! (How's the look on my face? I was going for reverential...I think I managed to hit 'odd')

And then I kissed it for luck. Because if it works on dice it should work on skipping rocks right? Yeah only problem with that is that it doesn't work on dice....there will be no follow up picture because the follow up was disappointing- because of me, not the rock :-D

Isabelle, looking mischievously adorable

And then Dieuwke decided to fish for a rock!

Making the grab!

VICTORY!!! She has the...rock...wow, that was really anticlimactic to write. In real life though it was totally awesome

And Isabelle was TOTALLY packing her pockets full of rocks (all I could think of when I saw her was that Dr. Seuss book "There's a wocket in my pocket") She was uber disappointed when we told her she could only take one home

And THEN Dieuwke found a rock that looked like a battleship! (You can totally imagine where this is going can't you? Yeah, we're total 5 year olds)

After playing around with it in the water for a while we safely docked it into the shore where it's fighters could safely disembark

And then we found the Ice Cream Sandwhich Rock! (I'm telling you this river had THE COOLEST rocks in it!)

And honestly, what do you do with an Ice Cream Sandwhich rock but eat it? Or at least attempt to

And then we made friends with Mrs. Duck who came by to play with Isabelle

But after she started playing that fun splashing game Mrs. Duck made a speedy exit

So finally after about 1 1/2 hours we decided that we were done at the river and that the idea of walking around the whole island was dismissed in favor of food. We were quite hungry and today was our day to do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted (we of course drew the line at all things illegal...maybe...or at least as we will admit) so we decided to jet up to Munchen Haus and have so freaking amazing sausages for lunch!

Me (well, obviously), perusing the menu while we waited in the forever long line

Hahaha! This bag of chips totally cracked us up! Who knew that New York Cheddar chips could get EVEN Cheddier! (Cheddier? Is that a word? Should I say cheesier instead?)

Isabelle, very begrudgingly giving her Mom exactly 4 chip pieces

I know! It's like bigger than her face!

Getting ready for her scrumptious first bite!

Oh yeah, that's some good stuff Maynardette!

And me getting ready for MY scrumdidliumptious (that's right- my first bite was better) first bite!

Oh ho it was SO good! (And very hot- as may be obvious by the picture...)

Isabelle didn't want to sit with us- she had to be all cool over there on her own

And then we all got some pretty amazing ice cream cones!

And Dieuwke and I did a 'scumps' toast to each other and our day with out ice cream

I would like to now introduce 2 very important new additions to our family. The one on the left is Calico- Dieuwke's new pet rock that we picked up at the river (we were each allowed to take one after all) And the one on the right is Cinnamon, my bet rock. Cinnamon and Calico are BFF :-P

So there we have it-- the adventures and decisions of two lovely girls who awoke to a brand new week and discovered a degree of freedom in their day that had been unanticipated! Isn't life grand?!