Day two- Utah, Idaho, Wyoming

We had a long day of driving, but the scenery was so unexpectedly beautiful that the hours passed quickly.

Stretching our legs...

... In Perry Utah. Even the rest stops are beautiful!

16 hrs In...

... And happily playing with his truck.

4am Check in

Do we look thrilled or what? We flew via Amsterdam to Salt Lake City and made it without incident. Seb, who was pulled from bed at 3am, was a total champ the whole way. He hardly watched any shows on the iPad either. He just wanted to play with all of the new and fun toys I brought. Play dough was the hands down winner.

Quinta Time And The Living Is Easy

We were lucky to sneak away this June for a quick quinta weekend before the final chaos of the last weeks of school.

Seb zoomed around on his balance bike, climbed one of the oldest trees in Portugal, "drove" the tractor, sat on a horse, played lots of football, went for walks, and played with his cousins until late at night. What about the other kids? We hardly saw them. That's the beauty of this place. The kids roam in packs and play the day away.

I can't count the number of hours we spent standing next to this tractor while Seb worked the gears and pedals.  

 The middle cousins had constant ping-pong tournaments running.

Here's Freddy with a group of cousins.

Before refrigeration, live fish were kept in a pond at the bottom of these steps. It is now a small child magnet.  

 Seb ran after that ball until he was dripping in sweat and red in the face. He referred to the front lawn as "the park."

Despite all that running around, he continues to be one of the strongest sleep resisting toddlers ever to exist. We drove home late at night, and he only closed his eyes at 11pm after two hours of driving. Did I mention he also goes on hunger strike when we travel? This does not bode well for our Summer travels.

Work is always present for Pai, but at least he could work in a different setting. We did get in quite a few walks as well. 

Zita was came with us, but Mooj stayed home. 

Lastly, here is Seb making a run for "the park." I will never accuse him of being too clingy in unfamiliar surroundings. 

Cheesecake From Scratch

The requests to cook or bake usually roll in when I have just finished cleaning the kitchen. I was so reluctant to let Freddy bake yesterday, but the clean up was worth this vanilla cheesecake with strawberry topping and sauce.

This cheesecake was no joke and took a good two hours to make. Our digital scale is the best; no eyeballing or heaping cups of dry ingredients. Everything is perfectly accurate and the end result was a perfect cheesecake. Despite 800grams of cream cheese, it wasn't too cheesy tasting at all.

After all the effort and waiting (4 hrs while it chilled), Freddy realized he doesn't actually like cheesecake after all.

Pausing To Admire A Bee On A Thistle.