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| Picking up Lily at the airport |
Lily turned 12 at the end of last year so it was time to invite her to come and visit, as we had already with Jordan. The best weekend seemed to be MLK weekend as we were just back from Chile and it was a 3-day weekend.
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| Top Golf |
Since Lily had school on the Friday we got her ticket to fly in on Saturday morning. We met her just outside security, and since she just carried on luggage we were ready to start the day. The first stop was
Top Golf where we had lunch and played a couple of games - Lily's first time....she does have one a few miles from her hour in Austin. Lily was quite consistent - hitting many of her balls in the same part of the yellow target. Our next stop was the
Aquarium where we saw both the aquarium and the
Butterfly Wonderland exhibit. The butterfly exhibit exceeded our expectations - with a 3D movie at the beginning that explained the monarch migration that was really well done. After a couple of hours there, we drove back to the house to get Lily settled in. After relaxing for an hour, we left the house again to grab dinner at
Outback Steakhouse and then went to see
Jumangi.
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| Horseback Ride McDonalds Ranch |
Sunday was another busy day. The morning began with Lily cooking us all her famous pancakes - which were delicious. We scheduled a horseback ride at
McDonalds Ranch at 11am - it was fun to ride among the giant cactus. We saw a hawk on the top of a cactus, perched and looking for prey. After the horseback ride, we went to the
Market Street area of DC ranch for lunch at
The Living Room. On the way home we stopped by Safeway to get groceries for dinner. The next stop was
iFly. Lily and Keith had both done it once before, while it was Shawna's first time. The person sitting in front of Lily realized he had a shoulder issue so he gave Lily his flight time, so her second flight was 2 minutes - really cool. All of us did better than we had expected and had a blast. After arriving home, Shawna started cooking while Keith and Lily looked though really funny old pictures of Graham - all 1600 of them. It was really interesting to see so many of them where Lily or Boone's features could be seen in a young Graham - and also pictures of Graham at places in England where Lily had just been, such as Berwick and Windsor Castle. We then introduced Lily to Monopoly Deal - played a game before dinner and another after dinner. We wrapped up the evening watching
The Princess Bride.
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| iFly |
We were up at 7am on Sunday. We just had cereal for breakfast, then Keith took Lily to the airport for her flight home. It was fantastic to spend time with our niece!
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| Horseback Ride McDonalds Ranch |
