Bouncing around BJ

We had to take a trip to the capital city last week to renew Clara Anne's passport. Yes, it has almost been five years since her first passport was issued! She has filled it, added extra pages, and almost filled those. Factor in that the photo is of her when she was only a day old, and it was time for a new one. (Not to mention that the U.S. government required us to get a new one!). So we packed up the family and took the fast train to the capital city, spending a few days there and enjoying some great family time!

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised that the trip ended up more relaxing and vacation-like than I expected, especially considering that I caught a terrible cold just before we left! We had a wonderful time together as a family, explored several new fun places, and enjoyed some great western food as well.

The first afternoon we were strolling in the area around our hotel, when we found a huge inflatable bounce house set up on the sidewalk. It was free, but you had to go into the adjoining mall to a kid's toy store in order to get tickets to use it.

[Their excellent marketing ploy paid off, by the way. We had no idea there was a toy store there, and it had lots and LOTS of toys imported from America--Legos, Play-Dough, Thomas train stuff, you name it! We ended up buying some play-dough for the girls, and spent a very enjoyable evening with them playing with play-dough and John and I lying on the bed watching the European soccer league! But I digress...]

The girls had a great time in the bounce house. There was climbing . . .
There was jumping . . .

There was laughing . . .

There was trying-to-escape-from-annoying-boys-who-were-chasing-them . . .

And there was sister love.

What more could you ask for?