elephant rides, ox cart rides, and bamboo rafting in thailand

while we were in thailand for our family's christmas this past year, we spent a morning being tourists. growing up, we rode elephants countless times since we had mission trips frequently visiting that wanted to see the elephants. it was so special to be able to include ben and ruby kay on this part of my life.

ruby kay and aunt marisa. it was so sweet to my thailand sister love on my girl. especially after years of me being the aunt, it was fun to let her take a turn being ruby kay's auntie.

little girl was a little timid around the big elephants. i couldn't blame her though, when i was little they used to terrify me!

sugar cane and bananas to feed the hungry elephants, or in some cases the elephant trainers. i'm pretty sure lori and hayley's elephant trainer ate their sugar cane instead of giving it to their elephant.

 ruby kay with her papa and daddy. one lucky girl.

 i already miss this tropical paradise!

 ox cart rides!

after sitting still during the elephant show, rk wanted me to take her on a walk.

ellanora and her nina. 

one of my favorite pictures of ruby kay and i together in my favorite country.

coloring with ruby kay

now that we are back in cold weather, we spent our days almost completely indoors. to combat the winter blues, we had fun coloring on the coffee table one day last week. since we didn't have any butcher paper on hand, we used the back side of wrapping paper. 

i made sure to encourage rk to only color on the paper, but washable crayons are forgiving during the "learning" phase. she only colored on one other table, and it was easy to clean off.

ruby kay discovered that sitting on the table is fun too. overall, this was a great activity to do together with my girl.