We spent Monday doing whatever Alexe wanted to on her last day of vacation.
This included going to a local diner for breakfast. She had read all about it online, and wanted to see how their operation ran, to make it such a popular and successful spot in a competitive market. (Store hours, 4 am to 10 pm, every day, family operated.
We had to wait 20 minutes for a booth, on a Monday morning around 9.
(I liked this bench design; I'm going to try duplicating it if I can make the concrete form when we get home.)
Pre-meal, Annaliese took her drawing very seriously, Caspian made faces. Alexe watched in open-eyed wonder at the masses of people busily swirling around her.
Post-meal, making towers and trains with whatever was handy.
Following Alexe's itinerary, we then dropped Alexe and Caspian at the Portland Children's Museum, where they would be attending a rock painting class together. Annaliese and I headed to the Old Port to wander and see what we could see.
We went down to the dock and watched a large yacht departing. It made me wonder at the skill of old sailing captains who left these ports in their big ships without the help of water jets that allow ships today to move left and right at the push of a button.
On our wandering we had a deal that we would explore any toy store we came across, which kept Annaliese intent on moving on.
We saw a pirate, but it wasn't in front of a toy store.
Still, she stopped for a moment to play hide and seek.
We passed this house, a few blocks up from the wharf, and I was taken with the fourth floor. Those windows face the bay, and if you look through the gable windows, you can see the other side of the roof has a number of sky lights. It looked like a very pleasant, sunny space.
Annaliese spent the second half of our adventure time on my shoulders. She was much happier up high, and off her feet. It also took the pressure off to find another toy store; the best we found was the moose store/tourist trap, where last year we found her pink moose pajamas. They didn't have them this season, so we couldn't get her the next size up.
We walked up to get Alexe and Caspian after their painting class. (This turned into a bust: the 1 hour class was $22 instead of $4, (the ads in the paper and online neglected to mention full museum admission would be part of the class cost,) it included 3 very small rocks and a single small brush, with no painting instruction, so all the kids were done within 10 minutes, and even when Caspian asked if he could paint a little more, he was refused any additional supplies, ie rocks.)
Luckily they had paid for museum admission, so they had something to do for the next 50 minutes.
Again back on Alexe's agenda, we went to a local bakery to pick up whoopie pies for the ladies of the BTC, who has been holding the fort down in Alexe's absence.
We waited outside while Alexe picked up her supplies, and a whoopie pie for us to share.
This is my last picture of Alexe up here. Harumph.
Jack was very attentive while Alexe made dinner that evening.
We had a nice family meal...
Went for one last walk to the beach as a family...
(Caspian here has removed a googley eye from one of his 3 50 cent piece sized rocks from the painting class and stuck it to his arm.)
And came home to curl up and watch the end of Mary Poppins, which Alexe and the kids had started the night before.
Packing, a little sleep, and then off to the airport by 5 this morning.
Alexe is in the air right now, from DC to Memphis. I suppose the kids and I will get back to being a threesome now, for a couple more weeks.
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