Summer came back yesterday (hooray!), so we spent most of the day at the beach. Ellie LOVES the beach! There is something magical about running around naked, splashing in the water and playing in the sand (and if you think Ellie is the only one who thinks so, check the post from a few weeks back). Once again, there was a cool wind, but fortunately we have a sun tent that blocks wind as well. The sun was nice and toasty, and we had a great time burning energy and digging holes. Ellie is quite intent on Markus making "kuchen" ("cakes" AKA sand castles from overturning a bucket), which she usually knocks down, trounces or tosses by the fistful with glee. Yesterday, she was entranced temporarily with decorating the kuchen with shells. The beautification efforts were quite impressive and thorough until she remembered that stomping kuchen with gusto was loads more fun.
This morning, we took advantage of more good weather with a day trip to northern Holland and a visit to Apenheul ("Monkey Hill"?), a part of a nature preserve that is an open monkey zoo where several monkeys are allowed to roam free.
We saw many, many monkeys, but the best for us was the glorious weather. The nature preserve is beautiful, and Apenheul is so well-designed. Ellie was not really in the mood for monkey viewing, so she exerted most of her efforts acting like a monkey herself, climbing things, jumping around, inspecting the plants, and chewing on her shirt. We didn't last too long, but we did go twice around the Rainforest merry-go-round on our way out (and experienced many tears when we left that behind).
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