Friday morning we left for an amazing trip to Phuket, Thailand. It is a beautiful island and the perfect place to celebrate my Birthday! This is the airplane. I took a picture of it because you can see the stairs that we walked up to get on the airplane. I have never done that before and tried to take a picture of us on the stairs but they wouldn't let us. So anyway I thought that was cool.
We got to Phuket at 9:00 am. We caught a taxi that took us about an hour south to our Hotel. I forgot to take a picture of it. It was a Best Western, but was very nice and had about a hundred trillion stairs. We got tired quickly of climbing up to our room. A few minutes after we got to our room we got a phone call from my friend Tania. Her and her husband Mike were in Phuket for the weekend also and they wanted to take me to lunch for my Birthday. So this is a picture of Tania and me. Yep, she's like my mom and adopted Grandma to Grace and she is so great! 
After lunch we headed to the beach. Here's Gracie lounging on the chair. She loved floating over the waves with us and playing in the sand. At lunch Tania and I were joking about the Europeans going topless but she thought they would be more modest because the Thai people are very modest people. But as soon as we got to the beach we discovered that Europeans would be Europeans. We saw quite a few topless people. We were amazed at how comfortable they were walking around like that and I decided that I have no reason to be self concious about my body after seeing lots of not so great bodies in all their glory.
Later that afternoon we found a big Marketplace with lots of Souveniers, clothing and decorations. We had a fun time shopping and Ben was great at dickering down the prices. We got some stuff really cheap!
So my goal of the weekend was to ride an Elephant. So first thing Saturday morning a driver from the hotel took us to and Elephant Safari. It was pretty cool to sit on top of such a powerful creature. He was very gentle and we got to ride for 1/2 hour. His name is Namsap and is 40 years old! Grace was a little freaked out in the beginning, but by the end of the ride she was pretty excited.
Along the way we saw a lot of Rubber Trees. They were collecting the rubber sap dripping down the trunks of the trees. Our driver pulled some off for us. It was just like a rubber band.
After our ride we decided Namsap deserved a treat so we got to feed him some Bananas. He was pretty slimy but it was cool to see the way his trunk worked.
On the way back to the hotel the driver suggested we go the this monkey show. So we thought it would be fun. It was AWESOME. The monkeys were so smart and very friendly. This is me holding one of them. (sorry for the turned picture)
The monkeys did all sorts of tricks. They did pushups and situps and slam dunks and even rode a tricycle. Here he is coming to give us a hug. This one was very loving and gave hugs and kisses. Grace LOVED the monkeys and was constantly immitating them,
This is a Tuk Tuk. We had to ride in one just because it looked fun. We rode about half a mile down the beach Saturday evening just to say we did it. These are all over the roads here.
The beaches were beautiful! This is my favorite picture from the weekend. Ben and Gracie walking in the Sunset.
Our little family enjoying the beach. 
Ben wanted to take a picture to the Sprite can. He thought it was cool to see it written in Thai. This is the restaurant we ate at Saturday night. I saw it Friday and really wanted to go back, so the celebrate the end of the funnest Birthday we went. Yes, the tables are really in sand! I thought that was so cool. (again sorry for the turned picture)
This is the front of the restaurant after dark. I loved the atmosphere of the restuarant with the torches and sand. It was so fun. There was also a live band playing all of my old favorites, Chicago, Depeche Mode, and several other 80's songs. It was classic.
After dinner we went home and crashed. None of us slept much over the weekend, Grace woke up at 5:00 both mornings we were there and had a really hard time going to sleep with so much distractions. We made it home Sunday morning and we all had a good nap. It was such a perfect weekend and we would love to go back if we get a chance.
Some pictures from our trip to the Zoo last weekend. Click on it to enlarge. We really had a fun time. There are TONS of Monkeys! They were my favorite along with the Elephants. They had 8-10 Elephants and had a really fun show, but we only caught the end of it. I think we'll definately make a trip back while we're here.
