Rasa Ria Nature Reserve

A few final memories to capture from our holiday...

The girls had their hair braided...  Gorgeous!

The kids signed up to ride a pony with the kids club.  Scott and I wanted to see, so we came over when we saw the kids lining up for it.  Wyatt and Madeline do not know that we are watching!

Madeline is being such a sweet big sister, she holding on to her little brother and making sure he stays with her.

She turns and gives him a sweet kiss on his cheek!   I'm so happy to have captured it!

They stand together in line...

Suddenly, Wyatt sees us!  But, he doesn't say anything!  He just smiles at us!

Finally, Madeline sees us too!  So sweet!

Then, they each ride on the horse.  Lily comes out a little later, they broke the kids up by age.  She's with the bigger kids.

Each night, the kids club has a performance for the lighting ceremony.  The kids that want to participate can dress up as a warrior or a princess (only 2 princesses per night).  The staff at the resort dress up too.  There's drums and music, fire dancing and swords.  Pretty fun!  The girls did it 2 of the nights.  The first night, they were warriors.

Wyatt was a little scared of the fire!

Madeline later told us it was a little boring because they just stood there.  But, she definitely wanted to do it again.

All 3 of the kids got to be junior rangers at the Rasa Ria Nature reserve.  It was awesome!  I didn't get a picture of Lily, because she changed her shirt too fast and then didn't put it back on for me.  They all got to prepare the food for the Orangutans and then bring it up to them.  Pretty fun!

There were 2 Orangutans that came to get the snack.  Both of them climbed through the trees right above my head!  

They were pretty cool!  The Rasa Ria Reserve is a stage one rehabilitation reserve for Orangutans.  If you want more information about their work, you can find it here.

And our final evening begins.

Lily and Madeline were the princesses on this night!  That means, they get to be carried in to the show on a chair lifted my men!  How exciting!!

The sunset was golden!

Thank you for the fun times Sabah!  We loved it!

Pirate Treasure!

Something really special happened while we were on holiday this time.  

Scott was walking along the beach.  The kids and I were playing in the pool and Scott had just run back to our room for a minute.  On his way to the pool, he spotted something shiny in the sand.  When he went to check it out, it turned out to be a bottle with a map inside!  Well, of course, he thought our kids would want to know about this, so he rushed over to find us.

Lily, Madeline and Wyatt all leaped out of the pool and had a look at the crumpled old map.  It sure did look like a map to the beach that we were staying on!  We decided to have a look and see if we could figure out where the x might be...

Inside the bottle with the map was a flag with the Jolly Roger on it.  Hmmm....  This could be pirate treasure!  Do we dare?

After looking around on the beach for a little while, Wyatt was the one who spotted the X!  He pointed to it and got Madeline's attention.

Madeline rushed over and then the two of them called to Lily and Scott.  

Lily and Scott rushed over fast.  

Could this be it?  Let's have another look at the map and see.  We decided it was indeed the X from the map.  Lily needed to run off and see if she could find a shovel.  Lucky, the towel guys from the pool had one on hand!

Digging is hard work!  Lily went first.  

Wyatt did some too.

Eventually, we all used our hands.  There's something down there!  How big is it?  Where are the edges?  Dad, get the shovel, we're going to need your help!

This is getting exciting.  It looks like a treasure chest!  Quick, get it out!

Wow!  Let's take it over to the shade and have a look.  Do you think the pirates are watching us?  Are they going to get mad?  We saw some boats out on the ocean, but they were pulling an inflatable banana  so we didn't really think they were the pirates.

Oh look!  A bottle of gold!  More flags, this is definitely pirate treasure!

We found so many beautiful treasures in that chest!  It's an amazing thing to find a treasure map and a treasure chest on the beach.  Our family won't forget these memories!