Treasure Box

Dan bought the kids cute treasure boxes on his first trip to Phnom Penh. One for each: a puppy, a fish and a dragon. The kids love them and use them to store their money, but really the compartments in them are only about 3 in x 1 1/2 in x 1 in. So not big. We have to fold and refold their money and cram it in until we can get the lid to close and stay. Not ideal. And Kylie gets into it and takes her money all over the house. Again, not ideal. So, I've been wanting to figure out some other kind of thing for the kids to keep their money in.

Then, on Monday a middle school neighborhood girl dropped off some stuffed animals and a Hello Kitty jewelry box she no longer wanted! It's perfect, if not my taste, with 3 deep drawers for the kids to keep their money! So, I painted it last night! It turned out so cute! The middle picture is what it looked like this morning - and I had to get out more paint because those white sides were just mocking me...Check it out:

What's your View?

Here's the view from our bedroom window. A house across the street, but still blue skies and a pretty day. What's your View?

Pajamas

We received a package in the mail today from Mark, Heather, Hannah, Abby, Mary Kate and Cole! A postcard from Mark and Heather's trip to Paris (and London), cute Valentines for the kids, a belated birthday present for Kylie and an early birthday present for Megan! Megan will have to wait until her birthday for hers...but Kylie got her present yesterday and loves them! PAJAMAS! And not just any pj's - pink pajamas from London! So cute and they say, "Pussycat, Pussycat, where have you been?" on the front and "I've been to London to see the Queen" on the back! She loves them and made me take pictures of them while she modeled them last night :) Thanks Uncle Mark and Aunt Heath!!!

Our Chill Weekend

Our weekend was pretty chill - it consisted mainly of hanging out at home and going to birthday parties. 3 parties to be exact. One for each of the kids to attend. Kylie had a birthday to go to the same time Saturday that Jack did, so Dan and I divided and conquered. Megan came with me and Kylie to a 4 year olds Princess Party. It was quite the deal. They made princess hats, then played musical chairs (where only the birthday girl and Megan wanted to play - Kylie was too scared, another girl cried and another girl sat out), played pin the crown on the princess, played hot potato with a princess teapot (again, 2 mommies playing with 2 girls, Megan and the birthday girl), ate a ton of food, ate an amazing mermaid birthday cake (pictured left, but it had 4 mermaids!)...and...drumroll please...had 3 ladies from the nail salon come and do the girls fingernails, toenails and put tinfoil in their hair. Oh, and the Mom of the Birthday girl did all the little girls' make-up! It was a riot! Megan got red and blue foil in her hair (teeny strips of metallic foil tied to the roots of hair strands to make it look like you have shimmer in your hair!) and Kylie got pink! I know the photos aren't great of the girls, but I was having a hard time getting the picture to show them!
Jack's birthday party was a pool party and Megan's was today and a pool party...Oh, and on Friday I went up to the kids' school to buy an ISB lanyard for Dan's school ID and picked up a cute bandana headband there for myself, which Megan and Kylie promtly stole! So cute, $0.75USD and I wish they had made them with the elastic under them back when I was in high school and college...I would have rocked them! :)


Also, Dan's on a fruit smoothie kick. Today, because we are pretty much out of fruit in the house, he made banana and frozen raspberry ones!

Video made by Suz

Click Here to rate this video!!!

My friend, Suz, and her friends and cute family made this great video for Welch's Grape Jelly! If you get a chance, rate it for her...there's a trip to NYC and $$$ as the grand prize! And the Wonderboys are too cute! Oh, and Suz isn't actually in the video - she's behind the camera! Her husband is the villain and her 2 boys are the one on the lap and the Wonderboy with the "J" on his cape!!!

Legos

Our family really hasn't been into legos all that long. We had mega blocks for forever (and I finally threw them out before we moved here - every. last. one.). But this Christmas was just the start of Lego's for our family. Jack got some, Kylie got some and then we bought some more with Christmas money the kids got. They love them, Dan loves them and I think they are okay. I have no spatial awareness - if you give me legos, I will build one of 2 things. A tower or a staircase. That's it. Dan, and the kids, however, will build towering castles, helicopters, diggers, houses with roofs and windows, spaceships and firehouses. I haven't taken pictures of Dan and Jack's creations - or Kylie's - but I will. Here are 2 of Moo's from today: her pattern board and her statement to me. Too cute.

Color!

Okay, so if you know me at all, you know I love color! Growing up, I went through the standard pink phase as a little girl, then I loved aqua and turquoise in elementary school, then just blue. Any shade. And I hated red, orange and brown. I still hate red (sorry A and sorry Sarah - i did love your bridesmaids dress, though) and I really desperately hated orange and brown until the last 7 months. And now? Well, pretty much anything pink or polka-dotted and I definitely am loving orange and brown! I think it had to do with the nice chocolate brown of our sofas and the fun orange and yellow rug we got for our kitchen...they started it all. Now I'm fairly obsessed with orange and brown (and anything pink or polka-dotted).

I had to paint our "S" Saturday night. It's been red to match our headboard in our bedroom (which matched our bedding we registered for our wedding - when I asked Dan what colors he wanted for our bedroom, he said, "red, white and blue...and no flowers" - i found him a red, white and blue plaid comforter at eddie bauer home and got that - with matching flowered sheets - it's all about compromise - and desires, not expectations). Anyway, we had never hung the "S" up, so I decided to paint it orange and put it in our china cabinet with a starfish. :) And we have started slowly hanging up stuff...this cute picture i originally bought for Kylie and fell in love with it and couldn't put it upstairs, so it's in our kitchen...and i couldn't figure out what else it needed...until I pulled out the new sign from Dan's Mom for Christmas! Perfect! And we hung up plates on the sides of the bookshelves in our kitchen/dining room! Oh, and that jar? We have loose change we need to use to buy milk from the milkman every other day. Dan washed out a nacho cheese dip jar and said we could use that until I figured out something "cute"! Kylie and I decorated it with ribbon this morning and it's adorable! And makes me happy to see it :) Yay for color in a white-walled house (hmmm, that might have to change soon...at least our t.v. room. With chocolate sofas, what color should we paint it? Any thoughts?)

Sleepover

Last Sunday night (a week ago) the kids had a sleepover in Moo's room. Moo has a queen bed in our new house and we decided to let Jack and Kylie sleep in there with her since Monday was a holiday here in Thailand :) We didn't have the kids take big naps, so they would be tired and put a bed rail on Kylie's side of the bed, so she wouldn't fall out. We put them down around 8pm. Had to check on them and tell them to be quiet and go to sleep 2 or 3 times between then and 9pm. At 9:30pm, I went to check on them and all was quiet....except Kylie was wide awake, sitting up in bed playing with her babydoll and a pretend food container for her baby. The other 2 were sound asleep. Then, at 11pm when Dan and I went to bed, we went upstairs to check on them again...and found the bedroom door wide open and the light on. All three kids were asleep, but Jack had apparently gotten up to go to the bathroom and forgotten to close the doors or turn off the lights...we tucked them in and everyone was up right before 6am the next morning (which came too soon, let me tell you)!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today is Valentine's Day and we started out the morning with a scavenger hunt for the kids :) Dan and I made up 8 clues and hid them all over the house - each kid had 2 just for them to figure out and then there was a starting clue explaining it and an ending clue taking them all to the surprise! It was fun and the clues were just hard enough for them to have to think, but know where it meant!

Not much else is new around here. We've had a busy week with the kid's being off school this past Monday and Tuesday for Macha Bucha Day (Thai buddist holiday), playdates galore, bible study for me and then house group for Dan and I and last night the kids and i talked Dan into taking us downtown to the mall for dinner and walking around! We didn't get home until 10pm...and of course Bugga was still up before 7am :)

Weekend with the Flaglers

So, Friday night was Matt's birthday. We had him and Tricia over for pizza from our favorite place (Kylie calls it Neetza Pizza, but it's really Pinocchio's) - 2 Pizza Salami (pepporoni), 2 Pizza Margharita (regular cheese) and 1 Greek Salad (pronounced sah-lad). Very yummy and pretty much down to a science on what we eat. Tricia had Que Pasa make a cake for Mr. Matt - which was really 2 gigantic chocolate chip cookies sandwhiched together with sweet, sweet icing and then coated in icing all around it and topped with the Happy Brithday Matt. That's right, I said, Happy BRITHDAY. Did you notice? It was awesome and make you want to puke it was so sweet...but we managed not just 1 but 2 slices throughout the night. :) We topped it off with Cities and Knights of Catan, where Matt won 2x's...and on the 2nd game, I put our laptop on the table and played The All-Time Great Movie Mix that A and I made sophomore year at final's time when we should have been studying. So fun.

And, as if that was not enough time with our family for the weekend, we all went to the Samut Prakan Croc Farm on Saturday! Matt and Tricia just bought a new camera and are great photographers, so we had them use their camera all day and it was almost like having professional photographers with us! So nice to have pics of our whole family together! Thank you guys! They took 500+ pictures that day!

The Croc Farm was awesome. Matt and Tricia had their pictures taken with baby tigers, Dan and Jack had their picture taken with a HUGE live crocodile (while other crocs were swimming around), we "fished" for crocodiles, fed hippos, Matt ate crocodile meat (in kabob form and as a hamburger), Matt had his picture taken with a Chimpanzee, we bought a picture painted by an elephant, fed more crocs, walked a ton, drank at least 10 bottles of water and 8 sodas (somehow 6 for lunch and then 2 for Dan and I on the ride home), the kids got their picture taken holding baby tigers and a baby cheetah and we had a blast!

Kylie posing with "it's just pretend" crocodile

Matt and Tricia feeding baby Tiger cubs


Daddy and Bugga


Momma and Bugga


Jack in front of the monkey


Daddy and Jack walking out to get their picture taken with a HUGE live croc...
Actual picture taken by the Croc Farm


Our view of Dan and Jack when they went down to get their picture taken


Matt with the Chimpanzee


"Fishing" with chicken rib cages for Crocs

Daddy and the Tweedlers


Me fishing for Crocs


A Croc jumping for the chicken rib cages


Thankfully, Moo and Jack posing with a stone statue


A goat on the loose! We saw a couple of goats that had gotten out of their pens and no one seemed to notice. I told Tricia that Dan loves goats and has tried to talk me in to letting him have some...but that I would have to milk them everyday. He didn't hear me say that, but about 2 seconds later said, "Man, I love goats!"


Our wonderful family

A line-up of us feeding 3 hippos


Momma Hippo, Baby Hippo and Big Daddy Hippo


Megan posing bravely with an elephant


Touching the elephant!

A random monitor lizard on the run! I think it is a wild one, but they have ones in a confined space at the zoo, too!


Go Cougars!!!


The Family

The 2 couples taken by Megan

Walking under the elephant

The 3 kids feeding a baby tiger...

then Kylie is given a baby cheetah to hold. If you know Jack, the stuffed animal he sleeps with every night is the same size and is, in fact, a Cheetah. We got him at Jungle Larry's in Naples. You can see Jack eying Cheetah. He wanted to hold the baby Cheetah and Kylie wanted nothing to do with it...

Feeding the tiger...

The real photo taken by the Croc Farm

Dan is holding a picture we bought (for 50B or $1.44USD) painted by an elephant! We'll frame it and put it up in the kitchen - perfect for Valentine's Day!

About 2 minutes after we left the Croc Farm from a great, great Day! Thanks Matt and Tricia for coming with us! We had a blast!!!