Family Time

I can't believe I haven't posted anything in two months. Chloe and I have been busy training for the 2012 Olympics. I'm looking at competing in the group synchronized swimming competition (since my belly is getting too big to do anything but sit in large pools of water) and Chloe is pretty sure she can secure a spot on the Chinese women's gymnastics team (since they're a little lax on the age restriction and all) and Jeff has been busy saving the world from earthquakes, floods and WMD's. In between all that we were thrilled to have some of our family come to visit.

Here are some fun pics from their adventure to the land of grass huts:


The place just wouldn't be the same without Ronald McDonald.


And of course, you have to visit the local markets.

And the beautiful waterfalls

And the elephants

And top it off with some Chocolate cake. This is from Chloe's birthday celebration. I gave her the entire cake and she thought I had lost my mind.

Vacation Pics

This year we were very blessed with a few visa problems (the stamp in our passport that allows us to stay in the country not credit card problems). Unfortunate for us, we just HAD to go to Australia to get our visa renewed in order to return legally to Thailand. So we decided to take a short plane ride over to New Zealand and spend a little vacation time there. I know it's a rough life, we're just making the best of it. :)

We began by spending some time in Brisbane to work on our visa. Then we spent a couple of hours on the beach where I ate the yummiest fajitas ever at a Hard Rock Cafe. We can't get fajitas in our city so I take any chance to eat them when we are away.



Then we flew to Christchurch, New Zealand and visited the international antartic center. Chloe and Jeff slid down the ice slide in the snow room.

We spent a week in this campervan driving around the south island (the place where the Lord of the Rings was filmed). Since New Zealand is in the Southern Hemisphere it is winter down there as their seasons are opposite ours.

It was quite beautiful

We rode a luge down one of the mountains. Chloe thought sitting on the sled was fun at first. But as her and Jeff headed downhill she no longer thought it was fun.

We saw a glacier. You can see a person in the very right-hand corner of the pic. That's how big the glacier really was.

As we approached the west side of the island, we spent a little more time on the beach.

You may not be aware that New Zealand has more sheep than people. The sign we saw as we were driving down the mountain road said "Stock 30 km/h." Of course, we didn't know what that meant until just happening upon this sight a little further down the road:

2nd verse same as the first

Good News!! We left last year as three and we just found out that we will come back next year as four. Our second baby is due Jan. 15. Hooray.

In other news: We will be traveling again the next two weeks. I spent most of today packing to appease the airlines strict luggage policies. I walked into our room and found Chloe had "helped" me unpack everything I just packed. Oh, well. At least she had fun throwing the clothes all over the bed.

Beach Pics

Hi Everyone,
Last weekend we were able to spend some fun time on the beach. Here are the pics.
H

She don't like Mac-n-Cheese

This week, we received a couple of beautiful packages from the states and inside were four, priceless boxes of Mac-n-Cheese. We were so excited about them we decided to wait for a special occasion to break open a box. We decided we would make Sunday a special occasion and eat our bounty for lunch.

As it has been over a year since I have cooked mac-n-cheese- I forgot. Really, I did. Fortunately the directions were in English as opposed to the majority of things I'm not sure how to cook here with directions in Thai.

Anyways, I lovingly prepared our feast- excited to present our child with one of the tastiest foods on earth. I carefully spooned a portion into Chloe's bowl- careful so as not to drop a piece and laid it before my family.

Jeff and I took the first sumptuous bite and watched Chloe as she ate what many could describe as "manna from heaven." She promptly spit it out with a look of utter disgust.

How could this be? What have I done to raise a child that would rather eat rice than Mac-n-Cheese? And, what do I do now?

I had a choice, I could force her to eat and enjoy the mac-n-cheese or give up hopes of raising "An American Kid" while we are here.

Jeff and I stared at her bowl of unconsumed gold and decided that if she didn't like it why force her now? We fed her something else, put her to sleep and fought over who got to eat her Mac-n-Cheese.

By the way, here is an updated pic of her and I doing her favorite activity-reading.

Happy Birthday Jeff

I can't believe I haven't posted in over a month. Saturday was Jeff's 30th birthday and other than that nothing newsworthy has happened in over a month. Can you believe it. So here are some recent pics.

Life Update

Since we last posted an update, a lot of new things have occured.

Chloe has been really busy catching up on all the work she missed from her hospital visit:




We have spent the last several weeks on the beach. Partly for work, partly for play. Don't feel bad for us, this is the view from our hotel room.

Before we left, I got a shiny new grill on my teeth. This should help with my jaw problems and the doctor says I'll only look 13 for a couple more years.

Chloe's first visit to the beach was a bit scary.

This is one is Jeff trying to get her to touch a wave. Poor Baby!

She wasn't injured and enjoyed some popcorn at a carnival the next night as well as....

going down the giant inflatable slide.

Well, I think Jeff enjoyed the slide more than Chloe.

In the end, we were able to spend some time with our friends. This is us using the public transportation system to go to a restaurant.

We should be back home this weekend.