Tuesday, April 17, 2012

A Week's Adventures

I took Mom to the morning market this week. You can find all kinds of things there...food, clothes, shoes, meat, veggies, etc.
One of the things you can buy there are snakes. We thought it was funny to see this lady asleep with her feet on top of the snakes.
You can also buy all kinds of beans and other dry goods.
And of coarse, you can buy chickens. I guess these people were having a party or something because they bought several chickens and then threw them in the back of their van.
I also got to go to a wedding! (via computer) My college roommate got married this weekend and she set it up online so that I could go. I was probably the only one attending in my pj's. I wish I could have been there, but this was the next best thing. We are so thankful for the technology we have today that makes things like this possible. Oh, and yes, I ended up waking Jonathan up with my picture taking at 4am! I just couldn't help myself.
So here are ALL of my college roomies. Jenny Moore, Carrie Shields, and Kelly Harrison I love this picture! It is so good. You guys look beautiful!
We also took Grandmommy to one of our favorite parks (which is really an old house) The kids alwasy find new places to explore.
Benjamin and Grandmommy
My beautiful girl! I can't believe how quickly she is growing up!
Another beautiful girl!
The fish were really hungry this day. They were all swimming on top of each other and on top of the water. I just loved to hear the kids laugh. I coul dhave fed them all day long just to hear them having so much fun.
The peacock at the park was trying to impress everyone. He was giving quite the show with his feathers. He was so pretty.
The older two kids had a fundraiser at their school for a local orphanage. They had face painting, food, and a pie throwing contest. They raised a lot of money. Regan wants to start volunteering at an orphanage sometime and Benjamin asked the director of the orphanage if he could have a little boy baby to take home. Such sweet kiddos with such sweet hearts...I hope to get them involved with something like this soon.
More face painting
Lauren finally got up the courage to get her face painted. She got little butterflies on her cheeks, Katherine got a big butterfly, Regan got dolphins, and Benjamin was Batman :)
Katherine had a school field trip. This was definately the best field trip so far. They took 13 buses (maybe more) to an amusement park in another city. We caused quite the traffic jam trying to load up so many little kids.
We were so excited to get there!
We got to see all kinds of replicas of housing and famous places and Katherine got to dress up.
She got to shoot a real bow and arrow (and won a prize...I think they just wanted to give her a prize) :)
She also got to ride a horse before the mock battle on horses....this was probably my favorite part. It was a fun littel show.
And they even had a man made waterfall, but they could have fooled me. It was done very well.
So we had another fun and busy week. I can't wait to see what this week has in store for us :)

Monday, April 9, 2012

Birthday, Easter, and Family

My mom got here just in time for all the celebrations. We had a full weekend planned for her to help with all the jetlag :) Everyone was so happy that Grandmommy could be here to celebrate with us~
Benjamin turned 7! I can't believe it...already. He informed me that he wanted a Spider Man party and a Spider Man cake. (I believe the expectations for cakes has grown ever since I did the giraffe cake for Regan.) I told him I would try my best...so here was the result. It was a lot of fun and tasted good, too!
Grandmommy gave him a Spider Man costume, so he wore it ALL day since it was a Spider Man party. He had a few friends over and they all played and ate cake.
His little sister gave him a Cherry Coke for his birthday. He was one excited boy.
This was the big find. We were searching for gifts and came across a little shop with a bunch of little baby and girl toddler things, but in the back, we saw a minature foosball table. It's the perfect size.
Our first family Easter photo since we left the States. I know, no tht traditional Easter outfits, but we tried :)
This year Easter falls in line with one of the local holidays, so many of our friends were busy doing other things. But we were happy that one of our newest little friends was able to come by and color and hunt eggs with us. It started to rain, so we only got one hunt in, but the fun continued inside.
The Easter Bunny (AKA Grandmommy) brought lots of Easter candy from the States to fill their baskets. I think it will last them for a LONG time :) We also got some little goodies that were hidden away for later...shhhh, don't tell the kids.
Regan and her eggs that she found.
Benjamin and his collection.
We took Grandmmomy to get her nails done. What a treat! We left right after Regan got out of school...and yes, there are extra sets of hands in there. Two of Regan's friendscame with us.
This was one of the cutes little guys. He had one tooth on the bottom adn the biggest smile. He wanted to come to us and we had fun holding him. He was very heavy for such a little guy.
Grandmommy and Katherine posing for a pic.
This is Katherine and some of her classmates from school. They still call her Carrie. I guess it will be her name until we move again.
I just love this little face. She was glad to go out and play with Ayi. We had several days of rain and Ayi was off for a couple days, so she was one happy camper. So, it has been a great start to April. We had birthday parties, Easter celebrations, and Grandmmomy got here all within a few days of each other.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Birthday Visitors

So, I apologize for missing the blog last week, but we had visitors...Granddad and Mammy came for a week! It was so much fun to be able to show them around a little and also celebrate Lauren's 3rd birthday. I think they had fun, but I also think they were looking forward to returning to the American lifestyle :) I know the kids loved having them here and making lots of memories. I have tons of photos and could not really choose what to put on here. If you would like to see more details of all the fun we had, you can see my other pics on facebook.
Lauren cracked me up at her little party. She got so embarressed that we were singing to her. She hid her face and would not blow out her candles. We were afraid the cake would catch fire (not really) and she finally said that she would blow them out if Daddy held her hand. Jonathan did most of the blowing out of the candles.
This was Lauren's big gift...her very own bike! She was definately ready for one. She is FAST! She rides it all over the place. She even got to ride it at night right after she opened it. She was just too excited.
I really like this picture, too. Lauren had gotten a badmitten racket for her birthday as well. She wsa just taking a little break in Granddad's lap.
What do you know...a picture of me and Jonathan. We all went ot the zoo for some fun. It was quite the adventure getting there, but we eventually made it and had fun seeing and feeding the animals.
This was too funny. Everytime Kahterine would wave to the elephants this one waved back! She would just giggle and wave again.
I think feeding the giraffes is one of our favorite parts of the zoo. Lauren wanted to be just liek the big kids and feed them herself. I was quite impressed that she got one of the giraffes' attention.
As you can see, they all had a great time.
This is one of my favorites....Katherine racing back and forth with the pacing tiger.
We still went to the high school for a play date. It had been a while since we had been able to get Regan over their to play with the girls and we thought it would be agood opportunity for Granddad and Mammy to see the inside of a high school here.

This is alsways Katherine's favorite part...burying herself in the sand.
The grandkids were able to get Granddad and Mammy into costumes for pictures :) Dad didn't want too many of these to make the blog, but it was between this one and the one of him laying on a stretcher in a doctor's office...I guess a little too much excitement and change all at once ;)
Two of my beautiful princesses
Me and Dad...and no I didn't dress up (someone had to take the pictures)
Several of our good friends took us out to eat while they were here.
And yes, Granddad even tried a chicken foot! We were all so proud :)
And of course, my little ones just loved the chicken feet.
We made a trip to Hong Kong. We took a differnt route to get there this time, so I got to see a few parts of HK that I have not seen before. The shipping dock area was quite a site.
It was a little windy, but no rain. We tried to see as much as we could in one day.
Benjamin got to open his birthday presents early from Granddad and Mammy. He got new roller blades and some Tennessee stuff! He was one happy boy!
Loving being outside!
This was Lauren's "real" birthday after everyone had left. We couldn't let her not have some kind of desert on her birthday.
We also got a wedding invitation from one of my best friends and roommates from college, Carrie Falconnier. The kids were so excited that they were invited to the wedding! I informed them that I would be "attending" (watching online) at 4:00am and they would be sleeping. Benjamin was not happy...he said it was not fair that I was the only one that got to watch because she invited ALL of us. :) We'll see. Lauren was super excited about her wedding coloring pages.
Regan got this adorable giraffe shirt, too.
So, that was the last 2 weeks in the smallest nutshell I could make up. We did so much and had so much to talk about that there just isn't enough space to put it all on here.