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.

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.

Interesting Days

Besides our normal daily activities, we took a weekend trip to a nearby city. The kids were excited to go and look around a new place. Benjamin loved that he was able to play his DS nearly all day. A kid's dream come true. The bus ride was good and no problems.

It started out as a hazy overcast day, but the next day was beautiful. We have not seen the sun in a while, but it seems the weather is finally warming up and we are loving it.

Once we were in the other city, the kids made themselves right at home and all hid inside the tv cabinet. They wanted me to come and find them. Katherine really is in there...I had them rearrange themselves so that I could see her too (picture below).

So, this was at a museum that we visited. They used to carry the bride in this "box" through the town and then to her husband's house to live. I thought it was very interesting.

We also visited some different neighborhoods. This one turned out to be "under construction" so we had to wear hard hats when walking around.

This was the view from one of the places in the city. I love being able to see the mountains! It reminds me a little of home.

Regan ordered some fried rice and ate almost all of it.

Love this one....

Anyone want to buy a snack?

After the trip, my language teacher took me out for what we call a "life script." What that means is you do some activity together and talk about everything you saw and did (not in English of coarse) So, we went to the market together. I learned many things about language and life. So, if you are one of my squeamish readers, you can end the blog here. If you are more curious about how to pick out a good chicken to eat, then you can keep reading. (that was part of our class)

So, here are a bunch of chickens. The white ones are really expensive because it is thought that they are very healthy for your body because all of their meat is black and all of their feathers are white.

This is the chicken that was chosen. Apparently, it is a complicated process. You need to pick out a young chicken and not an old one. You have to check the color of the skin under the feathers. You have to feel their legs to see if they have good leg muscles (my terminology) because if they do then they are too old and you don't want that one. Then you want one that has never laid an egg because that means they are still young and the meat will be tender.

After you choose your chicken, they kill it for you (no pics of that...it's so sad) Then after the chicken has died, they throw it in this pot of hot water and stir it around for a bit to "clean" it and loosen the feathers.

After that, they throw it in this dryer or washer looking thing with screws sticking out of it. It spins the chicken round and rund and literally takes off all the feathers within a minute or two. Then we got to tak the thing home on the bus. We gave half to our neighbor and the other half our Ayi will use. It was definately an interesting day.