traditions

Not actually a picture from this year but as I was scrambling to find the memory card for my camera on Christmas eve, I discovered an old card and this gem was on it. 

We loved having a real Christmas tree. Last year I threw away the lights we had bought our first year year. The blinked sporadically, all at different times. Between Winston and Rocky's Mongolia trip, we never got around to buying any and just went without. We have a surprising amount of ornaments, considering we didn't bring any with us. We try to pick one up whenever Rocky or I go somewhere new. This year we had new ones from Mongolia, Burma, China, Bahrain, Cambodia and South Africa. They are usually just key chains or knick knacks that we add a ribbon to but we love the memories they bring.

We started off Christmas by passing out gifts to Rocky's office. We gave them our favorite market popcorn. So much a favorite that Violet refused to give anyone a bag unless she was already holding one in her hand. The two girls in their dresses causes quite a stir and there were many stops for photo ops. Violet, who adamantly despises strangers, would have none of this and walked around telling everyone, "No! No! No!"

Amy made these adorable nightgowns for the girls. I can't believe I actually got a picture of both of them smiling--I think it's the first ever. That ugly fish ornament above E's head is something Rocky picked up in Vietnam last year and I kept hiding it in the back but Rocky enlisted Eliot to move it up front every time I hid it. 

Since we weren't going to be in UT for Christmas around our families, we've been scrambling to come up with some Christmas traditions. We tried out a few new ones, some we will keep and some we are still regretting. We had a high class, fancy dinner of pizza and steamed vegetables. Eliot got us in the Christmas mood by remarking, "Hey! I know, cauliflower is like broccoli's spirit." Turns out she was probably not old enough to watch that creepy, animated version of The Christmas Carol.

I had the idea to do 'candlelight Christmas Eve' turns out semi-darkness gives me serious anxiety. Not to mention fire and small children. I'm still cleaning wax off my furniture and I have burn marks on my feet but Eliot loved it and is already looking forward to doing in next year. In the meantime all our candles have mysteriously disappeared. 

In a tradition that is a shoe in for sticking around, we ordered in some vanilla ice cream and mixed it with candy cane dust. The same thing I've been pouring into my protein shakes every morning. (Dad, this recipe should probably go in that Lean Complete cook book, milk, vanilla lean complete, 1 frozen banana, 1 candy cane--blend.--just an adult breakfast.)

Christmas morning was magical, at least for Eliot who was the only one who cared about presents. After we opened stockings and Violet confiscated all the trains that Santa had left each person, she had no desire to open any other presents. Winston still lacks control of his limbs, so Eliot opened all their presents herself. 

She's asked Santa for roller skates for the past two years and I guess he finally thought she had the gross motor skills to handle them or just got sick of her asking for them and gave in. It was the last present she opened and I'm glad I got it all on video, because it was classic E. 

She's actually doing pretty well. 

Since there was no chance I was cooking Christmas dinner or even cleaning up after one, we went out. We could have gone anywhere since Thailand is a Buddhist country and everywhere is open on Christmas. Instead of going somewhere good and delicious, I went for memorable. I read about a local pub that does a big Christmas dinner. It was supposedly good food and with good environment for kids. 

What should have been my first tip off was that it was a pub, second it was British food. Our family together with two other families, we brought a total of seven kids and one baby. Bringing the grand total of children in the "family friendly Christmas dinner" to seven kids and one baby. It didn't take us long to realize why. The dinner was a sit down, six course meal that took over 2 hours and included a significant amount of food that no kid in their right mind would touch. Luckily they served sorbet as the third course or our kids would have completely starved.

After enduring five courses over two hours the kids sat excitedly anticipating the dessert that they had managed to put away the potato soup and brussels sprouts for. It was fruit cake and mincemeat pie. After finding out the pie was made of raisons, Eliot immediately broke down and sobbed, "I just want some treats!" Needless to say, all the 50 year old men and their 30 year old Thai dates were thrilled to see us leave. Especially after we spent twenty minutes explaining to the staff that they overcharged us by over $200.

In their kid friendly defense, they did have everything they advertised for kids, paper hats, poppers and Mr. Bean playing. Which would have been great if it hadn't been the one where Mr Bean was naked.

So it looks like we have 50 weeks to come up with some new traditions. 

tis the season

Christmas season in Bangkok is a bit strange. There's actually a lot decoration considering it's a Buddhist country. Having grown up in UT, it's just weird for Christmas to come around without cold and snow. We will somehow muddle through. Besides, I've still consumed an above average amount of peppermint hot chocolate. 

We had to run over to Ikea to buy some stuff for our new place and timed it just right to get one of their real Christmas trees. They were only $60 and if we return it we get half our money back. The only other option for a real tree in Bangkok is the imported German fir trees that runs over $300. Needless to say, we've settled for fake the last two years and as our real one drops 5 pounds of needles everyday, the grinch in me is remembering how great that was.

 Winston loved Ikea. Rocky walks through Ikea like he's competing in a speed walking marathon so Winston never had a chance to wake up.

 Nothing says, "fresh from the great outdoors" like tying a tree to your car in a parking garage.

I feel quite confident that Hollypop, our elf on the shelf, is significantly creepier than yours. We love her anyway. She seems to choose her spots in the greatest effort to scare Hannah--although her latest spot, in the freezer, was probably chosen with my late night snacking in mind.

We're loving having Hannah here. Here she is showing the girls how to feed her Ferbie. Normal grown up behavior. 

My favorite thing about Christmas in Thailand is the weather. It's winter here and everyone is getting out their coats, unless they are not from Thailand and they don't wear a coat if it's in the 80s.

Weather like this is pretty great. Don't feel too bad, you can all gloat for the other 11 months of the year. Let Bangkok have their thirty days of stellar weather.

its not christmas without footie pajamas

And footie pajamas buyer's remorse.

Some pictures from our Christmas. Since I'm still handing out Christmas cards, a blog post about Christmas in mid-January is practically early. 

 I swore I wasn't going to buy footie pajamas anymore--they're a pain to get on (Eliot refuses to put them on by herself), they are a pain to change diapers in and there seems to be a direct correlation between wearing them and bed wetting. But when I saw these, I couldn't pass them up.

I regretted buying them even before the major breakdown in the bathroom of the Seoul -Inchean airport with me telling Eliot she had to put them on herself, as I was holding Vi and Rocky was incapacitated (flu business), or we were leaving her there to stay. She answered by laying on the ground, pancake style, and crying that she didn't want to stay in the airport but she couldn't do it herself.

So we left her. Can't make promises I'm not going to keep, sets a bad precedent.

Pearl Jam showing up my girls by smiling for the camera.

 Vi's stocking is still an item on my to do list.

Vi clearly isn't impressed by her stocking.

 Luckily Eliot's easier to please.

The swim cap was a big hit.

Santa must have known I'm a BIG playmobil fan. Eliot likes it too. I love seeing her playing with it.

Their adorable outfits spell out "fearsome foursome".

They all love the home grown beef jerky.

And don't like when it's taken away.

Eliot prefers to spend all Christmas singing carols at the top of her lungs.

Fenton and Sam were each given two tickets to Romeo and Juliet on Valentines day. They seemed excited...they're open to ideas of who to bring.

jet lag is not your friend

Have you been wondering what we've been up to?

Besides neglecting our blog and taking poor quality, blurry pictures of ourselves?

We went back to the states for Christmas just in time to catch a nasty flu virus. Luckily we were all healthy on Christmas (we had a 48 hour window of peace). 

We got back to Thailand a few days ago. We got to our house around 2 AM and Rocky left for Malaysia at 4 AM. Needless to say, I've been walking around all day in my pajamas, in a complete haze and going to bed at 6:30 pm. He got back last night around 9 pm, not that I know the time as I was already well into my second rem cycle. 

Eliot handles jet lag like she handles everything else. As long as she gets a bowl of cereal at some point in the middle of the night, she's fine. Well, besides that she keeps moving from bed to bed wetting all of them. No bed is safe. I wet to the store today and bought her some pull ups--something I probably should have done a few days ago. Though now that I think about it, maybe she's just marking her territory. 

Vi  doesn't do as well (with jet lag or wetting the bed). She prefers to spend a few hours awake roaming around the house doing her signature "raise the roof" move and getting into all the toys Eliot doesn't let her play with. With this as her reward for getting up in the middle of the night, she may never get her days and nights right. 

As we were driving home from the airport in Bangkok Eliot said, "When me in Thailand me miss Utah, when me in Utah me miss Thailand." This is true but it's a lot easier to live in Thailand when its 75 degrees here and 6 degrees in Utah. I'll revisit that idea in April when it's 75 degrees in Utah and the same temperature as the face of the sun in Thailand. 

Here are some other quotes from our holiday:

After reviewing the safety brochure on the airplane, Eliot told me, "If our airplane lands in the water, put your life jacket on first before you put them on your kids." 

um ok

After our first flight (SLC to LAX) Eliot brightly announced, "Only two flights left! That not too long!" I envy her enthusiasm but at that moment it took a lot of strength not to crush her soul and explain we still had over twenty hours--a whole day and a whole night left and with Rocky sick with the flu, I was left as the anchor of our team. 

Luckily, both girls did pretty great (thanks to Vi being locked in her carseat) and our plane didn't land in the water. I don't know if they're getting better at flying or if I'm starting to care less about them crying in front of people. Either way it's a win-win for me. The results aren't so clear for the rest of the people on the plane...

While riding in the car the other day Eliot told me, "Mom, when me grow up me want to be a Jew artist."

"A what?"

"A Jew artist."

(A few days before she had brought home a picture of a menora and requested we get one of those like a boy in her class, but it still seemed like this interest in Hebrew art was coming out of left field.)

"An artist of what?"

"Of Jews, Mom! Of of diamonds and stones."

"Oh, a jewel artist."

"Yeah, but only when I'm not a 'mumble mumble'."

"A what?"

"You know, a scientist of dinosaurs."

"Oh, a paleontologist."

"Yeah me going to be a paleontologist and a Jew artist."

"Jewel artist?"

"That what me said!"

"Just checking."

And yet Eliot insists Violet is the funniest one in our family. "Mom, Biolet is so funny!"She usually says this while squeezing her or poking her in the face. Which, I get the feeling, Vi no longer finds funny anymore. 

fa lease navi dot

It's Christmas season in Bangkok too. 

Here's some proof. 

So I'm bad at videoing but you get the jist. This is is E's class in their school program. The program was very impressive, very long and very hot. The most impressive thing was the pot luck lunch.

Everyone was asked to bring a plate of food. Of course some parents felt that a plate meant a giant pan of chicken or a couple boxes of Krispy Kremes. I'm not complaining--let's just say that my school-parent motto so far is 'let's keep the bar low' and I demonstrated that with my food plate and again with my teacher gift. (rumor has it one parent gave their kid's teachers iPads--confession, it was me.)

The final song of the program was was Feliz Navidad. Which seemed a bit strange at the British based Bangkok school but it worked. E's been singing it around the house since about Halloween. If a Spanish speaking person heard her, they would probably think she was speaking Thai. (Vice versa for my Thai.)

Santa came to visit after the program. Rudolph was feeling a little under the weather so Santa brought a baby elephant. As usual Vi was totally cool with us subjecting her to exotic animals. She's just biding her time until she can file a complaint against us.

After you've lived in Thailand for a certain amount of time, you just sort of start belonging in a silk suit on the back of an elephant.

A few weeks ago we took advantage of Rocky having a day off for the king's birthday and went ice skating. As in Rocky  pulled E around the ice rink while I did my best to keep Vi out of the rink-side cafe's garbage can. She's walking a little too well now. We keep finding her playing in the toilet--apparently for her to like water it has to be mostly urine.

I was some how put in charge of the nativity at our ward Christmas party. It was a little rough around the edges but came through in the end. This is E and Abe as angels. This was right before E made a decidedly un-angelic move and stole the baby Jesus.

 If you're wondering what this is, so am I. E just asked me to take a picture of her with it and I did.

Also, Violet  is growing up fast.

I tried to take some good pictures. I guess when your too lazy to change your baby into a clean shirt or do her hair, you can't be too picky.

This is how Vi feels about me singing "Tennessee Christmas" at the top of my lungs at breakfast. (The cereal is supposed to be in focus instead of the baby, it's an artistic shot.) This bodes well for our relationship when she's a teenager.

That's Christmas in Bangkok. In two days we'll try out Christmas in the USA. Well first we'll do our best to ruin Christmas for the people on our flights. Here's to a a fast and fun 30 hours of travel.