Thailand Highlights #2-- Koh Lanta

After our week in Bangkok at the conference, we boarded a plane with several great friends headed south to Krabi province to go to the beach. At the airport, Sarah showed off her great imitation skills!
Sarah saw a man sitting near us in the airport who was laid out on the benches, using his backpack as a pillow. So, of course, Sarah had to do the same!

We arrived at the island of Koh Lanta in the evening, and here was our view at breakfast the next morning:
The messiness of the next week began immediately, when Sarah covered herself in strawberry jam.
We decided to just go with it, so we stripped her down to her diaper and let her play in the sand.
Sarah met Tian, a little boy from Austria just a little younger than her, that first morning. Tian and his mom, Ruxie, became our great friends and playmates for the whole week!
Sarah loved the sand immediately!

And soon, she was coated in it!
Check out her eyelashes!

Our good friend Josh enjoyed introducing Sarah to the beach,
and then his wife Danielle helped us try to wash at least some of the sand off Sarah.
Sarah loved the water pump, and often ran over to play with it even when she didn't need to wash sand off!
We went into the main town that first night for dinner at a seafood restaurant right on the water.

Sarah enjoyed "ordering." She loved to flip through the menu every time we would go to eat, and would often point to something in the menu and say to the waiter or waitress, "Coke!" Like father, like daughter. :)
Koh Lanta is very family-friendly. Most of the other tourists there were European families with young kids. The resort next door to ours even had this little playground right on the beach! Sarah loved the slide and the swings.

David had the opportunity to play several games of beach volleyball, one of his favorite activities.
Meanwhile, Sarah and I would watch the sunset.
One of our last evenings in Koh Lanta we ate at a restaurant at the opposite end of the beach, called Time for Lime. It was built like a treehouse, and had really cool atmosphere with all the lime green lanterns hung in the tree.

We went to the restaurant straight from a volleyball game, so that is why David is sweaty and shirtless. But that's the joy of dining on the beach, right??
We had a wonderful week in Koh Lanta--great time with friends, a beautiful beach, lots of time to relax and rest. Truly an ideal vacation. We just had one more special adventure planned . . . Koh Phi Phi (Thailand Highlights #3--coming soon)!

Thailand Highlights #1: Bangkok

Finally, here it is! Installment number one of our photos from our three weeks in Thailand this year!

Our first week was spent in Bangkok where we attended a conference. We have spent a little time in Bangkok over the last several years, and as crazy as it sounds, the more time we spent there, the more we like it. I remember at first we thought it was just a dirty, crowded, kind of sketchy (Okay, very sketchy) big city, and the truth is that it IS all those things, but its more than just that. It also has GREAT food, both Thai and Western, good public transportation, convenient shopping, good parks . . . In other words, a pretty good place to spend a week!

Here is the hotel where our conference took place--it was HUGE! We heard it was like the second largest hotel in Southeast Asia, or something like that. It had two high rise towers with more than forty stories each, two pools, like 6 or 7 restaurants. The hotel was a little older, but the rooms were still very nice and one of the things we liked best was the food! Breakfast was really good, and every day there was a lunch buffet provided for our conference and the food was the best, by far, we'd ever had at one of those things. Yum!
Right next to the hotel was a great little park. We enjoyed taking Sarah out there to play, and the whole time we were in Bangkok the temperature was in the low 80's--perfect for enjoying being outside!



Right on the other side of the park was a mall (the bottom several stories of this high rise building) which had a full size grocery store, tons of restaurants, tons of stores (most of which were too expensive, but fun to browse), a good bookstore with English books--basically everything you could want, right there!
During that week, we did a really fun double-date with our good friends Daniel and Kayla Rupp.
We got in a taxi, trying to find a restaurant David had read about on the web. The driver, however, did not seem too interested in helping us find this restaurant as he wanted to take us to some seafood place HE knew about (and inevitably would get a kick-back from taking us to). So eventually we got out of the cab on this random side street which happened to have a small open-air Italian restaurant.
The food turned out to be great!!! I got this spinach gnocci which was to die for, David got some sort of seafood pasta--we all loved our food and enjoyed trying everyone else's.

Later that week, we ate at this great Thai restaurant right by our hotel. This is what a really good restaurant in Asia looks like, in my experience--the more hole-in-the-wall-ish it is, the better the food is going to taste.

Anyone who has spent a week in a hotel room with a toddler will tell you, it can be challenging to keep them out of trouble (and out of the minibar!). But Sarah did a pretty good job of entertaining herself without breaking anything. Here she is, pretending to take an important phone call!
Another challenging aspect is what to do when you are trying to get your child to fall asleep, which they absolutely won't do if any lights are on or if they know you are still in the room with them. So, we spent a good chunk of time every day hanging out in the bathroom. Thankfully we both had good things to read. I sat on the bath mat, and leaned against the wall. David found the tub to be the most comfortable place.
Anyway, after that week, we headed to off for a little vacation time at the beach. Thailand installments 2 and 3 coming soon!

Sarah is TWO!!!

Happy birthday to my wonderful daughter! I can't believe its been two years that I've been the mom of such a fun, happy, smart, silly little girl.

We had a great birthday party for her, full of many of the things she likes best these days. We invited a few other families with kids, and started the celebrated at E-Kids Island, the Asian Discovery Zone.
Sarah's two favorite desserts are chocolate and strawberries, so I made sure there were plenty of both at her party.
Unfortunately, a last minute trip to the grocery store proved fruitless in purchasing frosting for the cupcakes or ice cream, as they had neither in stock. So the cupcakes had no icing, and there was no ice cream for the party, but that's just how things go here from time to time!

A special high chair for the birthday girl!
We dined on another of Sarah's favorite foods--pizza!!!
She made herself comfortable in the high chair, as you can see!
The best part about the party was all the wonderful friends who joined us. Above are the Golacksons,
here are the Millers,
half of the Chiang family, as their two year old was home sick with his dad.
our great friends the Shelleys and the Jungs,
and the Rupps and their awesome three boys!

Sarah enjoyed her cupcake, all her friends, and her birthday presents!
She had more presents waiting at home--this really fun play cookware my thoughtful sister sent from the U.S.

This whole week, Sarah has been singing, "Happy Birthday Me!" and answering, "Two Years!" when asked how old she is. Still not sure she totally gets the whole birthday thing, but she's definitely had a fun week and we are thrilled to see the little person she's becoming!!

The Newest Dean

. . . is Eli Efrem Dean! My brother-in-law Robbie and sister-in-law Kelly brought him home from Ethiopia on January 15. He is the answer to many of our family's prayers, and we are so thrilled for Robbie and Kelly as they begin the amazing journey of parenthood! Oh, and he's adorable--check him out!

The Big Three-Oh!

All these photos are from my birthday back in January. I had a really fun and memorable thirtieth birthday, and I am so thankful for the friends and family who made it so!

My birthday celebrations started a couple of days before my actual birthday when some girlfriends and I all went out to dinner to eat my current favorite cuisine---Korean! It was really fun, and while some of my friends were already familiar with yummy Korean food, it was also really cool to be able to introduce some others to it for the first time. I love sharing the things I love with friends!
We got our own private room at the restaurant, which made it easier to talk and enjoy one another!
The girls also surprised me by going in together to get me some really nice silver earrings and a bracelet, and making a word collage of adjectives they felt described me. I genuinely felt known, honored and loved--and at the age of 30 I know enough about life to realize that having a community of people who truly know and love you is something rare and to be cherished! My birthday dinner was a moment that truly represented that, and I think it will always be one of my most memorable birthday parties for that reason!

My actual birthday was equally fun and special, which I owe almost entirely to my wonderful husband. Check out the breakfast he got up super-early to make for me and bring to me in bed:

Eggs benedict, asparagus, fresh fruit, bacon and homemade cinnamon rolls!!!

In the afternoon, David watched Sarah so I could go and get a pedicure with my good friend Karis. Ironically, my birthday turned out to be the coldest day of the year!! It even started snowing, just a tiny bit, after we were leaving the salon! But the salon didn't have any heat (hardly any buildings do here, which is usually fine since the weather is generally pretty mild), but our naked feet froze while they were being beautified!


In the evening, we got a babysitter and David and I went out for dinner at this restaurant called Sandra's. Sandra is a slightly-eccentric German lady who lives in our city, and runs a tiny restaurant where she does all the cooking and waiting tables herself with just one assistant. Other than pizzas, her menu is different every night, but she is so gifted that it doesn't matter what you order, it will be good!
I got homemade German sausages with, again homemade, mango-green onion mustard. Both were AMAZING. I seriously need to learn how to make my own gourmet mustard--it could be life-changing!!
So very thankful for all the friends and family who made my birthday so special!

We're Back!

Hi Everyone! The Deans are back from the lovely, lovely country of Thailand, and I am slowly sorting through all 300 of our vacation photos to figure out the best ones to put up here for you all to see. In addition, I have photos from my birthday back in January (30!!!) that I want to post, and I can't wait to put up some pictures of my new little nephew Eli who David's brother Robbie and his wife Kelly just adopted from Ethiopia. So, yeah, exciting things coming soon on the blog. :) For now, I leave you with a couple of random photos from back in January that are too cute not to share!
Sarah has loved this coat this winter! She has a little red one with toggles too which is my personal favorite, and then this blue one is more of a dress coat she'd been wearing mostly to church. But in January she started refusing to wear the other one because she loved this one so much--she even wanted to wear it in the house!

My good friend Lindsey and I took our kids randomly out to lunch at one of our favorite coffee places in our city, Chicago Coffee. The cutest thing was Sarah, Hadassah and Lily sharing this comfy chair and reading together. Sooo cute!!!