For Grandma, Day 3

"This learning to walk-thing is serious business!"

For Grandma, Day 2

"I am my happiest when I leave a wake of destruction behind me . . . coming to YOUR house, summer 2010!"

Happy Birthday Grandma!

My mom's birthday, is today--January 29--but unfortunately we are away from our home and internet for several days at a conference, so we won't be able to call her to wish her a happy birthday. But, I have come up with something else to do to! For a long time, my mom has been saying, "If you would just put one picture of Sarah up on your blog every day for me to see, that would make me so happy!" Well, Mom, wish granted! For the next six days while we are out of town, there will be a new photo of Sarah waiting for you on this blog each morning at 7 a.m.! I hope that you will enjoy them, and that you'll know how much I love you and how special you are to me, Sarah and David! Happy Birthday Mom!

Snack Time!

Sarah's favorite time of day these days? Snack time!
"Which one will I eat first??"

"This one looks good!"

"Tastes good too!"

Snack Happiness.

More Adventures for Sarah

In addition to Sarah's fun time at our picnic in the park on Sunday, she also had a great time Saturday afternoon when we took her to a new play place downtown in our city. Several of our friends had taken their kids there, and though we suspected Sarah might be a little young to enjoy it, we decided to check it out anyway. We were already planning on meeting some friends downtown to take them to dinner, so it made for a perfect family outing!
Sarah is definitely too young for us to let her play in this Asian Discovery Zone-esque place, but thankfully they allowed David to go in with her, and I served as photographer!
Sarah loved it! She was mesmerized by the dozens of kids running around and enjoyed touching all the elements of the playground.
The name of this place is "E-Kids Island," which I think is hilarious. Isn't "E" supposed to mean electronic, as in e-mail or things of that sort? I think in this case they just wanted to convey that this place is a modern and sophisticated playground!


Sarah played for about an hour or so, and then we took our exhausted almost-one-year-old to a grown up dinner. She did OK for the first half, and then David spent the second half of our dinner walking her around the restaurant to keep her distracted and manage the grumpiness. Sigh. Still, it was a really fun afternoon and evening out for our family!

Picnic at the Park

Sunday afternoon I organized a picnic at a local park to welcome a new family, the Golacksons, to our community here. My friend Alisa and I came up with the thought a few weeks ago because our community here keeps expanding (mostly child-wise) and is getting a little overwhelming for any one family's apartment to host everyone. We've been having AMAZING weather this winter--practically every day in January has been sunny with highs in the 60's and 70's--but I still worried about planning an outdoor party in January! However, that day was as gorgeous as any, and the picnic went off without a hitch!
Above you can see the little patch of green where we hosted our shindig. For whatever reason, parks here contain very few grassy areas and the ones they do have, you are generally not allowed to sit or walk on. This park, and this very spot, is one of the few places we have found where you can have a picnic on the grass! The grassy area used to be much bigger, till the park decided to use 2/3 of it to build a giant "winter wonderland"/"ice city" exhibit on it (which is the building you can see directly behind us).


The kids especially had a great time running around and playing outside--something we do not take for granted here! Sarah loved it. David commented, "I think this is the first time she's ever seen grass!"

She was enthralled with it! Our final picture here is just a tiny fraction of the audience we drew with our 18 or so foreign adults and 15 or so foreign kids, but this family was by far the most entertaining. Most people would just walk by, stop for a couple of minutes to watch us, and then go on their way. This family? Oh no. They sat down, in a row facing us, and just watched us like they were watching TV together for at least half an hour! Here you can see the dad is taking pictures/video of our spectacle on his phone! Ahhh, Asia.

Ka-La-OK!

My 29th birthday was last week, and because of some general busyness we have going on this month, the celebration(s) were kind of spread out and very little happened on my actual birthday, but I think that's just pretty typical of the stage of life I am in these days! Anyway, in addition to David taking me out to Papa John's (which is a very fancy dinner and special treat in the Dean household) a few days before my birthday; David taking me out to a nice lunch on the day of my birthday; and David planning to take me to see Avatar in 3-D at some point (he tried to buy tickets but they are pretty much impossible to get for the time being); some of the other moms in my city also decided to take me and another birthday mom Erin out for dessert and Karaoke for our birthdays!

Karaoke is VERY, I mean EXTREMELY popular in the country where I live, but I have only gone to do it maybe 3-4 times in the going-on six years I have lived here. In general I can't say I really "get" what the fascination is. But when one of my friends suggested we do karaoke for my birthday, I thought, "Why not?"
Unlike in the west where you go to a Karaoke bar and have to sing in front of a bunch of strangers, here in Asia you go to a movie theater or a karaoke club and rent a little room for the evening where you sing privately with your friends. I have to say, this definitely makes it a much more enjoyable experience for me! I mean, it is fun to listen to your friends that can't sing try to sing, but it is NOT fun to listen to strangers who can't sing try to. And why would I EVER want to subject a stranger to my "singing?" (Yes the quotation marks are intentional.) Plus, the rooms you rent are very disco-sparkly, and they include 2 microphones and a tambourine!
We had a really, really good time. And, yes, despite the look on my friend Kayla's face above, we were totally sober! We sang lots of 80's stuff, from Madonna to Elton John to Janet Jackson, with also some Boys to Men thrown in there too. Good times, good times.

The most awesome part is also the part of the evening that must have convinced the Karaoke employees we were totally crazy--we brought a 2 month old baby with us! This reminds me of that scene in Sweet Home Alabama where Reese Witherspoon says to her redneck friend, "You have a baby! In a bar!" in disbelief. Yes, we brought a baby to the loudest late-night activity we could think of. But Vivianna, the baby daughter of my friends the Golacksons, did great. The best thing about newborns is definitely that they'll sleep anywhere. Oh, how I miss those days!