Cute and crazy crawford clan

Sammy Turns Five!

2011-05-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe how the time flies, Sammy is already five! (of course as I type this Chris and I are celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary so I really feel like I am in super speed mode or something). He originally wanted a star wars party, suprise suprise. But I decided this year we would only invite the kids in his class and one other special friend, which meant there would be more girls then boys and as much as I think girls would LOVE running around getting the storm troopers, well needless to say I asked Sammy if there was any other thing he loved as much as Star Wars he replied, "Creations!" Which is true, he is nuts about making stuff out of trash. I decided to class it up a bit and go with painting party. This year I didn't want to go to the effort of making an entirely new fabric birthday bunting so I made one in photoshop instead in fun bright colors, then sewed it to some striped fabric.

We ordered lots of paints

and brushes

and everyone got their own canvas, crown, whistle and mask to decorate

When I ordered the puff balls they only sold them in 5 lb bags. Since I had no concept of puff ball weight I didn't realize the enormous amount that would be. This bowl was maybe 1/4 the bag. I have no idea what we are going to do with the rest ha!

We borrowed the tables and Chairs from Liam's little school and had everything set up on our deck to keep the kids cool, in the shade and if by some randomness it rained dry.

When the kids arrived they could pick an apron color (these were soooo easy to make, at first I thought I was nuts but after a dozen you get a rhythm goin') pick up their party bag, which had some very special art supplies they could use or save for later (yes they are pink and purple and the only gift bags I could find on the island. I thought Sam would mention it but he never did! Phew!)

Then they could check out the chalkboard to decide what to do first.

Some how Abby got hold of one of the giant suckers and I swear every time I turned around she had a different one.

Sam (who refused to cover up his Star Wars shirt) had a blast "creating" with all his friends.

Briggs and Carmen, possibly Sammy's two favorite people in Timor at the same table!!

Ava is the youngest in his class and such a sweet heart. She was unusually shy at the party, I think she was a bit overwhelmed.

Raf is Sammy's buddy from Portugal and thankfully also likes Star Wars.

I got a chance to try out the amazing face paint my friend Rachel brought me back from Aus and her cool step by step instruction book.

Then the kids left their creations to dry and it was water play and snack time! (I thought it was pretty funny how one person painted a rainbow on their canvas and suddenly there were a bunch of rainbows ha!)

Sammy's one food request was "iceblocks". I think this is an Australian thing? You basically take all different flavored cordials, water them down, pour them into plastic cups and freeze them. They then literally become flavored ice blocks. They sell them at the school as a fundraiser for the orphanage every Tuesday and Thursday and the kids go nuts about them.

Sylvia and Vivian in the baby pool enjoying their blocks. I think Sylvia spent the majority of her time just chillin in that pool.

Oscar tried out the slip n slide

If they got cold in the water they could take a break and go get all sweaty on the bounce house.

Shiyon is from Korea and I swear she and her mom are the most stylish people I know I would die for some hand me downs.

After lunch it was cake time! Okay so I worked pretty hard on this cake, despite the fact that it looks so plain.

I have been following THIS blog for a while and she did THIS cake that I thought would be perfect.

I have got to learn how to ice a cake well.

I even bought one of those special paddle tools and it didn't help much ha!

Liam was pretty excited himself.

We got to hear "Happy Birthday" the Aussie way, Italian way and Portuguese way.

Sammy was able to blow out the one candle in one blow.

The kids were pretty excited when they saw the cake cut, even when the icing started melting and the cake was sliding apart ha!

I warned the parents that the amount of food coloring may send them to the hospital

Abby enjoyed the cake... oh wait no she was working on her fifth lollipop probably at that point. This one she didn't even bother having someone take off the wrapper she just muscled through it.

Sammy seemed to have a great time and got some really fun presents to remind him of Timor.

The next day on his actual birthday I made our traditional train shaped cake and we gave him the presents from us. He just about died when he opened the remote control R2D2 and do you know who else loves him? Abby.

Abby is so crazy about R2D2 that even if she is playing with another toy she will lock her legs around R2 so you can't get him. And if you try, she WILL bite you.

Luckily Sammy is a pretty darn good sharer so he doesn't get bitten too often ha!

In other news we have less then 3 weeks here in Timor! We cannot believe how fast it has gone. We are all packed for our big family vacation with the Crawford's (Chris and I are retracing the last half of our honeymoon, Disneyland then Mexico... yup I said last half, our honeymoon was legendary ha!) then we have my little sisters wedding to get ready for! Once again I will be the super preggy one hiding in the back of all the photos. I don't know if I will blog again from Timor, now that is a weird feeling. Hopefully I will gather enough energy (the stomach flu has ripped through our house hold this week) to get a goodbye party together so we can say good bye to all our friends. Just thinking about it makes me kinda tired though ha! As does thinking about the 13 hour flight we will take from Sydney to LA ahhhhhh! Prayers for that are welcome :)

Sailing for Mothers Day

2011-05-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

To celebrate Mothers day my friend Jeanne organized a sailing trip! I was really excited because this was something I had wanted to do for a while but you have to do it in a big group otherwise it is insanely expensive. The fun group of us from over 8 countries (always love how diverse the group is) set sail at 3:30 in the afternoon.

I wish I had gotten a pic of our sail boat, it was gorgeous. But being panicky about having my camera I double freezer ziplock bagged it in my carry on and couldn't get it out fast enough. I figured the ziplock bags would give me the five seconds necessary to throw myself overboard after my bag if it went in. But here I am pushing my belly out as a joke at the front of the boat (Aft? Stern?), my friend Krista told me I needed to look pregnant, check.

We sailed through Dili harbor and out around the Christ statue

They served little Hors d'oeuvre (spelled the French way-- I gotta learn sometime!) along the way and we brought lots of yummy drinks and the conversation was fantastic! Plus I had fun listening in on some of my friends speaking French. Didn't understand a word but it made my ears excited for Paris.

krista, steve, jeanne, toby

Once we got to back beach we stopped so we could snorkel. This is a great spot, but unfortunately the sight on land was pretty sad.

We have no idea why but they were slashing and burning the mountain side.

Usually they only do this in areas they are going to farm and Back Beach is definitely not that place, so we don't really know what was up. But it was cool watching the "Bombedaros" fight it.

Some people stayed and relaxed on the boat but Chris and I jumped in. The water was gorgeous and so clear but to be honest I spent the majority of my time trying to tell myself not to think about crocs.

I tried to stay close to Jeanne's hubby Silas since he had a spear gun ha! I was a bit worried about how we were going to get back on the ship since we had simply flung ourselves over the side, but when it was time to go a ladder magically appeared :)

This was the little "dingy" that was pulled behind us and used in case any of us were taken off by the current while snorkeling, which was actually very strong. I was tempted to ask if I could sit back in it on the way back in, it sounded fun to be tugged.

But I am glad I didn't though because I would have missed the most amazing sunset. It started out just sort of getting dark

and I was a little bummed thinking we weren't going to get any color. So for a while I took some other random pictures since I didn't think I would get a good sunset shot. You know of totally weird things like a pile of rope

and lots and lots of the sails

None of which turned out all that great. Then my friends hubby said "Kelly do you not want any of the sunset?" I sat up and BAM! This was what I saw:

So of course I nearly killed myself running to the front of the boat to get a better shot

These are straight out of the camera (I have no clue how to edit a sunset anyway). The colors were amazing!!! After enjoying the sunset we sailed slowly back to port in the dark. It was soooo relaxing sitting back and talking while the boat swayed. I told Chris I think we should retire to a yacht. He told me that there is an old saying that the two happiest days of a boat owners life are the day he buys the boat and the day he sells it. I guess that is a no :) It was a lovely mothers day gift though.... even if it didn't involve the munchkins, just us two.

Singapore, Jakarta and easter

2011-04-30T02:53:00.000-07:00

Be forewarned that this is going to be a loooong post :) There is lots to catch up on! A few weeks ago Liam and I took a trip to Singapore! Liam needed to see a pediatric gastrointestinal specialist to figure out just why he isn't growing and well, frequenting the bathroom more often then the normal child :) I got to see the OBGYN and sneak a peak at the baby! We were there for a week and had a blast just the two of us. After almost two years now going every where with three kiddos it was bizarre to be able to give all my attention to one child, and boy did he take advantage of it. I have NEVER heard Liam talk so much. I am pretty sure if he wasn't sleeping he was talking. Since Singapore is incredibly expensive it also helped having only 2 people to pay admission for. While we were at doctors getting poked and prodded we tried to get in most of what this gorgeous city had to offer. One morning we headed out bright and early to Snow City. It was a bit out of town so it took a while to get there. Then there was the rental of every piece of winter clothing and I suddenly acutely remembered why I DON'T miss getting kids ready to play in the snow ha!

(they do not allow cameras inside. I had to totally sneak that picture of Liam as I put my picture in the locker. Instead they have someone follow you around with their camera and then try to sell you the pictures) Once we were all ready you had to wait in a holding room to acclimate to the cold temperature. In the room there were 3 huge animatronic polar bears that let our horrible and load roars ever few seconds. Liam was terrified. After we got into the "snow city" and I tried to distract him he just clung to me crying that the bears were going to get him. I finally talked him into sledding down the hill once and that was it, all he wanted to do was leave. Luckily right next door was the science museum that we had planned on going to after lunch.

This museum was amazing and Liam and I spent hours playing with the hundreds of exhibits. What was so great is that everything was made for kids to touch, play with or experiment with. Not once did I have to say "oh don't touch that!" Liam's favorite part was the robot display. He and Sam are NUTS over Star wars right now so he was pretty excited to see R2D2. He posed for a great picture in front of a poster of him.

Liam got a much needed haircut the next day. The lady put it in a Mohawk, sprayed it with green hair paint and added gold glitter. Liam was in heaven. And totally bummed when I made him wash it before hoping into the pristine bedsheets.

The next night we headed to the famous Singapore zoo night Safari.

You get to ride around on trams through special trails that passed by all the nocturnal animals. It was amazing to see the animals so close and so active. A few days later we headed back during the day to see the rest of the zoo. To be honest we spent the majority of the time at the fabulous water park in the kids area of the zoo.

Liam played for hours while I chilled in the stroller eating Ben and Jerry's (wise zoo planners put it right next to where all the parents sit)

Liam became friends with a set of Aussie brothers just a bit older then him. They were so cute and kind to him. I think he enjoyed having a friend his age to talk to, after all he mentioned several times during the trip that he missed his brother.

As far as the animals go, his favorite were the giant bunnies. These bunnies were crazy huge and would totally let you pet them and they hoped really high.

On the way out they had a station where you could take your picture with tropical birds. They were being so loud I thought there was no way he would do it, but he dashed up and gave a tiny smile.

We then spent a day just relaxing at the hotel pool.

Liam had a thing for winking and giving me thumbs up the entire trip, I thought it was pretty funny

The embassy takes care of hotel bills when you have to leave your post for a medical reason and I will just say that we stayed at a hotel we never would be able to stay at otherwise, especially in Singapore. Liam LOVED that the pool had pillars of water shooting up to play with

I was worried at first he was going to be told he couldn't play with them but all the workers would giggle and joke with him when they passed by. He refused to take off the flippers we found for him at a store next to the hotel

When I got him a matching mask and snorkel he was dying to try them out, but it was raining. So into the ginormous tub he went

The last day of adventuring we headed out to the island built for tourists, Sentosa. It is filled with different theme parks. First we hit up Insect world. The butterfly sanctuary was incredible. I was terrified one of us was going to step on one, they were everywhere.

While I was trying to get a picture of a butterfly that was way bigger then my hand Liam kept yelling for me. He seemed totally distressed

When I came over he kept saying something about a turtle eating lunch. I looked down and sure enough a butterfly had drowned (?) and the turtle was enjoying it. Just a little disturbing.

After we got our fill of creepy crawlies we headed to Underwater world. I wanted to get there before the dolphin show and we got there RIGHT as it started. Everyone else was sitting in the nice shaded spots but Lemers and I had to sit in the blazing sun, but it was totally worth it. They asked for some volunteers to come do tricks with the dolphins. I waved Liam's hand like crazy and he got picked!

I was worried he might not want to get his shorts wet (totally unprepared on that front) but he went right in!

After they gave him a printed out picture of him and the dolphins and he just stared at it forever ;) We went through the aquarium, petting sting rays and the shark tunnel. This is when it dawned on me why Chris and I so prefer Aquariums over zoos. At zoo's half the time you can't even see the animals, the enclosures (thankfully) are too large. At aquariums you can squish your nose right up next to a massive dungeonous crab. The flight home with just one cutie was a breeze. Which was nice since we only had one week before our flight as a whole family to Jakarta! Chris had two days off work for Easter so we decided to go visit our friends the Nielsen's up in Indonesia. The boys were so excited to see their buddies Clark and Andrew. I was horrible about taking pictures but we did have such a great time. One of the days the Nielsens sent us with their car and driver to Timan Safari, the zoo outside of Jakarta. What makes this zoo special is that you drive through it and feed the animals. On the road leading up to the zoo there is stand after stand selling carrots, bananas etc. You stock up and then head in. It is hilarious that you don't have to sign any waiver, or read any warning signs etc. Abby absolutely adores Curious George so when we gave her bananas to feed the monkeys I thought she was going to fall out of the car

When she wasn't feeding them carrots, she was trying to kiss the camels through the window

Liam loved the elephants who were reading their trunks over to us.

I loved that the hippos just laid there with their mouths open

The zebras weren't shy about getting close and more then once I was afraid we were going to roll their lips up in the window ha!

At first the kiddos were a bit apprehensive about sticking the food out.

I was sort of afraid when a few of these guys surrounded the car

We ran out of carrots but the boys still had fun hanging out the window looking at the animals.

We rolled the windows up when we headed into the lions den and Lala our driver kinda booked it through :) After we got even closer to the elephants.

the boys were both really brave feeding them

Chris got them a bucket of carrots that went in less then a minute:

Abby was terrified when the elephant got to close

To finish up we took a ride on the train, which Sam of course LOVED. Half way through it started LASHING down rain. The kids crawled into the back sit with Chris while I hovered in the front trying to keep the camera from getting drenched. We then hoped in the car and headed home. On the way home we got to experience the natorious Jakarta traffic. It took us over three hours to get home, which since we had a DVD player wouldn't have been so bad, except the air conditioning went out. By the time we got home the kids were basically in their undies and I was rubbing them down with ice from the cooler. Still totally worth it though! We then took all the kids to Snow Bay, a fun water park. I decided against bringing the camera :) The kids played like crazy until they were so tired Liam and Abby had some pretty fantastic melt downs. That night we got Cherylyn had called the ice skating rink and they told her they were open until nine. We got the kids all dressed in warm clothes (they all wanted to wear their coats, hats and gloves in the car). When we got there the kids were soooo excited. This is the kids waiting patiently, with Tanner in the background finding out that the rink in fact closed in ten minutes for hockey practice.

Yeah, it was a bummer. The boys were pretty good about it. We got them ice cream and they watched the zambonie and then the hockey players. I had to take a picture of this though. Clark was having a rough night and at one point refused to use his legs.

I just thought it was so hilarious because seriously, what parent hasn't been there at some point? Of course I had to go to Mayestic (the fabric market) several times and Chris had 3 suits made out of gorgeous designer fabrics for 1/3 the cost you would ever find them anywhere else. Looking back we probably should have had more made since he will have to wear a suit every day in Paris. It was such a relaxing and yummy vacation (think fresh milk, cheese, yogurt and french butter) The highlight for me (aside from being with such wonderful friends) was going to a new resturant called Tin Pan Alley. We had two nannys stay will the six cuties while just us adults went out to dinner. Oh my gosh it was AMAZING. I loved everything about it, the black and white checked floors and subway art to the jam jars the strawberry lemonaide was delivered in (which had huge straws so you could actually enjoy the large chunks of strawberry). I of course went crazy and ordered an appatizer, a main course salad a steak with potatoes and verggies and a desert. I literally thought I was going to be sick after ha! Oh my goodness was it delicious though. There was a super cute poster on the wall that said "good food all depends on the company" and I couldn't agree more. The conversation was as good as the food :) We were sad to leave, especially since it meant getting up at 3:30am to make our 6am flight but we had to get back since I was in charge of the Embassy Easter egg hunt. While at the airport in Bali I grabbed four dozen doughnuts from Dunken doughnuts to bring with me and serve at the hunt (there is nothing like that in Timor). I had already bought several blueberry muffin mixes and cinnamon strussel crumb cake mixes to make and serve. We had over 80 people RSVP and I was a ball of nerves. I headed over early in the morning to hide the one thousand eggs (yes, 1,000 eggs). In the end I literally was just flinging them everywhere. Chris was great about getting the kids all dressed and ready with their baskets.

I LOVED Abby's Easter dress that my mom sent.

Everyone kept asking me if I made it and I kept saying "Nope, it was all Granny!"

We broke the hunt up into 3 and under in one area and over 3 in another. After finding a few eggs Abby was happy and just wanted to sit down and open them.

Sam and Liam on the other hand were nuts about it and wanted to find as many eggs as they could, especially the ones that had little starwars spaceships in them.

We order the eggs prefilled with toys from a great company that employees those with mental disabilities. it is so nice not to have to worry about candy melting on cute clothes or the kids getting all wired. When it was all said and done with had over 80 people, the Ambassadors house was still standing and I was EXHAUSTED. After clean up I came home and literally passed out asleep. While I was asleep Chris made lunch for the kids and thank heavens he took off Abby's dress because by the end she was wearing most of her lunch:

We are not on count down to Sammy's birthday party, Disneyland and the cruise. With only five weeks left in Timor you can imagine we are crazy busy and enjoying our last few weeks of almost constant pool, park and beach time!

Baby Pocus, Our Humble Abode and Sewing on the Seine

2011-03-08T22:57:00.000-08:00

Wow, I feel bad for not posting in sooo long. But at the same time I have literally been feeling BAD. For those of you who don't know Chris and I are expecting baby number four!! We are thrilled, although with out giving to much yucky detail the toilet and I have gotten to know each other WAY to well in my opinion. I head to Singapore in a week for my ultrasound but Chris and I have decided that we are not going to be finding out what this munchikin is. We already have clothes and decor for either (and pretty much settled on a few names) so we thought we would let it be a fun surprise. Now we will see if this can remain unknown as it requires me to immedately tell ever doctor and nurse I see "we're not finding out!" and I did have one friend who had a doctor abroad who thought that was ridiculous and went a head and told her anyway! Liam has dubbed the baby "baby Pocus" I said "Like Hocus Pocus?" "Yup!" He also asked Chris and I "Will this baby be nice? And not pull my hair and bite me?" Um..... Abby has been going through a bit of a rough spot and I think the boys are beginning to notice. In other big news we closed on and now own our first home! We are desperate to see it but won't for 3 more months ughhhhhh. It is in our beloved Williamsburg (I love that our kids have a place to be "from") and I will fly out to see it in July, then promptly sign it with a rental company, boo. We also found out today where our next posting will be and we are still in complete shock, fabulous, wonderful, could not be more excited shock. Chris will return to DC for seven months in the New Year to learn French so that we can all head to Paris France!!! Chris woke me up this morning at 6am by saying Bonjour and I basically feel out of the bed screaming. Of course Paris won't be nearly as fun if we don't have visitors!!!! As if I had to sell it, but just so you know we will be a 1.15 train ride to London, flights round trip to Scotland and Ireland are 50 bucks and well, basically everywhere in Europe is a quick cheap train ride. I am already trying to talk Chris into going to Transylvania for one of the halloweens ha! So there you have it! Over load of news and no pictures, rare for me ha!

Project Run and pLay Finale

2011-02-19T16:15:00.000-08:00

The last few weeks I have been taking part in a sewing competition called Project Run and Play. This week is the finale!

I am still surprised I made it this far! If you get a chance and don't mind hoping over and voting for my dress I would love it!

Things are looking pretty dire voting wise ha! Click HERE to go vote. You can see better pics of the outfit HERE.

Thanks!

We will ROCK you!

2011-02-12T05:06:00.000-08:00

I have found one of the fun things about working for the gov't (or in DC) is the sports teams you can be a part of. While Chris was in Iraq I played for a softball team and we would play games on Saturday mornings on the Mall close to the Washington monument. Each Saturday I would have what my friend Meredith calls an "ah-ha" moment as I stood in awe of the Washington monument and thought about how blessed I was to be an American. Here in Timor the softball games continue! The Japanese embassy challenged us to a game (second year in a row) and we of course accepted. Our wonderful neighbor Brenda agreed to play with us so I wouldn't be the only girl. Then at practice she got pelted with a softball which compounded a soccer injury received earlier in the week, so it was just me... and all the Sea Bees (the military detachment here). You had to have a girl on the field the whole time (I mentioned this was derogatory to women but everyone just laughed). The Japanese fans were out in force with flags, music coolers etc. We had our kids and the Hiemstra's cuties wandering around until they just couldn't take it and had to leave for morning naps. Not before Adrean ate her weight in dirt though.

We had a huge local audience hang about on the outskirts of the field and up on the walls. We took the field first and out Sea Bee's pitcher "Murphy" (man did this bring back memories hearing "murph" be yelled on the softball field) began pitching. Of course he did slow pitch because that is what we were under the impression we would be doing. The inning ends and as we grab throw gloves and grab bats we see the pitcher warming up, with lots of speed on those softballs. What the what? I think something had literally been lost in translation. Thankfully I didn't was number 8 to bat. Chris was excited to try out the "sports" dial on my camera. On the first pitch he caught the getting ready to whined up

The whined up

and the hit

It was a pretty good hit if I do say so myself. I ran to first and then heard someone saying "go! Go! And instead of just listening I turn around and say "Oh hi!" to the first base coach. Yeah I am pretty awesome. But it gets better. After making it to third and staying there the next batter hits a pop fly. I take off running TOTALLY forgetting you need to tag up if they catch the ball. I hear the third base coach yell "Come back! Come back!" and instead of coming back I yell "Why?" What is with me questioning authority? I just need to do as I am told. Of course the ball gets thrown to third and I am out, making it a double play... ughhhh. Anyway we were getting seriously slaughtered and I joke about a Mercy rule until the bottom of the 6th where the Americans made their big come back! The game ended 17-16 with USA the winners!! Woo hoo! Of course they want a rematch when Pacific Partnership comes (a group of ships in the same category as the Mercy but from Japan this time not the US) so we will see what happens. In other news this Thursday was a big movie night at the school. They had 3 different movies playing for the different age groups and your ticket (which was not cheap by the by) included popcorn and juice. Sam and Liam went to Toy Story 3 because Free Willy looked to "scary". The parents got to buy drinks and food from the snack bar and hang out. The next day there was no school so I had mentioned we rented the bounce house from the Embassy and would have our huge inflatable water slide going if people wanted to come by. By mid-morning we had 15 cuties playing in the yard!

I could not get a clear picture because they were all running or biking around like mad people.

Add in the swing set and a slip n slide and everyone was teasing me that we should charge an entry fee and treat our yard like an amusement park. It was just nice to have so much fun packed in a day that otherwise would have been filled with boredom and most likely a lot of whining :) Sammy and Liam have TOTALLY immersed themselves into the art table I had made for them. They are constantly coloring, cutting, taping and bringing us creations and drawing. I am loving it! This last weekend Sam made a ton of pictures and put them all up on the wall with magnets (having metal walls does have its perks!) He then had one magnet outside the door that was the doorbell. I was to push the "doorbell" and he would open the door and let me in to his exhibit. He then took me around to each of his pictures and told me about it and requested I take pictures of him and his artwork.

It was so cute. A lot of his creations he referred to as "prototypes", maybe there is something even bigger in the works I have to look forward to! I am just thrilled he inherited my moms artistic love and I think talent, then again I am only the tiniest bit bias! I have also been wanting to get pictures of the kids with a similar background and get big Canvas prints of them for our living room. Of course Sam was a pro:

Liam was okay:

And abby wouldn't even sit down AND was COVERED in dirt by the time I got to her. I guess we will try again later :) Chris is off in Hawaii this week so it is me and the kids. I really don't mind during the week since it is always super hectic at our house with play dates and two school schedules to keep up with, but the weekends are not so fun. We miss him already and Sammy asked why Daddy hadn't called the computer yet and he only left this afternoon :) But it does mean fun surprises from the states and I am sure Daddy will enjoy his hotel on Waikiki. His job really is so rough :)

We have been busy....

2011-02-04T05:41:00.000-08:00

I feel awful for not updating the blog in so long, but what can I say, things have been crazy busy around here. Lemers, who has up until now been attending his cute little Dili Sprouts school 3 days a week was dubbed to advanced for it and has started attending the morning class at QSI (Sam's school) This means I am driving around Dili ALOT. He is loving it though which makes it totallyworth it! Abby, who hadn't broken a tooth for months upon months suddenly broke two molars and has two more coming in. Lets just say our little "princess" is being a royal grump lately :) Sammy is as social as ever and had me run raged this week with several play dates everyday. Chris has been working lots of overtime after the Staffdel visit and gearing up for a Congressional Visit. We are set to receive our bid list next Friday (we had a false start last week). We are both freaking out with excitement to find out where we are going next. In fun Dili news last weekend there was a bike/run race. Several of my girlfriends who are gearing up for the Tour De Timor this year entered. While they raced Chris and I wrangled all the cuties! We wanted to take them down to see their parents race. This ended up being hilarious because of course the road was closed so we had to figure out how to get everyone to the finish line.

We broke out the wagon, two strollers and the ergo (that is out friend Susan in the pic who is expecting her first baby soon!) Along the way we got to cheer on the mommies that ran past. Jeanne had taken a little tumble on her bike and was very happy to see Tiavan.

Sammy, Roman and Noah decided they wanted to get in on the racing action. Liam decided about a minute later to join them and it was so cute to watch him try and catch up.

We waited at the finish line with our poster for Amanda's parents

Roman, Noah and Mace's mommy Krista came in second!

Amanda's Mommy Meredith came in third:

They really liked the poster the boys made for them

Jeanne came in fourth and was so fun to watch

Tiavan was so worried about her and kept asking where she was.

Abby spent the entire time chillin in the stroller and eating snacks.

We have been wanting to get pictures of the boys we some of the UN police that abound here in Timor, you know so when they grow up we can say "look you totally lived in a place patrolled by the UN"

They are always so nice and handed me their cameras to take pictures :) The race went right past the presidents house which has guards who are a bit more serious... and way better armed.

On the home front there has been a baby gecko living in Liam's bed net. We don't mind so much as they eat mosquitoes and Liam thinks it is pretty cool :)

We have been LOVING our new playground and Abby is anxiously awaiting her baby swing.

New Years Eve- Dili Style

2011-01-08T07:48:00.000-08:00

Everything is laid back here in Dili (unless we are in crisis mode which seems to happen often at the embassy ha!) So we approached New Years eve with that in mind. Most of our friends left the island for the holidays so those of us that were still hear got together at our house with the BBQ, the bounce house and some face paint. The kids had a blast. Sammy LOVES Briggs who is a few years older then him but very patient with him. They played "Agents" most of the night. And when I asked how they wanted their faces painted they said "like agents" I responded "what does that mean?" and since they couldn't articulate it they got spiders.

I thought Amanda would want a butterfly or flowers but she wanted spiders too

Liam wanted (read mom talked him into) a dragon

This is what it looks like when he is a grumpy dragon

Addie did not want her face painted but was excited about sparklers... although she doesn't look it in this picture, and we did turn her sparkler right side up.

It is nice having a big yard when firewords are involved because we can kind keep the kids away from each other. Although I think my constant "Don't run with your sparkler!!!" Probably sucked some fun out of it

We tried doing the whole write your name thing, but it doesn't work so well when it is still bright out.

It is fun to play with the focus on the camera when fire is involved

Although I would suggest a zoom lens not a prime in the future. I got some nice sparks zappin me.

Liam would beg for more every time his went out and I figured since we weren't going to be here for the fourth we might as well.

I think they ended up doing 4 or 5 each. Then there was lots of snacking

The kids headed to bed around 9:30 and Chris and I literally stayed up until 12:03 then zonked. But that is kinda how it is when you are parents! I think one year I am going to make an effort to go to a glamorous party. Maybe when we are at some big huge embassy. For now I kind like Dili style!

We have a HOUSE!!

2011-01-04T06:44:00.000-08:00

Well it is getting there at least! Katie was kind enough to send us some photographic updates on our house and I am jumping out of my seat I am so excited. Although when I think about the fact that we will not be living in it anytime soon I get pretty sad. So this is the front of the house.

It is a duplex and when seeing it next to the smaller one I am sooo glad we went with the larger one. This is the side view. I LOVE how many windows there are. If I had my way there would be even more but something about structurally unsound...

And this is the back.

Which leads out to our cute little garage.

There is just enough of a yard to put in a giant trampoline ha! We don't have to worry about a swing set because the park is directly across from our front door, ah heaven! Then there are all the walking trails that lead to Colonial Williamsburg and, well, I just think it is the perfect place. Now, does anyone know a GOOD family in Williamsburg that needs and amazing four bedroom place? :)

Making Christmas Happen

2010-12-29T06:57:00.000-08:00

We have been having a very busy and very fun December. It started out with the school Christmas performance. Sammy's class and the morning class sang their song "Making Christmas happen".

They used their recycled "creation" hammers as props.

Sammy's was made out of a water bottle and empty yogurt tubs.

I thought his face make up was adorable

We also got to have breakfast with Santa at the embassy! The kids were so excited and nervous all at once. They decided to all hold hands on the way in.

Abby LOVED her eggies and muffins

I have decided it is impossible to get a good picture of kids when there is more then three ha!

Addie had on the cutest little smocked Christmas dress.

It was hard not to let the kiddos plow through the candy.

Liam liked the snowmen decorations

and of course his daddy

When we had finished eating the guest of honor came out!

Sammy was so excited I loved it!

The local kiddos were just as in awe

He couldn't stop clapping and laughing

Santa asked who had been good this year and the boys shot their hands up

Then Santa started pulling out the gifts. Liam walked right up when his name was called

Sammy was excited but just a tinsy bit nervous

Abby was terrified and screamed the second she was put near him.

There is always one and this time it was ours ;)

Liam couldn't wait to open his and was pretty excited

Adrienne was pretty darn excited herself

Everyone was teasing me about how cheeser my kids are and how you can totally tell their mom is a photographer

The local kids were so wonderfully patient and none of them opened their presents. They all took them home. I was so impressed! Right after we took the boys to get their hair cuts. This is how cool Timor is, at the Thai food restaurant you can get yummy food, a hair cut a message and anything else you might like. The boys had so much fun on their rubber donkeys

Sammy named his "hehaw, because he says hehaw" of course. Abby really loved the other one but was MAD when I made her turn around for a picture.

I tried to talk Chris into getting them one for Christmas but it was a no go :) They did get pretty spoiled. But that will have to wait for another post :)

Riding Elephants and mopeds

2010-12-09T04:43:00.000-08:00

Luckily our villa came with a daily driver but with traffic as bottle necked as it is it took 40 minutes just to get to the beach. Our solution? Rent two mopeds and pile on!

I actually decided for Chris to make two runs. The boys LOVED the moped and begged for rides.

Abby loved the helmet.

What was great about them was we could take the tiny backroads only mopeds can fit on, through gorgeous rice paddies right to the beach. The beach by the villa was deserted when we got there and we found out why.

There is an old women sitting under a palapa who the locals bring their babies too when they are 3 months old. She touches their feet to the sand for the first time. I thought it was such a cool thing.

Thats not the only thing the kiddos got to ride, ELEPHANTS!

Abby and I skipped it this time but the boys had a blast. Clark and Andrews elephant was named Andrew which they got a kick out of. Sam and Liam were bummed that theirs was a girl because they wanted one with tusks.

Liam was a tiny but scared when they went in the water

Mom was a little worried when the elephant balanced on a piling

Afterwards we got to go up to their alarming petting zoo. They had baby orangoutangs in diapers that I wouldn't let the boys near. Before I could stop them there was a snack around Liam's neck

Abby kept her distance from all the monkeys in aviary type cages

It was so much fun seeing all the kids become friends. Even Abby and Audrey dug each other... well until Abby would poke her eyes and try to hug her

Sam has already asked to go back to Bali, then he changed it to Clark and Andrew coming to visit him, we'll have to see, maybe there will be a trip to Jakarta in the spring :)

I would like to live in this restaurant

2010-12-02T05:07:00.000-08:00

The food never disappoints in Bali, the taste, the presentation, the atmosphere, you name it and it is awesome. The first day we ventured out of the villa we went to Cafe Bali

Our poor driver I am sure thought we were NUTS. The boys all pilled in the back and the volume back there reached incredible levels, so many "excuse me guys?" (Both our kids "politely" say excuse me 500 times when they want to say something, it was hilarious listening to it go back and forth).

The minute we stepped onto the porch of the restaurant I leaned over to Chris and said: "I want to live in this restaurant" So now I am photo documenting the resturant so later I can go back and try to duplicate some of their awesome decor.

The inside didn't disappoint either.

The lighting fixtures were so cool

and I loved their wall of mirrors

Then this little area was tucked away in a corner and was completely different from the rest

I love hydrangeas, they made up a large portion of my wedding bouquet so I have been in heaven finding them every where in Bali

My own complaint would be how HOT is was. We were all sweating bullets. (did you notice in the pictures all the dudes either without shirts or in tank tops? Yeah we were in a total time warp back to 1985). Our boys were "glistening" ha!

The food was fabulous and although Abby had a meltdown we really enjoyed ourselves and if we go back to Seminyak I will absolutely be eating there again.

After lunch the boys graciously took ALL the kiddos back to the villa so Cher and I could shop (Seminyak is known for its shopping so we were pretty excited). My friend had told me about this children's store Clara Mia that carried clothes by a french lady that were to die for. Cher and I walked past and they were closed for lunch and we peered in and it looked like there were only a handful of dresses in the whole store. I thought aw great it is one of THOSE stores. We started walking down the street and that is when a massive thunderstorm let loose.

We were stuck in this random clothing store with CRAZY prices and store clerks who shrieked everytime the thunder would clap. FInally it let up and we headed back to Clara Mia. It totally lived up to the hype. I wanted to buy EVERYTHING in the store. But it was expensive so I walked out with one outfit. I totally tried to sneak pictures of some of the other outfits because I could totally make some of it but would never remember what they looked like. Cher was great at distracting the girl while I snapped some hilariously bad pictures with the camera down by my leg. We were so covert haa!

I am TOTALLY going to make these sailor shorts for Abby!

We also stocked up on decor for Abby and Audrey's rooms and I am soooo excited to start setting it up... and figuring out how to make pale green, metal walls look okay.... I love a challenge and all but this one is tough. In the end it was sort of overwhelming shopping there. There was just WAY too many streets all jam packed with tiny shops which were in turn jam packed full of merchandise.

Thanksgiving in Bali

2010-12-01T06:56:00.000-08:00

We packed up the fam and headed to Bali last wednesday to celebrate Thanksgiving with our wonderful friends from the "Burg the Nielsen's. They are, serendipitously enough, working for the State Dept. in Jakarta! (I am actually once again staying with them as I write this trying to get this tooth that will not be mended fixed ughhhhhhhh) We had decided this time instead of a hotel to rent one of the millions of villas we always see for rent. We got a steal of a deal on what was described as a four bedroom with a pool. When we showed up I just about keeled over and died it was so gorgeous! When you walk in the wooden doors we were greeted of course by a gorgeous hindu statue and walked along a rocky path back to the "villa". The first courtyard looked like this:

To the right of this is a building with two large bedrooms each with their own bathrooms. This was were the four boys slept. They got to share a bed, but it was a pretty big bed so I didn't feel too bad ha!

When you stood on their "porch" you faced our outdoor living room/ dinning room:

This was completely surrounded by a "moat" of sorts with couy fish and gorgeous moss covered water features. Sammy LOVED the fish

to the left of the living room was our kitchen, laundry room and office. If you walked through the living room and down the beautiful-yet-heart-attack-inducing-when-you-have-an-18 month-old-walking-around-steps:

You get to the two master suites. Both free standing with a courtyard in the middle:

Everywhere you looked there were flowers. Even when you went inside your room the beds and side tables had flowers

They even stuck them in between the shampoo and conditioner

I LOVE the smell of gardenia so I was in heaven! If you walked down our porch and around the corner you came to the pool. Cher and I were REALLY nervous about having our own pool, excited, but soooo nervous. I had actually decided to keep Abby in a life jacket the entire time. We were lucky though and it was zero issue. The fact that it was kid of out of the way and you had to walk past a mommy daddy room to get to it made it easy to guard.

We got soooooooo much use out of it. The kids LOVED being in it and we loved playing with them or relaxing on the cabana

We all loved being there so much it took a while for us to even want to go anywhere else. Add into that the fact that directly next to our villa was the hotel restaurant where we got our yummy breakfast every morning and had we wanted to we could have been perfectly happy never leaving it ha! But we did and I have lots of fun pictures of the kids riding mopeds and elephants and playing at the beach. But since Abby is totally getting up at 4:30am (I do not like you jet lag) and it is 10pm I am going to sleep :)

Fall Festival

2010-11-13T23:20:00.000-08:00

Last week Sammy's school had their fall festival to raise money for one of the many orphanges here in Timor. Since they do not celebrate Halloween at school they said the kids could wear their costumes if they wanted. Well of course the boys were all over that!

Sam was excited to see his partner if crime fighting Bumblebee

Since Liam REALLY wants a bumblebee costume he was pretty excited to get his face painted to look like him.

Even though he changed out of his costume Sammy was still Optimus Prime.

What can I say these boys LOVE robots. I am researching retro ones for Christmas but I am pretty sure they will be bummed if they aren't Transformers.

Over the weekend we made some crafts aka Wall-E

Flowers

And found Abby's favorite new thing, getting dragged around in the laundry basket

Also my prophecy of Abby being a Tom Boy is already coming true:

The guard got to watch us use sidewalk chalk to create all sorts of under sea animals.

He was also pretty nervous about Abby standing on the gate. Even here in Timor I get the "should you be letting your child do that looks" ha!

We are gearing up for our Thanksgiving Trip to Bali. We will be meeting our friends Tanner and Cherylyn and their cuties and am I sooooooooo excited. It has only been 2 months since Italy but it feels like we haven't been off the Island in years ha!

Boo!

2010-10-31T01:44:00.000-07:00

The kiddos were really excited for Halloween this year.

Liam kept going back and forth between being spiderman and a ghost. He REALLY wanted to be Bumble Bee from transformers but he decided that about five weeks to late :)

I took full advantage of Abby not knowing what was going on and made her a cherub

I was really suprised she left on the headband and wings as long as she did

Sammy was Optimus Prime and refused to let us fix the mask that was smooshed in the mail. He thought since it came like that it was supposed to be like that.

I made all the kids trick or treat bags because sadly enough I never did find out Halloween items (both orange and black tubs held random winter clothes, apparently my attempt at color coordinating holidays with storage containers didn't work).

We had a really fun trunk or treat party at our compound.

It was so much fun seeing people who had never trick or treated before enjoy their first time and of course all the babies!!

Our friends Jan and Meredith were "White Trash" and the only ones who even attempted to dress up ha!

When I first saw Meredith I gasped totally thinking something horrible had happened.

On Halloween the Embassy took all the diplomatic children around in a van to each of the embassy communities homes to trick or treat. It was so fun to see them all pile in and out of the can together.

Oddly enough Sam was the first one bolting to the door ha!

They also took them out to the See Bee's camp to trick or treat. Wow. If you are a kid who wants to stock up on full sized candy the troops are the place to go! I am sure they were kid enough to share lots of the candy they recieved in packages from home. Then Chris, Sam and Abby headed over to the embassy for the big party. Liam and I both have been feeling under the weather so we stayed back and rested. Abby went as Kung Foo Panda to that party. I would have loved to see Sam bob for apples. Hope you get lots of treats!

Contests Contests and one more contest

2010-10-22T22:55:00.000-07:00

This year I was determined to submit a dress to the Dare to Design contest on Shabby Apple's blog.

I found out this morning it was selected for the top 15!!!! I was so excited! If you would like to vote for me (oh please please please) you can click HERE, I am number 12.

I was also selected to compete in "crafting with the stars over at Sew Dang Cute.

I was pared up with Jen from Tatertots and Jello which I am thrilled about. Our first challenge was due today:

I am kinda nervous about this competition because my "craft" supply is fairly limited ha! But we'll see how it goes. FINALLY oh my goodness I am have been DROOLING over these bikes for about a year now... remember I did a post WAY back when about them?

Well they are doing a give away and maybe by some MIRACLE I might win one ha! I could totally see myself biking down the horrible streets of Dili in one of these bad boys :) You can click to the pic and it will take you to their site if you want to enter yourself. My friend Jenny who lives in Beijing has her own tuk tuk that fits 2 car seats and this is the only thing that can come close to that! So lots going on at the Crawford abode crafty wise :)

Hiss! You're never around when I need you! -- I've been robbed

2010-10-17T22:16:00.000-07:00

Ten bucks to who ever can name that movie. Anyway over the weekend our friends the Hiemstra's were kind enough to come to Back Beach with us (thusly named because it is to the "back" of the Christ statue) in the early hours to take some pictures. What do they get for this kindness? They, and we, get our rear windows smashed on our cars and robbed. Yeah, not fun. Before we get to all the gory details fun part first. I always have some crazy ideas for pictures and sometimes they translate and sometimes they don't. I think it also makes a difference when I am behind the camera. It is really hard for me to articulate what I have pictured in my head. Then imagine being handed a huge camera that I forgot to turn off Manual and be expected to get a shot described very vaguely. Yeah, don't you all want to come help the Crawford's do pictures ha! First I had a chalk board that I placed to far away from us so it just sort of looked odd, plus the kids were NOT going to look at the camera

So instead of giving it sometime sI of course rushed us to the next thing. An "I'm dreaming of a white christmas". This one sort of worked although I wonder if you can even read the sign

After 3 shots of this we moved on the the "Crawford Family est..." sign. Now this is when I feel REALLY stupid for switching lenses and running back to the pack before turning the dial back to auto for Meredith. Which is a real bummer because in this one the kids are actually all looking and smiling.

After rushing through the families I tried the kids. This one turned out pretty cute

The rest Liam was strangling himself with the tie or Abby was wailing.

Sam has gotten a lot better and understands the faster he cooperates the faster we are done.

It also helps when I sing the Animal Mechanical song apparently.

Liam seriously plopped down on this stool and just hung out while I was getting other pictures. He shoved his candy in his pocket and cheesed it up.

But it took that candy to get him to smile. His first picture was this:

The only person that could get Abby to smile was Jan. He totally got her to smile.

Which is a miracle because she was sobbing the entire time unless I was holding her.

I always feel ridiculous in front of the camera when I don't have a family to hide behind.

As soon as we were done the boys bolted to the car and immediately began shucking off clothes.

We moved the cars down a little closer to the beach and headed out for a swim. We only stayed about an hour. As we were cleaning up down on the beach Jan yelled for Chris to run up to the cars. We were obviously being watched from up in the hills and who ever did it came down and first tried to pry the windows out with a crow bard (or something) completely bending the window frame. Then the got impatient and just busted the windows. They went through everything, manuals, the center console, under the seat. Oddly enough they took all the cash, our phones and the necklace I am wearing in the pictures above but left our ipods. Chris and both wish they had just come down to the beach and demanded all our money. Now we have to figure out how to ship in a Jeep window and get it fixed. A HUGE headache and will take a LONG time. It also puts a kink in going anywhere and leaving the car. Plastic taped up to the window hardly says "security". I think the guys are most upset that neither of the car alarms went off. Not surprising to much for our car which is really worn out but Jan's is the Embassy's security car and is super nice. Oh well right?

Since We've Been Back

2010-10-14T06:21:00.000-07:00

It has basically rained every afternoon. No one has any idea what is going on. I chalk it up to the rainy season NEVER ending. We went straight through what was supposed to be the dry season with tons of rain and now we have gone head long into the wet season. Anyway Abby LOVES the rain. She loves to sit outside and watch it (we just got our hammock today so I am totally pysched to lay out there with her and watch it). Last week she was begging to go out in it and I thought why not.

Aka our new cook watched from the kitchen window I am sure thinking "oh my gosh this women is nuts". Chris came home from work and we were still out there so he grabbed some pics from the safety of our huge deck, then came and joined the fun.

(I think I look a little nuts in that picture... but even more nuts and unflattering would be this picture:

Abby sure looks cute in this one though:

The only one who didn't come play was Sammy, he didn't want to ruin his Octopus Pie costume {otherwise known as Optimus Prime). Abby loved playing by the rain gutter outlet. She just stood there with her hand under it forever

After our galavanting in the rain Oscar and Carmen came over for some Halloween crafting. I also taught the kids how to make a toilet paper (or as Liam calls it Bathroom Paypah) mummy.

You can tell we are back in Timor and back to the kids picking out their own clothes by Liam's sweet matching job in that picture. We taught Dominique (their momma about toilet papering, no one does that anymore). Then it was bed time and we did out ritual of "Coins" with the boys. It is a new discipline thing we are trying with positive reinforcement and man is it working (thank you Cherylyn!). When we asked Liam to come out for coins he came out like this:

and didn't mention the googles at all. (he LOVES his Captain Chaos jammies thank you Granny!) We also had a pretty brutal game of Hopscotch.

Liam wanted to make up his own rules & apparently it was a shirts vs. skins game

Sam would make these HUGE jumps to avoid his tiny pebble

and it resulted in the dirtiest feet ever

but they loved it, which seems to happen when I introduce them to classic games. The whole playing in the rain thing might have backfired though because Abby is now very sick with a crazy high fever... so even when it is warm you may not want to play in the rain.

Saying goodbye

2010-10-12T21:59:00.000-07:00

I am not going to lie it was really hard leaving Italy, and when I say Italy I mean Grandma and Grandpa. The boys have asked on several occasions to go back. Liam last night broke something that he got there and said "well better go back to Grandma and Pappa's house" and headed for the door ha! For or last day we headed to Ostia to see the old fortress and ruins. First we headed to the fortress to see when tours were. When we saw a huge crowd we were shocked. Until we realized there was a wedding at the gorgeous old church that shared the piazza, which was GOREOUS

I loved the kitty in the window

Apparently the wedding had just ended and they were waiting for the bride and groom to come out. It was so fun people watching and seeing all the over the top outfits. Or the underdressed feet, as in this guys case:

The couple came out and the crowd went wild. They threw everything, rice, bubbles flowers it was a free for all.

After lots of pictures and mingling they headed of to what I assume was their reception. And this was when I snuck a picture of the bride, who looked a little ticked off that I did ha!

After everyone was gone I snuck in to see how the chapel was decorated

Could you imagine getting married in such a romantic old setting?

After some serious finagling we got all 3 cuties to at least sit down by each other

and they stayed for one shot with Grandma and Granpa

and then Abby started eating rocks as always

And giving me the pouty face when I took them out

The boys were way more interested in the fortress. Sammy went and knocked on the door a few times and yelled hello

It was a pretty cool door.

I especially liked the modern day peep hole "Yes? Who's knocking at my fortress door at noon?"

Once we got on the tour the boys were CONVINCED that a dragon lived in the castle. Chris had them believing that the lizards scurrying around were baby dragons. They also really like the holes in the side for archers or as Liam believed "camons" (canons)

After our tour we walked over to the ruins.

The boys were absolutely respectful and quiet.... or not so much

Abby zonked in the stroller and the massive cobblestones were not made for sleeping babies so I parked near the stage and rested with her for a bit. The boys had fun exploring and looking through their binoculars quiet a bit.

Liam kept telling me he saw "nuffing"

The floors in these ruins were amazing. They were all tile mosaics

In the little market in front of the stalls they would have a smaller version depicting what they were selling or makers of. It was really awe in spiring to see something that old and beautiful. Sammy liked the sea serpent and went hissing on his way

Once we had our fill we headed down to the beach. Beach's in Italy are not like most I have been to. They are all private and you have to pay quiet a bit to gain access to them. We walked down a ways though and found a perfect little place that suited our need of a few minutes for the kids to play.

The kids had a blast running crazy along the shore

just watching them made me tired, running in sand is hard work.

This trip Sammy really became attached to his Grandpa. He still tells me I am not reading stories right at bedtime and reminds me of Grandpa's cool voices. He really misses him.

Abby ate lots of sand

and in lou of underroos which she likes to put on her head she went with pants.

It was a really lovely day with Grandma and Grandpa

It is comforting to me that for now the boys don't understand how far from family we are. I can't wait until next summer when we get to see EVERYONE on both sides of the family (that means you better come Cori!)

The Vatican, the zoo and glow in the dark toys

2010-10-10T07:45:00.000-07:00

So I have to admit I had kind of decided to pack in the blog since we had received ZERO comments on the trip to Cairo. Mainly because hello, if you are going to get no comments on pictures in front of the pyramids, well, you just are never going to receive comments. But then I thought about my mom who has no idea how to leave a comment and how much she loves seeing the kids and I thought alright I will keep it going. So this is for you mom. Jan was kind enough to watch the kids one afternoon so Chris and I could go tour the Vatican. It was amazing, although to tell the truth I was totally shocked by how tiny the Sistine Chapel is. I was thinking it would be more the size of St. Peters, amazing, just smaller then I always thought. It is so nice how alike Chris and I are when it comes to "touring". We enjoyed the amazing art but went through at a speed that by the time we were done we weren't thinking oh my gosh art over kill.

We decided to go to the top of St. Peters Basilica and could not believe how TINY the stairs were.

At one point the walls were slanting in and you had to lean as you walked. The hallway was only as wide as Chris's shoulders. Then when you think it can't get any smaller you see a rope hanging in front of you to hoist yourself up the last TINY stairs.

The view from the top was amazing...

even if from this vantage point all I could think about was the Da Vinci code ;)

We got a rare shot of the two of us:

and ohhhhd and ahhhd at what I think was the Popes residence.

Don't worry though, if you are hot and sweat from teh massive hike up they reward you with gelato, so Italian.

They also have a phone and I was trying to convince Chris it would be hilarious to call someone and see if "The Vatican" came up on the caller ID.

There was also a post box but of course I had no pen on me to address some postcards. How cool would that be to get a postcard with the Vatican Stamp on it.

Then we went downstairs and toured St. Peters, seeing Bernini's famous baldacchino

Then outside to gaze at the wonder that is the Vatican Guards uniform.

How cool would it be to wear something designed by Da Vinci. And these guys OWNED it the way they strutted around.

The piazza itself is simply amazing.

Then we headed to Neuvono for a lovely dinner all by ourselves. The view from my table looked something like this:

We totally got lost getting home and wandered for almost an hour but it was such gorgeous wether and we had enjoyed such a wonderful day we didn't mind in the slightest (add to it two stops for Gelato and well how could it be bad right?)

Since we took sooo much time from Chris's mom and Dad who are such fabulously dedicated missionaries we had one day with just the fam while they got some much needed catch up taken care of. We decided to head to the Zoo in Villa Beourgese. When we got out of the car it immediately started raining so we looked around and spotted the Hard Rock Cafe. Perfect! We took the kiddos in for some yummy American Fare.

We have now decided this is one of THE best places to take kids. The boys were positively enrapt by the music videos. I had to capture a picture of them watching Tom Petty's video where they are remaking Alice in Wonderland:

Liam had just woken up from a stroller nap and you could tell he was totally confused by the whole situation:

I loved it because with out saying a word to us Sammy calls over the waitress (by her name) and sweet talks her into bringing him a big bowl of Olives ha! I guess he has some great confidence. We walked over to the park and intended on walking straight to the zoo but ended up stopping and letting the kids play at every play place along the way. They had so much fun and the weather was fantastic so we were all happy campers. Once in the zoo the boys hoped on the train while I stayed with a sleeping Abby. I love how happy trains still make Sam.

We checked out the Giraffes

And I always make Liam take a picture by the {Lemers} but this was even better because it had a cut out to pose with!

When we were all done with the zoo we headed back to the restaurant Chris and I ate at for dinner.

I was sooooo impressed with Jan's mad parallel parking skills. We got a super sweet spot, which is really saying something for Italy. Grandma spoiled the kiddos and got them the coolest light up toys ever. I don't know how to describe them but you whiz them up on the air.

Liam and Sam were pro's by the end of the night. They made friends with another little boy and were running around having a blast zooming them into the sky.

I mentioned how much I would love to give them as party favors at Liam's space party and Jan bartered a guy into a sweet deal and bought them. I am sooooooo excited to hand them out. It was such a wonderful day, and then we collapsed asleep ha!

Crawfords In Cairo

2010-09-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

Chris and I left the three cuties for the first time to go to Cairo this week. I had a really really really hard time leaving them. When we got to the airport the lines were super long for everything but Chris totally found short cuts aka. going through the EU immigration check point and the First Class Security Check point, and yes we went through both just fine. I kept thinking ohhh maybe we won't make the flight, but we did and crying I boarded the plane. I know you think I am lame but Abby is only 1 and I have not spent a night away from the kids ever, so oh well I am a baby. When we landed I literally went into culture shock. We had saved up our Marriott points so we could stay HERE and had arranged for a airport pick up. Not surprisingly since we arrived at 3:30am, no one met us. As soon as we stepped foot out the airport door Chris was MOBBED by taxi drivers. A tourist Authority guy inside had told us to go to the taxi at the front of the line and that it should be ten bucks. Line? What line? Mass chaos is exactly what it was. I loved that since I am a women I was completely ignored. Until I got ticked and shouted "Just go with that guy he is saying ten bucks" well my guy then tried to have us share a taxi, um no thank you, then put us in a van. If nothing else movies have taught me that van= kidnapped so I sat exhausted and extremely uneasy. Then the guy proceeded to pitch us all his various services until I finally said "I just want to go to our hotel, I am to tired to think about any of this" Then he proceeded to charge us 15 bucks instead of ten (he meant ten per person, silly me). On our way out of the airport security stopped the van, took down the license plate number and had us write our names legibly next to the number. Oh good, so when they find our dead body's they will know the van that took us to our doom, ha! Actually it made me feel better. I felt even better when we made it to our AMAZING hotel. While checking in the brought us glasses of super yummy strawberry juice. Bear in mind it is now 4am and we started traveling at 9:30 pm. Chris reach's for something (we still have no idea what) and knocks the goblet shattering the glass and splattering strawberry juice all over their computer and nice Armani suits. They of course hush our apologizes and bring Chris another glass to which I hiss "Don't spill anything!" We head to our room and ZONK. Chris finally drags me out of bed at 9:30 so we can make breakfast and set up our tour for the day. We first headed out to the Pyramids at Giza. I am not going to lie they are amazing and totally worth heart sick missing kids feeling, lack of sleep etc.

The hotel had set up our own personal tour guide and she was awesome. Although people kept making us do the lamb "look I am holding a pyramid between my fingers pose". She literally place us in this position. I was snorting at how very unlike us it was

You aren't allowed climb to the top-- anymore. Apparently they used to have races and everything. You can climb up a few for a picture. I could not believe how huge these blocks were. All I kept thinking was why in the world didn't people revolt against a leader who would waste lives and money on something like this, our guide informed me that you don't rebel against someone you think is a earthly embodiment of your God, valid point I suppose.

Then we got ride camels- my main desire with this entire vacation.

It was nerve wracking going from sitting to standing and then we both thought for sure we would lose a flip flop. Of course our camel guide made us do another hilarious pose:

This is more like it

The camels are all so docile and just sit there while they run into each other and sit down practically on top of each other.

I thought this guy looked like he was smiling

Once we were done fulfilling one of my bucket list items we headed down to see the Sphinx

So cool:

After the pyramids we headed to a place to learn how to make papyrus and got a few pieces for Sam to show to his class. Then on to their famous "essence" shops where we could smell all the different essences and make your own mix. I kept going back and forth between Lotus (which smells exactly like Tommy Girl but way less overwhelming) and Nefrititti which we ended up going with because it was so cool. The next day we headed to the Egyptian Antiquities museum. You are not allowed take pictures so I have none, at first I thought it was to preserve all the artifacts but after going I think it was to keep it a secret how AWFULLY done the museum is. There are artifacts just lying around everywhere and hardly anything is labeled, what is labeled looks like it was typed on a type writer in the late 70's. One of the items was labeled with a hand written scrap of paper! We had planned on spending 4 hours there (as the guide book suggests is the minimal amount ughhh) So we wandered around for a bit, stoping to have a snack at the Hard Rock. For once it was totally in our favor that it takes FOREVER to eat at restaurants abroad. Then we met up with our friend Morgan and her hubby. It was so fun. They took us to this amazing local place that was incredible! She ordered everything in her fluent Arabic and it was amazing. It really made the trip.

Explora: Children's Museum in Rome

2010-09-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

We wanted to do some fun things just for the kids while in Rome and Megan suggested Explora. It is hilarious because they have pretty strict policies where they only allow people in every 2 hours and limited numbers each time. We arrived a little after the time limit and they stressed to us that we would only have an hour and a half and then had to leave ha! First we headed to the fire truck.

Then the boys found the outfits you could dress up in.

Then we found the water cannons

Then the super cool solar powered cars (which were really tricky)

The boys had a blast playing in the toy gardens. Sammy planted the food

Then Liam would water them

This is him making a shhhhhhshhhhh noise that comes with watering plants

Then Sam would harvest what they had grown

Then it was over to the kitchen to cook it!

Liam really liked his turkey

All the while Abby was playing with the adorable pull toy puppy

Then we headed over to the store to buy ingredients we were missing.

Sammy checked us out and like any good Italian boy bought a piece of meat the size of him

We all took turns chillin and playing with Abby

Sammy had a blast on the zipline.

I was impressed with how brave he was doing it.

Sammy LOVED the fake bank part of the museum he kept going back there and pretending to work on the computer.

We talked the kiddos into posing in the hilarious cut outs

After our hour and a half was up we walked down to Piazza de Popeolo, the home of the twin church's

Abby was so happy to run around and I just died at how cute the skinny jeans Grandma bought her were.

This girl LOVES the wide open spaces in all the Piazzas in Rome.

It is cute to watch she and Liam become such good friends. They CRACK each other up I love it!

We then asked a tourist person on a segway how far it was to the Spanish steps, she said a five minute walk so we thought we would do it. It was NOT a five minute walk and the steps were PACKED.

The steps were beautiful though and the Bernini fountain in the piazza was gorgeous

On the way back all the kids zonked and poor Chris and Grandma took turns carrying a limp Liam all the way back to the car.

But it was great to see it and well worth the sore muscles :)

I want to be this cool when I am old

2010-09-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

Chris and I saw this music video while we were in Egypt and I LOVED it. I have no idea what the song is about because I believe it is in German but the video is ADORABLE! Although I won't shop lift when I am old... I hope.

Raining in Rome-- but still gorgeous!

2010-09-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

We have been keeping busy busy busy here. I thought I would give a super quick update about what we have been up to. I tried to do family pics this last Sunday

Sammy:

(Chris is not a fan of the skinny khakis I got him at Zara but I think they are so cute)

Liam was a DOLL and there are to many that I love:

Although this one is hilarious because it is totally his personality

Abby was so excited to be wandering around and taking it all in.

I really wanted a good one of her smiling so Daddy gave her some tickels

I love the look of anticipation on her face:

I have THE worst luck when it comes to our own family pictures. Nothing ever seems to go smoothly. As soon as we got in the car it started lashing rain. We drove all the way into downtown Rome and sat in the car saying we would give it ten minutes to stop. Thank heavens it lightened up enough to run out to the bridge. The boys LOVED playing with umbrellas

We were quiet the spectacle and had a bit of a crowd watching the boys spin around (and I was probably pretty entertaining trying to run around in my dress trying to get pictures of all of them)

This was the only family picture that really turned out okay. It was just to busy (totally thought the rain would drive people away) and the kiddos had been cooped up for too long in the car, but it looks cute

Afternoon in Borghese

2010-09-16T08:56:00.000-07:00

My friend Megan who's husband is from Italy HIGHLY recommend we take the kids to Villa Borghese. It was so fun we will be returning this weekend. It is a HUGE park (it reminded me a ton of Park Retiro in Spain) with lots of trails, fountains, ponds, statues etc. After wandering a bit we rented a Suri to bike around the park. The kids thought it was awesome to pile in on the front

I loved that we could ALL fit in one

and was so happy that it had a little built in motor ha! We would stop and take in some of the amazing views.

The boys would run around and Abby would pick up rocks,

Put them on the suri,

and then decided which ones to eat ha! It was hilarious getting up speed and zooming down hills. The kids had a great view of the park.

We had lunch and let the cuties play at this funny little wooden farm. Then headed home. Oddly enough both Abby and Liam fell asleep in the car :)

Trevi fountian, the Pantheon, Neuvono and of course Gelato

2010-09-15T21:55:00.000-07:00

We did a big 'ole tourist day on Tuesday. We got a super early start and headed first to the Pantheon.

It is funny because what I had seen so far of Italy was 100% not what I expected it to be, but today, well, most streets we walked down looked like this:

narrow, cobble stoned and gorgeous. EXACTLY what I thought Italy would look like. When we came to the Pantheon I was bummed that half of it was covered in scaffolding. When Sam saw it he promptly remarked "Look! They are almost done!" It made me laugh so hard. Thankfully it was not packed and the kids got to enjoy running around

Sam had Grandma hold him up to see all the fountains

He has LOVED being around Grandma and Grandpa and getting nice and spoiled ha!

Liam as always just does whatever he thinks is fun and wandered around jumping up and down the steps

Abby has gotten into a funny yelling stage where she sounds like she is barking out orders to everyone so she stood at the top of the stairs yelling randomly.

We had to get a few family shots, so here are the boys

and the whole fam

There was a really talented guitarist playing on the steps in front of the Pantheon. Grandma and Grandpa like to support musicians so they had Sam run over and give him some money. It was the cutest thing to watch. First he cautiosly walked up

then stood next tot eh guy for a second trying to figure out what to do, and the guitarist kept doing a nodding motion with his head trying to show him what to do with the money

Finally he figured it out and ran back so proud of himself

Abby particularly like the horses that were standing in front of the Pantheon. I think she thought their hats were cute

We then headed down to Piazza Navona. It is gorgeous but the boys had the most fun in one of the ridiculously expensive toy stores. They had really cool hand puppets that I would have totally bought the boys except the only one they wanted was Spiderman, not any of the cool Italian looking ones, Spiderman, so we walked out of the store empty handed. Then we walked over to Trevi fountian. It was CRAZY packed, to the point of making me nervous that we were going to loose a child. Abby was zonked in the stroller so we took the boys up to throw some money in the fountain. They thought that was fun but really loved getting a drink from the fountain that spits water right out onto the rock

Liam was a bit apprehensive and just wanted to watch Daddy take a drink.

On the way home we stopped and had yummy pizza and followed the guide book to supposedly the best Gelato in Rome.

It was amazing, so good in fact that when Chris and I do our night tour on Friday we will make a special trip just to go there :)

Can't believe we are here!

2010-09-13T14:41:00.000-07:00

I feel awful that I haven't updated the family blog for soooo long. Things as always are busy in Timor. We keep saying it will slow down but it never does... until now! We are on R&R in Italy. We made the 23 hour travel from Timor to Singapore, Singapore to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Rome, yesterday and have already done lots of amazing touristy things PLUS (more importantly and way more fun for the kids) has so much fun with Grandma and Grandpa. We arrived in Rome at 8am local time so we had the whole day a head of us. We headed back to their way-bigger-then-I -expected-it-to-be apatment dropped off our stuff, shoveled in some yummy snacks and headed down to the Collesium. Sam was thrilled to take the metro and thought the grafitti was "super cool". When we steped out of the metro we were RIGHT at the collesium, it was nuts. I of course reached behind me for my camera, which is always there, and grabbed air. I had totally left it at the apartment. What the WHAT is wrong with me? Oh yeah, I had been traveling FOREVER with 3 cuties (one who cried so much that she is STILL hoarse) sp I blame it on that :) Luckily Chris had out trusty video camera in his pocket and the batteries didn't die until near the end ha! We are soooo prepared it is inspiring ;) The first thing that struck me, ironically enough, was that there were no cars zooming around the roung about in front. I asked what was up and we discovered that the roads are closed to traffic on Sundays! AWESOME!!! This meant the boys and Abby could chase pigeons to their hearts delight. Which is what they did, while we stood talking about ancient Rome and how when I saw the Arch going up to the cellesium I would have freaked out if I had been a gladiator. That thing is HUGE! It was fabulous weather and the trip was made even better by Gelato!!

People were stopping and taking pictures of the boys. Which was hilarious because I am so immune to their messes now I barely even noticed. I only did when I realized Liam had basically ruined the soccer shirt grandma had given him an hour ago. We cruised up the middle of the street and got some cool pictures that you could not get if there was traffic (I am saving these for later). WE walked past the Palatine, Trajans market etc and then headed home. what is so great about being here for so long is that we can do it bit by bit and really enjoy it. Today we took a nice slow day. We headed to the mall and Jan and Chris were nice enough to take the kids to the kiddie stores while I spent FOREVER in Zara Kids, H&M and some local stores dying over how cute the close were and agonizing over which I could buy. It is almost worse when Chris doesn't give me a limit and just says I trust you. Ughhhh. We had a delicious lunch (picture the boys eating bowls of fruit the size of their heads) and then headed to Ikea. This made me so happy because I immediatly felt like I was home. The boys thought the automatic icecream machine was super cool!

Liam would lick off all the chocolate and then want to watch it work again.

We headed home and took some much needed naps and played around the apartment. Grandma and Grandpa have a gorgeous wrap around balcony that Abby and I really like playing on. The light is so fabulous. This is she and I in the doorway a bit over exposed, but still I love the light pouring in the doors

Abby likes looking at all of Grandmas plants

smelling the one rose

and sneaking up and pulling the clothes off the line. I try to stop her but that girl can hussel right past me

While everyone was sleeping Sammy laid on the bed with me and just looked out the window for a while

Then this evening we were able to attend a fireside with Elder Ballard. It was so uplifting and fantastic to be in a Church listening to an Apostle of the Lord. He and his lovely wife were so cute when they spoke about each other I LOVE it. They have 7 kids like the Crawfords and 43 granchildren so Rick teased that means Robyn and I both have to hav 12 more.... um I don't think we are going to make it ha! Lots more to come!
PS I just clicked spell check and the entire page was highlighted and I couldn't figure out why, until I realized it is not in Italian so nothing is spelled right ha! Sorry if there are a bunch of errors.

Hair Cuts and Shoes

2010-08-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

We are getting all ready for Italy and Egypt. Thinking about seeing family for the first time in 8 months made me think about how the boys are lookin'. They received the WORST hair cuts a while back and it has grown out into ridiculously wild weird hair. Chris's fond memories of his childhood "Summer Sheerings" always win me over and I have hair cut amnesia of how much I dislike super short hair on my boys. This is Sammy with his long locks just before being shorn

This is Lemers waiting for his turn

This is Sammy during. He looks almost as concerned as I did

I about had a heart attack when I saw how much hair was in the sink and that was only at the half way point

This is Sam post cut

Needless to say I put my foot down and Liam's hair will not be cut until we actually get to Rome. Sam told me today when I picked him up from school that he wanted his long hair back like Liam. I told him we would grow it back out and he asked when will that happen. Poor little guy. It is a ton cooler though! Bright side, think bright side ha! We also received amazing mail today. I received my shoes for the vaca. One of the more minial bummers about living away from family is that my shoe collection is dramatically impaired. With out Felicity's hand me downs I am stranded. Well everyone here wears Birks (Gizah style) and I decided to jump on the bandwagon and I LOVE them. I forgot how comfy they are! Abby also got new shoes. She got three pairs of roman sandal type shoes and a pair of gold Havianas. She is a HUGE shoe girl (I think she gets it from her Aunt Felicity) she was literally shaking and huffing and puffing when she saw the shoes. We had to sit and try each one on and then she would do a lap around the living room, come back, sit down and try another pair. Once she decided which pair to stick with she went and put them in our shoe basket. It is crazy how fast kiddos feet grow! We also cannot for the life of us find Sammy's Keens which were his school shoes and worked wonderfully because they could get wet and were sturdy enough to run around in. I have looked everywhere and know they will show up when we pack to move ha! We are getting soooo excited for our trip, is it to early to start packing? I bet my mom says nope start right now!

I like to fly in Helocopters

2010-08-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

The Mercy left yesterday. I am totally bummed but at the same time so exhausted that I keep getting sick. Saying that I have been burning both ends of the candle doesn't hold a candle to the wild and crazy two weeks it has been (I was trying to fit as many cliches as I could in one sentence). Aside from attending church both Sundays, which was awesome, and having AT LEAST seven members over for dinner every single night but one, the highlight had to have been being the Commodores photographer when she went out to visit the medcap. We of course went by helicopter because it would have taken days to get there by car, the roads are that bad. This is what I look like when I am all gettuped and ready to go

For some reason I wear the exact same outfit on every remote photo shoot. It has lots of pockets and I don't care if it gets ruined, but doesn't look super ghetto. (I learned how to dress for them after I lost one of my favorite ballet slippers to a mud slide and ruined a brand new top) The commodore joked with me that I was lucky to fly with her because they would go out of their way to show her the most beautiful parts of the island. And they weren't kidding. We saw the most amazing waterfalls and rice terraces. I have actually gotten pretty used to flying around in helicopters, although I do not call them Helo's yet like everyone else. It drives me nuts when people use trendy terms like "Cali" or "anthro" I dunno just a personal pet peeve, plus I don't think I have earned my stripes enough to use that term. But on this trip we made several mid air stops. We would just hoover there (I know thats the point of helicopters) but there is something totally unnerving about being completely suspended in the air. I just kept waiting for us to DROP and was very gratefully when we started moving again. I have so many cool pictures I want to share but could only get up a few. This was the "crazy" guy in the village. He walked around talking into the whipper beater and holding up his calculator and yelling. When I asked him in Tetun if I could take his picture he looked at me and said "oh yes thank you" in perfect English. Maybe he is only crazy in his own language?

After watching several rather gorey procedures we went on a nature hike to see a beautiful river.

I felt like I was in big Cottonwood Canyon again! The water is this amazing color and they said it is because it has silk in it from the silk worms in the trees above the river. How cool is that?

Then the Commodore and I played soccer with the local kids until I thought I was going to puke. Note to self, to loose pesky baby weight simply play soccer for a half hour every day.

(That little guy in the front was totally ticked because I carried his friend around on my shoulders for half the game and then I had to leave before he got a turn, felt pretty bad about that whole situation)

I really wish I could get some more pics up of the children getting onto the helicopter going to the ship for treatment and the LINES and LINES of people waiting to be seen. They also had a bunch of dentists and it was amazing to see how totally organized they were. These volunteers are so amazing and I am so proud to be a member of our church who played a HUGE role in all of this.

Crazy Jakarta followed by a crazy week

2010-08-18T08:52:00.002-07:00

Just when I thought it couldn't get any busier it has! Abby and I had a crazy trip to Jakarta. It was supposed to only be three days, and we ended up staying there over a week. On the way we to Jakarta we missed our connecting flight, the airline said it was my fault for scheduling the flights so close together, so I had to run around the airport trying to find a flight to Jakarta that left that night so I didn't miss my one night at the Ritz that I was so so so excited for. I shelled out the CRAZY amount for a tiny one way flight and ran to the plane (oh and the airline had lost my luggage... on a nonstop 1.5 hour flight? What the what?) Abby and I just caught the flight and the flight attendant (I am sure trying to be nice) brought Abbers what I thought was rice pudding but after a few bites Abby started SCREAMING so I tired it and discovered that no, it was spicy yellow curry. Abby proceeded to throw up all over me for the next hour or so when she wasn't screaming. We finally made it to the hotel (which had CRAZY security because apparently it was bombed last year, ahhhhh!) and we got to our amazing room at 11:45 PM!!!! I washed our clothes in the bath tub and was never more grateful for huge fluffy bathrobes. OUr friend Cherylyn picked us up (after a wild goose chase, she thought I would stay at the other Ritz, not the one that had been bombed, apparently I need to do better research on my five star hotels ha!) The next morning I headed in for my root canal, joy of joys! The day after that Abby got her 1 year immunizations (5 shoots) and blood drawn. Cherylyn was kind enough to cart us around to all the amazing, out of this world, malls. I literally never thought I would say it but upon entering one mall the words "this is too big" actually escaped my lips. We ate out at fabulous restaurants and went to THE coolest fabric mecca I have ever seen. (I will upload pics as soon as our internet isn't lame). The dentist needed me to stay for five days so we had already pushed everything back so that I could make my second apt. On the second supposed day of departure, Tanner was kind enough to drive me to my apt. while Cherylyn watched Abby. About five mins after we left Abby tripped and hit her head really hard on her coffee table. Cher called and told us we needed to turn around and come back. Honestly I didn't think it would be that bad, head wounds tend to bleed like crazy. When I saw it though I totally went into shock and thought "oh my goodness there is a chunk of my daughters head somewhere on your carpet!" Tanner loaded us up and we spent the next 2.5 HOURS trying to find the SOS, medical center that Expats are supposed to go to. Keep in mind EVERYONE in Jakarta has drivers because traffic is so bad and the streets are so crazy, and the Nielsen's usually do, but Sat is his day off. My flight out was at 6:30pm and I REALLY didn't want to miss it. Cher sent Chris an email and then Skyped with him to let him know what was going on. We were about to give up when we finally found it. There was a sweet Indonesian man waiting outside with a huge umbrella (did I mention it was lashing rain?) and as soon as he saw us came running. We saw a very sweet American doctor who informed me that no, there was no way we would make our flights and essentially if I were a good parent who cared about how my poor daughter looked I would go to the hospital and have a plastic surgeon stitch her up. Flash forward 2 hours, the plastic surgeon finally makes it through the rain and traffic and they have to put Abby under to do the stitches. The local Embassy nurse demands to be in the operating room (she literally said to me "if I am not in that room this surgery is not happening" and took my gown) as I stand in the hall crying. 15 stitches later we head home.

Yeah, it makes me so tired even thinking about it. We end up flying out to Bali a few days later. Our flight is again delayed (oh and we still have no luggage, they refused to send it on and told me just to get it on the way back to Dili) so we arrive at 10:30pm. In Bali you have to get off the plane and then take a bus to the terminal. You are of course SHOVED in together like sardines. Since I had no luggage (the counter was closed by now) I ran out to Que up for a taxi. I got to the front, told them where I was going, reach into my bag and my wallet is gone. It had been stolen while I was shoved in together on the bus. OH MY GOSH. I literally was freaking out. Here I was in Bali with no money, no debit card, no credit cards and essentially 1.50 in cash. I thought to myself okay, the flight leaves early tomorrow morning we can just sleep at the airport. I kept my Diplomatic passport in my pocket at all times so we were good there, but there is a 15 dollar exit fee, crap. I walked over to the crowd of 100 or so drivers waiting to take people to their hotels and yelled out "Conrad? I am going to the Conrad!" Miracle of miracles (there were several that night) a very nice gentleman steps forward and said he was from Conrad and asked if I had requested transport. I told him no and then started crying and explained what happened. He immediately took me to airport police and helped me fill out all the paper work to report the incident (which is just ridiculous and a waste of time). He then grabbed one of their other drivers and had him take me to the hotel. It was about a 20 minute drive and I literally sat in the back crying and praying the entire time. I had no idea how I was going to get a hold of Chris. It was past midnight Dili time so there would not be anyone at the switchboard and there was no way he would be on skype. We pulled up to the hotel and the manager opened the door and said "Our driver called us and told us what happened and we have your husband on hold at the desk" OH MY GOSH!!!!! I got to the phone and of course starting bawling my eyes out, the other workers defiantly thought I was crazy. Chris had no idea what was going on but right before going to bed though "I should call Kelly and make sure everything is okay with the hotel". When they told him I hadn't checked in yet he knew something was wrong. So, Abby and I get to our room AGAIN past 11pm, which is sooo sad because look how gorgeous THIS place is. The hotel manager was very kind and said they would easily charge extra money to the card for the room and give me cash so I could get out of the country. Then, the next morning when I came up for breakfast they handed me my wallet! The first driver guy had gone back with the airport police and searched through the bus's and found it! All the money was gone but my debit card and ID were still there! AMAZING! When I went to the airport I was finally reunited with our luggage, which I unfortunately had to immediately recheck, and boarded the plane no problem. I never thought I would be THAT happy to see Dili! The boys and Chris were waiting at the airport with little signs and I thought I had died and gone to heaven! Talk about a crazy trip. The thing was, except for the traveling and stitches it was such a fun trip! The Nielsen's are wonderful hostess and Cher and I had such a blast together. Of course right when we got back the USNS Mercy docked which has meant NON STOP fun crazy busy days. I was Helloed out the Same to take pictures of the Commadore visiting a medcap and it was amazing. But the highlight HAS to be the fact that there are 40 volunteers from LDS church services! I was assigned to photograph one of their deliveries to a Muslim orphanage. I loved seeing box's with our church's logo being handed up:

And the children were adorable

Soft spoken and shy

And so excited to color, play with play dough and just talk with our church volunteers:

They were all so grateful, and expressed their sentiments via a play dough message (note the spelling)

On Sunday we were sooo lucky and got to go out on the Mercy for church! The kids were ecstatic to go on a little boat out to a big ship. Before church we were given an extra special tour that involved the boys getting to sit in an actual helicopter!

(Abby also had her stitch's taken out about 2 mins after we boarded, hence the sponge bob band aide)

(you are not allowed wear dresses on the ship hence my pants)

We had a YUMMY dinner with soft serve ice cream and girl scout cookies for desert then headed down to the chapel. It was lovely singing with an organ and shhhhshing the kids! Sam gave his very first talk on board woo hoo how cool is that! And then we had primary in the peds ward where we sang primary songs to the kids healing from surgery. The boys also had gone through their toys and picked out ones they wanted to give to the children and were able to hand them out. Chris and I made sure that everyone had our numbers to call us when they were on liberty and lets just say that everyday this week at 12 at least 8 have been on liberty shoved in our tiny jeep cruzin' Timor and then coming to the house for dinner.

(okay smallest world ever, emily in the middle of the photo, was roommates at BYU with my best childhood friend! Man the LDS world is a small one!) I actually was really sick the other night and I think I had literally run myself ragged, and it is only the middle of the week! Ha! So needless to say things have been WILD around here. Add into that embassy and private photo shoots, and the fact that both boys start back to school this week and I am DYING for our R&R, 3 weeks to Rome! Plenty more pics and stories to come, I just wanted to do SOME sort of update, even if it is 12:45 at night here (yeah our kids went to bed at 10pm, way to much going on!) And this last picture just because abbers looks so tough with her band aide

Crazy Jakarta followed by a crazy week

2010-08-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

Just when I thought it couldn't get any busier it has! Abby and I had a crazy trip to Jakarta. It was supposed to only be three days, and we didn't leave until almost a week later. On the way we missed our connecting flight, the airline said it was my fault for scheduling the flights so close together, so I had to run around the airport trying to find a flight to Jakarta that left that night so I didn't miss my one night at the Ritz that I was so so so excited for. I shelled out the CRAZY amount for a tiny one way flight and ran to the plane (oh and the airline had lost my luggage... on a nonstop 1.5 hour flight? What the what?) Abby and I just caught the flight and the flight attendant (I am sure trying to be nice) brought Abbers what I thought was rice pudding but after a few bites Abby started SCREAMING so I tired it and discovered that no, it was spicy yellow curry. Abby proceeded to throw up all over me for the next hour or so when she wasn't screaming. We finally made it to the hotel (which had CRAZY security because apparently it was bombed last year, ahhhhh!) and we got to our amazing room at 11:45 PM!!!! I washed our clothes in the bath tub and was never more grateful for huge fluffy bathrobes. OUr friend Cherylyn picked us up (after a wild goose chase, she thought I would stay at the other Ritz, not the one that had been bombed, apparently I need to do better research on my five star hotels ha!) The next morning I headed in for my root canal, joy of joys! The day after that Abby got her 1 year immunizations (5 shoots) and blood drawn. Cherylyn was kind enough to cart us around to all the amazing out of this world malls, I literally never thought I would say it but upon entering one mall the words "this is too big" actually escaped my lips. We ate out at fabulous restaurants and went to THE coolest fabric mecca I have ever seen. (I will upload pics as soon as our internet isn't lame). The dentist needed me to stay for five days so we had already pushed everything back so that I could make my second apt. The day of Tanner was kind enough to drive me while Cherylyn watched Abby. About five mins after we left Abby tripped and hit her head really hard on her coffee table. Cher called and told us we needed to turn around and come back. Honestly I didn't think it would be that bad, head wounds tend to bleed like crazy. When I saw it though I totally went into shock and thought "oh my goodness there is a chunk of my daughters head somewhere on your carpet!" Tanner loaded us up and we spent the next 2.5 HOURS trying to find the SOS medical center that Expats are supposed to go to. Keep in mind EVERYONE in Jakarta has drivers because traffic is so bad and the streets are so crazy, the Nielsens usually do but Sat is his day off. My flight out was at 6:30 and we knew there was no way we were going to make it. Cher sent Chris an email and then Skyped with him to let him know what was going on. We were about to give up when we found SOS, there was a sweet Indonesian man waiting outside with a huge umbrella (did I mention it was lashing rain?) and as soon as he saw us came running. We saw a very sweet American doctor who informed me that no, there was no way we would make our flights and essentially if I were a good parent who cared about how my poor daughter looked I would go to the hospital and have a plastic surgeon stitch her up. Flash forward 2 hours plastic surgeon finally makes it through the rain and traffic and they have to put Abby under to do the stitches. The local Embassy nurse demands to be in the operating room (she literally said to me "if I am not in that room this surgery is not happening" and took my gown) as I stand in the hall crying. 15 stitches later we head home.

Yeah, it makes me so tired even thinking about it. We end up flying out to Bali a few days later. Our flight is again delayed (oh and we still have no luggage, they refused to send it on and told me just to get it on the way back to Dili) so we arrive at 10:30pm. In Bali you have to get off the plane and then take a bus to the terminal. You are of course SHOVED in together like sardines. Since I had no luggage (the counter was closed by now) I ran out to Que up for a taxi. I got to the front, told them where I was going, reach into my bag and my wallet is gone. It had been stolen while I was shoved in together on the bus. OH MY GOSH. I literally was freaking out. Here I was in Bali with no money, no debit card, no credit cards and essentially 1.50 in cash. I thought to myself okay, the flight leaves early tomorrow morning we can just sleep at the airport. I kept my Diplomatic passport in my pocket at all times so we were good there, but there is a 15 dollar exit fee, crap. I walked over to the crowd of 100 or so drivers waiting to take people to their hotels and yelled out "Conrad? I am going to the Conrad!" Miracle of miracles (there were several that night) a very nice gentleman steps forward and asks if I said he was from Conrad and asked if I had requested transport. I told him no and then started crying and explained what happened. He immediately took me to airport police and helped me fill out all the paper work. He then grabbed one of their other drivers and had him take me to the hotel. It was about a 20 minute drive and I literally sat in the back crying and praying the entire time. I had no idea how I was going to get a hold of Chris. It was past midnight Dili time so there would not be anyone at the switchboard and there was no way he would be on skype. We pulled up to the hotel, the manager opened the door and said "Our driver called us and told us what happened and we have your husband on hold at the desk" OH MY GOSH!!!!! I got to the phone and of course starting bawling my eyes out, the other workers defiantly thought I was crazy. Chris had no idea what was going on but right before going to bed though "I should call Kelly and make sure everything is okay with the hotel". When they told him I hadn't checked in yet he knew something was wrong. So Abby and I get to our room AGAIN past 11pm, which is sooo sad because look how gorgeous THIS place is. The hotel manager was so nice and said they would easily charge extra money to the card for the room and give me cash so I could get out of the country. Then the next morning when I came up for breakfast they handed me my wallet! The first driver guy had gone back with the airport police and searched through the bus's and found it! All the money was gone but my debit card and ID were still there! AMAZING! When I went to the airport I was finally reunited with our luggage, which I unfortunately had to immediately recheck, and boarded the plane no problem. I never thought I would be THAT happy to see Dili! The boys and Chris were waiting at the airport with little signs and I thought I had died and gone to heaven! Talk about a crazy trip. The thing was except for the traveling and stitches it was such a fun trip! The Nielsen's are wonderful hostess and Cher and I had such a blast together. Of course right when we got back the USNS Mercy docked which has meant NON STOP fun crazy busy days. I was Helloed out the Same to take pictures of the Commadore visiting a medcap and it was amazing. But the highlight HAS to be the fact that there are 40 volunteers from LDS church services! I was assigned to photograph one of their deliveries to a Muslim orphanage. I loved seeing box's with our church's logo being handed up:

And the children were adorable

Soft spoken and shy

And so excited to color, play with play dough and just talk with our church volunteers:

They were all so grateful, and expressed their sentiments via a play dough message (note the spelling)

(Abby also had her stitch's taken out about 2 mins after we boarded, hence the sponge bob band aide)

(you are not allowed wear dresses on the ship hence my pants)

2010-08-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

Last week we headed up with our friends the Hiemstra's and the Harries to a little village in the mountains called Maubisse. On the way up there was a funeral procession that lasted for about a mile. It was interesting to watch.

It was a wonderful little getaway where we did absolutely nothing. Seriously, nothing. We let the kids go nuts and run around and play with each other and we sat around talking and enjoying being in the rain and COLD. Where we stayed was at this OLD OLD place called the Poussada. It was a huge gorgeous manner when the Portugeuse controlled Timor. We stayed in the servants quarters as opposed to the main house and the kids had such a blast!

I accidentally left my camera sitting on the couch so all of these were taken with our video camera in camera mode, they aren't all that bad.

Abby on the steps leading up to the main house

Liam and Roman making fishing poles out of sticks and tea bags (this is what happens when you purposely don't bring toys!)

Sam was hanging out with his best school buddy which always means Liam gets abandoned. It makes my heart hurt a little. So we spent lots of quality time together. We took a walk and found a monkey

And flowers that looked like horns,

then found out they were hallucinogenic if you touched them for too long, ooopps. We enjoyed wearing flannel and saying "I need some mittens it's so cold!"

Figured out what we would look like if we were at woodstock and big ole hippies

It was nice spending some quality time with just Lemers. He is such an easy going guy I think sometimes he is so content we don't worry enough about giving him his fair share of attention.

Enjoyed the lovely tandem swing...

"Um mom where are the seats?"

Admired the ingenuity and reuse of USAID products we have given the Timorese

Ate our weight in rocks.... well some of us did

ran around ALOT

Some of us were good and just looked at the turtles...

While others threw caution to the wind and threats of salmonial were ignored as was the rule that you don't throw turtles back and forth to each other

One candle was lit, but it took four children to blow it out

Some of the other guests had a huge fire going and a giant cooler (the biggest I have ever seen) chakabox full of sodas and snacks and kept bribing all the kids to take pictures of them by giving them sprite and treats until finally we had to put a stop to it.

Abby was mesmerized by the fire and kept trying to walk over to it.

(I know how to get rid of red eye but how do you get ride of crazy possessed silver eyes?)

On old drained pool became the coolest hid out ever,

but mostly we saw a lot of these:

and heard a lot of this "this is the BEST day ever mom!"! That night Sam and Chris slept in one room with Abby and Liam and I in the other. It was so nice to sleep without worry of mosquitos and being so incredibly hot you can't stand it (like in Autauro). We woke up in the morning and had a lovely breakfast of buns and jam and let the kids play for a bit in the rain. Liam and Roman enjoyed eating their cereal on our porch

While Sammy pouted because we had to leave and he wanted to stay with Noah

On the way back the weather looked like this:

So it is not to surprising that we got lost. Especially when you take into consideration that in Timor the "road less taken" is the one that is pristine and intact. While the one that leads to the capital city is terrible and completely chopped up. About an hour into the drive our engine started billowing smoke so we pulled over and Chris and I had an adventure with the radiator. It actually turned out that when we had turned the heater on the car freaked out because it had never had the heater turned on before ha! After about another hour the boys were begging for food so we pulled over and I hoped out to get fruit snacks out of the back. There were three local children hanging out on the side of the road and I thought they might like some so I gave them each a pack of fruit snacks. The littlest guy had me open his and the smile he gave me was priceless

The scenery was amazing

And we made it home safe and sound, it was such a great little break!

Funny video

2010-08-02T16:31:00.000-07:00

Check out Liam in the background chuckin' rocks. More to come but just thought this was so funny. Isn't Roman's accent adorable!

(Ps Loving having a video camera that fits in my pocket, thanks Chris!)

It's Hard to Say Goodbye

2010-07-30T07:19:00.000-07:00

Last night we had a little goodbye party for our wonderful friend Brent. He is the only other member on the island that we know of and has been fabulous to have in our home and hold church with. He is so good with the boys and always brought such a happy spirit in our home. We are so sad that he is leaving, mixed with happiness for him to be back with his mom in Australia, and hopeful that he will be getting his MBA next fall at BYU so we can see him at Christmas. We had so hoped to see more expansion of the church here in TImor wile he was here, but these things take time. We are just so grateful that we were able to meet him and become such good friends. SIngle girls in UT this guy is awesome and will need someone to show him around eh eh.

I also made Abby a doll this week as her birthday present. I think she really likes it :) Or at least I will shove it in bed with her every night until she does ha!

We are excited to celebrate a little bit tomorrow, the big celebration with have to wait until we get back from Jakarta (heading up to get a root canal and Abby to get her 1 year old immunizations). Doesn't that sound like a great trip? Luckily seeing Tanner and Cherylyn will totally make it worth i!

This is amazing

2010-07-28T17:13:00.000-07:00

i am IN LOVE with this video. I don't know if it is the photographer in me, the mommy in me, the love of traveling with children in me, my excitement to go to Paris or what but I have watched it soooo many times. Watch it, I promise you won't regret it.
Click HERE to view it
Isn't it the cutest thing ever!

So flattered

2010-07-27T15:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my sewing blog, Sewing In No Mans Land (you can see it HERE) was featured on a fantastic craft blog Luv In The Mommyhood. The author Shannon was extremely sweet and of course made me cry with her review of my blog. I am still rather shocked that it has received any attention at all. If you would like to see the feature you can click HERE. Don't be shocked when our kiddos have different names, we did it to maintain some privacy and safety for them. In other news We are getting all geared up for Abby's birthday celebration. We are headed up to Mobisse, a little village up in the mountains, on her actual birthday so we will be partying away on Saturday. I cannot believe she is one! I am sure I will take a zillion pictures!

First Lady Cup 5K

2010-07-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

This morning the kiddos and I participated in the fundraiser 5K that the first lady of Timor sponsors every year. Since Chris is gone it was just going to be me and the 3 kiddos. The night before I had everything prepared, snacks, books, water, more snacks, money just in case. The boys had their outfits laid out and wanted their shoes to be on their bed side table all ready for the big race. Of course this morning was the first time in history that Sam woke up at 6am and Liam slept in. I had to wake him up after I got everyone else in the car.

Us at the starting line
When I was up with Sam earlier it had rained and I thought aw man I am not doing this in the rain, but luckily it stopped and was just insanely humid :) The other great part was walking with jan and Meredith. Everything is more fun with company and it was nice to have the support just in case anything happened. The boys shared their books with Amanda and Amanda shared her sippi cup with Abby so everyone was happy. The boys had their feeties up, rubbing in that they could relax while I hauled them!

Sam kept saying "hurry mom or we won't get a trophy". This got everyone around us laughing pretty hard. It was so inspiring to see those with disabilities running. There were a handful of people in the Timorese wheelchairs

(they crank the pedal in front with their hands to turn the wheels)

This little guy was marching a long grinning and totally stopped and let me take a picture.

Our friends the Harries ran up behind us and surprised us. Noah and Roman had ridden the entire 10K on their bikes. Sam was sooo jealous, we really need to get him a proper bike.

At the finish line they were handing out water and soda and what looked like orange juice. A guy handed the boys a juice each and I thought nothing of it until my friend let me know it was an energy drink, aw crud. They totally didn't take a nap today, either of them, and mommy was soooo tired. All three of them were way better then I expected, even though Sam was really bummed we didn't get a trophy.

First Lady Gusmao chatted with me for a few minutes. I asked to take a picture with her and she obliged and then proceeded to ask me questions. She totally remembered me from taking pictures of her at other events. Wow, that is a good politician. She also has three children so we talked about that. I wish I was a better screen writer because I would TOTALLY write a movie script about her and Xanana (her husband's (pronounced shanana) courtship and marriage it is INCREDIBLE.

Chris jokes that I always agree to do things and then drag my feet right before doing them and then am sooo glad I did after. While this is usually true I enjoyed this one start to finish.

This party is on FIRE! (literally)

2010-07-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

Chris has been in Jakarta and Singapore the past few days and won't get back for a few more. He always hates when I mention he is gone while still gone but I challenge anyone to travel all the way to Timor and then get past our guards and gate... seriously lets see you try. Anyway, since he has been gone I have tried to make the time go by fast with lots of fun activities and outings. Last night my friend Jodi and her little girl Mackenzie (whom the boys love) came over and we camped in our backyard. We bought cheapo tents that pop up, NO assembly required, from the local grocery store. The kids were soooo excited. I of course was prepared for a sleepless sweaty albeit fun night. I blew up our air mattress and shoved it in the tent while saying "I'll MAKE it fit" (it was fun having a little girl around who caught the Cinderella reference in my childish humor). It was only 5pm but Sam was already asking to get his jammies on.

It was rough being so far away.... from the grill.

The poor kids were subjected to Jodi and I yelling "ZIP THE TENT!" every time they went in and out, thats all we needed was to contract malaria while going on a fake camping trip. We had fantastic grilled chicken for dinner while the kids had hot dogs and chips. Then Jodi single handily got the fire going for s'mores. Sam and Liam LOVE doing s'mores, although I really have no idea if they have ever EATEN one because they always light their marshmallows on fire.

Sam even flicked his across the yard while trying to put it out ha! We had the bounce house going and the kids got pretty sweaty so we decided we needed some home made ice cream, mint chocolate chip. YUM! When it was time for bed Abby headed inside and I brought out the baby monitor. We read MacKenzie all our favorite books and then snuggled into our tents. Sam's head hit the pillow and he was OUT, it was 10 PM by this point. Liam on the other hand talked and rolled and sang and poked until I finally said "I am going to put you in your bed if you don't stop" This totally back fired and then he was begging to go in his bed, dang it. He eventually fell asleep only to wake up dripping sweat needing to go to the bathroom. I took him and then put him in his nice cool bed. Then I had to decide wether to stay in with Abby and Liam or go back out with Sam. I was really torn since Sam wakes up every now and then with night terrors and I didn't think I would be a very good hostess leaving my shrieking son with Jodi. So i literally DRAGGED his heavy limp body out of the tent and put him in bed with me. By 2am I finally got to sleep. The next morning we had a pile of pancakes and OJ and then went out to clean up our mess. I put some water in the ashes (which had been out for more than 9 hours at this point) and then dumped them in our trash. The girls headed home and I went in to feed the kiddos lunch. I went to wash the dish's and looked out our front window and saw a HUGE fire. This will tell you how used to seeing weird things I have gotten. I literally thought "hmm that's weird that our gardner is burning trash in our yard" Then it hit me that is was Sat. and there was no gardner today and I had dumped a bunch of ash into that same trash can about two hours ago! I ran like a crazy lady to get Sam and Liam in the house (they were playing on the deck like nothing was happening) and waved frantically to our guard who came running back. I dashed into our house, it seemed like it took FOREVER to yank the fire extinguisher off the wall. I had it charged and ready to go in seconds. We stood there for about five minutes putting out little flare ups and then he doused everything with water. Apparently it was STUFFED full of dead grass and leaves etc. I immediately called Jodi thanking her PROFUSELY for having the fire extinguisher demonstration earlier that week. Talk about a blessing. Had I not had that class I would have been hopeless with the extinguisher. If it had been 10 minutes later we would have all been napping and it would have gotten out of control. So many little things that make such a big difference. The boys were of course thrilled to watch Momma put out another fire. We all were fine... but the trash can is toast.

This was not REALLY the excitement I was going for ha! Chris if you are reading this you should give us a call, lots has been going on haaa!

Science Day, Safety Day, Space day oh my!

2010-07-22T23:10:00.000-07:00

Jodi has been running a fantastic camp for the few kids that have been here over the summer. I don't know what I would have done without it. The boys would have killed each other for sure. This past week we had Science day. The kids all got super cool safety goggles which they wore diligently

Okay so some better then others :) They did tons of fun little experiments and then to top it all off nothing beats a baking soda volcano. Sam was so excited when it erupted it was hilarious.

Carmen who is such a little smarty was asking all sorts of good questions about why it exploded etc.

Liam sort of looked confused

But gave me a big smile when I asked him if he liked it

(They love their shirts by the way mom, thank you!) What is great is since it is at the Embassy all the Daddy's can come and watch the experiments or demonstrations and then we all eat lunch together. Is it sad that the past few weeks I have been ordering off the kiddy menu? Abby liked being held by her daddy.

They also did this cool experiment using hot and cold water, empty bottles and balloons.
The kids were totally fascinated.

Wednesday was safety day. They learned how to do some first aid and made little kits to wear around their necks when hiking etc. They also learned a lot about fire. The practiced climbing up and down a ladder safely

Um that doesn't look to safe on Sammy's part. Abby liked roaming around the tennis court with no obstacles in here way

They also learned to stop drop and roll, which Liam was awesome at. He would just FLING his body onto the ground and roll.

Abby thought this was hilarious. She really cracks up whenever Liam "performs" for her.

Then the piece de resistance putting out an actual fire with a fire extinguisher! They combined water and petrol in a bucket and then lit it on fire with a long pole. (The guy then proceeded to put the fire out by rubbing it in the grass... um grass fire ring a bell to anyone in Timor? No, one huh.)

The kids were then shown how to charge and hold the extinguisher.

Each one got a turn to put the fire out. The safety goggles came in handy again.

The parents got to take a turn also. It was nice knowing how to do it. maybe now I won't be afraid to make doughnuts ha! We also took the kids out for dinner for the first time in as long as I can remember. We headed to Dili Beach hotel to have pizza with the Hiemstras. The kids chowed on french fries and then vegged on the couch.

The people that run it were kind enough to turn one of the TV's from soccer to playhouse disney leaving us to have a nice quiet dinner with only Abby and Adrienne at the table. My girlfriends in Dili ordered me that Fedora for my birthday. I had mentioned it once to Meredith (Saying I would never spend that much on a hat even if it was that awesome) and she totally remembered. I am trying to pretend to have enough confidence to sport it ha! Anyway, today was Space day and they have making rockets and milk planets on the docket. Thank heavens for camp!

So nuts

2010-07-22T05:17:00.000-07:00

It has been INSANE around here. I think Che Che thinks I am nuts, literally. I run around like a crazed person all day. In out in out in out. Our guard must think I am crazy too. Although funny story, I was of course speeding out of our drive way and pull up to the gate... honk... nothing... honk honk... nothing. I look in the guard house and no one is there. Che Che looks in our yard and no sign of him. I get out to open the gate and hear frantic banging and yelling. He was totally locked in the tiny bathroom they have. I felt so bad because I couldn't understand him at all. We got the gardner to come over and we tried a zillion keys. I called Jan who is in charge of all the guards and he sent someone over. I really had to go so I left but when I came back Che Che let me know in the end they had to bust the door down. I just wonder how long the poor guy had been stuck in there with zero air circulation etc. In better news the boys have been having the BEST time ever at camp and I have sooo many awesome pictures. I have been doing a hefty amount of photography but the internet hates me and won't let me upload pictures. The only one I have is from a photo shoot today with this gorgeous girl

She is wearing a dress I made, my birthday present hat and Felicity do you recognize your shoes? She has been staying in Timor for the summer and is a budding photographer and has come on a bunch of shoots with me. She leaves wednesday though and we thought it was high time she got her own shoot. Ahhh to be 16 and look fabulous again, actually I REALLY like the point I am at in my life, I really just want my 16 year old body back ha! Okay so tomorrow fingers crossed I will get some photos up. Otherwise I have to wait until Chris gets back with the laptop and head to my fav cafe... "both good options" (Chris that is for you!)

Noah turns Five

2010-07-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

Sammy's little buddy Noah turned five this past week and we had a great time helping him celebrate. His mommy Krista makes the coolest cakes in Timor and this one was no exception

There were lots of games, including Pass the parcel.

Which is usually accompanied by music on a CD but we had our very own live entertainment!

Since he was from New Zealand we kept teasing him about being Bret from Flight of the Conchords (If you have not seen this show you HAVE to watch it, it is soooo funny). Under each layer there was a buggy for the kids to keep. Liam was excited for his grasshopper

This is Oscar (his dad was playing the guitar) I am fairly certain he is the only red head on the entire island of Timor.

The kids all took lots of turns beating the pinata Krista made but in the end Steve had to beat it down

Noah thought the broken pinata made a great hat

Steve spent the night using our water balloon maker to make over 100 water balloons for the fights and Krista spent the night making her traditional stripy jelly.

It is so yummy but I would never have the patience to do it. The kids got to swim in their awesome pool, Abby kept track of the goggles.

Noah waited patiently and then blew out all the candles with no help... ok so there were only 5 but still.

Then Oscars mom and I painted all the kids faces with this stellar face paint she brought back from Australia. The kids had so much fun and came home and crashed. Thanks for letting us celebrate with you Noah you are a great little guy and we are so glad to have you as a friend!

Down Under

2010-07-15T03:23:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday I was in charge of Camp Crocodili. I was asked to do Music and Movement in the morning (thank you thank you thank you Cady, once again your CD saved me) and Photography in the afternoon with the older kids. We had a blast jump around and making our own shakers for music time. The minute Jodi asked me I had the perfect idea for photography for both the older and younger kids. Our friend Brian is an underwater photographer. He is creating a book about all the fish species here in Dili. He had never shot in a pool before and I thought "how cool would the kids think it is to have pictures of themselves underwater?" He was kind enough to oblige and even let the kids take a turn with the camera! Liam and Sam of course were cold (my boys are ALWAYS cold, what are they going to do if we live in Switzerland next?) But we got a few good shoots with them.

Sammy enjoyed it a little more and even tried to smile

He was on cloud nine getting a picture with his little crush Carmen

He was driving in the car with me today and out of the blue said "Mom Carmen loves me huh?" When I said "she sure does" he just smiled. Since I was the only Adult in the pool aside from Brian I got to take pictures with the other little cuties. I love how this one with Amanda turned out

It was so fun doing it with another person who enjoyed taking pictures as much as me. We tried all sorts of crazy things. We just couldn't get a cool picture of diving with out all the bubbles, the pool just wasn't deep enough.

I had fun taking some pics, although to be honest it was WAY harder then I thought it would be. Half the time I didn't even know if I was taking a picture of what I wanted it to be of.

The kids were great with their poses though.

The kiddos loved it though and I can't wait to show them at camp tomorrow how they turned out! After the pool I had them running around the embassy with their cameras on a photographic scavenger hunt. I asked them to try and take pictures from new angles etc. and they did such a fabulous job, I think we definitely have some photographers in the making!

Feeling Sick, but looking good!

2010-07-11T22:53:00.000-07:00

This past week the kiddos have all had throwing up/ fever bugs. Yuk. Liam actually threw up pomegranate juice, it has now been ruined for me for life... okay way to much information. On Friday we literally did not move from the couch. I would carry the boys to the restroom and bring them sippy cups of water (we learned early with the juice ha!) Liam felt better in time to make it to his friend Tivans birthday party and it was HILARIOUS! HIs mom Jean made this awesome paper mache fish that two kids could get into and run around trying to catch the other "fish". If you got caught it was your turn to be in the fish. They had a fish shaped cake, played in the pool and got wonderful goodie bags. The next day Sam felt well enough to go to his friend Isaiah's birthday party which was Dinosaur themed. They made clay dinos and painted them, got tattoos and beat a pinata to death. I have be informed by countless people that before Sam's pirate party birthday parties on Timor were much more relaxed but I stepped it up a notch. Which now makes me start thinking what in the world we will do for Liam's ha! We had seriously planned on just doing a cake, ice cream, bounce house but will that let everyone down? Shouldn't have set the expectations so high. (secretly I am LOVING that now we have to have cool parties wooo hooo!) Having so much down time gave me plenty of time to relax and sew a little. I made Sam a new tie

and Liam a new bow tie

You know so that when the mission president comes we will all look straight laced and reverent on our front couch for church :)
I also worked on Abby's birthday dress. I love how it turned out but now I definitely have to make a bib because if she smears cake all over it I WILL cry.

At least we won't loose her in a crowd with those electric yellow leggings ha! She has taken lots of steps lately but spends the majority of her day crawling over, pulling herself up on my leg and giving me this look until I pick her up:

She is still loving crawling though and has pretty banged up knees and the tops of her feet are always dirty

Chris and I took the kiddos to get some pics to this amazing pretty much destroyed church where I had done a photoshoot a few weeks prior. Great for adults, not great for kids. Huge stairs with no railing, second story with a floor but no walls. We told Sam and Liam it was an old castle and Sam made up this whole story about a king and dragon and princess, it was fabulous.
It has been CRAZY weather here in Timor lately. I am talkin monsoon rain. A few people were actually killed this weekend because they were in the river and washed away. Lots of our friends who live in more locally made houses have had lots of flooding. A friend of mine who has been living here for ten years says she has never seen anything like it. This is supposed to be the dry season and apparently even during the rainy season it doesn't rain this bad. It has really kept the temps down though which has been so nice for playing outside! The boys have been attending Camp Crocadili MWF mornings which has been soooo fun. Our Community Liason Officer has organized it and so far they have had Dino Day, Sports day and Water day. They come home exhausted every afternoon (Sam has even gone back to taking naps yesssssss!) On the first day Liam was awarded Camper of the day.

As you can tell he was deeply moved and honored by the award ha! He was pretty pysched about his tattoos and made sure his shirt was up the rest of the day, and wouldn't wear a pJ shirt to bed because he couldn't see them.

All these parties combined with camp has made the last few weeks FLY by. Which I am so thankful for because we still have four weeks until lots of our friends come back.

Let them eat cake... really big cake

2010-07-06T04:06:00.000-07:00

On the fourth we met all the other American Embassy families at the pool to BBQ, Bounce House and eat the HUGE left over sheet cake from the official embassy function. The boys sported the shirts I made for them since they had no Americana outfits (sad commentary on us) What is so funny is I thought I was all original and then saw almost these identical shirts on another craft blog... great minds think alike maybe?

Funny story about Sam's. I only had a girls 4T shirt and thought there is no way anyone would notice. So I sewed it all up and put it on him. Chris and I about died laughing. So I unpicked the ruffled sleeves and thought well it can be a muscle shirt. Sam would have no part in that though and decided he would rather wear two shirts then a tank top. Wooo hoo! I am not a fan of tank tops on boys. ANYHOO, the boys loved eating the huge flag cake, the only thing missing from the great party, napkins

But who really minds?

New Tutorial Blog

2010-07-05T06:14:00.003-07:00

I was so excited to receive a note from Kari at U Create that she was featuring my Tuxedo Dress tutorial on her site. Chris and I were wondering why in the world we suddenly had quadruple the number of hits on our blog, and that would be why. Wow, I was floored. So, I have ALOT more sewing tutorials ready to pump out but I was thinking that I like having this blog be my blog for Granny, Grandma, Aunties, sister's, friend's who ever really, but keep it about the family activities. I decided to start another blog for anyone who is interested in more tutorials. I call it my global experiment in sewing and we will see how long it lasts :) I call it Sewing In No Mans Land and the address is: http://sewingin-nomansland.blogspot.com/ if you want to see how to make this cute little top and lots of others to come then please check it out ;)

I would love for it to work out but am not holding my breathe ha!
So, back to the family news. I am totally bummed because Flikr uploaded all the wrong pictures (okay, so who's fault is that really, yeah that would be me) So I don't have our hilarious fourth of july picks yet. This morning we met a bunch of our buddies at Christo Rey and let the kiddos go crazy with their bikes, kites, soccer balls etc. Abby practiced her standing:

We wished Mace a happy second birthday (and later enjoyed cake and a great party with him)

I once again continued my crusade to make all the kids love me by bringing enough fruit snacks to put them all on permanent sugar highs Bwah ha ha I think my plan is working!

While Sam spent the morning riding Isaiah's two wheeler (with training wheels), Liam spent the morning following around the Harries dog Lukie.

If we lived by them I think Liam and his cousin Morgan would be best friends. Both of them LOVE pretending to be animals, doggies in particular. It is so funny because here in Timor the VAST majority of dogs are WILD so our boys get very little interaction with them. Sam is 100% terrified of them. They other day Sam saw a huge cock fighting rooster (which even Chris was a little afraid of) and Sam had zero issues but a second later a tiny cute little puppy came bounding toward him and you would think it was a monster the way he started crying, screaming and running. Poor guy. Seeing Liam got me thinking about how much Liam would love a dog, how we have a HUGE yard, a gardner (paid for by the Embassy NOT us, just want to make that clarification) to pick up the yucky stuff and lots of great places to take it for walks... I dunno Chris and I both swore up and down we would never ever ever have a dog, but hmmmmm maybe, just maybe.

The Fourth of July Tunic

2010-07-03T03:50:00.000-07:00

This is really one of my go to's to make for gifts or if Abby's wardrobe needs a little pick me up because it is SOOOOO easy and takes so little fabric (a requirement for c'est moi since I don't live within a half a million miles of a normal fabric store).

What you need:
Scissors
Thread (matching color to your fabric preferred but not required)
Two Buttons
1/2 yard fun fabric
1/4 yard corresponding fabric or a solid you think looks stellar
Some patriotic music to sew to
Some paper to draw the pattern, if you think you are going to make this more than once, or feel more comfortable cutting fabric with a guide
Alright, once you have everything gathered we are going to use our paper first. Okay don't laugh at my drawing-- to hard. I make no claims to be an artist and love sewing because it is so much more forgiving. Roughly (key word) Draw a yoke shape on the paper.

When I cut this out what I will do is fold the paper down the middle and only follow one side so that when I open it up it will be even :) Sneak peaky. This will be on the back of the dress and come up over the shoulders so it needs to be a little longer. Make sure to make it wide as you will be sewing and turning it inside out. Now make a second yolk with stubbier tails. This will be the front and does not need to go up too high. You will need two of each of these, or four pieces total:

Now we are going to do the main part. Take a paper and fold it in half. Keep in mind you will be gathering the top straight portion of the dress to fit into the yokes you just made to give the top some volume. Draw an arch from the top to the side, for the arm hole. The length depends on how long you want the tunic to be. I wanted mine fairly short since Abby uses crawling as her main mode of transportation. All of this is very rough and easy to adjust once you get sewing. (See what I said about forgiving, eh).

Now grab your fabric and make sure you have enough :

Pin your top pattern on and cut out two. Placing right sides together sew up the two sides. I was to lazy to drag out the surger so I ended up just going back over it with a zig zag stitch.

Now finish up the arm holes by making a little hem. (Sorry I didn't snap a pic of this step) Now that everything is nice and connected, shirr the tops of the dress making sure to leave a long tail to allow you to make adjustments.

(Yes I shirred mine before I connected them, very naughty, much easier to do it the other way) Now for the neck portion. Place the two yokes (am I using the right word? that seems weird but I swear thats what they are called.... hmmm please feel free to correct me I don't want to sound ridiculous, I need my street cred and using the wrong terms is just lame) anyway place them right sides together. Now start sewing at the top right corner. Come down to the bottom of the U and back and forth. Cut your thread. Leave an opening across the bottom of the yoke. Place your foot at the bottom left and continue to sew all the way around until you are back where you have started.

Do this to both sets and you will have your front and back. Now go a ahead and flip them right sides out. At this point I like to press them making the necessary folds at the bottom this makes attaching it sooo much easier.

Now go a head and place the top gathered portion of the tunic up into one of the little pockets you made. (Both sides are the same so it only matters what side you want to be front, you know, if there is a cuter part of the pattern you want mainly seen or what have you ) Pin it at the corners

Once again starting at the top right, top stitch all the way around the yolk, making sure not to sew over your pins.

(I have totally done that before and it sounds horrible, and then you have to replace your needle, which takes time us sewing mommies don't usually have). Now go a head and hem up the bottom how ever largely you would like. Whoo hoo you are sooo close! It should look something like this:

Okay now for the buttons. If you are Miss Super seamstress and know how to make a button hole with your nifty button hole maker you can skip this part. My button hole attachment disappeared days after I got my sewing machine, and I have never replaced it so I just do it the old fashioned way. I take my seem ripper and after measuring my button a little, rip a tiny hole where I want the button to fit through.

I then hand stitch (I know archaic right, yet oddly gratifying) a loop stitch all the way around the hole to reinforce it. I make sure my button will fit through and then attach it. I am in dire need of some buttons. My mother in law gave me a ton of fantastic vintage buttons and these were the last set of matching ones. It was serendipitous because I think they look kind of militarily patriotic. Once your buttons are connected that is it! There is nothing to do but try it on and drag your poor unsuspecting daughter out in the yard for a photo shoot!

Or wait am I the only crazy person who does that :) She doesn't look too upset by it though. I think it is because she loves her shoes, they were mine and my mom saved them for my daughter, how AWESOME is that!

Of course you could add pockets, ruffles ric rac, what ever. I just wanted something a little plain for this holiday. Have fun and as always I LOVE to see any you make! I also have a Fourth of July Boys shirt I want to upload if the internet would stop going in and out... hopefully I can get that up because come on there is a HUGE void when it comes to sewing for boys :) If I don't get back on have a FABULOUS fourth, enjoy some fireworks for me!

The Big 2-9

2010-06-30T23:46:00.001-07:00

(I promise another tutorial tomorrow, I have all the pics uploaded and ready to go I swear but since it is my birthday I thought a brief aside would be forgiven) So, do you know why today was an AWSOME birthday? Because I have incredible people in my life thats why. This morning the boys woke me up, at 7:30!! I know some of you may have just spit soda on your computer screen but that is sooo nice and late for me! They wished me happy birthday and asked if I wanted eggs and toast, thank you very much. I got all dressed and Sammy came in and asked where my birthday presents are. (We are definitely going to have to do the presents at breakfast thing I talked about HERE). I told him I was wearing them. He cocked his head and said "I'll go make you some presents mom". Apparently my clothes are not appealing to a four year old :) Lunch out with the hubby completely uninterrupted (fabulous) Then Happy Birthday to me, I received an awesome package from Elizabeth! Talk about stellar timing, only you could pull that off Elizabeth! The boys were THRILLED with the contents of the package, lots of festive fourth of July items and some YUMMY lotion (thank you thank you thank you!)

The boys had so much fun with the hilarious patriotic glasses

Sam kept asking me to take pictures of him. Then he asked if we could go to Atticus's house to show him. I wish bud, I wish.

Getting this package is fantastic on many levels. First of all it is impossible to get ANYTHING Americana here, and secondly I LOVE that my birthday coincides with this wonderful holiday. There are always lots of fun festive activities and it means summer break is in high gear, the beach, watermelon, ice cream, usually fireworks (they are illegal here, the Vice Prime minister apologized for that last night ha!)
The other mail I got was a hand written Thank you card from Lands End Canvas, what the what? I mean how much money do you spend at a store for them to send you a handwritten note? Chris was more than a little concerned haaa!

My friend joked that I should see how long I can keep the correspondence going and keep thanking them for their notes, attention etc. sounds hilarious, but a lot of effort :) Anywho, to celebrate we kept it low key and had friends over for a backyard BBQ. We got the bounce house set up and the kids went wild. Which was great because that meant we got lots of Adult undisturbed conversation, ahhhh sooo rare and so nice! Abby was all gussied up in the pettiskirt that I made Ava. Isn't it so nice when you get hand me downs of things you made? I love it because it means it actually is good quality!

Although I can't say as much for the head bow I made, she ripped that off in the first 2 seconds.

Apparently in a match of hot glue vs. 11 month old, the baby wins easily. She did have fun bossing around the other babies, although honestly I think Owan could take her if he really wanted to.

I tried to get a family picture but could not tear the boys out of the bounce house. Oh except for when Liam decided to pee off the slide, yeah that was a proud moment. I only got Abby and Daddy and I

My friend Dominque suggested we have everyone wear funny hats, well I am lacking in the funny hat department but woo hoo I had the cool sunglasses Elizabeth just sent! Don't worry though she brought enough for most of us!

I felt very Kate Middleton esq.

She said what was so funny is she bought it for a wedding in London, went to the church and sat down and noticed the women directly in front of her was wearing the exact sam thing HAAAAAA! I love it! I can't wait to go somewhere that outrageous hats are a norm. We had yummy burgers from Australia (ooops sorry let me wipe the drool off the screen) and Carrot Cake cupcakes and Too Much Chocolate Cake. I think I gained ten pounds. Then last night the Embassy had their Official July 4th celebration. Chris was workin the room making sure all the dignitaries were being looked after and I was working as the photographer but that didn't mean we didn't get to enjoy the rows upon rows of food... we just had to wait until all the VIP's ate. They died the water in the tea light holders the most vibrant red and blue. I asked Jodi how she did it and all they did was stick a little square of crepe paper in them and the color leaked out! How cool is that!

This morning we wanted to spend some time as a family so we headed down to Caz Bar for pancakes or eggies on the beach. I built another Sand Castle for the boys and this time topped it with a flag from the party last night! Woo hoo America!

Abby was of course scarfing down everyone ESLES food. She literally screams at the boys when they try and touch her food.... I think we may have a bad combination of spoiled and drama queen on our hands, yikes! But she is just so cute!

(That is her shoving a nutella pancake into her mouth while I was distracted.) Okay so now that I have caught up on the wonderful birthday I had I thought this afternoon I could post the Fourth of july tunic I made Abby so if you are like me and find yourself with nothing patriotic for the darling to wear you can whip it up. I literally made it in the half hour I have that Liam and Abby over lap taking naps. Here is a sneak peak

Baby Tuxedo dress tutorial

2010-06-29T21:34:00.000-07:00

I originally wanted to make this dress for myself as a birthday dress, but I don't have enough of any cute fabric for me, so Abby gets a cute dress for moms birthday! It may look daunting but is SOOOOOO easy I promise. Just be patient and remember you are working with fabric so a little stretching or pulling goes a long way. Also a lot of this tutorial is arbitrary, if you would like defined measurements etc. you should probably pass on it and stick to patterns. (ew that sounded brattier then I meant it...sorry)
The Materials you need:
A onsie or, for a bigger girl, a plain colored shirt that match's your fabric. Either long or short sleeve works fine.
1/2 yard of cute fabric
2 coordinating fabrics with 1/3 yard of each (just long strips of whatever fabric you think complements the main fabric.)
Fabric for the center tuxedo portion or the button section cut from some other outfit you decided is so far gone you might as well cut it up
Coordinating buttons
light weight fusible interfacing (just a little square)
Thread
Sewing machine
OPTIONAL: Ribbon or string for drawstring waist
Not optional: Some good tunes to listen to while sewing.
(I am a visual learner so pictures will come first in my tutorials. If you get what is happening you can probably skip the explanation)
STEP ONE:

Cut off Snaps from onsie to make a long shirt. I also want 3/4 sleeves so I cute some of the arm off.

Cut your strips keeping in mind that you will need less fabric for the inside ruffles. How much fabric should you cut? That depends how ruffled you want your tuxedo top to be. To be completely honest I think I went a little over board on Abby's ruffles. The strips are super wide (2inchs) and were really long so the ruffles would be thick. They sometimes stick so far up she can suck on them and makes this face when they tickle her:

It is up to you and how funky you want it to be. I probably will scale it back for the shirt I am going to make her tonight. ANYWAY,
This next step is optional since the ends will be hidden when they are sewn onto the shirt but I am a bit neurotic about unfinished edges so I hemmed up the ends of my strips.

Now using your shirring setting gather up those bad boys leaving a long tail of thread at the end. (If you need to learn to shirr you can read THIS, it is a very useful thing to know how to do) If you want the ruffles to be bigger just grab one piece of thread at the end and tug on it. Push along the gather and repeat until you have it as ruffly as you want.

There you have it a lovely pile of ruffles. At this point I decided that I should probably use some interfacing since my ruffles were MASSIVE and a onsie is pretty flimsy material. I only have heavy interfacing which is a bummer because it makes the shirt really stiff. I didn't snap a pick because i was so side tracked thinking of all the sewing stuff I totally forgot to bring to timbuck too. I just cut bib shape piece of interfacing that would cover where my ruffles are going to be placed. Then you can follow the instructions on your particular interfacing to attach it on the wrong side of the shirt right where you will be attaching your ruffles.

Now the fun part Take which ever ruffle you would like to be seen the least and starting at the top of the left side pin it to the shirt. Proceed to make a "U" shape, pinning where you feel necessary.

I pinned at the "corners". Make sure at the top, the fabric goes up and over the neck so it is hidden. Sew the ruffle on. I chose the selvage part of my brown fabric because I thought it added a fun texture. (because this outfit isn't busy enough right?)

Follow the same steps with your second length of ruffle. Laying it just slightly inside your first ruffle. Then repeat again with your third ruffles until your shirt looks something like this:

Step 9:

(I finally got the pic to upload ha! I have defeated you again cruddy internet!)
Now grab the material you set aside for the "tuxedo" section. Out of it you will cut 2 rectangles. Both need to be the length from the neck line to the bottom of the "u" of ruffles you created. One needs to be wider then the gap from inside ruffle to inside ruffle. Essentially you are cutting a rectangle that will fill in the gap. The second piece needs to be less wide as the first but the same length. Hem up the sides of both rectangles. Now this is optional but I decided on the second smaller piece to use the side that the seam was on to make it look more tuxedoey. That is totally your choice. I then attached the smaller rectangle to the larger making sure it was nice and centered. Then you can attach the number of buttons you think looks good, I know the picture shows 5 but in the end I went with 3, I just thought it looked better.

Before you attach the tuxedo to the shirt I would hem up the bottom edge. You could do this while attaching it if you are super sewer and don't like lots of lines of thread, but who really notices right and it makes attaching it easier. Which, when you are dealing with a mountain of ruffles, is a nice thing.

That is how your dress should not look! Woo hoo You are done with the hard part! Now for the skirt. This again depends on how long you want it to be on your bubs and how fluffy. I wanted mine to go just to Abby's knees so I cut a long rectangle with enough length to hem and it would be to her knee. I cut it to be 2 and a half the lengths of the front of the onsie. Once I hemmed it up I shirred the top again leaving a tail so I could adjust.

I laid it on the bottom of the onsie to make sure it it fit and made any necessary adjustments. This is where you can do one of two things. I will first go over if you want a gathered waist.

Place the "skirt" and "top" right sides together, leaving about a half an inch of onsie fabric hanging blow the skirt. Pin the skirt and then sew around. Once you have done this turn the entire dress inside out and sew the edge of the little "lip" of onsie to the wrong side of your skirt. Now when you flip in right side out you will have a little pocket to feed a ribbon or string or whatever you like through. Just make a a little hole in the seam you just sewed and feed through the ribbon attached to a safety pin. If you think that is to much (which I did AFTER making the pocket) then you simply line up right sides together and sew around. I would highly recommend zig zag stitching or surging this portion so it doesn't fall apart in the wash.

TADDAH! Woo hoo you are done! (you can see my little pocket if you look closely) I like using a onsie because it makes getting it on and off her head so easy :) Which is good because this little chica is on the move! She took six steps yesterday wow!

If you end up making one I would LOVE to see it so send me some pics or your link. Have fun and get creative, guaranteed if you live anywhere near a fabric store you will end up making a cuter one then mine, but you gotta use what you have right?
P.S. My friend Elizabeth found the website We Love Colors where I purchased Abby's leggings. I love them because they are nylonish so she isn't sweating bullets but is protected from the mosquitoes. They are nice and stretchy and she has been wearing them for 6 months now! The only draw back is the Velcro on her cloth diapers has made them snag a few times, bummers. Have I sold you on them yet ha! Happy sewing, hope your daughter looks dapper!

That is sooo Anthro-- baby

2010-06-28T22:06:00.000-07:00

I have been extremely disappointed with the clothes online for Abby lately. Nothin I like at the GAP, Old Navy, Children's Place, Target and since H&M won't let you order online (so totally lame) I was left with nothing. Since all of Abby's clothes above 12 months were sent to storage (we have got to do this moving thing better next time) I was in dire straights. Since most patterns are not in PDF file (a gap that need to be remedied by someone) I decided to set out and make Abby a bunch of dresses from my own little mind. I thought maybe some where out there someone else would need the same thing so in the next few days I will be posting in depth detailed tutorials on the dresses I made. The first being my version of what Anthropology might make if they had a baby line... and I was crazy enough to spend that sort of money on baby clothes: Here is a sneak peak at it (made from a onsie) on the table. (There will be cuter ones of Abby modeling them with each). Let me know if you think this is a good idea or not because honestly I don't want to go to do all this and end up with ZERO comments ha! Okay enjoy the sneak peak (do you think I had enough parentheses in this post?)

A circle in the sand

2010-06-27T21:40:00.000-07:00

** Waxing philosophical blog to follow please try not to barf from sappiness**
Last weekend we headed to explore back beach. The waves were sooo big (for Timor) that it would have been a perfect boogie board day but we have been living without our beach stuff for so long that I forgot that we actually HAD it now. The water was a little too rough for the kids so Sammy and I ended up heading to shore to build a sand castle. I got down on my hands and knees and drew a circle in the sand with the edge of the shovel. I was immediately washed over with a deja vu type feeling. How many times had I seen my Mom do the exact same thing as a child. The memory was so fresh it felt almost tangible. She would draw a circle in the sand and then proceed to build a moat, then she would use the sand from the moat to build castles in layers. Each castle would then receive some sort of ornament for the top, be it a shell, straw or cool piece of trash. As I followed these EXACT steps I was overwhelmed by how close I felt to my Mom even though she was hundreds of thousands of miles away. The rest of the day I walked around the house thinking how similar to my mother I have become. Here I am about to turn 29 and I have 3 cuties 4 and under, just like my mom. I live far far away from my family, just like my mom. I can't relax in a messy house, I feel like watching a movie (unless it is really funny) is a waste of time because I could be doing something more productive. I cry in the shower when I am overwhelmed but don't want the kids to see, because I know tomorrow I will wake up totally revitalized. I give the last of MY ice cream to my little beggar boys after they have polished off theirs even though I really want it. I make two dinners often because someone would prefer toast sandwich's to whatever I initially made. I am really good at saying sorry to my kiddos after I get more mad then I should have at something silly. All these things and soooo much more I get from my mom. I know it was just fathers day and I do have two AMAZING father figures in my life, but these past few weeks I feel like there is no way I could ever thank my mom for what she has done for me. I know it is because I am on the flip side now and can see the hundred of thousands of little sacrifices she made for me, and I hope that this little "circle in the sand" will continue and some day Abby will realize she is just like me, and be as happy about it as I am.

How long has it been since you ate?

2010-06-26T05:57:00.000-07:00

On Thursday Chris and I were invited to attend the USS Pelelui reception (the ship with the marines and sailors that I had been photographing all week). Since I would be taking pictures I got to once again fly out to the ship on a helicopter so I could be there to snap away at the VIP's as they arrived on their helicopters. Chris teased me because he came in on a boat with the majority of guests, and I joked with him that some hobbies just really pay off :) We got to mingle with lots of amazing soldiers and eat a TON of American food. I think the guy in front of the amazing meatballs must have thought I hadn't eaten in months. I think I ate at least a dozen and some where around five macadamia nut cookies. After I took some pictures of a group of Marines they joked that if they didn't receive a copy they would come back here and get me. I told them that would be fabulous, as long as they brought the food with them! The reception took place in the hanger bay so there were beautiful views of Dili and of the ocean

Chris hadn't taken an extensive tour so a chaplain was kind enough to take us all over the ship. It made me think maybe I should spend some time on the stair master because man were my legs killing me from the stairs! After our tour they made a last call for those who had come in on helicopters to head back. We had to book it up to the flight deck and were able to sneak Chris on so he got a ride!

The next day I flew out to a village at the opposite end of the island, but more on that later. I got back covered head to toe in mud (literally to toes, one of my shoes was lost to the mud) and had just enough time to rinse myself off before heading to the MTV Exit concert. Chris has been working with MTV and USAID setting up a concert to raise awareness about Human Trafficking. They do them all over the world (In Cambodia Placebo performed at Angkor Watt, how cool would THAT have been!) and the bands perform for free and the concert is free to locals. We got there at 5:30 so Chris could get everything in order and so I could take some pre performance pics.

When they say all access they really mean it. I got to be up on stage snapping away at the performers. Although eventually I thought my ear drums would burst and decided the three feet in front of the stage that was protected by Portuguese guards was close enough. They estimated that 15, 000 Timorese attended or 2% of the entire population ha! We had fun hanging out with friends and watching the moving video clips they showed in between performances.

But I was sooooo tired that after I got what I deemed enough pictures of the final (and main band, Superman is Dead) we headed home. I had to stay up and get the pics organized since the ship was leaving in the morning and Chris and Jan stayed up to watch the Brasil V Portugal game. I literally fell asleep at the computer and poor chris watched the entire game to have it end in a zero zero tie ughhh. Needless to say this weekend will involve LOTS of napping!

You'll be strapped in

2010-06-22T23:49:00.000-07:00

This week has be INSANE!!! I am still working out the details of which pictures I am allowed post on my personal blog but lets just say I spent most of the week with a four thousand dollar lens (excessive government spending? I think not ha!) on my camera, donning awesome head gear and taking hundreds of pictures of our AMAZING men and women in the military visiting here in Timor, I basically have looked like this:

A large part of my week also included seeing this reflection below me.

(I tried to get my toes in the shot but the lens was as long as my arm and I was soooo afraid I would drop it)
When they told me I would be half hanging out of a helicopter taking pictures I must have turned green because Major Johnson added "Don't worry, you'll be strapped in" oh, well then lets do this thing!!! It was also fathers day on sunday, the same day as the Dili Marathon (lots of pics from that to follow). I asked a group of the wives what they were doing for fathers day and all of them looked a time with panicked expressions "Today is fathers day? Aw crap" was the general response. You really have NO concept of time here since the weather NEVER changes. Chris enjoyed an hour and a half massage and homemade rocky road ice cream on top of Chocolate lava cake yum! When Chris proposed one of the promises he made was to give me an amazing life. Throughout this week it has been hammered into me what an amazing life he has provided for me and the bubs. He worked soooo hard for sooo long. I distinctly remember during law school thinking "Come on when does he get a break, he is such a good guy he deserves a break" Of course as always Heavenly Father knew better then I did and walah massive huge phenomenal break. I mean who gets their dream job at this age right? What I love about this job is that while we get to live abroad it is EXPECTED of us to remain VERY American. Any other time people would think you were an annoying foreigner and not "embracing the culture" if you dressed your kids in Red WHite and Blue for a marathon, talked constantly about how great the states are and shipped in the majority of your food :) Not in the state department, that is all fully supported (and in the case of the mail heavily subsidized). I am rambling. As soon as I am allowed there will be lots of fun pics from this amazing week. There is still two more days and the MTV concert Chris has been organizing so I am trying desperately to pace myself... and spend some time with the chubs a bubs so they don't forget who I am ha!
Okay one last pic I can sneak in I think without getting in trouble:
Cristo Rey

Schools out for Summer

2010-06-18T04:56:00.000-07:00

Sammy had his last day of school on Tuesday. Woo hoo! summer, or more accurately, dang it, summer. To celebrate the end of the year there was a musical performance for the whole school at a local reception center. The kids were really excited to see each other outside of school (even if it had only been an hour and a half since they were IN school). Sam's teacher Ms. Naomi tried to entertain the preschoolers while everyone got settled by walking around the garden with them.

Of course Liam HAD to be involved and followed the class on their tour

They were asked to bring a stuffed animal for their performance. Sammy chose his bear. His great Aunt Beverly gave it to him when he was one and he still sleeps with it.

They were very patient and waited quietly for their turn.

even when I had to drag Liam kicking and screaming away from them. Once they got up on stage they sang "Going on a bear hunt" It was hilarious! Sam was so hyper (I can see now why on his end of the year report it said he was wonderful etc etc but needs to learn to not flail when excited ha!)

(Don't you love his friend Salaman's tie and Noah's tiger face paint, ears and tail? We take ourselves VERY seriously here) I am not going to lie it was a LONG evening and rather hard to keep Liam and Abby happy. I was suddenly acutely aware of what it would be like to actually attend church anywhere besides our living room-- wow. When the finale rolled around all the children got up and sang "Thats what friends are for" Sam totally belted it out, I was so impressed.

(Bianca really got into it too, she is two to the right in the black dress and is AWSOME!) Lots of the older kids were crying. Since Timor is a hardship post for just about every organization the stints here are only 2 years so lots of people were saying their final goodbyes. On the last day of school both the morning and afternoon class met for a party. The kids were allowed dress up if they liked and bring their swim trunks. Sam wanted to go as Superman and showed Ms. Naomi how tough he was

Liam tagged a long and of course was Batman

He usually wears the cool, cape hood mask thingy but it impairs his vision to much when actually playing so he took the mask from the Robyn costume instead. All the other kids were intrigued by his built in muscles and he was stopped often so they could look at them

I loved that the boys were all fun super heros and the girls were all princesses. Bianca was Ariel

Katie was Snow White

and Sylvia.... well Sylvia was an awesome pirate with a flowery hat :)

Sam got a kick out of Noah also being superman. Although he had no idea what Noah meant when he kept saying up up and away. We need to find the boys some actual cartoons of these superheros.

Each child was asked to bring something to eat. When Sam brought me the paper with his request it said "Hot Chips" I asked him why he wanted spicey Chips, that he didn't like spicey chips. He said "No mom hot chips." Ms. Naomi had to let me know that these were in fact French Fries. Oh my gosh Sam is picking up local lingo! It is funny because he is also getting a little accent. No not the cute Australian one I had been hoping for, oddly enough he is speaking like someone from Boston. He says Cahh (Car) and Dowah (door) etc. it is really funny. So I brought the "hot chips" and the kids enjoyed the smargasbord of random foods that preschoolers request. Liam tried a fried banana and was NOT a fan, he thought it was a chicken nugget and was not pleased with the surprise.

Thankfully the embassy is putting on an amazing summer camp for those diplomates who's children are still on the island for the next 8 weeks! They have fun days planned like Dino day and Mad scientist day etc. I think if it weren't for that the boys would probably end up having fight clubs in our garage :)

Tribute to Top Gun

2010-06-17T02:16:00.000-07:00

The following pictures are totally candid. I did not drive around Dili looking everywhere for the sunglasses or wait for a good overcast day... okay so I totally did. I have been wanting to do some pictures of Liam since I have done so many of Abby and Sam. Liam is hard to photograph. He totally marches to his own drum and does not take direction and couldn't careless what I bribe him with. Then once he got his crazy haircut I figured I had to do some. Sam on the other hand LOVES getting his picture taken so I knew he would want in on the action. We headed out once Chris got home from work. Sam thought he was pretty hot stuff

Liam didn't know how he felt about the sunglasses. It didn't help that Chris pointed out that his undershirt was WAY to small for him :)

I told Sam he needed to show Liam how to look cool. He took his job very seriously

I tried to get some pics of Liam

But he was so apathetic and way more interested in the crowd of locals we had watching

Sam had a blast and of course was cheesin it up. Unfortunately his "picture smile" is NOT a nice natural one :)

At least he smiled though I only got 1 of Liam smiling

I have to show this one a little bigger because of my gosh it is is so Liam. He is totally thinking "Mom this is so lame, seriously, lame."

Of course the minute we were walking back to the house he was clapping his hands and all smiles.

In more hilarious news, this morning the boys found a big stickbug/grasshopper outside our house. One of his legs was broken and they were really upset by it. Sam brought it a leaf to eat and I told them we should leave it alone. We headed inside and Liam quietly went into his room, rooted through his plastic bug collection and found the praying mantis. I watched him run outside and followed him. He laid it done next to the dying bug and said "look mama now he has a friend." Oh my gosh I thought I was going to die of cuteness.

I love that he even laid it upside down like the real bug. In other news we are finally near being unpacked! I was sooo excited to get a few of my kitchen items. Especially the mixing bowls. I received these bowls as an engagement present over 8 years ago. A very sweet neighbor ordered them for me and they were my first introduction to crate and barrel. They at least make having to wash the dish's by hand more aesthetically pleasing :)

To celebrate having good bakeware again, and since Chris was at a Saturday morning breakfast with a bunch of gov't big wigs I decided we should make home made doughnuts. The boys were so excited about the prospect and eager to help

I don't own a biscuit cutter so we had to improvise and used an empty can of corn. Which I totally sliced my finger on cleaning out.

They turned out pretty delicious. NOTHING compared to Duncan, Krispe Kreme etc. but good enough to cut the craving I had for either of those ;) And it was a fun treat to have ready for when daddy came home!

The boys were upset we didn't make more but I was honestly terrified that I was going to start a fire. I have never made anything deep fried like this and even though we have a nice big fire extinguisher right in our kitchen I didn't want to have to use it :) Although I wonder, would our metal walls catch fire or just melt? I hope I don't find out!

A Sunday Beach Front Stroll

2010-06-14T23:56:00.000-07:00

It has been crazy days 'round here, which is good because it is all about to come to a screeching HAULT in two weeks when the mass exodus off the island occurs. But I am trying not to think about that :) This past weekend was a fun one. On saturday we took it nice and easy, found a yummy burger place (miracles do happen) and got the boys hair "cut", I think butchered is a better word but Chris keeps reminding me that it is only hair and that they don't notice (Pictures of said unnoticeable hair soon to come) after a lazy day we met everyone at the pool as usual around 5 pm. A lot of the Expat community was attending a gala that night to benefit an organization that works with those who are deaf or blind in Timor Leste. An amazing organization and Chris and I would love to support it, if the tickets didn't cost more than it would to put extra ceiling fans in the new house (see told yah it would be all I thought about). We really do want to become more philanthropic but for the next few years until we are no longer a charity case it will have to be donating time and services ha! ANYWAY, after swimming for an hour or so my friend MEredith gets a call that her friend is sick and they won't be using their two tickets would she want them? She then turned around and asked me if I wanted to go with her. We already had a babysitter lined up to go out to dinner so it turned out that Chris hung out with Meredith's husband Jan and us girls headed to the gala. I was apprehensive because yet again I was attending something that I SHOULD be much more dressed up for but brought NO gala type dresses with me (My little sister has been charged with finding me a modest one and mailing it ASAP). Thankfully black is so boring and nondescript I just sort of blended in. It was a lovely evening and the Prime Minister gave a stirring speech about how he donates half his pay check every month to charity's. He then informed us what that exact amount was and I almost choked on my water. Lets just say I didn't know we earned more then double the president of the country. Lots of money was raised and people got progressively drunker so we headed home. It was really great because most of ladies had attended that night sans husbands also so it was a pretty posh girls night out.

The next morning it was gorgeous so we decided to head out with the boys and take a walk down the beach road on the opposite side of the pier from our house. There is a restaurant at the end of the road called Ocean view that we have eaten at right around sunset and just about died at how gorgeous it was and thought we would check how it looks during the day time.
I put Abby in the new sundress I made her (once again no pattern and disgustingly easy) immediately the button popped off (why I don't sell things on Etsy) so the poor girl was safety pinned together :)

Liam and Sam have been really excited about riding in the wagon so we made sure to bring that.

But as soon as Amanda showed up with her bike...

Liam was begging her to trade spots. (I tricked Amanda into wearing the dress I made her by telling her it was a princess dress)

(Liam will now only wear 2 shirts, Superman and Batman. I have actually started LOCKING his closet to keep him from changing MULTIPLE times a day- where does he get that from? ahhhemmME). I really have taken on a whole new attitude toward clothing. The boys dress themselves 100% these days except for Sunday and special occasions... which mean it is like 95% of the time. It makes them happy, gives me less stress and well just works out better for everyone involved. True Liam's shorts are ALWAYS on backwards and usually Sam's shirt it (he likes to be able to see the cool pictures) but who cares seriously, who should I be trying to impress in Timor. I am telling you the fact that they are wearing clothes is good enough :) Anyhoo, the bike has a great handle so you can push but still lets them stear- not so great. Jan actually let amanda go right into the bush's to try and teach her how to stear. Chris's solution was to have a permenant pop oh wheelie

The kids got to see lots of cool things. LIke this mountain of beer bottles:

I wonder if they can recycle those here? I also said hilarious things I never thought I would like "Sam don't ride your bike into the goat" and "Liam look at that HUGE pig next to that baby"

How cute is that tiny baby! I just wanted to take her home and feed her. When we passed by on the way back she was sleeping in here:

Oh my goodness!! And you know those round pieces of wood and a stick that they have at colonial Williamsburg to represent toys from times gone by? Well they are still TOTALLY the rage here... only they use tires

Once we got to the restaurant we saw the owner giving all the locals children juice and ice creams. How sweet is that. It made me want to support him all the more

Amanda wanted a coconut which is ALWAYS hilarious to watch a child try and drink

Then we headed back this time walking on the beach for a little bit. But bikes

and wagons

are tall orders to pull and push through the sand. I think Adrienne had the best idea being all nice and snuggly in her carrier.

I love that even super simple things like taking a walk are such an adventure here. I don't know how many times a week I look at Chris and say "Can you believe how crazy our life is?" 99% of the time it is crazy AWESOME but every now and then those "Dili Days" sneak in and I suffer from massive island fever. Thankfully we only have just over 100 days until Italy and Egypt... Maybe on my next Dili Day I will make a paper chain to count down. That would eat up a good chunk of time and cover the majority of our living room HA!

Arggh you all ready for this? Pirate Party Paloosa!

2010-06-10T02:27:00.000-07:00

Duh duh duh dunt dunt dunt dunt- MORTAL COMBAT! Okay so Sams pirate party may have felt like mortal combat sometimes but it was AWESOME!!!!

I decided MONTHS ago to do this pirate themed party which gave my very talented friend Elizabeth plenty of time to complete her commission for Sams pirate banner featured above & through out... but I am getting a head of myself. Once the theme was settled on then began the search for awesome party garb. I found the Website for Meri Meri and went ballistic. I justified buying most of the pirate collection but drew the line at invitations that would cost around 80 dollars to send. Um sorry but no invitation is THAT cool, even if you can wear it after :) So I headed over to Oriental Trading and found the invitations in a bottle. I knew I wouldn't get them in time so I had them mailed to Kerstin who was conveniently coming the next week (Man that was such a cool visit)! Poor Kerstin headed to the post office on her lunch break thinking she will pick up an envelope with invitations... because that is what normal people do. The postmaster comes out with a huge box and she reminds herself that it is me she is dealing with ha! So she shoved 24 plastic bottles in all the little empty spaces and then suffered through rolling up all the little invites, emptying sand into them etc. See what happens when you come to visit? :) I also wanted to make sure that each of the attendees could really feel like a pirate so I ordered about ten yards of black burlap and made each of them Pirate tunics!

I just made little sandwich board like tunics and wrote their "Pirate name" in glittery puffy paint.

I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with more than 30 pirate names. I cut long strips of different colored fabric for their belts aka sword holders and let them pick which they wanted. They each got a sword an eye patch and a bandana to go a long with it!
Buccaneer Bianca who has since lost that last pesky top tooth

Sammy got to be Captain Sammy since it was his party and Liam was 1st mate!

(Grandma Jan, those hats you got them for Colonial Williamsburg are extremely loved and well used!!!)
Once all the tunics were sorted out we let the kids pick out their tough pirate themed temporary tattoos. The Pirate mommies all got glittered eye patch's

while the dads go fake stick on mustaches... some also donned the few Jack Sparrow hats

When Elizabeth sent the banner she was awesome enough to include matching fabric for me to make Abby something, so Abby got in on the action!

Although to be totally honest we had 3 nanny's that night so she spent most of the evening with Che Che while I ran around like a crazy person. Since our "stuff" had arrived the night before I decided to turn one of the huge wooden crates into a make shift photo booth. It turned out so so but I did love this one:

Once everyone was decked out and tattooed up we sent them on a treasure hunt. I totally meant to make a treasure box but spaced it so at the last minute grabbed Abby's jewelry box and put all the booty in there. Since most of the searchers are still illiterate we just gave them hints of places to look. (Once again, living on a huge guarded compound is AWESOME-- tons of space and not a single worry about kids getting out, lost, run over etc.) Each child would bring me a piece of gold and receive a treat! Then it was off to the pirate pinata. I tried to take some good pictures of this but bats and small children don't mix and I actually ended up holding the pinata and letting them whack it until Chris finally just broke it open ha!
Just in case they hadn't had enough sugar we took a break from activities to have snacks and cake.
We had three tables over flowing with food by the time it was all brought out. This was the parents table with more "adult" food

Most peoples favs were the licorice and pirates booty but I loved the fruit salad. Look at the size of this papaya I got for 2 bucks!!!

Holy cow I had more papaya then I knew what to do with! To drink we had Root beer for the adults and juice for the kids. And for those who wanted to keep with the theme: Coconuts!

Our Gardner was kind enough to cut about 20 of them down a few hours before the party. I think if you were stranded on a desert island barely scraping by then yes coconut water would be fantastic... as it is I would recommended sticking with the root beer :)Sammy's cake was awesome- in theory... didn't look as cool in real life

I used a bunt cake to try and make it look like a volcano, brown sugar for Sand, blue raspberry jello for water and playmobile characters so people would know what in the world I was going for. Sammy loved it though and thats what maters!

Even though I had made a TON of cupcakes most of the kids wanted the blue jello ha! (It is one of those things you don't often see in Timor)

(It was so great having 3 helpers to magically replenish everything through out the night! Every time I turned around there were more chips and dip, cupcakes, drinks it was awesome)
Once it got dark the twinkle and globe lights turned on.

These globe lights from Pottery Barn were so cool and surprisingly cheap, I am thinking about keeping them on our deck year round :) I had also been saving the tons of glass baby food jars Abby had been going through and put little tea lights in them then put them every few feet on our garden path. I was a little worried about fire and kids but it was a total non-issue! I think that is because most of them were hovered around the HUGE fire to do s'mores!

They are such an american tradition and it is near impossible to get marshmallows here unless you can mail food in like we can (seriously the state dept and its amazing perks- don't get me started) I think the cuties mainly like melting the marshmallows off their sticks :) After s'mores we let Sammy open presents with the help of a lot of friends! Then let everyone run wild!

I mean they were by this point chocabox full of sugar thanks to yours truly. It was hilarious to watch them sword fight and search for treasure and try to scare us moms

It was nice to take a breather and relax with some of my mommy friends and the baby pirates

Sammy took a break to talk to his preschool teacher Ms. Naomi. He was SOOOO excited that she came, and even more excited when she gave him a soccer ball!

When the kids were ready to head home they each got a booty bag with of course more candy...

What I loved the most is how many people came up to me and told me they heard Sam exclaiming that this was the best party ever!!! What made it the best though is how wonderful our friends are here and how totally game for a laugh they are! While I was totally exhausted after, Sam and Liam were, of course, wound up like tops... look at my crazy eyes again and hilarious attempt at a pirate outfit

The next morning we were still reeling and it was all the boys talked about over breakfast. Liam even put a mustache back on!

This morning in the car Sammy was talking about his next birthday and how he wants an airplane party... hmmm. At least I have a year to come up with ideas for it right? Hope your weekend was as full of laughter as ours!

Isn't she lovely

2010-06-08T23:36:00.000-07:00

Our friends Lisa and Paul asked to do a family session this week. They are a ridiculously good looking family (Lisa has the coolest freckles) from Sweden so I was very excited. But a little nervous because Paul is also a photographer and it is always nerve wracking shooting other photographers. I asked if it was okay to be a bit more creative since he can get fantastic photos himself. Hopefully they like the out come...

see what I mean about those freckles!

I told Paul to think about their wedding day and his eyes went huge it was hilarious after we banished that thought we got this one:

We got some great ones of the boys and of the family but the sweet internet here in Dili is against me so I only got these 3 to upload.

Lisa is just so gorgeous... I have freckles in all the wrong places. I remember on my wedding day the person who did my make up said "Okay were going to cover all these freckles up right?" Ha!

Mid Life Crisis

2010-06-08T01:15:00.000-07:00

My little Sister Claire is ten years younger then me. I VIVIDLY remember holding her as a newborn thinking "oh my gosh when she is 16 I will be 26!!!" Yeah that day has come and past and oh my goodness now she has gone and graduated high school. It is funny because I feel like we are just getting closer in age instead of both of us getting older haaaaa! (wishful thinking) I didn't know what to get her for graduation all the way from Timor until genius struck (if I do say so myself) Everyone wants cool senior pictures! Anytime pictures and UT are in the same sentence for me it means Leah Miller. She was kind enough to do a session for Claire AND her two friends. You have got to check out the cute pics on her blog : http://leahmillerphotography.com/blog/
Leah did such a fabulous job. She kindly gave me the password to view all the proofs on her blog (all 150 of them!!!) And I was blown away. I am TELLING YOU if you are in UT you have GOT to book a session with her. You will not be disappointed. Carebear I hope you liked your present and I am so very proud of you. Watch out BYU here comes another Murphy girl!

Its been a long time

2010-06-04T13:40:00.000-07:00

But I actually had a photo session... and have 3 more in the next week. Wow when it rains it pours. The other day we had a fun little shoot with Katie and Ana. Katie is in Sam's school and well, I love her. I think it is because she is crazy about me in return. She is always more excited to see me at the end of the day then Sam, so I just can't help but be sucked into her adorableness and give her anything she wants :) Her mom wanted to do some pictures for their Grandma before they head home to London. (There is a mass exodus from the island during winter break, we will be going it practically alone for the next six weeks ahhhhhhhhhhh!). Since they were for a Grandma I ignored my urge to take them to this abandoned church I found and stuck with pictures in my garden, it seemed more Grandma friendly then the shattered glass windows haa!

Ana was adorable and just wandered around picking up Gardenias. She was super mellow and Angela and I couldn't figure it out. Then later that afternoon she crashed with a really high fever and has been sick for days! Poor sweet girl.

Katie on the other hand would be great for a few moments and then something would set off a little bit of a pout. Her mum and I would just turn and focus on Ana and she would come around.

I LOVED this shot because Sam literally laid down on the floor and said "Katie go like this" and she did it and then looked up at him and smiled ha! Who knew all my pesky picture taking of Sam had sunk in and left him a posing coach :) Anyways, it was sooooo nice to get to take some pictures again of children not your own, with a parent as into getting them smile as you! I think I will post more pics on the photog site but that requires good internet and a few moments of down time..... neither of which are plentiful around here :) Yesterday afternoon I was picking up Sam when Chris called and announced that our stuff had been delivered. What the what!!! Every time I forget that Murphy's law dominates my life BAM! Something like this comes back to smack me. Tomorrow is Sam's ridiculously huge birthday party. Chris and I keep teasing that we are warming up so he can be on "My super sweet 16" a show we DESPISE and believe most of the parents should either be punished or at least required to attend a parenting course. The thing is since this is such a small island you either invite only his best closest friends OR you invite EVERYONE so we are expecting close to 80 people. And we now have 200 box's cluttering out entire living room, flowing out onto our deck and into the garage!!! Thank heavens we had planned to hold it outside but if anyone has to use the bathroom they are going to have some mad mountain climbing skills to get to it! Not that I am not grateful that after more than FIVE Months we actually have our stuff, just could the timing be worse? Guess I know what I will be doing ALL next week ha!

Hurry, push her down!

2010-06-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

Abby is sooooo close to walking and I can't believe it. I am seriously freaking out about my baby girl getting so big! It is funny because with Sam I thought "oh my goodness get big enough for us to play and go to the park!" and I am feeling TOTALLY the opposite now. To be honest I have consciously NOT worked on standing with Abby. But now that she is such a crawler she will simply crawl over to a ledge and pull herself up. We've still got two months until she is one and I am hoping she doesn't take her first steps until a little closer to her birthday. Just so I can relish these last few months with out 3 cuties wreaking havoc on the house :)

She has also decided she no longer wants to wear headbands and bracelets. Unless I do a REALLY good job of distracting her the minute I put one on the hands are up and ripping it off. She has broken 5 bracelets now and I have given up for the time being. I know eventually she will WANT to wear them (unless she goes through an ernest tom boy stage like I did).

I just have to include this last one because it cracks me up. She totally looks like she is going to get frisked.

But after falling forward and on her bum a few times:

it is understandable to want to get a good grip on something. She is still a HUGE mommas girl and will NOT let anyone else hold her if I am in the room, which I must admit I LOVE. The first time she went to che che without crying my heart broke a little. (I know totally LAME of me but still).

I see so much a our families in her. She has her Aunt Robyn s huge eyes, her daddies dimples, my dark hair, her aunt Claire's "dinkiness", as we call it. Anyways I just wanted to share some pics of her before Sam's pirate party bonanza!

Last Picture

2010-06-01T06:16:00.001-07:00

I just had to share my favorite picture from Atauro. It was totally one of those candids that you end up loving. It is of Nicola early in the morning and lets just say I want an awesome hat like hers and want to look as good in it!

I don't know what it is I like about it so much, maybe it is just that I know what a lovely person Nicola is and so it means more to me. Either way I am glad I caught it.
Brief Aside: One of my amazing friends informed me that one of my absolute favorite fabric designers came out with a wallpaper line this month, be still me heart. It can be seen HERE. The sad part is that my adorable husband who never ever has any real opinions on decorating etc. and always gives me free reign has informed me that we will under no circumstances have wallpaper in our new house-- what the what!! Haaa! I guess I should listen to his ONE request in EIGHT years...... but there is always hope that he might change his mind right?

Hard to have seat belts when your sitting on a board

2010-05-31T04:59:00.000-07:00

One of the last things we did on the island was let the kids go on a tuk tuk ride. It is essentially a motorcycle hooked up to a wagon of sorts, think the tropical version of a hayride. When the driver pulled up we asked him how much for a 5 minute ride, he told us 15 bucks, we said no way and offered him five for however long it would take them. The kids were so excited and jumped right up in.

We decided that Nicola and Chris would ride a long and attempt to keep everyone safe. Nicola asked sam to move over the other side to balance things out and he looked completely indigent and replied "but I'm sitting next to Carmen." So he stayed put and we rearranged others (of course not moving carmen in the process!)

The driver and his son got such a kick out of me snapping away and the kids giggling.

So off they went all perched on little wooden bench's Chris Calm as a cucumber and Nicola feeling the same anxiety as me!

Meredith and I thought we would take the babies for a walk while they were gone. It is funny in Dili the children (especially girls) run when I ask to take a picture of them. Along the side of the road there was this little gang of boys. I asked them if I could take a picture and they struck a pose

When I showed them it on the screen they freaked out laughing and teasing each other and then struck this one:

This is exactly why I am saving up for a polaroid. I wanted so bad to be able to give them a copy of the picture. We walked a little further and there were this adorable girls

When we got back we were surprised that the tuk tuk wasn't back--45 minutes later it finally came back. They had gotten petrol, taken a sick little boy to the hospital and delivered some packages!!!! HA! Along the way Addie had fallen asleep and Liam was almost there. I am sure Chris and Nicola's bums were numb for a week but man what a hilarious experience for the kids!

Coming Home.. to OUR house

2010-05-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

Don't worry the tuk tuk pictures are coming... Because I know so many people are on the edge of their seat waiting for them- NOT. But Chris and I are finally wrapping up things to buy our home in Williamsburg! I already made comments about it on Facebook but some of our family has asked for a link to see them. We will be building in the Village at Quarterpath in the "Jefferson" which can be found HERE. We are adding in a fourth bedroom and extra bathroom so it is second floor option 2 if you are taking a gander at the floor plans. If you want to see actual pictures their facebook page HERE has a ton. We have been lucky enough to work with our friend Katie who has done lots of videos and made us a blog with pictures and updates. I am a little nervous that when we actually see it the colors we have picked out from across the globe will all clash and look horrible ha! It has been really fun thinking about wall colors etc. And although I never ever ever thought I would, I am totally thinking about wallpaper. I KNOW Ahhhhhh. I cannot count the number of walls I have taken it off and cursed the people who put it up. But when it looks like THIS or like THIS, well how cool would that be to have on at least one wall... or maybe five? Ha! It won't be completed until October and we won't see it until next June when we come to the states but you are now warned that every now and then there are going to be house updates and probably some crazy typical kelly decor ideas. We are really excited to be calling Williamsburg home again! This week we also celebrated out 8 year anniversary! Whoo hoo! eight years ago it was just the two of us with no clue what was in store. Now it is all five of us partying in East Timor

Chris and I had a yummy dinner at Daya one of my favs. After straightening my hair for about an hour I walked outside and POOF so much for that! 99% humidity and straight hair are oxymorons.

Chris and I are lovin' that Abby is keeping her dark hair!! After dinner we came home to a nice quiet, clean house thank you thank you che che ha! I always feel ridiculous when it comes to presents for anniversary's,especially since we just had mothers day and I received this in the mail
So we kept our tradition from being students of not getting each other anything. Just enjoying each others company is enough! Plus I am sort of getting to the age where if I REALLY want something we just save up and get it... it makes birthdays and anniversaries a lot less about presents and far more enjoyable.

Who doesn't like swimming at 6 am?

2010-05-27T21:14:00.000-07:00

While Atauro was an amazing adventure I have to admit the night time was MISERABLE. It was soooo crazy hot. I have never ever been that hot. There was no AC and no fans. The ocean breeze stopped abruptly around 9pm and then it was just stagnint hot air. Barry's little twins have already contracted Malarie SEVEN times!!!! OMgosh! So of course I was miss crazy with bug spray and making the kids wear their christmas feety pajamas and barracading their bug nets around them. I felt awful when around 11Pm Sam was sobbing because he was so hot. I ended up taking off their jammies and then spent the entire night making sure all three bed nets on the kids beds were tight and that they hadn't snuck out (something they do often at home). So when Sam woke up at 5:30 am and crawled into the hammock with me I thought this is the worst vacation ever!!! Then we watched the sun come up together and I was in awe

We got our swim suits on and headed for an early morning swim.

The light at this time was AMAZING and it felt fantastic out!

Since we were not the only people who had been miserable all night we were joined by lots of our friends for our 6 am swim

The kids were excited not to have to wear their rash guards for a moment and not have me chase them around with sunscreen. Sammy loved that he could go out far and still touch

Once Briggs came out Sam wanted to follow him around, he is Six and so cool :)

I sat on the beach watching the kids and relaxing. A local mommy walked past with her baby boy and I had to try and take a picture. Once I reviewed it I noticed how young she is and I think she was actually his older sister.

It is crazy how much the kids here are left to their own devices and the older siblings basically raise the younger ones. I've lost count of the number of times i have seen two boys Sam and Liams age walking the streets together or the older carrying the younger. It is so interesting to compare cultures. This got me really excited to watch that documentary about babies ;) Around 7 am Liam (who slept like a log!) came wandering down in his suit. Jan was nice enough to take him in since I was now all comfy on the beach

Once Carmen and Amanda joined us the party really started

Sam LOVES Carmen. He is totally smitten with her and hello who wouldn't be! The kids grabbed there buckets and went star fishing.

Briggs and Oskar donned their gear and went a little deeper

But the little cuties did just fine were they could touch. Sam wanted to find Carmen a starfish so bad and when he finally did she had already found one herself but was more than happy to have two!

They ended up finding 6 starfish right in the shallows

It was hilarious to hear them talk about the "hundreds of Tongues" and where its mouth was and which ones were poisonous. They filled up a bucket and carried all their starfish up to inspect over lunch. I was suprised that Liam and Sam would touch them since they wouldn't go near them at the Living Museum in Newport News but I guess it helps to have older cooler boys and a cute girl watching you :)

After lunch Brigg's dad Peter came back from his 6 hour snorkel trip (he was encountered by 2 hammer head sharks!!!! I would have freaked out.) and let the kids try out his surf board. Addie hoped right on and could keep her balance pretty well!

Carmen was fearless...

but didn't stay up that long ;)

After that Carmen got wise and simply had Sam pull her around on it,

which Sam was MORE than happy to do :)

after so much swimming, running and starfishing, all on little to now sleep, everyone was ready for a nap! I went to grab a hammock but they were occupied by the daddies and gorgeous baby girls!

Abby was so happy!

So while Liam slept and Abby and Daddy swung I strapped a life vest and mask on Sammy and took him out for a deeper snorkel. It was so fun to have him hold onto my back and cruise among the reef. He would duck down with me every now and then to get a closer look but was just as happy to bob on the surface with his face in the water. He got tired after a half hour though and I made him walk back (We walked soooo slowly it was comical, every few minutes he would give me something else to hold that had become "to heavy") Chris and Abby were now sitting out in the Balaes and Abby gave me this look:

she is SUCH a mommas girl it is ridiculous. Chris and I have no idea how to break her of it but ma has it gotten bad, adorable but bad. As soon as I sat next to her she was good to go

She has started pointing to everything and it cracks us up. You can ask her any question and she will just point at random things. Chris likes to ask her who her favorite is while I am holding her and she of course points to him :)

Sam and Liam took a break and Sam filled Liam in on his repeated rejections from Carmen, and Liam gave him some comfort ;)

Then came the Tuk Tuk ride...