Going Sailing

So we started moving in the middle of the night.  I'm pretty sure everyone woke up.  You could feel it.  It was not a smooth ride.  The 5 girls were in a room together, and at one point I woke up and heard them all talking and giggling.  Some people slept on the deck too.  It's a special treat to be able to see the stars when you live in Jakarta.

I missed part of the morning because I was sick.  I don't think it was motion sickness, but I heard a couple of kids puked into the ocean that morning.  Actually, I didn't 'hear' it, I was told that's what happened.

This is what we all woke up to...

Ocean in all directions.

Fishing boat.

This is the boat we stayed on for 3 days.  It was supposed to be a 3 hour tour.  If not for the courage of our fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost.

Just kidding.  It was called The Cecilia Ann.

First stop:  Ujung Kulon National Park.  This was an island called Pulau Peucang.

The water was the perfect temperature.

This beach was perfect for finding seashells.  There were so many different varieties and sizes.

Mads was doing this thing where he would jump up and then land in the splits.  I promise I haven't been letting him watch 80s rock videos.  I have no idea where he learned it.  It was pretty entertaining though.  And it didn't even hurt!  The sand was amazing.

(He just told me he learned it from Gru on Despicable Me.  Then he showed me his whole dance.  Hilarious)

Perfect perfect sand.

My obligatory feet-in-the-sand picture.  Plus, I don't ever want to wonder if I was there or not.

There were monkeys on the beach.  I think this is the one that drank my diet coke.  They warned us not to bring food because the monkeys will riffle through your stuff.  There were a ton of them.  You could see them watching us in the trees.

We also saw a couple boars, a deer, and a monitor lizard.  The pigs were eating jellyfish.  So strange.

Building castles.

I think he tried to bury himself.

Making Dare a mermaid.

Going back to the big boat.

I know I said 'perfect' a lot.  But seriously.  It was pretty amazing.

After we had a late lunch, we moved the boat to another part of the island (or another island, I can't remember) and we went snorkeling.  I didn't take any pictures!  I am kind of upset with myself, but there was a lot to do and see.  I think the PGs have some pictures though.  All of us snorkeled except for G.  I couldn't get him to wear the goggles and look in the water long enough to see any fish.  But the rest of us saw fish.  Tons of them!  It was so great.

Long Waits and Fish Eyes

I should be blogging about the super interesting holiday that took place during August.  And about the reason we had days off of school and work.  And about fasting, and what that means, and all the other traditions.  But I am too excited, so I am going to skip all that and go straight to...  we took our first vacation!

Day one was picking up Nate from work and driving to another city to get on our boat.  We had to stop for dinner.  And for a potty break.

This is the bathroom outside the restaurant we stopped at.  So colorful!  There is nothing that these kids can't handle.  If nothing else, the bathrooms in Indonesia will make us all stronger people.

Inside, waiting for food.  Nate ordered.  I guess because he could read the menu.  We got satay, and some fish.  It was scary and tasty, but mostly scary.  Nate ate a fish eyeball.  Owen thought that sounded fun, so he ate the other one.  Gr-oss.

The outside of the restaurant.  It looked so festive.

The guy in charge of the boat wanted to have everyone listen to the rules and go over where we were going.

The plan was to start sailing at 2am and go to Ujung Kulon National Park.  Since we got to the boat pretty late, we mostly just found somewhere to settle, and went to sleep.
We were so happy the drive didn't take the 7 hours we thought it would.  It was less than 3.  Miracle?

Like Nobody's Business

G and I have had a lot of alone time since school started.  He loves it.  He hasn't said he misses the kids yet.  He is soaking it all in.  All the attention, that is.

I love it too.  We have a good time.

We keep busy.  There is always something to do, and even going to the grocery store takes up quite a bit of the day.

He never leaves my side.  He wants to see what I'm doing on the computer.  He wants to be on the counter when I'm making food.  I can hardly shake him when I want to take a shower!

We spend a lot of our time talking.  That boy sure loves to talk.

Most of our conversations begin with him asking why.  I will answer.  I'm usually right, he doesn't ask that hard of questions yet.  And he will respond with, "Actually, it's because of this..."  So he totally doesn't believe my answer, or he is just testing me to see what I will say.  I'll correct him again, and we'll just go back and forth with our own answers to his why questions.  He uses the word 'actually' way too much for a 3 year old.

Or, he'll ask why, I'll answer, and he'll then say, "But why?"  My answers are never good enough.  For example...
G - Why is that guy smiling at me?
Me - Because he thinks you're cute.
G - But why?
Me - Because you are cute.
G - But why?
And so on, and so on...

Holy Hippo Ears

I guess my stuff isn't at the bottom of the ocean after all.

 This is called a big box of irony.

Let me tell you why...  The first time I went grocery shopping here in Jakarta, I was disturbed because I couldn't find anything I needed or wanted.  It is better now, and I quite like shopping actually.  But back then it seemed like the stores only had 2 things:  nutrition drinks, and single serving noodle mixes.  They have aisles dedicated to noodle mixes!  You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not.  Whole aisles!  I was shocked at the time.  I couldn't believe that there were so many brands, and so many flavors!  And of course they are dirt cheap.  Like about 7 cents a packet cheap.  So you can imagine my horror when I opened a box full of Top Ramen.  This was carefully chosen to go with us in Utah.  It was stored safely while we spent our time in DC.  And it was shipped on a very large, slow boat so we could receive it (16 months later!) in a country that has more noodle mixes than they know what to do with!  We laughed.  It was fun.

Here's what the kids did the day we got the stuff we haven't seen for 16 months...

Put on old Halloween costumes and watched TV.

Going Through A Lot of Hassell

Well, Mads started school.  I did everything I could to stop it, but it happened anyway.

He was excited!  I was so happy about that, because all summer he was saying he didn't want to go to school.  I forced the girls to say only great things about school.  I think it may have worked.

He liked his first day.  When we were talking about it, he told me his teacher was mean.  I was surprised and asked him if she got mad or yelled, or said mean things or if he got in trouble.  He said no to all those things and then said, "Because recess isn't very long."

 Love this picture.  He looks genuinely afraid.  Of BA.

This is Mads' 2nd week, and he leaves for school not wanting to go, but comes home happy and excited.  That boy does not like to be woken up.  It takes me a good 15-20 minutes to get him out of bed.  And finally, when he gets up, I usually have to get him dressed myself and put his breakfast in his mouth.  He is not very willing to be productive in the morning.

Yesterday I asked him what he likes about school.  He told me recess and playing with toys.  It is so strange for me to have a boy in school.  It is a totally different experience.  But when I asked him if he likes reading and art and music, he said yes to all those things.

He told me this morning that there is a boy who is not fun to play with because all he talks about is Star Wars.  I wonder what kids think about Mads talking about Mario games all the time...

He is excited to start math.  He says, "I want to show off my skills!"  He is trying to be funny of course.

On the first day, I only cried on the way there a little.  It helped that he was happy and excited.

That night at dinner, while everyone was chatting, I realized (again, I'm sure I've realized this before) that we can never go back to the way things were.  Now four of my kids have this whole other life outside our home, and it is a little hard to move on.  All I can do is hope we've done a good job at teaching them to choose the right.

His teacher is from New Zealand and South Africa, so she has an accent.  We thought it was funny yesterday when he told us about the star he brought home.  He said he got it because, "I gave it a go."  I can't wait to hear all the other phrases he picks up.

I've always wanted to use that spell

Whoever was mad at Indonesia, and took the movies away, got over their issues.  So movies are back!  People who were around before the movies were taken away would talk about the theaters, and the movie watching experience, like some long lost friend that they couldn't stand being parted from.  They assured me they would come back, and I would love it.  I did!  I saw the final, very sad, Harry Potter movie.  I just couldn't look at that poor sad baby anymore!  Or when Harry watched Snape's memories... yes, there were tears.

 Do I look cozy?  I'm not going to lie, the blanket was a nice touch.  I wasn't hungry, but they give you menus and you can order food just like a restaurant.  They bring you drinks too.  Get this... all for around 5 bucks!  So awesome.  I can't wait to take the kids to see Kung Fu Panda next week!

It was ours, then it wasn't, then it was again.

Move out...

 One last picture with our view.

 Good-bye Pakobu-LAME-O!

Move in...

 The table all the stuff is on, is the dining room.  The room where G is, is the family room.

I didn't take the best pictures of our house.  I didn't take them with the intention of sharing them.  But since a few people asked, these are what I have right now.

Garage.

The same day we moved in, our air shipment arrived.  It was nice, but I realized how little 1000 pounds can be.

Those young men took every item that was in those boxes, unwrapped them carefully, and put them exactly where I asked them.  And they were all smiles.  It was awesome.  Oh, they took all the paper and boxes away too.

 Here is the front room.  I haven't figured out what to call it yet.  Living room?

 This has been dubbed the Sun Room.  I think it's everyone's favorite.
Those snacks the kids are eating are L.A. Bears.  Isn't that an awesome name?  Things like that make Asia so fun.  Anyway, they are like chocolate Teddy Grahams, but with no artificial ingredients.  And they are dirt cheap!  Each of those bags cost about 1600 rupiah, which is like 18 cents.  It's weird.  Sometimes I don't get the pricing for things here.  Too bad I can only find them in one store, and it was close to the apartment.

 Here's the family area upstairs.  Don't know what to call this room either.

The boys were so happy to play with some of their toys.  It had been almost 3 months.  Three months with only the luggage we took on the plane.  That's a  l o n g  t i m e.  Thank you to all those people who advised us to max out our luggage allowance.

Here's the little neighborhood. 

As soon as the scooters came out of the box, the kids were riding them.  It is a pretty bumpy ride, but no one's complaining.

 And the pool.

G and Mads can both swim.  Three months ago they couldn't.  I guess that's what swimming almost everyday does.

We are all loving the house.  Some of our favorite things are...

-being able to play outside

-being able to take walks

-having a grocery store in walking distance

-more space

-having the street to scoot and ride bikes on

-hearing birds chirp in the morning

-the Sun Room

-seeing trees and all kinds of cool plants everyday

Bad things...

-the apartment was so new!

-mosquitos

-stairs

-ants

-commute, or driving anywhere, anytime really

Our apartment was great.  We were happy there.  It was just difficult to deal with the people there.  They were starting to get to me.  And we were just done with apartment living.

Ragunan

One of the cool things about living in another country, is that even when you do normal kid things, like going to the zoo, it can turn out to be a very interesting experience.

This zoo cracked me up because it was huge, and had tons of animals, but they were all the same animals.  For example, they had elephants in 4 or 5 different areas.

 One of the many elephants we saw.

Some of the animals would come right up to you.  I'm confident they were looking for food.  I don't think there would be any issues if you slipped the animals a grape.  Or an apple.  Or an oreo cookie even.

Even though there are these signs.  I love the hearts.

Cheese!

Cool trees.

K, so I have gotten quite used to people taking pictures of my kids.  It happens literally everyday.  So when I saw a couple dudes getting out their phones when they walked by us, I thought nothing of it.  He held up the phone and clicked a picture, just like they always do.  This time he showed it to me, and it was of me!  What?!!  I was so confused.  And I looked that way too.  In the picture.  So I made him take another one.  hee hee.  And then we took one with my camera.  It was very silly.

Don't worry.  I am very humble about this situation.  I know it's not because of my looks.

That's my Austalian friend.  Love her.  I've never had an Australian friend before.  Sometime I'll write a post about how I giggle in my head when I am listening to her talk.

She is the reason we went to the zoo that day.  I was having a hard time being motivated.  I'm so glad we went.

This is the food court.

We brought our lunch.  Not that any of us have a problem with Indonesian food, but it's tricky when you don't know anything about the place you are buying from, and you don't speak the language.

Another cool tree.

Dude fishing at the zoo.  Ironic.

You could tell the monkeys were used to being fed too.  In fact, there were guys selling peanuts right by their cages.  And those guys were standing right by the "don't feed the animals" signs.  The monkeys got really mad at you if you didn't give them any food.  They would scream and hiss.  Carmen warned me that they sometimes pee on you!  Thank goodness we avoided that situation.

Having lunch.

This was a hard group to get to smile at me all at the same time.

My favorite part of the day was when I learned that there is a taxidermy shop there.  At the zoo!  So hilarious.  It was right next to the gift shop.  So you could buy a t-shirt, and a stuffed orangutan all in one convenient location.

New New New

First day of school...

-     It seems like I've been making preparations for this day for a long time.  I started about 8 months ago by filling out applications online.  To say the process was complicated would be an understatement.  I think I had to sign over each of the kids' first born child.  But they got in, and they started.

-     I wish I would have ordered the stuff we needed 8 months ago.  I slacked a bit, but only because we didn't have internet forever.  We still haven't gotten their backpacks and shoes.

-     It is an amazing school.  We are very excited.

-     School starts at 7:30, and we have a long commute.  I woke up at 5:15, and I woke the kids up around 5:45.  Ugh. 

-     There was a little drama in the morning.  Mads got lost, and there were tears.  When I dropped Dare off at her classroom, there were tears.  But that's it!  I call it a success.

-     Mads doesn't start until Monday.  The tears may be mine that day.

-     I thought it was funny that there was even a question about what nationality the girls' teachers were.  They are all American, but I'm pretty sure Mads' is from New Zealand.

-     Most of the students are from Asia.

-     The girls bought their lunch.  There was a choice between "Western" and "Asian".  Asian was chicken and rice.  And Western was beef and potatoes.  And rice!  I guess they have a hard time not serving rice with meals.

-     The girls had a good day.  They like the school and their teachers.  

The Horn Culture

I took this when we were in Hong Kong.  It's funny.

We sat in that tunnel for a good 15 minutes or so.  Just listening.

Lollipop's

There's an apostrophe in the name because that's how they wrote it.  Nate and I had a big discussion as to why there was an apostrophe.  He thinks it bad punctuation, but I assured him the cat who owns the place is named Lollipop, so it is correct.  In all honesty, it's probably bad punctuation.  There's enough of it around here after all.

So, indoor playgrounds are popular here.  Probably because it's hot outside.  So in all the malls, there is something to do for the kids.  We decided to try one out.  Lollipop's.

The helmets seemed like overkill if you ask me.  It was like a .354 mile per hour zip line.  Better safe than sorry, I guess.

This slide was slow unless you were wearing slick pants, then you were out of control.  They should have worn helmets.

My boys with the N boys.

All the kids on the spinning cat named Lollipop.

We had dessert afterwards.  We got a crap load of shaved ice.