Making Christmas Happen

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

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

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

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:

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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 :)