Alive and Well....and Happy!

Merry Christmas!

In case you all were worried, we are still alive! We have had a busy holiday season and end of 2011!! Time has flown by!

Top 10 things to mention:

1. Ellie can count to thirty in Chinese (she could probably keep going, she just usually loses her attention around thirty) and Siri can count to 10 in Chinese!

2. Ellie is FOUR!

3. Siri is getting her two year molars! :(

4. Some of Joey's family came to visit for Christmas. So fun!

5. My parents arrive tonight!

6. There are actual moments where I'm cold enough to drink a warm tea and not break into a sweat!

7. We have yet to find YUMMY Italian food in Taiwan that doesn't have a small hint of Chinese flavor.

8. We have entered Chinese New Year season which VERY quickly replaced the Christmas season!

9. We are looking to FINALLY purchase a scooter.

10. Ellie and Siri are getting too big too fast! They have adjusted so well to Taiwan and I believe they really feel at home here!

Feeling Settled

Slowly but surely, we are settling into our apartment. I (Joey) have included a few pictures below so that you can see the work in progress.

This is our dining room. The balcony looks out from the second floor onto the yard and playground for the building. Gas canisters are out on the balcony as well. We change out one of them about every 2-3 weeks. Our A/C unit can also be seen through the window. The pictures on the wall are a project I just finished with B&W photos of our family and lots of relatives. Turns out frames are super cheap in Taiwan.

This is a view into our kitchen, which is across from the B&W photos. It's very big, which is great, and we have a kiddo table in the middle. On the left of the photo is the hall to the front door. We just got a bench for that small hallway with shoe baskets for the kids. And the wall hanging is a present from Jamie from Uganda! (thanks, Jame)

This is the living room, which is directly across from the dining room. The balcony looks out onto the street. And yes, I took this photo right after the Cards won the World Series.

This is the back of the living room.

And this is down the hall. The study is the first door on the right, and the master bedroom is the second. The play room is the first on the left, followed by the girls' room, and the guest bathroom is at the end of the hall. And a Halloween paper chain is still hanging from the ceiling.

This is the girls' playroom. We finally have organizers for their millions of tiny toys! There is also a futon, not pictured, in this room.

Valence and window...

And a glorious puzzle floor, much welcome after walking on cement floors all day.

This is the study/sewing/music room. It's hard to tell, but the walls are actually light blue. I'm very proud of the wall hanging on the right. It's a cloth from the Hani people in Yunnan province that I bought when I was in middle school. It's mostly been an end-table cover for years, but now it's stretched over a homemade frame looking all old and cool. :) The smaller cloth is a present from some Navajo friends we met through church in Arizona.

This is the girls' room. We just got them the little reading chairs.

And I just put this shelf up, which was a huge pain because there was a design error. Hopefully it doesn't fall on Ellie's head in the night...

Come visit! We have a futon waiting for you! And maybe soon we'll have curtains, too! :)

Since my last post...

We've been to Taichung twice (This is "the plaza" at Joey's alma matter: Morrison-Taichung.):

Went to "crazy Sue's":

Went to the beaches of Kenting for three days:

And got completely fried:

Ellie was in a Taiwanese wedding:

And the girls went to a halloween party here in our apartment complex.

Ellie was a fairy:

Siri was a strawberry :

We even went trick-or-treating:

Watched other people bob for apples:

And played musical mats:

(Clearly Ellie lost here)

I can't believe it's already November!!

Latest Happenings

Thought some of you might appreciate a video of a look around part of Joey's school. This is taken from the side of the building. And as I scan around you can see our apartment building near the track.

Joey's about the only one close to being able to help Ellie with her homework as it is all in Chinese:

Though Siri likes to pretend to participate:

Here the girls are trying their first (but not last) tian bu la:

And here are some creatures we see around here fairly regularly like it or not.

A Lizard:

And.....a cockroach (Thankfully, this one is on the outside of our window):

Ellie Kay...

1. LOVES school! We struggled with our decision to send her to school ALL day three days a week, but I must say she is LESS crabby on the evenings she comes home from school than on her days off. Getting to school in the morning still entails a little fuss about not wanting to go, but every time I pick her up she comes running up to me with a huge smile and lots of stories to tell me. She also seems to be making LOTS of friends, despite the communication barrier.

2. Is learning Chinese. She has really taken to attempting to learn Chinese. While if you ask her to say something in Chinese she will still only say, "Ni Jiao shenme mingzi?", it seems at interesting moments, Ellie will say something in Chinese or at least something that resembles something in Chinese. Play time consists of Ellie shouting out incoherent phrases in Chinese, which I'm thinking MUST be a good thing! She is also learning Zhu Yin Fu Hao (Chinese alphabet) at school! Very exciting!

3. Wrote a song (the second stanza she had help with to fit with the first stanza):

Jesus is Lord (2x)

He goes into your heart

And He loves you so so much

When you die you go to heaven

Jesus is Lord (2x)

He died upon the cross

He rose up from the dead

He forgives us all our sins

4. LOVES to pretend. She has quite the imagination that girl. She still enjoys playing with her doll house or getting into some dress-up clothes and pretending she's a princess.

5. LOVES Chinese food. Ellie has always been good about eating Chinese food in the States and thankfully she has continued in this way. Her new favorite: Tofu

6. Is my little helper. If I would ever allow it, Ellie would be highly entertained cooking and cleaning all day long. She LOVES to help me in the kitchen and LOVES doing her chores for coins so she can buy things.

7. Is weaning off naps. Ellie doesn't nap at school anymore (she did for a short time) and it seems she doesn't always nap on her days off either. I would say she probably only naps 2 days a week. She still goes into her room for a quiet time, but usually just reads books. We were discovering when she napped more often, the days she did nap, she wouldn't go to bed until around 10pm and would keep Siri awake with her. It seems she is better off not napping most days and getting to bed a decent time. Though quiet time is still a MUST! :)

8. Is growing up! Ellie has changed so much! It seems she is entering into the four-year-old stage and it is welcomed with open arms! Three-year-old Ellie, while mentally could handle much, physically couldn't. This led to lots of unsuccessful attempts at independence, which led to uncontrollable frustrations which led to uncontrollable tantrums. It seems as Ellie is able to DO more things she is able to be more independent and as a result is much happier. Praise God!

Valences and birthdays!

With the arrival of our stuff, life has become a bit busy around here, attempting to get organized. But I must say what a difference it makes! Amazingly, as a result of finally having our things, it seems (but perhaps also due to the natural progression of time) the girls are acting much more settled. And so am I! WOW! What a transformation! I was beginning to develop strategies for an attempt to cope with this new way of life I thought we were entering into: continuous melt-downs, tantrums, and an inability to fall asleep at night. But alas, that was short-lived! Praise God! It seems we all finally feel at home here now that our things are here. A wonderful feeling. The girls can sleep in their own beds and play in their playroom with their own toys and read their own books.....ahhh! Peace has come to this house! :)

And so, here are some pictures of the developments:

Ellie and Siri's room:

The girls' room with a view of the valence:

The playroom:

The playroom valence:

And two posts in one.....Siri turned TWO!! Happy birthday, Siri!

There are several MAK staff family members who had birthdays this week and last week, so we had a nice big combo party for all of them! And here they are:

Believe it or not, Siri was first to dig into her cupcake!

We had lots of fun! We even played a few games:

This game was called "musical mats":

Yes, even the dads got to play:

The bigger kids seem to really like Siri, and Siri seems to really like them (and perhaps all the attention):

Siri had a great party!

We thank God for our little girl and another precious year we were blessed to spend with her! May there be many more!

Container!

The container (with all of our things in it!) arrived on Thursday night! Needless to say we've been a little busy lately unpacking! Good news is, we are just about done! We have two containers of clothes to sort through and a box of home decor to arrange but other than that we are done! YAY! It feels good to be home!

Transitioning=fatigue

All is well here despite the lack of posts. :) It just seems by the time I have a moment in the day to blog, I'm completely and utterly exhausted with nothing to say. It does seem I'm suffering from the kind of exhaustion that a little exercise seems to cure most of the time, but in this heat and humidity, exercise takes a lot of motivation. The kind of motivation you need some energy to produce....hummm....

To sum it up, we are still transitioning! I guess there's no other way to describe it than to just say everything is tiring and draining! Everything takes a little more effort and a little more will-power (and a little more Chinese).

It seems these days I'm missing Panera Bread Co. Panera Bread was my little get away. After a crazy day and after the kids went to bed, somedays I would drive the 5 minutes out to Panera Bread, park in a designated parking spot and order in my native tongue the yummiest drink or pastry you can think up. Or better yet, zip over to Starbucks where the coffee drinks actually taste like coffee and on a nice crisp fall evening get a scrumptious, pumpkin spice latte with soy and as much whipped cream as I want, always knowing I could ask for more if I really wanted to (though I never did, fyi). No worrying about hitting crazy scooter drivers, or bikers, or pedestrians or suicidal dogs (that's what I call those crazy dogs that live here that literally take naps in the middle of the road). No worrying about where to park. No worrying about attempting to order, praying they understood me correctly and praying that they don't ask me any questions all the while receiving my order only to find out it's all wrong.

But before you think we are totally miserable, we are not. :) I think I have just found myself in the throes of transition along with my two children who for the first night in weeks, went to bed before 8:30 tonight, praise God! We are in transition. We are adjusting, recognizing the good, the bad and the ugly about Taiwan and digesting it one pill at a time. All the while, we are content, feeling safe only because we know we are in the center of God's will, the safest place anyone could possibly be in this crazy world.

And speaking of Taiwan, "Zhong Qiu kuai le!" Today Joey and Ellie had a day off of school for the Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival. Tonight we have heard fireworks going off almost incessantly. Here's a clip of some that went off right in front of our apartment! I took this video after the fireworks had been blasting long enough for me to pick up Siri and console her, think about what a good video it would be, get the camera, step out onto the balcony and THEN start recording, ie. there was more than a minute of these loud booms!

Living on a tropical island...

We have had several experiences lately that have reminded us that for better or worse we live on a tropical island (ok, some of these points aren't necessarily limited to only tropical islands, but they certainly aren't regular occurrences in the Mid-west US, well, except number 3.):

1. There are palm trees EVERYWHERE! This mid-western girl is just amazed at all the beautiful palm trees. This picture is taken on Joey's school's campus! Just amazing!

2. We went swimming in the pool of a waterfall (is that how you would describe what I'm trying to say?)! So at the moment I don't actually have any pictures from the waterfall but this picture was taken on the way to the waterfall. More pics to come (I hope).

3. We are experiencing a little bit of an ant problem. I know this happens everywhere, but I'm just a little annoyed and had to vent! Sorry, I refuse to take pictures of little ants crawling everywhere! :(

4. We experienced our first typhoon! Well, the winds had died down so much by the time they arrived here in Kaohsiung, they were actually only calling it a tropical storm, BUT because typhoons are so unpredictable and this one in particular had caused considerable damage in the Philippines on its way to Taiwan, the whole island had a government-declared typhoon day! YAY! And while it wasn't a typhoon technically, it rained from Sunday afternoon until Tuesday night (And, well, it's still drizzly today)! UGH!

Enjoy this video!