home sweet home

Our internet is still annoyingly spotty, so hopefully it will hold out long enough for me to post this and let everyone know that we're taking a trip to the States and we can't wait to see all of you!!! Just bought our tickets yesterday and our itinerary puts us in the US from July 18 - Aug 10, with the first week spent in California and the next 2 weeks in Utah. So clear your calendars because we KNOW how important it will be for you to spend time with the Weists! I'm counting down the days and John is already talking about "going to US" about every 5 minutes, so it may be a LONG couple of weeks. Looking forward to seeing everyone!!!

so many pictures, so little time...

So our internet connection basically sucks rocks lately and I haven't been able to upload a thing. I was *this* close to getting a bunch of pictures on here from when Michael's family was here and then our connection was reset and I lost everything. SO... I am giving up and just posting pics of my beautiful children because that's what the grandparental-units like to see anyway. Thankfully I did manage to get these few pictures to upload and I'm not going to press my luck for any more. Hopefully I'll get those other ones up here sometime. But I will tell you we visited an elephant sanctuary, Batu caves (a Hindu temple site not far from our apartment), Krabi (in Thailand, not close to our apartment) and basically had fun being tourists.


Stealing a kiss on our hotel balcony overlooking beautiful tropical grounds with the beach in the background. It was heavenly sitting out here, mostly because the kids were asleep.



My FAVORITE picture of Emily sleeping like a little angel. There's certainly nothing "preemie" about this girl now.



John in the bathtub at our hotel in Thailand, showing off his muscles. The best is that he growls when he does this.


Emily's 3 favorite activities:

Chewing on daddy's finger. (Goodness, how I love her twinkling eyes. What did Grandma Snow used to say? 'dem eyes'd bring a duck off the water.')


Hanging out with her brother (translation: watching his every move as he plays)


Trying to shove both hands in her mouth as far as humanly possible. We're looking into booking her a spot on Letterman.


And two more pictures of John, just because I have such beautiful kids and want to show them off.

Playing with a Mr. Potato Head ear stuck in his own ear. I said he was beautiful, not brilliant.


And I swear he did this of his own accord. I came around the corner and he was clomping around in my shoes. Heels, no less. "Look, mommy! New shoes!" So adorable. And of course Michael was mortified, which makes it that much more hilarious.

On second thought...

I was reminded this week of one of the things we love about living in Malaysia. Because it is such a large city and we have a relatively small branch of the church here, we have greater opportunities to be involved in missionary work. At first we merely showed our support by attending baptisms and welcoming new members. After a while, we got to know some of the Elders and Michael has been able to help them on a few occasions in meeting with investigators. Then, hallelujah, 2 or 3 months ago there were sisters assigned to the branch! Ah, yes, I obviously have a soft spot in my heart for the sister missionaries, but especially because I would be able to be more directly involved with the missionary work here.

Of course, I also had a 2 month old baby attached to me 24 hours a day, so it hasn't been possible to be much help. But this week they called me to see if I could come to an appointment with them at the church. At first, unfortunately, I had to turn them down because Michael is in the Philippines and it would be far too late to come to an evening appointment with 2 kids in tow (not to mention entirely too disruptive to their teaching). But after hanging up the phone I had vivid flashbacks of being a missionary, arranging schedules, trying to get people to come help, being stuck and in need of a 3rd person and not knowing what to do, and I felt SO ridiculously lousy and guilty, that I immediately called them back and apologized for not realizing earlier that I could volunteer my house to be the meeting place for their appointment. That way I could put the kids to bed and be here to help the sisters. Thankfully, they and their investigators were able to make it here that evening and we had a great time. (I just finished watching "Pride & Prejudice" - thanks Andrea!- before writing this and I keep wanting to say things like "marvelously delightful" and "stupendous" so I apologize if this post sounds out of sorts.) :) It's been difficult having Michael gone and doing bedtimes and mealtimes on my own but it made such a difference to my week to be able to serve someone else. Not to mention the amazing spirit that the missionaries bring to a home...if you have the opportunity to have missionaries over, especially to teach someone, PLEASE take it, I promise you will not regret it.

The man they were teaching didn't speak a word of English (one of the sisters translated everything into Hindi for him) but it didn't matter, the Spirit was still there and we all had big smiles on our faces because it felt so great. Of course that was also because the sisters had brought another investigator with them who is being baptized this week...don't ask me his name, I couldn't spell it if I wanted to, but he was from Nepal and also spoke Hindi. He spoke a little English and tried to explain his feelings about The Book of Mormon...he said when he read it he felt like it was "magic" somehow because it made him so inexplicably happy. It didn't matter how much or how little English either of them spoke, though, because we could all recognize those good feelings in our hearts. Anyway, I was reminded of how contagious missionary work is and I couldn't wait until the sisters called me again (which was fortunate because they called today and asked if I could speak at the baptism tomorrow.) I remember as a missionary myself feeling so anxious sometimes to ask people to serve and so grateful when they would help us, but I wish I had known what it felt like from this side, that they are actually serving ME by allowing me to be a part of their work. I think I would have viewed "member missionary work" a little differently.
Well, my break is over, my kids are awake so it's time to get back to life. I love being with them but I still can't wait for Michael to be home again. Hopefully soon I will have time to download pics from the Weist family vacation and write a little about their visit here. As always people are welcome to come anytime they find themselves in Asia. :)

a recent conversation

mike: wow, i can't believe emily's diaper! those are some serious big yellow chunks in there!
me (from the kitchen): thanks for that...that's just what i want to hear as i take a big swig of my mango lassi drink.

the sounds of home

So I finally got both of my kids down for naps this afternoon and I'm sitting on the couch listening to the sounds of our home. It's a rather interesting list so I thought I'd share it with you. First, there is the constant construction going on for the building behind us, which by now is directly outside our back window. When we moved in, the building was several stories shorter than it is now, but it has grown considerably and now there are workmen directly outside my balcony less than 100 feet from my spot on the couch. We're thinking we should really get some curtains.
However, that is a dull, minor annoyance compared to the second sound I'm listening to, which is the renovation going on inside our building. Because of the concrete construction of the place, the echoes make it darn near impossible to tell where the sound is coming from: above, below, next door...I have no idea. But if I didn't know any better I'd say it was coming from our own bathroom. Or inside my skull. Either way gives you an idea of the decibel level of the drilling.
Another sound I've listened to this morning is a neighbor (I believe he lives above us...again, the sounds here are deceiving) who has intermittently been dropping marbles on the floor and suffering from allergies in the form of massive, heart-attack style sneezing. I'm not kidding, it sounds like he's doing martial arts, complete with "HI-YA!" vocal exercises, except they are accompanied by violent bursts of air from the nose and throat that let you know his threatening outbursts are simply nasal and not intended to be violent.
How do my children manage to sleep through this cacophany, this symphony of discordant sound, you ask? Not well, I would say. Not well at all.

another world

In my mom's weekly letters from Africa she sometimes highlights the people they meet, occasionally focusing on those who have gone through devastating experiences and how they must adapt to the world as they know it. I was reminded of that today (and also reminded of how blessed my life has been) when Margaret and I went to get a pedicure, of all things. We are heading to Thailand later this week and I thought it would be fun to get pedicures and have cute toes since we'll be barefoot on the beach all week. Going to salons of this type are fairly inexpensive (case in point, we ended up getting manicures and pedicures and it cost us about $30 each) so we left the kids with Michael and went to enjoy our pampering. There were 2 girls helping us, one from India and the other from Sri Lanka, both of whom were outlandishly solicitous and good at their jobs. Both missed their homes, missed their families, their native food, other comforts of home, but the one from Sri Lanka has no hope of ever returning. At least, she hopes never to return. She is here under refugee status because of the intensifying civil war in Sri Lanka. I knew the atmosphere there was unstable, but I was sadly unaware of the danger faced by even civilians because of the fighting going on. Only a few weeks ago there was a bombing that killed several police officers as well as civilians near the capitol. I wondered, initially, about the sometimes ridiculous media that we cling to in the US, the biased slants either toward or against the political party of the day, the microscopic focus that is given to areas of the world where we have a political interest, and the utter neglect that is shown to others simply because it doesn't seem to be the trendy thing to do. (HOW many years has there been repression in Tibet and it's only recently come out on the forefront again because of the Olympics coming up???)

Anyway, my other thoughts lingered on this woman and her prospects in life. Her refugee status will possibly be only good for another year or so, and then the Malaysian government may decide they want her to go back to her home country. What then? She can't go back and she never wants to (although she left her only surviving sister there-- the rest of her family was killed by a bomb when she was 11 years old) but where will she go? Her options are to wander around from country to country, completely destitute and without connections, hoping to achieve refugee status; or she can stay in Malaysia and pray that she never gets picked up by police-- or that if she does, she has enough cash on her to bribe them (usually hundreds of ringgit at a time--the amount she shelled out regularly for 8 months before she was able to secure her refugee status) so they won't send her to jail or, worse, a citizen-run work camp where people are abused or killed indiscriminately and never given their promised reward for the labor they are forced to perform.

Suddenly I felt very small, sitting in my throne-like chair, being waited on by these beautiful women massaging my hands and feet, and I was almost tempted to ask them to sit down, to let us serve them instead. We left them a larger-than-usual tip, but it felt like such a ridiculously tiny thing to do, an inadequate way to show concern for our sisters on this earth. So I came away with cute nails and soft feet, but a slightly guilty heart because of my inability to make life better for this woman. Is a little extra cash, a smile and a concerned heart enough to help someone carry a heavy load? Unfortunately, I don't think so. And there are so many with stories like that, people who are fighting to triumph over incredibly odds, and yet most of them keep trying & fighting, showing unconquerable spirit and determination to survive and even thrive under these circumstances. I have to wonder...would I do the same? Would you?

living the cheap life

So I was reminded another few reasons I love living in Malaysia when Michael's mom & I took the kids downtown to the mall this weekend. Michael's family has been visiting and everyone else went to Vietnam but SOMEBODY didn't want his children gallivanting around a "dangerous" country (phbbt...dangerous shmangerous) so anyway Margaret & I hung out here for the weekend. There is a toll road by our house that connects from our street right to the underground parking of the KLCC mall at the base of the famous Petronas Towers. SO...to pay the toll BOTH ways and park for about 2 hours (remember this is absolutely the most popular downtown mall) cost us 8 Ringgit, which is less than $3 US. Not a bad deal for an evening out on the town. Also eating at the food court in the mall, which has everything ranging from local laksa (spicy noodle soup) to sushi to Indian to Thai, is good times as well. This time I opted for the Pad Thai and some bottled water and it cost me less than $4. Not bad, considering it is actually GOOD food and not what you'd usually equate with food court fare.

Still, I'm excited to get some really authentic Pad Thai when we go to Thailand later this week. Mmmm...and some sticky rice with mango, and some pineapple rice, and LOTS of pineapple juice, and BACON! (We relish visiting non-Muslim countries because we can actually eat real pork!) Looking forward to another few glorious days at the beach and hopefully some more scuba diving. We'll post pictures of that next week when we get back.

working 9 to 5?

So it is 9:33pm and the construction work on the building outside our window is going strong. Obviously it is pitch black outside, but that is why they flip on high-power floodlights, including ones attached to a crane that swings around randomly to focus on various projects going on around the roof. This does not bode well. Not well at all. The last two times this happened, I managed to go to sleep with what basically felt like a flashlight in my face (our bedroom window looks out right on this lovely housing project in the making) and when I woke up around 2am to feed Emily, IT WAS STILL GOING ON. That's right, people. I said 2am. What in the...? Seriously, I am at a loss for words. Who does that? The only other time I have seen construction at that time of night was when Utah was in a mad scramble to finish work on I-15 before the Olympics and they had to work at night because, obviously, people are driving on it during the day. OK, this building is VACANT. It is in a residential area. Their only pressing demand would probably revolve around a lack of labor because they never know when their crew will be hauled away because they are all illegal immigrants from Indonesia.

That reminds me of something else you'd never see in the States. Michael was driving with a friend the other day, coming home on an expressway that we love because it is a toll road and people here are cheap so it is always pretty empty. But still, when we pull in to pay the toll we usually have to sit behind 5 or 6 cars until we can get through. But they have other express lanes where you can scan a card that has money stored on it that will automatically deduct and lift the arm for you to pass, and obviously these lanes are faster than the pay-as-you-are lanes. Anyway, they were going through the express lane and there, waiting in our usual SLLLLLOOOOOOW toll lane was an ambulance, lights flashing, sirens blaring, just sitting behind cars waiting to pay the toll. Oh. My. Heck. I hope whoever was in there didn't bleed to death while they waited for the drivers to PAY THE TOLL!!! The problem is that most hospitals are privately owned, which means their ambulances are private drivers that only go to their specific hospital, even if it's on the other side of town, and people have been known to die while they sit in traffic. Yeah, it's that bad. But seriously, if you had an ambulance for your hospital, don't you think you'd give them an express pass for the toll? Just another reason why we're glad we got a car. (Although I may change my mind about that since we found more roaches in the car. Yes, again. And yes, we already switched the LAST car because it had roaches, so this is the SECOND car we've found them in. I've killed more than my fair share of spiders in my life and I can handle a lot of different bugs, but roaches are not one of those bugs. Yick.)

Anyway, we see stuff on a regular basis that makes us look at each other bemusedly with slightly open mouths while we shake our heads and say, "Well, there's something you don't see every day" so we're happy to share our amusement/horror with you.

Oh, yes, and here are some pictures of my kids because they're cute.

Went to lunch at my friend Jacy's house who helped her aunt cook us the most delicious Indian meal. They fawned over Emily and I had to take a picture of her with her cute Indian auntie.

This is John saying "more jam sandwich pleeeeeease."

This is the adorable face I wake up to in the morning. Michael's face isn't bad to wake up to either, but it's certainly not this fresh at 7am.

I LOVE THIS LITTLE GIRL!


Ahhhh...sweet relief. It is 10:07pm and they just switched off all the construction lights. Hallelujah, I am going to bed.

to the mom lady

my beautiful girl


what am i going to do with these kids?


big man on campus


I wanted to take a few moments to express my appreciation to my own fabulous mother and embarrass her with obscene amounts of gushing about how perfect she is. Ha-ha, kidding mom. But seeing as how it is Mother's Day and I don't get to give her a big hug to thank her for all she's done for me over the years, I thought I'd send out a big virtual hug from me & Michael & her grandgoobers (I mean kids). Seeing as how I'm that much closer to the big 3-0 you'd think I wouldn't be as much in need of my mother's guidance and counsel, but you would be dead wrong. Just this weekend I turned to her in pitiful need, aching for some girl talk and for someone to tell me everything would be all right. Who better to turn to than my mother? And, of course, not only did I come away feeling refreshed (because she did, in fact, let me feel that everything would be all right) but also motivated to be a better person because that's what she does...inspires me to be better because she is better. Funnily enough she also told me to stop being so prideful and basically to get over myself, but it is a major tribute to her sensitivity and love that she was able to word it in such a way it wasn't until quite a while after our conversation that I realized she had done so. And she really only has the ability to do that because I know she has been there before, she has found herself desperate or lacking faith or strength or desire or endurance and yet she has pulled through it (although she will be the first to tell you that it is with the help of the Savior and not her own abilities that she has done this) and so I know her counsel is tried & true. That's why I love my mom. Not because she's perfect, but because she's not perfect, but she's trying to be. And she's willing to let me watch her and walk carefully in her footsteps to see if I can be just as awesome as she is someday.
I love you, mom.

foreign language lessons

Yesterday John & I were practicing his alphabet on the computer, when suddenly he jumped up and started shouting "pih!" "pih!" We're usually pretty good at deciphering his jabbering but occasionally it takes a while to catch on.

Me: What?
J: (excited) pih!
Me: Pih? What's pih?
J: (frustrated now) Mommy, pih!
Me: Ok, John can you show me?
J: (grabs my finger and pulls me off couch) pih!
(we walk together to the middle of the room, he drops my finger and starts twirling around)
Me: Oh, you want to SPIN!
J: (excited again) pih! pih!!
(we spin in circles for 3 or 4 minutes until we are too dizzy and giggly to do any more)

This, I think, is why I became a mother.

a taste of home

Being a stay-at-home-mom leaves me a fair amount of time to surf the internet for fun stuff (oh, wait I mean it leaves me time to play with my kids! and sometimes feed them!) But in-between the playing and the feeding I like finding people's blogs and reading about their hobbies, especially when they're good at what they do. So here is a really cool website I like: PIONEERWOMAN and this specific link is for a really freaky recipe that looks just bizarre enough to try it...Mountain Dew Apple Dumplings. My first reaction was something like...eeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwww...seeing as how I have never consumed an entire can of Mountain Dew, much less used it as a main ingredient in a recipe. But the pictures and description are really what get me, so I am dying to try these. However, there is a problem: I live in a country where I am unable to buy either refrigerated crescent rolls OR Mountain Dew.

Therefore, I am giving one of my loyal readers (out of the whole 12 of you) the assignment to make these for me and then post a comment or email me about how amazing/disgusting they are. Then I will know if I need to bother bookmarking that page to make them whenever I get back in the States. OK, ok, it's really already bookmarked, but I'm drooling over them and really need someone to tell me that they're worth the wait.

And since I am living in a tropical, curry-filled country, here is a more local recipe to give you and idea of the things we eat sometimes.

Chicken Curry Soup

Heat oil in a large pot, saute some fresh grated ginger, couple cloves of garlic, and 2 or 3 chopped green chiles with chopped chicken breast. Cook until chicken is done. Add a few Tbsp. curry paste (we use a sort of sweet honey-chicken curry sauce). Stir in a Tbsp. each of vinegar, fish sauce, and sugar. Add about 4 cups of chicken broth (maybe that's 2 cans?) and a can of coconut milk and mix it all really well together. Finally scoop in about 4 cups of cooked rice (or until it is more thick like stew than runny like soup) and serve!

I know that is a REALLY specific recipe with the amounts and all, but that is how I usually cook here, which is why Michael has lost so much weight since we've been here. If something doesn't turn out there's no desire for seconds. Well, life's an adventure right? OK, let me know if you try the curry soup. And also get cracking on those dumplings. Thank you.

happy asian birthday to me

Michael got me the COOLEST present for my birthday, so I had to take a picture. These are my cool new earrings from Tradewind Treasures


They are made with porcelain shards that have been found in shipwrecks throughout the South China Sea. The certificate they come with boasts they are sourced from a company that is "working closely with the Malaysian Department of Museums & Antiquities to map, research and excavate shipwreck sites in Malaysian waters." These particular ones were made from 17th Century Ming porcelain recovered from the Wanli Shipwrick circa 1625. Does he know how to spoil a girl, or what?
Oh, he also took me to get my feet eaten by fish. Seriously. It was awesome. And freaky. But mostly awesome.

speaking of flour...

My last post about the flour-debacle with John the other night reminded me of a traumatic experience I had here, strangely enough, also involving flour. And bugs. You see where I'm going with this? My wonderful friend Anne introduced me to a great store called Bake With Yen, a wholesale baking store here that sells bakeware as well as baking products (5 pounds of hazelnuts, a bucket of shortening, etc.) and we frequent it when in need of cheese or breadcrumbs or whatever. So a few months ago I bought several bags of flour in a brand I can't remember but I'm sure it has something to do with Anchor-something-or-other because there is a large anchor on the front. Right.

Anyway, I was making cookies one night and innocuously opened a new bag of flour, dumping it into the plastic container where I store the flour. I casually dipped my plastic yellow 1-cup measurer into said flour and unceremoniously dumped it into the cookie mix. Without warning, a torpedo-sized insect LEAPT up out of the flour I HAD JUST DUMPED INTO MY BOWL and streaked across the room in an attempt to sever my head from my body. OK, not really, it was just a moth and it flew the other direction and landed terrified on the wall, but try telling that to Michael who was convinced from my scream that I was being attacked by an axe. He was not amused, by the way. Still, a moth. A LIVE moth sitting in a plastic bag of flour for who knows how long on a store shelf, waiting for me to buy it and bring it home so it could wreak its revenge on mankind. John thoroughly enjoyed the whole process, helping immensely by jumping around like popcorn, shouting "BUG! BUG! BUG!" until Michael trapped it in a cup and dumped it out the window.

SO...a word to the wise. If you find yourself living in Southeast Asia anytime soon, NEVER under ANY circumstances should you buy flour that has an anchor on the front! Unless of course they decide to change their logo, in which case I cannot help you.

baking lessons

Lately John wants to see what we're doing when we make food in the kitchen. Even if I'm just getting him a bowl of cereal, he'll get all excited and say "see!" while he drags in a chair from the table so he can be at eye-level with the counter. So this also means he wants to help a lot, opening things, dumping items into the bowl, etc. Anyway, he wanted to "help" me make cookies last night, so I would measure out the sugar and let him dump it from the cup into the bowl, stuff like that. Well, at one point I was transferring brown sugar from its package into a storage container and I blew some sugar off the lid, so of course he had to copy me and started blowing on everything.

After a few steps it was time to add the dry ingredients, so I let him dump the flour into a separate bowl and turned to get the baking powder when I heard him sharply blow and start coughing. I turned around to see my counter dusted with droplets of flour and my son wearing a fine film of white flour-dust from ear to ear. I started to scold him but the sight of him blinking at me under a layer of flour and smacking his lips to get rid of the grit in his mouth made me giggle so I just couldn't be mad. Unfortunately I was too scrambled, trying to deal with a slightly explosive mess, rocking Emily with my foot while she screamed in her car seat, and attempting to wipe down a wiggly, flour-covered boy, to think about grabbing a picture. Trust me, it was priceless.

smiles.

Emily has become much more interactive as she enters her third month, cooing more and smiling at us a lot. Of course, none of this have we been able to capture on camera or video, since she suddenly decides to do her imitation of a wooden puppet whenever we pull one of these strange recording instruments out... is she afraid it will steal her soul? Anyway, if you want to know what it looks like when she smiles, just imagine the Stay-Puft marshmallow man from Ghostbusters... before he gets all grumpy and bursts into flame, i mean.

ode to art

There is an art gallery here that we like to visit. It's fairly intimate and set at the furthest corner of a mall where not many people go, which makes it nice and quiet, always a bonus for an art gallery. There's another one, same company, at the hotel we stay at when we go to Singapore. (HERE is the link) Anyway, we found an exhibit recently that we liked, so I thought I'd post some pictures. It's not really Asian art, which is what we usually like to see, but I thought these paintings were really cool and would make for a fun kids room, if they didn't cost several thousand dollars. The artist is Coplu (his website is HERE) We tried to find prints as well, but they're also rather expensive, so that may have to go on the back burner for a while.

Also, I've been tagged...

I got tagged a few weeks ago by my cousin Heather, so I'm finally getting round to it.

FOUR PEOPLE WHO EMAIL ME REGULARLY
1. mom
2. posse (technically more than one person, but who's counting?)
3. anne
4. bookbrowse

FOUR PLACES I WOULD LIKE TO VISIT
1. the great barrier reef
2. hong kong
3. disneyland (haven't been in a few years and it's calling to me)
4. bali

FOUR FAVORITE RESTAURANTS
1. suzy's
2. the okonomayaki place (don't know what it's called)
3. michelangelo's (mom & dad have spoiled me SO bad... granted i've only been there once...)
4. that sushi place on 3rd so./2nd west, or something like that... i can never remember the name of it

FOUR THINGS I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO IN THE COMING YEAR
1. deciding where we're going to live
2. possibly visiting utah (if we don't come home to stay) and seeing my clothes again!
3. having john out of diapers
4. emily rolling over, crawling, eating solids, etc. the first year is so full of cool events!

FOUR THINGS I AM NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO IN THE COMING YEAR
1. potty-training john
2. packing & moving (either back to the states or to a new apt. here)
3. several of my friends turning 30... that means i'm not far behind...
4. missing out on the snow family vacation to cali. dang it.

OK, so there's my fulfillment of Heather's tag. I guess I'm supposed to tag someone else??? (Never done this before... by the way, thanks Heather for my first tag!) So I now tag Lisa, Laural, Stacy and Brookie to post the same list on their blogs.
Have fun!

Lots of Stuff

Wow, I love this girl.
So I've been negligent in my posting this last month. We had a great, busy time and are still trying to recover. Emily turned 2 months and doubled her birth weight, John got a haircut, we all went to the beach & to Singapore, we had friends from the States come stay with us... there were over 100 pictures in my camera from last month, so I'm just going to do a brief review of the big things. I'll post the web album later with the whole caboodle if you feel so inclined to look at such a ridiculous number of our pics.

The many faces of Emily... she is definitely a growing girl.

John stuck his Shrek doll on Emily's changing pad and said "Shrek wet"... now if we could only get him to tell us when HE'S wet. Sigh... potty training will be harder than we thought.

Michael finally convinces me to let him buzz John's head. John looks great and he is SO much cooler. The clippers scare the bejeebies out of him, but we can usually sufficiently bribe him to sit still until it's over.

Moses parting the sea :) She slept like that for about 10 minutes one day.

Why is it we think our kids look SO much older when they're wearing pants? Probably because they never wear them... it's too darn hot.

Goodness, where did this child's neck go??? Cute chubber-head. This was on Emily's blessing day. Tracy Friend gave me a set of baby pearls on a necklace that we put on her for this special occasion. It almost disappeared in the folds of her neck.

John learning his alphabet... with goggles on. Of course.

We make another trip to Singapore... we love coming here for a breather because it's so clean and efficient, things often sorely lacking in Malaysia. This landmark statue is right at the waterfront.

We go to a Pakistani BBQ with our friends.

Good food, good conversation. Good times.

A rare pic of just us 2 lovebirds.

A family photo!

Just sittin' here... lookin' cute.

I caught her mid-sneeze :)

We spent an amazing week in this beautiful paradise... Redang Island off the northeastern coast of Malaysia. Michael perfectly summed up our first visit to the beach: It's like walking on powdered sugar. And everything was that perfect. Crystal blue pristine waters, soft sand, beautiful weather, abundant sea life, relaxed atmosphere... everything you want out of vacation. The 7 hour bus ride there & back is a different story (as is the ridiculously rocky boat ride out to the island... thankfully only one of us threw up) but looking back it was well worth the effort to get there. If we could manage it we'd love to take another trip to Redang.

Matching outfits. It was too cute, I couldn't resist. Besides, I have to do this now before John's old enough to know better & protest.

John & Zach, 2 peas in a pod.

Michael & I finish our SCUBA certification!!! We were so excited to go and had an awesome time diving. An ENORMOUS thanks goes out to our friends who watched our kids so we could do this together. You guys are all awesome, we can't even thank you enough. We also can't wait to go diving again, it was amazing!

The boys chillin' at lunch. One of the rare moments John actually ate something... poor kid was sick all week. Not sure what it is about this boy and vacation that they don't agree with each other, but he always seems to get sick right before we go to the beach.

The GORGEOUS view from our resort.

Changing diapers... she HATES being wet & will calm right down when I put her on the changing mat.

My mission comp. Amy & her husband come to visit Malaysia! Eating at Suzy's, one of our favorite places.

We FINALLY went up the Petronas Towers while Amy & Jimmy were here and got them to take a family pic of all of us (even though all you can see of Emily are her legs). It was fun to see the city from a bird's eye view!

This is the first time we've ever strapped Emily in her car seat to take her anywhere. She looked so huge to us we had to take a picture.

Man, I love close-ups of this girl's face. She is indescribably beautiful to me.

Oh, and I got a haircut! Michael's never seen me with short hair (except in old pictures) but he seems to like it. I'm still adjusting, but MAN it feels good to have short hair in this heat.
Phew! That seemed like a busy month. We have a nice lull for a few weeks and then we'll be ready to have Michael's family come visit us in May! Anyone is welcome to hop on a plane and drop in on us any time... we have an air mattress waiting for you. :)

an observation

Having a 2-year old means that when someone tells you that they're pregnant, instead of telling them congratulations, you just start laughing.

anyway... coming soon, a trip to the beach, a haircut, and some good friends.

grammar 4 kids

a few weeks ago john started saying something that sounded like "mice" all the time and we couldn't figure out what in the world he was talking about (which, of course, was infuriating to him and would usually end in a screaming fit). finally, we realized he would use it in a possessive sort of way, indicating that something belonged to him. it dawned on us one day when michael said that something was "daddy's" and john firmly corrected him, saying "no, mice!" that's when we realized he was duplicating his daddy and stating a possessive "my's". and although it's incorrect, i'm still astounded that little kids can be so brilliant to apply grammatical rules to their words like that.
seriously, i don't think it's possible to not enjoy watching kids grow up.