Happy Birthday Anneliese

Big helpers in the kitchen, swirling the raspberries in the mini-cheesecakes.

Emma and Xander singing Happy Birthday to Anneliese. You can hear Emma singing in the "baby voice" she uses when she plays with her Littlest Pet Shops.

Anneliese's birthday dinner - she wasn't quite sure what all the fuss was about. Xander didn't want to be in the photo, so I scooped him up anyway. Emma made the beautiful B-day sign.

Anneliese liked the whole wheat pizza better than the cheesecake.

Cheesecake-free and all squeaky clean.

Getting goodnight 'zerberts' from Daddy and showing off all four teeth while grabbing on to his glasses. We love this little pearly smile, and she loves her Daddy's tickly kisses.

Kids...

I have been meaning to post for over a week, but everything has been in Vietnamese on my blogspot page - so frustrating! I've been taking random guesses and clicking on things, but all to no avail. Christian set me straight again last night, so here goes.

I love the things kids say. Here are a couple things within the past week that have amused me...

Xander: "Daddy I want play in dirt with you"

Daddy: "I would love that"

Xander: "Where [is the] dirt?"

Daddy: "I love my little boy."

We live in a concrete jungle. However, we are thinking of putting a sandpit on our balcony. We saw some friends do it and we think it would be perfect on the 3rd floor balcony because it has an overhang, and therefore, precious shade from the sun!

Emma dressed up for school Performing Arts Concert

Family sitting at dinner table.

Emma: "Why do I have so many pieces of broccoli?"

Dad: "You have 6 pieces because you are 6 years old."

Emma: "Then mom should eat 100!"

Dad: Chuckling "Why is that?"

Emma: "Because mom is more than 100 years old."

Mom: Sitting at table, mouth full of broccoli "Wow! That's insightful"

Xander dressed in Chinese outfit at Embassy's Tet - New Years Party

Xander has a new way of expressing gratitude. He has been saying it for the past couple weeks to me and Christian at random times. We'll be playing cars, walking down the street, eating lunch or whatever and he'll say: "Mommy, you're so cute." I love my little guy's compliment.

Dragon Dance at the Tet Party

Emma was home sick yesterday and we decided to walk around and run some errands together with Xander. On the way back home, she said: "I really think that you and dad made a good choice. I mean, you're the bestest parents I've ever had. I really mean it." I asked her what good choice she thought we had made. She answered: "I mean that you chose each other to get married." I thought that was really sweet and again insightful to her more-than-100-year-old mother.

Anneliese eating her first Cheerios in Kenya

Crawling...

We have a crawling little girl! Anneliese had a silly little crawl with one leg out and one tucked underneath her. Fun to watch, but now even days after this movie was taken, she crawls normally and only sometimes puts her front leg out. We love our little toothy grinning girl!

B is for Braids!

Emma getting her hair braided in Zanzibar on our last day. She really wanted to get braids in Africa so her hair could be the same as some friends at school.

Emma with braids and finger puppets a few days later. : ) Loving the feel of many braids.

It's half undone. We've un-raveled the back and the front is still in tight, tiny braids.

The next day, she's got everything un-braided and we've got lots of fun wavy hair. That was a fun experience.

Movies from Nairobi

Here are some movies of our adventures in Nairobi. We visited the Giraffe House where Jennie and Christian both got to kiss Daisy the giraffe. Our kids warmed up gradually to feeding and petting the giraffe. We were able to hold a giraffe femur bone - it was unbelievably heavy. It gave me a new respect for these very tall and strong animals. Giraffes have long purple sticky tongues that secrete an antiseptic which helps them eat the sharp, hard spikes off of the Acacia Trees - which is their main diet.

Next we visited the Elephant Orphanage. This orphanage collects elephants from around Africa whose mothers have died, or have been killed by poachers. The elephants are taught to forage and develop as naturally as possible, while being cared for by the workers. The workers try to do what the mothers would do: keep them warm at night, spray water on them so they can get nice and muddy (which prevents them from being sunburned, and keeps insects from burrowing into their skin). It was so fun to see the different groups of elephants they brought out to us. This is the under-one-year-old group. They are raised in the orphanage for a few years until they are independent enough to be released into the wild at about 3-4 years of age.

Bomas of Kenya (which means villages of Kenya) is a cultural venue where you can see traditional music and dancing from the many ethnic groups. There are also examples of different types of villages found throughout Kenya. This dance and song is popular among the Masai people. The men jump as high as they can and in real life they wear shoes made of used tires. In Tanzania, we were able to visit a Masai village and we'll post more movies of our experience there.

We thought the variety of huts was quite amazing. This mud hut is considered one of the best kinds. It is made of sticks with a mixture of mud and manure smeared on top. It is the job of the women to re-apply this whenever the all-season weatherproofing wears off.

Musings of my mind...

This morning I was sprinkling a hefty amount of cinnamon on the oatmeal when I realized it was ground red pepper - ooooh! One shake of this is enough to season a whole pot of soup! Luckily I was able to remove the top layer and start over. Whoops!

If it's too easy, it probably is. I went to two "Apple stores" today looking for a bi-lingual firewire so that we can download things from our backup drive to our new computer. Try that in Vietnamese, or in my case with techy terms, cherades or sign language. Yeah, it looked right, but now that I am home, it's not the correct cord. Back to the store we go... On the flip side, I finally returned a flash drive that I bought last fall. I've been hesitant to go back to the store because it's a little shop on computer street. They were good to me and swapped out the flash drives. The one I had was faulty - and I just thought it was our old computer. Now I wish I would have done this earlier.

I love exploring the streets of Hanoi. It seems that there is so much to discover on one little side street. Often I think I need to just get lost and explore some hidden spots. I discovered a couple new streets today and made mental notes of things available on said streets. Hanoi has shop after shop selling the same or slightly different thing all on the same street.

Hooray for good hairdressers! This is a shout out to Minh who used to cut my hair at another salon. It's a long story, but I got my haircut right before we went to Africa and it was a traumatic experience. The salon wanted to keep my business, so they called in someone special to cut my hair and promised that it would be great. 3 hours later and a buzz cut in the back (literally), I demanded to get the phone number for Minh, who no longer worked for them. This turned out to be a blessing because he is opening his own shop close to my house. My buzz cut in the back has grown out a bit and I am sooooo looking forward to a nice haircut next week after his shop opens. Let's just say that the haircut was so bad that my housekeeper told me: "It's okay, you can wear a hat." And Christian pulled me aside at the end of the day and thanked me for being such a good sport about it...and he tried to comfort me by commenting that at least the "bald spot" was centered in the back of my head. Thanks! Don't even ask, there aren't any pics.

One more musing, the day before we left on our trip, I was in the Embassy medical unit picking up some antibiotics to take on our trip 'just in case.' I stopped in to see the doctor and asked him if he had a minute to listen to my lungs. After a minute of careful listening, he declared that I had full-blown pneumonia! I got a shot of Rocefin on my buttock (which hurt for about 3 weeks) and antibiotics and a breathing treatment to open up my lungs. I was in shock, as was Christian when I told him. Crazy! I had pneumonia last year when we were in Laos. I'm glad I got this treated before the trip instead of afterward. I'll have to be on alert next fall/winter.

Movies from Sweetwaters Kenya

We were trying to figure out how best to break up the blog entries about our trip and we decided to upload the photos to Flikr. We're still working on putting comments/descriptions on the photos, but they have been saved into two folders "Safari" and "Zanzibar." If you aren't able to access them, let us know and we'll send you the link.

In the meantime, here are some movies that capture some of the fun. These movies are from our safari at Sweetwaters with the Zimmer Family. We were in tents situated around a watering hole. Pretty fun to wake up and go to sleep with animals right there. The kids got to take turns poking their heads out the sunroof and driving the car...definite highlights of the trip!

Another highlight at Sweetwaters was the chimp preserve. These are rescued chimps who are relocated inside a protected area. Visitors are allowed to walk along a fence to see the chimps. Many people think they are cute and make great pets, but they grow up very fast and are quite strong and dangerous which leads them to being held captive in chains and small cages. In the preserve they are allowed to roam freely in their natural habitat. Everyone, please meet George, who loves doing tricks.