November Little Things

Painting Philip's old room and turning it in to mom's new sewing room.

Painting with a 3 year old is not for the faint of heart.

Bedtime storytime.

Shae's nose was hurting him really bad the entire week leading up to our big trip. I was getting so nervous that something was really wrong. The Sunday before our trip (we left Tuesday) he was complaining about so much pain in his nose that we went ahead and found an urgent care to take him to. We are very glad we did as there was quite a bit of white pus coming out of a cut in his nose that must have gotten infected after picking at it. They gave us an antibiotic that he would then take for 7 days (it had to be refrigerated which made flying with it a little interesting...)

The little doctor taking care of all of us while waiting. 

Putting up the Christmas tree.

Opening a couple pre-christmas presents.

Somebody was already feeling the summer Christmas vibes.

Philip was getting rid of a bunch of old beanie babies, so the kids each picked two to bring with them.

If he could have, this kid would have brought every single one of his stuffed animals on our trip, but he settled on these three. He sure does love his stuffies.

Checking out one of the big rain storms (they are just about a daily thing). Looking for lightning.

It amazes me what kids find to entertain themselves with so few toys (or even when they have lots of toys at their disposal). Shae and Belen have been making pillow/cushion obstacles in our little hallway and doing competitions with them.

Just a girl on a train.

On our way to check out old town Jakarta one Saturday.

We get stared at often here, and sometimes even catch people taking pictures of us, but I suppose going to a more touristy place made people feel a bit more free to take pictures and stop and talk to us. It was pretty funny watching all the people pull out their cameras as we walked past.

I was pretty impressed with the courage some of these teenagers had to come up to us and practice their English.

Checking out the puppet museum. We were a little worried that the kids might be scared of some of the puppets, or that it wouldn't hold their interest, but they actually really liked looking at all of them.

Exhausted after a day filled with paparazzi. 

Stopped for a quick bite at the train station. Both the kids had their minds set on eating with chopsticks.

She'd rather stand up on the train than sit on my lap. They all prefer dad these days. I guess that's what happens when they are with me 24/7.

Missing the library like CRAZY. Like, bad. Oh how I miss the library. Thankfully youtube has a lot of "storytime" book readings on it. Definitely not the same as reading them myself, and some of the readers are just really hard to listen to, but it's something.

He has been begging us to let him sleep in the living room. We keep telling him to wait till next week when we will all do it together as a family for a little Christmas celebration. 

We won't be making many of our own sweets while we are here, but we do have a blender, so the kids made what they call Penguin Juice for FHE treat one week. They mixed chocolate and vanilla ice cream with some milk, and of course had to use chopsticks to drink it.

Walking around a mall with the kids one day, we discovered this huge arcade zone. It was insanely flashy and loud, like a Vegas for kids. The kids had a blast running around pretending to play all the games. Thankfully they are still young enough where they can get some sort of enjoyment by just sitting/pretending and not actually playing. (Although that doesn't mean they didn't ask me over and over again to play, especially the elder one).

We've really enjoyed all of the Indonesian food that we have eaten thus far. The Nasi Goreng (fried rice) is super yummy.

This pasta dish had so many different types of meat in it. I wasn't always sure what I was eating, but still really good.

Our mall mission was accomplished when we found a paper store where we were able to buy a few things to make a Christmas tree.

We love love love the Youtube channel Art for Kids Hub. Lately, Shae has really been in to drawing these cool surprise folding pictures. He has piles of them now that he has created on his own after learning the basics of how to do it. 

After telling him that we can't keep all of the papers, he decided to gift some to the pool employees. After we were done swimming, we found the employee doing his own folding to create something to show the kids. These pool guys are so nice. The kids always get so excited to say their one or two Indonesian phrases and then they always respond with one or two English phrases and Shae walks away saying, "Wow, they speak English!"

Where we spend most of our time. I am so so so grateful for this pool. 

Trying to make it feel like Christmas.

After making the tree we snuggled up to watch a Arthur Christmas. We were so excited to see that Netflix here has it. It's one that we love watching each year.