Thousand Islands Trip (Pulau Pari)

 A couple Saturdays back, we woke the kids up nice and early (around 5:30 a.m.) to go on a day trip with some other families from church. We rented a speed boat for 45 people and split the cost between us all. You never know how long it will take to get around Jakarta, even so early in the morning, so we left nice and early. We ended up being the first ones at the dock.

 We found this little map hanging of all the islands and how to get there from Ancol dock. We went to Pari Island, about a 60 minute boat ride.

The boat ride was SUPER bumpy. Poor Belen had a real struggle, as did the other 3 and 2 year olds on the boat. While bumping around, I somehow made it to the back of the boat where the bumps weren't as strong and that helped a little. I had to peel her hands off of the seat in front of her once the bumps subsided, she was gripping it so tightly. 

 All was okay in the end.

View from the front before we got going.

 Our view from the back of the bumpy boat.

 Between this sign...

 ...and this sign below, we had to walk for 10 minutes through the little island town. I wanted to take pictures to remember it, but would have felt weird snapping shots of people outside of their homes. It was cool to see what living on the island looked like. Lots of chickens strolling the area and kids playing, riding bikes, and even mopeds (as in, driving them). 

The beach was amazing. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

 Shae spent a good bit of time doing some shell hunting.

  Tried fried bananas for the first time. Belen picked the banana out of hers saying, "I just want the donut part." 

While there, we took a little boat tour through a mangrove forest.

 This boat trip was brought to you by, the letter E (found in the ocean).

This tree was incredible. 

 Coconut water: looks good, but does not taste too good. Makes for a a good beach photo shoot prop though:).

Before heading home we grabbed some of the ash that had been floating to the shore. There was a person on the island sweeping it up and told us that it was ash floating in from Mt. Krakatoa, the volcano that erupted a few weeks earlier. Maybe we can stick it in a jar or something?

We got back to our apartment just about 12 hours after we left. The perfect day trip. A trip that I very much needed.

Books Read in 2018

Considering that a few years back I maybe read one book a year, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself this year for having read 52 books. And when I say "read", I should clarify that about half of these books I  listened to in audiobook format, which is really what makes "reading" this many books possible. Thank you Overdrive.

Here's a list of all the books that I read in 2018:

My Top 10:

The Great Alone, Kristin Hannah

Small Great Things, Jodi Picoult

Refugee, Alan Gratz

The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas

The Read Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with your Kids, Sarah Mackenzie

Educated, Tara Westover

Salt to the Sea, Ruta Sepetys

I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives, Caitlin Alifirenka and Martin Ganda

Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction: Derek Thompson

The BFG, Roald Dahl-- This was definitely my favorite read aloud with Shae this past year. It made us both giggle so much (talking about repulsant snozzecumbers, schnozzles, and telly-telly bunkum boxes).

Middle Grade Books that I would love to read again someday with my kids:

Harbor Me, Jacqueline Woodson

Ella Enchanted, Gail Levain

Number the Stars, Lois Lowry

Books read aloud to Shae (Belen would sometimes listen for a little while too, but she never stuck around too long, except for the Tom Percival Little Legend books, she did like those :)

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Barbara Robinson

The Genie's Curse, Tom Percival

The Great Troll Rescue, Tom Percival

The Spell Thief, Tom Percival

The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog, John Erickson

Ribsy, Beverly Cleary

Beezus and Ramona, Beverly Cleary 

Ramona the Pest, Beverly Cleary

A True Home, Kallie George

Charlotte's Web, E.B. White

The Mouse and the Motercycle, Beverly Cleary

Frindle, Andrew Clement

The Boxcar Children, Gertrude Chandler Warner

**This list does not include a ton of other shorter chapter books that we read, like a ton of Magic Tree House books, Pokemon chapter books, and other early reader chapter books that could be read in a day or two.

And here's all the other books. While these didn't make my top 10 list, and I am not likely to read any of them again, I really liked just about all of them. Feeling pretty happy about my 2018 book selections. 

Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My Lady Jane, Cynthia Hand

My Plain Jane, Cynthia Hand

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis, J.D. Vance

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, Michael Moss

The Truth About Forever, Sarah Dessen

Saint Anything, Sarah Dessen

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjamin Saenz

Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor

Days of Blood and Starlight, Laini Taylor 

Strange the Dreamer, Laini Taylor

Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay

The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

The Good News About Bad Behavior: Why Kids Are Less Disciplined Than Ever--And What To Do About It, Katherine Lewis

As Bright As Heaven, Susan Meissner

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson

P.S. I Still Love You, Jenny Han

Mindless Eating, Why We Eat More Than We Think, Brian Wansink

The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying, Nina Riggs

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Sheryl Sandberg

The Crossover, Alexander Kwame

Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, Chip Heath

A Wrinkle In Time, L'Engle Madeleine

Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America, Firoozeh Dumas

Christmas Day

We enjoyed a papermade Christmas this year. 

 The kids were so worried about Santa not having cookies to eat, so we went ahead and tried out No Bake Cookies since we don't have an oven (and chocolate chips are like, 7 bucks a bag for the cheapest). It felt (and tasted) so good to make cookies. I'm sure that I set a record for myself by not making holiday cookies until December 21st. Something that I really hope never ever happens again.

 Practicing his wise man line over and over again in our taxi on the way to our Christmas party.

 He was SO excited to be a wise man, and to have a line. It was adorable to watch him practice his line all week and ask me to sing the songs with him that they would be singing in the program. I love how he took it so seriously. 

 The nursery kids got to be animals. Belen said she was a cow, or camel, or a sheep. Depends on when you asked her. Loved watching her crawl in to the stable with Mary and Joseph. (For the record, she reeeeeally wanted to be Mary).

 Shae saying his line, while playing with his nose, haha. Now we know what to work on next year.

 He stood aside so that he could sing the songs with the audience. He was extremely excited to sing We Three Kings of Orient Are.

 After taking us an hour and a half to arrive at the Christmas party (when it should have taken closer to 40), and poor Shae being so worried he would miss the nativity, we had such a good time. They served brisket, which was so so good (but feed me anything here and I'm a happy camper not having to think of what to cook on my own). After the food and Christmas program, the host family pulled out this big bucket of "snowballs," basically big white puff balls, and we had a big snowball fight with them right there in their living room. The kids were launching them from upstairs and vice versa. It was really fun.

 One of my favorite traditions growing up was sleeping by the Christmas tree as a family on the Eve of Christmas Eve. We hadn't done it with our little family yet as the kids were little and it sounded like more work than fun. This year it sounded fun, and it was. We were all really excited about a living room sleepover. We pulled out our big king mattress and curled up and watched Polar Express together, I ended up spending about half the time in the bathroom (TMI? Sorry, just have to remember that not all things are perfect and rosy in life. I also feel the need to remember that I went a month in a half in Indonesia before that happened :). 

 The kids woke up at 5:45 a.m. that morning. I guess the excitement of all being together was just too much for them. Thankfully I got Belen to go back to sleep while Shae just rolled all of the place next to me, never getting settled back in to sleep. 

We started a tradition last year of Mrs. Clause dropping Christmas jammies at our front door, which Shae remembered. All through dinner he would randomly hop up, quickly open the door to peek out, and then sit back down and keep eating. 

After dinner, while Darin was with the kids in their room looking at the Santa tracker, the doorbell rang. They ran out to open the door, saw the presents, and then ran right in to the hallway to see if they could catch Mrs. Clause. Here is Shae saying, "She's pretty fast."

 They were so excited about their soft new jammies. Belen exclaiming, "I've always wanted Else jammies!" (Now whenever we do little living room dance parties she hops up and yells, I need my Elsa dress to dance!)

 

We had such a wonderful Christmas Eve FHE. I always have these high hopes of doing all kinds of Christ-centered things on the day of Christmas...Mormon messages, reading the Christmas story, singing all the Jesus songs, but then Christmas day always seems to go by so fast and is filled with so much fun and food and friends and family and then it's all done. It was really really nice to focus all of Christmas eve (other than the Christmas jammies...) on Jesus and hopefully we can continue that in the future. 

The kids used these cute little nativity paper puppets to sing Picture a Christmas and a few other songs. 

 Then we watched a story called A Birthday Party for Jesus (since I don't have the book with us) and made our own presents for Jesus to put under the tree.

 Mine:

 Belen's:

 Shae's:

 I didn't get a picture of the back of Darin's but it said: Bring joy to our family.

 We then read the Christmas story from the bible and Belen got to be Mary which made her so happy. Baby Jesus was her little beanie baby dog.

 After the peaceful, calm, spiritual Family Home Evening things got a little crazy. Belen fell right to sleep, but Shae, did not. He didn't end up falling asleep until 11:45 p.m. (!!!) It was insane. And like I said, he had woken up at 5:45 that morning, so I have no idea how he stayed awake that late. Poor kid was just exhausted, but so ramped up on excitement that he literally put himself in to hysterics. He couldn't fall asleep. Darin or I would lay with him and then we would think he was asleep, but he would always sit right up as we tried to leave. He would randomly break into these awful crying fits where he didn't know what was wrong and then while in full on tears he would stop and say, "Did you hear bells?" totally serious. He kept trying to use his fingers to keep his eye lids open because he wanted to see Santa so badly, but I think he was also feeling bad because he knew he should go to sleep. It was seriously so crazy. Not the relaxing Christmas Eve I had been looking forward to.

 We encouraged the kids to not wake us up until 7 a.m. We can dream right? At about 6:30 we heard some squeals and "Look what I got!" I jumped out of bed and sure enough the little stinkers were already in the living room looking at their stockings. 

It was a nice relaxing morning. The kids were so excited about all the little things that they got. Shae was really excited that Santa brought him a Turtwig Pokemon toy because just the week before it had fallen out of his hand in the elevator and bounced off the floor right in to the crack between the elevator and the floor as the doors were shutting. He was so happy Santa knew that he had lost it so he could get another one. They also loved the note in the stockings to look in the freezer and then finding Popsicle with their names on them. 

 Belen loves these little princess dolls from Walmart. She bought Anna and Tiana with some money she earned before we left Ithaca but always wanted Elsa. She was really excited to get Elsa and Mulan to add to her collection.

 Shae's gift from Santa:

 Belen's gift from Santa:

Christmas afternoon we went over to the house of a family in our ward. We had a lovely turkey Christmas dinner with them. We brought rice krispie treats which felt so wrong of me to bring to a Christmas Eve dinner with all the other nicer, more delicious desserts out there, but we can only do so much right now right? I was excited to find (overpriced) marshmallows so that we could make them. We  hung out there the rest of the afternoon/evening. It was so nice to be in a big home with a Christmas tree and all the decorations. We played fun games with their teenagers while the kids ran around playing. Then we finished the evening off going out to the playground and playing HORSE at the basketball hoop. It was really so perfect, and so so sweet of them to have us over.