I should be packing...

but Liz is alseep and Ashley is resting, so I'm on my own and can freely type without either of them pushing the off button on the computer, which has become the new obsession of them both. I think they like to see my reaction when they do it.

It's been a wonderful two days here, with absolutely gorgeous weather, in the 80's during the day and cool at night. Yesterday, Angie and I took the kids to a mall with an outdoor play area and played there for awhile, then went to a park right next to the local airport. They ran around chasing birds and blowing bubbles. The planes were coming in for landings right over our heads. The first few were neat to see, but then the noise got to be too much and the girls got scared and ran to me and covered their ears. It was pretty loud! We got back home and went to get on the elevator and Liz got her hand stuck in the doors - OMG, it was so scary. She's fine, her fingers and hand are fine - no problems, just a little redness. But I was scared when it first happened. I always tell them to keep hands away from the elevator doors but I just wasn't quick enough this time pulling Liz back away from the doors. Poor baby! I'm just so glad she's ok. We did laundry last night and started packing for our trip after eating leftover meatloaf for dinner. (Yes, I can make meatloaf here and cook it in our little oven :)!

Today, Angie came by and picked us up again (I'm so thankful I have a friend with a car, it has made it so much easier to go do things, she's even let us install Liz's carseat in her car so we can go around town in safety) and we went to the Taipei Children's Recreation Center (http://www.tcrc.gov.tw/ENGLISH/AMUSEM%7E1.HTM). We had a lot of fun and so did the kids. We rode the ferris wheel, the carousel, the train and the boats. There are several playground areas spread throughout the park also, so they got to play on those too. There is one playground with a little "maze" connecting several stairs and slides. There were many school kids there playing and we let Liz and Joseph climb up the steps, thinking they would slide down a slide right next to the stairs - but no, they decided to take off in the maze and we couldn't see them. I had to crawl up in it (definitely not made for adults) and find them both. They were happy as could be walking through the maze, seeing kids go all around them, but we couldn't see where they were and with all those kids running around and not knowing if they were going to try to slide down the slide on their own, it was a little scary for us. I found them though and Liz and I slide down the slide together, which she thoroughly enjoyed.

I should go finish packing to visit Texas now...before Liz wakes up. We are looking forward to seeing everyone while we are in Austin. Ashley is very excited about seeing the grandparents and going to a Halloween party where all "her friends and the mommies and the daddies will be" (as she puts it). Don't know when I'll post again, but probably not until we get back from our trip.

Internet Access

We have finally joined the 21st Century and have internet access at home! I only had to wait until 2 pm today (appointment was from 10 am to noon) to get it! I am so happy, you all will never know how much I missed being in contact with everyone.
This will be short, we are preparing for our trip home, packing and making a list of things to buy from home that we can't get here. We leave on Saturday morning (early) and arrive there Saturday evening (although we will have been traveling for 24 hours, not 12!).
I've posted some new pics up and will try to get some more up tomorrow if I get a chance.

Boo-Tih

Today, Ashley had a great development. We were sitting around the breakfast table (slash dinner table, but we were having breakfast), and Ashley pointed at the ground and said something like "Mommy, Daddy, look at my kitty cat". We looked around for a while until we were both sure, there was nothing there (like a stuffed animal) that she was pointing at. We asked her what color it was, and were told it was pink with brown spots. She then 'picked' it up, and carried it around. When told to wash her hands, she went in saying "c'mon kitty" and took her kitty with her to wash up her hands.

From there on to her room to show the kitty her fish, and then to the play area in the living room. She would walk around with her little arms wrapped around her chest petting one of her arms and talking to her kitty cat.

We asked her the kitty’s name, she said “boo-tih”. We made a couple of guesses as to what she said, but got it wrong, and she kept correcting us. Finally we said ‘boo-tih’ (pronounced like "Boo!" and the 'i' sound like in the word 'it') and that’s apparently correct. Too damned cute.

This is first time I can think of that she's ever had an imaginary animal. All previous animals/babies/people were based on stuffed animals and toys that she had. This is purely air.

Especially like the name, never heard anything like it. Best I can figure, is it's a made up Chinese name, since pronunciation sounds more Chinese than English.

Further amusing about the name - mentioned it to a couple of people, who each had they're own take on what it was based on. Grandmother thought it was based on "Beauty", male friend thought it was based on "Booty". HAHAHAHA

Last week of stuff - from Kimberly

Editor's Note: Yep, it's me, and we still don't have internet access. You'll know when I know, I'll have my people call your people. Until then, you'll get massive data dumps from my wife, via me. So just be prepared to read and read and read. Good info in there, as usual. I sometimes think our life is boring until I read about it. P.S. I'm keeping an eye on the typhoons, and I don't think they're going to interfere with our trip home. We'll be arriving this Saturday early evening. Hope to get to see everyone while we're back in Austin. -anthony

October 14, 2004

Today was another interesting day in our lives here. We woke up this morning to Liz screaming, went in and got her and poor baby, she looked like she’d been beaten up – eye lids so swollen she could barely open her eyes and when I took off her pj’s, she had a horrible rash on her legs and butt. It was awful. She was breathing fine and was in a good mood, so we decided to wait until Dr. Bear’s office opened right down the street from us at 8:30. We took her to be seen and the doctor said she was having an allergic reaction to something, probably ingested, but she didn’t know what. We went through list of food she’d eaten the last 24 hours, but she’d had everything before and we couldn’t think of anything new or different. The doctor gave us some syrup medicine, along with powder medicine to mix in with the syrup to give to her three times a day for 5 days. She was better after taking a nap and by one pm, her rash was gone, but she still has the puffy eyes. Anthony stayed home with us this morning to help keep an eye on her since we don’t know what caused it (and also to watch the 3rd presidential debate).

I’ve thought of everything she ate and just can’t fathom what would have brought that reaction on, especially since it started this morning and she hadn’t eaten since the night before. Or other thoughts are clothing/sheets (stuff from our shipment) and being bitten by something. We have these ants in the apartment that have bit me and caused me to swell up and itch at the bite site, so maybe she got bit and is severely allergic to them? We have no idea? Just have to wait it out and see, I guess. Poor baby! I washed all her bedding today, along with stuffed animals and have started on all her clothes too, just to make sure. I haven’t seen any ants in her room either, but they are the little buggers, so I may have missed them. She was in a pretty bad mood starting around 5 pm; she hadn’t taken an afternoon nap, so that didn’t help. I made some really good veggie soup (with a little leftover chicken added) that was great for dinner this evening, and then Anthony got Liz to bed while I played a game of Sequence with Ashley. It was a nice evening with her until I mentioned bedtime, then it all went out the window. She starts crying and throwing fit, but I managed to get her to bed at a decent time tonight.

October 15, 2004

An earthquake today – a 7.0 at the center and a 4.0 here in Taipei. This makes me very glad to only be on the 2nd floor since I’ve heard its worse the higher up you are. It was at 12:08 pm, this afternoon, right after lunch with the girls. I was in the kitchen; both girls were in the living room. I heard a thud and then some weird noises and I saw Liz on the ground, doing what seemed to be hitting her head against the wall (it was later that I realized she had fallen and couldn’t get up because of the quake). I picked Liz up and then realized that everything was shaking and Ashley asked me what was happening. That’s when I knew it was an earthquake. I grabbed Ashley’s hand and we walked over to the front door (I’ve heard you are supposed to stand in/near door frames, away from windows). I counted and watched the living room chandelier sway. It was only after the chandelier stopped moving that I knew it was over, since my body was still moving and I felt like it wasn’t over. My heart was pounding and I was dizzy. It was very strange, since I’ve never experienced a quake before. The girls were fine, in fact, Ashley was excited, asking what that “bumpy” was and then wanting to sleep in the living room because it was “bumpy” there. I called Anthony and he didn’t answer his phone, but he called me right back to make sure I was ok since he knows how freaked out I am about the earthquakes here. I’m glad to know that it was a fairly decent sized one and I got through it just fine, without letting the girls know how nervous I was. Helps me know that I can handle it in the future. And Taipei 101 is still standing J I think many people here are afraid of having the tallest building in the world where there are earthquakes.

Liz is doing better today, the rash and redness is completely gone and her eyes are slowly returning to normal. I was trying to get her to drink a lot today since the doctor said it would help “clear” her system out of the toxicity.

We went by the Taipei Montessori School this afternoon and spoke with one of the teachers who speaks English. We both had a positive reaction to the school and have signed Ashley up. She will start going ½ days once we come back from our visit home. She is very excited and so am I J It will be in Chinese with ½ hour of English per day, but she will have one teacher who speaks English and there are at least 2 other kids in her class that are foreign (French, I believe).

We also went over to Beth’s house this evening (Beth has two kids, 3 years and 11 months). Anthony got to spend some time seeing how Ashley and Liz play with other kids (there were also some other children there – some other friends of Beth). Everyone had a great time. Beth asked us about our earthquake experience and told me that I should be glad I’m on the 2nd floor since they are on the 12th floor and were “rocking and rolling” during the quake. She’s also from California, so she’s been through a fair number of them before. Ashley had great fun playing with Claire and didn’t want to leave. We eventually managed to get her out and we headed over to Chili’s for dinner. It was very good and the girls got a lot of attention. Some of the waitresses are beginning to recognize us and even remember the girls names. They get quite a few foreigners in there, I always see others when we go, so they are used to seeing them and yet, they still declare our girls beautiful and cute J

October 17, 2004

This weekend was a good one. Yesterday, we walked to a supermarket called “Geant” in a mall called “New York, New York 2” to buy some necessary supplies for the apartment. We have a cleaning lady (Frances, also babysitter) coming once a week to clean the apartment and she had a list of things I needed to buy for her to clean. Along our walk, we also realized there is a street market near by, within walking distance, that sells fresh fruits, veggies among clothing and odds n ends. It’s a good place to buy produce since it supports the locals and is usually a bit cheaper than in the supermarkets. The girls took good naps once we got home and then around 5 pm, Frances came to watch the them. Frances is a woman that I found by posting a wanted ad for babysitter on one of the English bulletin boards here. She will be cleaning our apartment once a week (with all the dust and all tile plus wood floors, I just can’t keep up!) along with babysitting once a week so Anthony and I can get out. We both were pretty tired and didn’t find any movies worth seeing. We had dinner at the Dining Room, my favorite Chinese restaurant and split a bottle of wine. It was a great meal. Then we just walked around the Mitsukoshi mall near by to take up time and enjoy some relaxing window shopping with no children present. We got home early, around 9pm and both girls were asleep and apparently had been very good all night.

Today, Ashley and I went to the neighborhood Wellcome store to grab some groceries (very small store, not a large selection and almost no imported foods). She rode her bike there and back, which makes it a bit faster than her walking. After everyone took an afternoon nap, we headed out to find a park nearby, we walked through our neighborhood and came upon a little park a block off our main road. The girls had lots of fun playing and Ashley got lots of attention from a group of school girls there. She gets along well with other kids, even if she can’t understand them. After the park, we walked some more through alleys and lanes throughout our neighborhood, attempting to figure out where we were and how to get places. It’s amazing how easy it is to get lost in the alleys of Taipei. We saw some great shops and little stores along the way and I realized how you can survive without big chain stores, you just have to find all the little shops that specialize and remember where they are. I like our neighborhood a lot. It’s been a nice weekend weather wise, with some sprinkles, but the temps have been great, cool enough to walk around without breaking a sweat and breezy too.

I still have no idea when I’ll get internet access. I am not very happy with that situation but there is nothing I can do about it. I’m trying to wait it out patiently, but Anthony can attest to the fact that I haven’t been very good at that. I did find an internet café nearby, so I was able to check my email this weekend, although I didn’t have time to write any. I miss everyone from home and I am looking forward to our visit next week (although I have some anxiety about flying with the girls again on such a long trip and the jet lag, at least they are on some sort of schedule, so hopefully that will make it easier!).

You likey shakey-shakey?

Earthquake. First real one.

We had that little shake one time we were in the hotel, but this is the first full blown one. Around noon today, I was at work in my cube, Kimberly at home with the girls. THings just kinda started shaking, and didn't stop for a while. Last a good half to full minute (I'll try to time the next one:) ). Pretty damn good shake.

At work, most people kinda did the prairie dog thing and popped their heads up to look around. Not much to see really, but hey you never know. I got a few catcalls - since they knew I was the foreigner who hadn't been through a real one before. Certainly does make your heartbeat jump up a bit, even while you know it's probably fine and not much to do if it isn't, anyways...

Kimberly said she saw Liz sitting and bumping her head against the wall... Then after that realized everything was shaking. Later she figured out that maybe Liz fell down from the shaking and it was the wall that was bumping Liz's head. Anyways, headed for front door, Ashley asked "Mommy, what's going on?" - don't know response, but they weathered it, watching chandelier sway back and forth, Kimberly being all stoic (while she was totally freaking out on the inside), until that too passed.

Later when Kimberly was putting Ashley down for a nap, she said "I want to take a nap in the living room where it shakes, Mommy." and then "I want it to be bumpy!" Yep, we now have a girl who loves typhoons AND earthquakes. Pretty soon we'll have child saying "Daddy, I want the chickens to sneeze on me!"

So - after the fact, we now know it was 7 at epicenter, which was about 75 miles off coast, about 4 magnitude in Taipei. Nothing crazy, but nothing to sneeze at.

Oh, and in the "what else is happening seeing as your in the land of constant natural disasters" department - we have another typhoon headed this way, and maybe another one behind it.

Good news, to temper - we should finally be getting internet access at home today. So Kimberly's non-self-imposed exile from all things WWW & email should finally be over by the time you good people wake up (Friday morning, your time).

That's about it for this edition. Keep watching the skies - and we'll see some of in just another week or so! (pending approval by any typhoon that might be over us at the time)

-a

UPDATE - The telephone people are at the apartment, so hopefully Kimberly will be online soon!
New Update - ARRGGGG. Someone at AMD gave them wrong address. :( So looks like no internet this week. Dammit.

Barbecue, 10/10, & Taipei Zoo

Hey, y'all. (husband post)

Real quick post sense I'm at work.

Still don't have internet - hopefully by today I'll find out when we should be hooked up and the horrible isolation of Kimberly comes to a close. She's holding up really well, you should all be proud of her. :)

For the weekend, Saturday we cleaned up the apartment a bunch, it's looking quite liveable. It's just about totally done as far as being squared away. Beautiful day, so we went for a walk in the afternoon, went pretty far, stopped in one of the tiny pet stores they have everywhere. Very cool, bunch of rabbits (which Liz really loved), turtles, fish, etc... They had clown fish, saltwater fish tanks, lots of live corral - some of which you just don't see in the U.S., had to be illegal, or something. Quite beautiful, even had puffer fish in one tank, and some other weird things. Went to a downstairs grocery store on way back (had to carry damn stroller all the say up - probably 30 steps), got back around 5pm, when babysitter showed up (Francis). Kimberly and I went and saw movie at Living Mall. Had dinner first upstairs, then to movie (Sky Captain & World of Tomorrow). They had 'VIP' and normal tickets. We went for VIP. It's about 10% more ($10US vs. $9US/ticket). It's a totally separate section of theatre, with different concession, theatres, and bathrooms. Nice and clean. Comes with free popcorn, smaller theatre with leather seats (swear to God). Quite remarkable. I think we'll be back. :)

Back home, got in right around 9:45pm or so, Ashley was still awake - obviously tired but nicely enthusiastic to see us.

Sunday was 10/10, celebration of independence day or equivalent for Taiwan. We went to CKS memorial, saw the presidential motorcade being prepared. Two convertibles and about 50 motorcycles with officers all riding. They got the bikes, mounted and road off to whistles from an officer with military precision (btw, no president at this point, they were leaving from CKS to go pick him up, I believe).

Then back to apartment for naps for girls. At 3pm, went to Angie and Jason's house for barbecue on their back deck. Very small by Texas standards, but nice regardless, and first well maintain grass I've seen in Taiwan. Great steak, fun time, and the kids had a blast. Liz likes playing/fighting with Joseph, their son who's same age. Stayed there pretty late (Liz was asleep in pack 'n' play by the time we left).

Monday morning went to Taipei Zoo, took MRT there (the subway). The zoo is quite huge with some very nice exhibits. Lots of animals - and the cost? $60NT ($1.80US) per person - kids under 6 free. Drinks and other toys and stuff were cheap, too! Ashley got an elephant hat from vendor ouside gates for $4.50US! And then the lady gave her free thing of bubbles. Guess she thought she was cute. Had lunch at McD's just outside zoo, met Angie and Joseph there, then back to zoo. Walked around for about 5 more hours. Ashley walked the whole time, and only had 1 time out (that's got to be some kind of record, especially with all the possible distractions). Kimberly will be back, no doubt. They had parts closed, including lion area. But plent of monkeys, elephants, zebras, tortoises (sp?), fish, penguins, tigers, leopards, bears, bats, giant flying squirrels, deer of all kinds, camels, snakes, lizards, kangaroos, koala bears, couple of wolves, etc, etc...

Had dinner at Zoo mall after, at Ponderosa (like Golden Corrall. Toddlers made a huge mess but had fun. Back home, Liz slept most of way, gave 'em baths and put them to bed. All in all a very good weekend. I'll post short note when I find out when we should expect internet access. Until then, take care!

-Anthony

The Move

Editor's Note: This is being posted by the dutiful husband, since the poor sweet wife at home is still without internet access, and probably will be for another agonizing (for her primarily, but listening to her complain about it, it's agonizing for me, too :) ) week or so. Again, if you need to tell her anything, you can always write me for now. She wrote this post on her laptop, and gave it to me via USB keydrive at work... So, without further ado, on to the post!

What a blur the past couple of days have been. Last Friday, I went to a store called Hola, which is similar to a Bed, Bath and Beyond (although not as nice stuff), to look for bedding for our apartment beds. It is a bit confusing here since the sizes of beds can really vary. Along with the normal variety you find in the States of King, Queen, Full and Twin, here they also have Taiwanese King (shorter than US), Double and Single, all of which we have in the apartment. It is hard to find the right sizes and I’ve found that you have to go to several different stores to find what you need. Anthony met me at Hola and I was pretty confused by the time we finished looking - so much so that we didn’t buy anything. We headed over to RT Mart to see if we could find Ashley some bedding – she specified that she wanted a Hello Kitty room so we were trying to find a Hello Kitty bedspread. We did manage to find one at RT Mart, of course. It’s definitely not one I’d have preferred, all cute and pink with small Kitty’s all over, no, it’s pink with one HUGE Hello Kitty in a bathing suit on the beach, with lots of bright colors on it. But, she likes it and since she was complaining that she didn’t want to move out of the hotel, we’d do just about anything to make sure she liked her new room. By this time, we were all exhausted and knew we’d have a long day moving on Saturday so we headed back to the hotel for our last night of luxury living.

We packed all our hotel stuff up on Saturday morning and a small moving van, along with Dories (DTZ rental agent) and her husband, moved us over to the apartment. We had Dories order us some pizza for lunch since we had no groceries at the apartment. After lunch, we got Liz down for a nap and I headed out (in the rain) to the Wellcome store to pick up some groceries. Wellcome is a chain grocery store here found just about everywhere. The one nearest us is a few blocks away and is pretty small. I found some basics, milk, yogurt, grapes, some drinks…whatever I could fit in the backpack. Since I couldn’t remember if we had shipped pots and pans, I didn’t buy anything that would have to be cooked. I headed back to the apartment where the moving men had shown up and were unpacking all of our shipped items. It was a MESS! But, it was so nice to see all our stuff, mainly the toys, it was like Christmas for the girls, they were so excited! Part of Ashley’s day was also spent sitting in front of the MASSIVE TV in the living room, with drool coming out of her mouth, watching her movies on the big screen. I think she must have thought she was in a theatre, she really enjoyed watching them (and staying out of our way :) ) We managed to unpack most of the boxes so the movers could take them with so we wouldn’t have to deal with it. Of course, the one item that can’t have a value put on it was broken in the move, and that’s the chalkboard easel that Anthony built for the girls. It snapped in half (just the stand, not the chalkboard itself). One other item, a small wooden letter (H) that I had painted for Ashley’s room (spells out Ashley) was broken. The movers are taking both items to a “craftsman” to fix, so that’s cool. It also turns out that they shipped a dresser that we had specified for storage. Thank goodness it actually fits in Liz’s room. We may keep it for additional storage or attempt to sell it, since it’s a cheapy dresser from Target and not necessary to keep if we don’t need it. We also now know what we should have shipped and what we could have stored, but we knew that would happen at some point. It is nice to have our stuff though, mainly the toys and the clothes.

After we tried to make sense of most of the stuff, we had a babysitter come over to the apartment, her name is Miss Woo, and she only speaks Chinese! She came highly recommended from some friends and they helped set it up since they had asked us to join them for dinner. Beth and Ingo had tickets to a jazz dinner at the Hyatt (of all places!) and so the Miss Woo came over while we were giving the girls baths and took right over – she got them both out and dressed for bed. Liz was crying, not wanting me to leave, she’s become a bit clingy lately, since she’s at the separation anxiety stage. But, we made it out the door, with Liz screaming and Ashley quite happy. We joined Beth and Ingo and had a very enjoyable evening having dinner and listening to a live jazz band play. We had Ingo call and check on the girls after about an hour and half and Miss Woo said they were both good and hadn’t been crying. Ashley had wanted some food and had eaten whatever she could find in the fridge. We got home (yes, home :) ) at about 11:00 pm and both girls were sound asleep. Miss Woo said she had no problems getting either of them to bed, although Ashley did stay up later, until about 9:30. And then Miss Woo even picked up as much as she could in the living room, cleaned the kitchen and vacuumed. It was so nice to come home to a fairly clean apartment and totally unexpected since we still had boxes about and stuff laying around everywhere.

Sunday was another day of running around trying to find stuff we need and make some room by putting away stuff. It was a long day and I can’t even remember all that we did that day (even though today is only Tuesday!). After our shopping trips, we did manage to have our bedding completely taken care of, along with a few towels and some bathroom rugs. So, that was good. After the long day, we decided to eat dinner at Chili’s – of course, where else would we eat? After Chili’s, I remembered that Anthony needed to go by the Hyatt to settle our account since we hadn’t done that after checking out on Saturday. He took Ashley with him while I walked around Misukoshi, looking in the grocery store. I didn’t buy much there due to the fact that almost everything is in Chinese and is Chinese food, so I didn’t know what most of it was. I did notice a section of imported pastas from Italy and some Hunt’s Spaghetti sauce, so once we have some pots and pans, that will be our first homecooked meal in the apartment. Anthony met up with us and we took a cab back to the apartment. The cab dropped us off, then took off, just like normal, but a few seconds after he turned the corner, Anthony started freaking out…he’d left his wallet in the cab! And due to the fact that we’d been shopping at Costco, which only takes cash, he had quite a bit of cash in it. We didn’t know the cab number or even the cab company, since we are always taking cabs and really don’t pay attention. There are many different cabbie companies here and with the city being so big, it would be impossible to find it. So, after waiting about two hours, hoping maybe the cabbie would return to the complex with it, Anthony called and cancelled his credit cards and cash card. Thank goodness that I have a credit card that he doesn’t have so we have one usable card. Only the credit card companies will send them international, so he should get them in a few days. He’ll not have a cash card for a while though since they won’t send it international, only to our local address. Frustrating. After all this, I was not in a good mood. I was frustrated at not having a vehicle, having to take cabs everywhere, having to take the girls shopping with us, not being able to find things we need (laundry baskets – who knows why they don’t have them here!), not having a stocked kitchen yet, having to take two cabbies back from Costco because we all don’t fit in one cab with the stuff we buy, and the lost wallet was just my last straw. Anthony was very happy to be in the apartment and didn’t’ seem to understand my mood. He takes everything in such stride, without getting upset or being in a mood.

Anthony headed off to work on Monday and I headed up to my friend Angie’s house. I had a wonderful time at Angie’s, with her and Joseph and another lady, Jane, and her two girls (3 years old and 18 months old). Angie has a very nice place outside of the city, more in the mountains, and she even has a small backyard (unheard of here in Taipei). She had a kiddie pool set up and everyone had fun playing in the water and running around outside. Both Jane and Angie commented that I looked exhausted and needed some sleep. I knew I was tired and exhausted too. We headed home after lunch and both girls went down for naps. I rested awhile, although didn’t sleep, couldn’t fall asleep. Anthony did call with some wonderful news. Someone had turned his wallet into the police station and so a lady from his work went down to pick it up. The person who found it did not leave a name or contact information. The wallet contained EVERYTHING that was in it when it was left in the cab – ALL OF THE MONEY! Can you believe that? From what I hear, the amount of money in his wallet was comparable to a few weeks pay for a cabbie. I am in complete shock that it was all there. It made my day though – to be in a country, where you can lose a wallet with money in it and have it returned to you, with all credit cards and all money, how great is that? Shows you how great people in this country can be. I am so thankful that it fell into the hands of someone who is honest and trustworthy and whoever it may be, I am so thankful to them.

We went to IKEA when Anthony got home, hoping to find some laundry baskets, trash cans, hangers, etc. We found some of the stuff we needed, but not as much as I had hoped. I like shopping there though since we can drop Ashley off in the front and then only have one kid to deal with :) And she loves the play area there. It’s got a big ball pit and a kiddie bathroom and a TV room with little stools to sit and watch weird Chinese cartoons. We also ate dinner at IKEA, since we still didn’t have pots and pans. We picked up some cheapy ones there though, they ought to last until we can find a decent set.

To be continued…only had this much written by Friday (hard to find time to write this week, I’ve been so busy!). Hopefully we’ll have internet access set up this weekend so I can get online. Anthony’s going to post this at work today if he can get a chance.

I miss being in touch with everyone through email and instant messaging! I can’t wait until we have access again at home!