Weekend
I took Elizabeth to the doctor this morning for her flu booster shot. She did really well and stopped crying as soon as the nurse gave her a lollipop! Lollipop, you say? What is a 16 month old doing with a lollipop? Well, apparently, due to the fact that this is not a suing nation, it is ok and advisable to give small children things like candy, stickers and balloons. She got all of these from the doctor. She loved the lollipop and was very upset when I took it away. I did let her suck on it for a while and she did fine – and loved it, of course.
Ashley went to school this morning, no problems. It helped that they had bread and peanut butter and jelly out for the kids to make their own morning snack. She can’t resist that. We had problems getting her to bed last night – it took 2 hours to get her to sleep and many, many screaming tantrums on her part. Anyone have any ideas for us to help get her to sleep at a decent hour? We’ve tried laying down with her, letting her lay in our bed, letting her lay on couch in living room (hey, we were desperate), letting her cry it out, taking toys away – nothing seems to be working. She just screams “I’m not tired” and you know she’s exhausted. It’s been going on for a few weeks now, off and on. Some nights are easy, some nights are ok and some nights are horrible (last night!).
The weekend itself was a good one. On Saturday, our friend, Lili came with us to the European School Christmas Bazaar. We thought it would be lots of Christmas crafts for sale, but it was mainly food and kids entertainment. It was fun though, something different to do and it was bizarre seeing all those foreigners (meaning…white people) in one place. It’s rare to see that many together at once. We ate lots of food and let the girls play around for a bit and then we decided we’d had enough of the crowds there and we should go to the opening of the Miramar Mall and see what kind of crowd tolerance level we had. I had bought movie tickets online that morning, so we also needed to pick the tickets up for the evening showing. The mall was PACKED – people EVERYWHERE. I thought the escalators surely weren’t made to hold that many people at once, but they didn’t collapse, so I guess they are. It is a very cool mall – lots of good kid stores, so I’m sure I’ll be back there. The main attraction of this mall is a HUGE Ferris wheel that loads people from the 5th floor. It is pretty neat. The lines were so long though, we’ll wait until the crowds thin out before attempting to get on the Ferris wheel. Ashley is very excited about it. They also have an IMAX theater there – pretty cool.
Anthony and I had date night Saturday night, so we headed back to the movie theater at Miramar after the babysitter arrived. We left the apartment around 5:10, thinking we could make the 5:40 show easily. No such luck. Apparently, traffic was horrible in the area around the mall due to the weekend opening. Luckily our taxi driver did some maneuvering and had us at the mall entrance at 5:43. We ran up to the theater and of course, our movie was showing on the top floor – 9th floor. We made it though, with previews still playing – and Anthony even had time to get me a popcorn and go to the bathroom before the show started. We saw The Incredibles – VERY GOOD movie, I highly recommend it. The theater was great – big seats, lots of room, big screen, good sound, we’ll definitely go back there again. Some foreigners here complain about the fact that you get assigned seating in a movie theater when you buy tickets, but we think it’s great! We were late for a new movie and we didn’t have to worry about it being sold out or not being able to find good seats. We ordered them online and chose our seats then, I really like that.
After the movie, we caught a cab and went to a restaurant called KiKi’s. It’s supposed to have good Chinese food. We ordered a chicken dish and shrimp balls. The shrimp balls were great, the chicken wasn’t very good. The chicken dish had chicken cubes (still with the bone ), mint, ginger and some other strange items. The flavors just didn’t mix for me. The girls were both asleep when we got home – although they both went to bed VERY late considering neither of them took naps during the day.
Sunday was another good day. We went to Costco to get groceries and a bread maker! So now I just need to find the ingredients to try and start making my own bread. I’m very excited. So if anyone would like to send me some of those prepackaged bread making kits, that would be cool. Nothing fancy, just plain white and wheat bread, banana bread, cinnamon bread, that kind of stuff. We then headed out to Chili’s for lunch – mmmm, Chili’s. It wasn’t a very fun walk since Ashley was in a BAD mood and threw lots of little tantrums along the way. I almost thought we weren’t going to be able to eat there since she was behaving so badly. But once we sat down and got our food, she cheered up. The food was DELICIOUS. I really do praise Chili’s here for the way that they have been able to keep all their dishes tasting exactly like they do back home. It just gives us a little reminder of being home, which is so nice. For dinner, we had rotisserie chicken from Costco and veggies and mac n cheese. The girls loved all of it, especially the veggies. I’m so proud that both my kids will eat their vegetables. We keep telling Ashley she’ll grow big and strong by eating them and she takes it literally – she put her arms up in the air and showed us how big she was getting. Now the chicken, although it was very good, I almost could not eat it. It comes packaged up, just like you would get a Rotisserie Chicken back home at HEB, in the little plastic containers, but when I took the top off and started taking the chicken apart for the girls to eat, I realized that it’s a little different than the ones back home – IT STILL HAD ITS HEAD ON. Fully cooked chicken head – with beak and everything. I found it a little disturbing, although I managed to get past it and still eat the meat.
After getting Liz to bed, Anthony and I played Scrabble, in between dealing with Ashley. I managed to pull off a win! Yes, that’s right, I won (which is pretty unusual in Scrabble). It was a very nice way to end the evening.
Ashley went to school this morning, no problems. It helped that they had bread and peanut butter and jelly out for the kids to make their own morning snack. She can’t resist that. We had problems getting her to bed last night – it took 2 hours to get her to sleep and many, many screaming tantrums on her part. Anyone have any ideas for us to help get her to sleep at a decent hour? We’ve tried laying down with her, letting her lay in our bed, letting her lay on couch in living room (hey, we were desperate), letting her cry it out, taking toys away – nothing seems to be working. She just screams “I’m not tired” and you know she’s exhausted. It’s been going on for a few weeks now, off and on. Some nights are easy, some nights are ok and some nights are horrible (last night!).
The weekend itself was a good one. On Saturday, our friend, Lili came with us to the European School Christmas Bazaar. We thought it would be lots of Christmas crafts for sale, but it was mainly food and kids entertainment. It was fun though, something different to do and it was bizarre seeing all those foreigners (meaning…white people) in one place. It’s rare to see that many together at once. We ate lots of food and let the girls play around for a bit and then we decided we’d had enough of the crowds there and we should go to the opening of the Miramar Mall and see what kind of crowd tolerance level we had. I had bought movie tickets online that morning, so we also needed to pick the tickets up for the evening showing. The mall was PACKED – people EVERYWHERE. I thought the escalators surely weren’t made to hold that many people at once, but they didn’t collapse, so I guess they are. It is a very cool mall – lots of good kid stores, so I’m sure I’ll be back there. The main attraction of this mall is a HUGE Ferris wheel that loads people from the 5th floor. It is pretty neat. The lines were so long though, we’ll wait until the crowds thin out before attempting to get on the Ferris wheel. Ashley is very excited about it. They also have an IMAX theater there – pretty cool.
Anthony and I had date night Saturday night, so we headed back to the movie theater at Miramar after the babysitter arrived. We left the apartment around 5:10, thinking we could make the 5:40 show easily. No such luck. Apparently, traffic was horrible in the area around the mall due to the weekend opening. Luckily our taxi driver did some maneuvering and had us at the mall entrance at 5:43. We ran up to the theater and of course, our movie was showing on the top floor – 9th floor. We made it though, with previews still playing – and Anthony even had time to get me a popcorn and go to the bathroom before the show started. We saw The Incredibles – VERY GOOD movie, I highly recommend it. The theater was great – big seats, lots of room, big screen, good sound, we’ll definitely go back there again. Some foreigners here complain about the fact that you get assigned seating in a movie theater when you buy tickets, but we think it’s great! We were late for a new movie and we didn’t have to worry about it being sold out or not being able to find good seats. We ordered them online and chose our seats then, I really like that.
After the movie, we caught a cab and went to a restaurant called KiKi’s. It’s supposed to have good Chinese food. We ordered a chicken dish and shrimp balls. The shrimp balls were great, the chicken wasn’t very good. The chicken dish had chicken cubes (still with the bone ), mint, ginger and some other strange items. The flavors just didn’t mix for me. The girls were both asleep when we got home – although they both went to bed VERY late considering neither of them took naps during the day.
Sunday was another good day. We went to Costco to get groceries and a bread maker! So now I just need to find the ingredients to try and start making my own bread. I’m very excited. So if anyone would like to send me some of those prepackaged bread making kits, that would be cool. Nothing fancy, just plain white and wheat bread, banana bread, cinnamon bread, that kind of stuff. We then headed out to Chili’s for lunch – mmmm, Chili’s. It wasn’t a very fun walk since Ashley was in a BAD mood and threw lots of little tantrums along the way. I almost thought we weren’t going to be able to eat there since she was behaving so badly. But once we sat down and got our food, she cheered up. The food was DELICIOUS. I really do praise Chili’s here for the way that they have been able to keep all their dishes tasting exactly like they do back home. It just gives us a little reminder of being home, which is so nice. For dinner, we had rotisserie chicken from Costco and veggies and mac n cheese. The girls loved all of it, especially the veggies. I’m so proud that both my kids will eat their vegetables. We keep telling Ashley she’ll grow big and strong by eating them and she takes it literally – she put her arms up in the air and showed us how big she was getting. Now the chicken, although it was very good, I almost could not eat it. It comes packaged up, just like you would get a Rotisserie Chicken back home at HEB, in the little plastic containers, but when I took the top off and started taking the chicken apart for the girls to eat, I realized that it’s a little different than the ones back home – IT STILL HAD ITS HEAD ON. Fully cooked chicken head – with beak and everything. I found it a little disturbing, although I managed to get past it and still eat the meat.
After getting Liz to bed, Anthony and I played Scrabble, in between dealing with Ashley. I managed to pull off a win! Yes, that’s right, I won (which is pretty unusual in Scrabble). It was a very nice way to end the evening.
posted by The Armstrongs at
11/22/2004
