Sunday Snapshot: Organizing & Little Red Spots

It all started last week. Becca woke up one morning and had several red marks on her back that were really bothering her. Since they didn't look like mosquito bites, I immediately thought that they were spider bites. And yes, we are still battling the mosquitoes. Fierce little monsters. So that day we cleaned out her bed, washed all the sheets, and thought it would be better.

The next morning she woke up with even more. And I was perplexed.

But then I heard that one of the other kids in the neighborhood had chicken pox.

Uh-oh.

Even though she had been vaccinated, Becca indeed has chicken pox. And I sent her to school during the most contagious period of time. Oops.

But on the thankful side, she has a mild case. No fever, doesn't really feel bad. Just really itchy.

Definitely not mosquito bites. I think of this face as her, "are you really going to take a picture of me. Really, mom?"

No, B! Don't scratch! She has one just below her eye that is really annoying her. And one in her ear.

But somehow, she doesn't look that sick.

Then on Friday afternoon, I looked closer at the mosquito bites on Tori's face. Hmm, and now we have case #2. Thankfully, Josh had it 2 years ago. How he got them then and the girls didn't is beyond me.

So Andy and the girls stayed in this Sunday morning. We went to IKEA the other day to buy Becca a desk and various home organizing things. I know that it was a definite hardship for him to hang with the sick girls and build the desk.

The end result.

Then when Josh and I got home from church, Andy and J built a new shoe rack for us. You can see the old shoe rack lurking in the background.

There is something truly wonderful about building something with Daddy. Or a home improvement project together. But we rent our home and are not even allowed to change a light bulb. Not exaggerating, we have to call a property management worker to change a lightbulb or even hang a picture. So opportunities to build with Daddy are limited and these projects are to be savored.

 I am almost embarrassed to show you the shoe area before. But in the interest of full disclosure, here it is. And there are even more shoes littered around my feet.

And the finished, much neater version. We can now fit all the shoes for this season on the rack. And as no household in China would be complete without it, there is the required basket of slippers for guests on the right.

I find it immensely humorous that on the shoe rack, Josh has 1 pair of shoes. Just one. Equally surprising is that I don't have the most shoes on the rack. Granted, I tie for that dubious right. Can you guess who ties me for the most?

Little T, my petite diva shares that honor with me. My littlest loves shoes. Boots. Sparkly slippers. She truly believes that a girl cannot have too many shoes. So I find them on discount and second hand, and she rocks them all. Particularly her cowgirl boots.

And my next organizational challenge? The toy room upstairs. Since I will be home-bound with the girls and their chicken pox this week, I know I will have time to tackle this.

Meat. . . but what kind?

I was talking to my ayi (house help) today about the chicken and dumpling soup that I made yesterday. She informed me the chicken that I thought that I had bought was in fact duck. Huh. I thought that the chicken smelled and looked a little bit weird. Which just goes to show that even after living here years, sometimes the grocery store still has triumphs over me. But we won't consider it a fail since the soup was delicious. Who knew duck and dumplings could be so good?

Sunday Snapshot: Paper cut outs

Think that I am done with all the vacation blogging. And now we are back to life as usual. A friend of ours from college was in Suzhou this last week for business and we were able to meet up with him. We picked him up for church on Sunday, went out to lunch together and then helped him get some shopping done. He remarked that while he gets a fair amount of attention here in China, it is nothing compared with us. And it is true, I can describe the attention our cute blondies get, but until you walk down a street with us and see everyone stop and stare at us (and for once, I am NOT exaggerating), I am not sure that you get it.

Anyway, just part of the package of life in China.

One of my favorite things we stumbled across was this man selling paper cut-outs. Paper cut-outs are an ancient Chinese art. I am amazed at what they can make just from paper and scissors. Warren (our friend) decided to buy some of the art and the man told him that he would give him something. And then, to our amazement, he told Warren to look to the side and in mere moments, he had cut out his silhouette. The vendor then proceeded to make a silhouette for each of the kids.

T posing. She had the hardest time staying still.

The end result:

Tori

Josh

When we walked up to the booth, there were no other people there. But after only a few minutes of us standing there, we drew quite a crowd. Yes indeed, the spectacle of us.

I love those unexpected finds that life gives you. Hope that you have an unexpected blessing this week.

Check out below for some other snapshots of life. [must confess that normally we would use our real camera. but today in just capturing the unexpected moment all we had was the iPhone]

Tioman Island - Snorkeling

On our second full day on Tioman we chartered a boat to take us snorkeling. This island is well-known for its great scuba and it has a lot of shallow-water reefs that are also great for snorkeling.

Geared up and ready to go!

Tori had a mixed reaction with the snorkel at first. She loved seeing and being able to breathe, but it kept bothering her. And then fixing it was complicated. Because she could never quite explain just exactly how it was bothering her. It just was. But when we went a second day she had gotten it.

We spent the morning at two different locations, but on our way to another island the wind picked up and it started to rain. With the wind blowing the kids were freezing. I had to buy two beach towels because they were just so incredibly cold. They had warmed up some by this picture but before their lips were a little bluish.

Time to refuel with chocolate pancakes. Lunch of champions.

With her cute braids and sea-salty hair, I kept calling T my little island girl. Here the island girl is warming up with some hot tea.

Can you see all the fish just swarming around Josh? How cool is that?

Tori, Andy and Becca

Becca is such a fish herself. For part of the time, she was not even wearing her life jacket. It kept happening that we would look up and she was a bit away from us. But even with all of her adventurousness, she had mixed feelings about the swarm of fish being right on top of her. Loved seeing the fish, not so crazy about them bumping into her face. I gave her the advice that if she kept moving then the fish would avoid her. Later I would look at her and she would appear to be just flailing around. At first I was confused because she is an excellent swimmer, but then I realized all this flailing was to keep the fish at bay. Love that crazy girl!

 Amree and T found an anemone. Or as Tori kept calling them: sea enemies.

Just a little slice of paradise. The tiny little island on the right side was our favorite spot to snorkel. There we saw countless clown fish, anemones, amazing coral, countless kinds of fish, and even a sting ray gliding along the bottom. What a unique experience!

So you might notice that is a marked lack of pictures containing me. Well, the reasons for that are two-fold. Even though Andy and I normally both take pictures, I took most of these. Secondly, do you have any idea what you look like after having your head in the water all morning? My vanity reared her head and for once I am letting her have her way. It was not pretty. Think I will leave it up to your imagination.

But we had a wonderful time. So much that on our last day when we gave the kids a choice of what to do, they unanimously choose to go snorkeling a second time. We will all cherish these memories.

Pulau Tioman

Or otherwise known as Tioman Island is a tiny island in Malaysia about a 45 minute plane ride from Singapore. We loved this little island. It has such a laid-back feel to it. Which starts at the airport.

Boarding the plane in Singapore for Tioman.

On the runway. I am glad that Becca didn't know how small the runway was before we landed. Or that it ended into the mountainside. My girl does not need any additional things to worry about when we travel.

And this would be the airport in Tioman. On the right is immigration. Seriously, the most low-key airport I have ever been in. The day we left to fly back to Singapore we noticed that they used a chalkboard to list the times of the 3 flights leaving that day.

After we landed, picked up our bags from the runway (where they wheeled them to us), figured out how to get money and then travel to our hotel, the kids wasted no time at all getting to the beach.

Sitting on the front porch of our bungalow. Oh, yes good things are in store for us on this island.

Singapore

The first week of October is one of the big holidays in China. It is referred to as one of the two Golden Weeks (Chinese New Year is the other) and the official name is 国庆节 guóqìngjié. This is the National Holiday of China celebrating the the beginning of the PRC (People's Republic of China). For us, this means the ability to travel as both Andy and the kids have the week off. Granted for Andy, the holiday is not a full week off so there is some creative shifting of the work week by the government in order to get those 7 straight days. For example this year Andy got off Saturday, October 1st through Friday, October 7th. But then he (and everyone else in China) had to work the weekend of the 8th and the 9th. But it is hard to complain since we get traveling in the bargain. Over the last couple of years, we have used this time to explore various parts of China. But Andy's brother and wife who live in Japan are planning to move back to the States within the next year. We opted to use this chance to meet up with them. We met in Singapore and then traveled together to Malaysia.

One of the highlights of Singapore was the zoo. I feel like we are becoming zoo experts. And the Singapore Zoo is now one of our favorites. 

To say my boy is fond of maps is a vast understatement. The boy loves maps. Almost as much as he loves books. And that is saying something.

In the rainforest enclosure. At first we were fascinated watching the giant fruit bats. But before long these lemurs were showing off for us. One of the things that is amazing about this zoo is how interactive everything is. We were up close and personal with the animals.

And I was feeling just a little too close and personal with the lemurs. Especially as they started growling at each other behind my back. We only got this one shot of us here because I quickly moved to a bit more comfortable distance. Andy was teasing me, but really they were growling at each other behind my back. I think I was justified in my need for distance.

Throughout the zoo there were really fun statues. The kids wanted their pictures taken at every single one.

At the white bengal tiger exhibit there was this freaky-looking bug on the fence. Before long, we weren't even watching the tigers but this crazy bug. I got the great idea to blow on it. Don't ask me why. And then it sort of jumped-flew onto Andy's shirt. He was less than thrilled. And who was making fun of me for not wanting to be too close to the animals?

But to be fair, it was a really freaky bug. The kids decided that it looked like it was wearing boots on 4 of its 6 legs. Furry, white boots. At first when we saw it, we thought it was a piece of lint or trash. Until it started moving! Freaky bug.

I think of this as Tori's lotus-flower pose. This is what happens when your child attends Chinese school. . .

The whole clan

We were so humored by this. You could pay to have your photo taken in front of the chimpanzees. But the trainer was not happy with the arrangement of the chimps. I think because they kept moving and shifting. As we stood there watching, he rearranged them several times. And then in the end, it really looked about the same. 

Tori was keeping pace with the Pygmy hippo

On our second day in Singapore, we met up with some friends who also happened to be visiting at the same time. We met Daniel at the Ion Food Court. While there we also ran into another couple that we know from Suzhou. Somehow this happens to us a lot. Last year we bumped into friends at our hotel in Vietnam. The world is small.

After lunch we met up with Cynthia at the Botanical Gardens. Tori seems to have commandeered Aunt Cynthia's phone. We'll just hope she wasn't making a call.

Within the Botanical Gardens, there is a stunning Orchid Park. It was steamy hot (then again all of Singapore is), but oh-so-beautiful.

Just what am I looking at? Somehow I was not behaving for pictures. First the lemurs, now this. . .

But maybe I will just claim that I was looking at these amazing flowers. The girls kept saying, 

"Take a picture of this one." 

"Oh, this one is pretty!" 

Because they were all just overwhelmingly gorgeous. It was hard not to take pictures of every single one. 

And maybe we didn't get every one. But we came close. Such a marvelous part of creation.

The Singapore crew

Upon leaving the Orchid Park, we encountered this lady with her ridiculous dogs. Can you see their shoes? As Andy said, "she is way too serious and intense looking to be carting around such ridiculous creatures."

Normally, I try not to repeat myself but all that comes to mind is: ridiculous.

As we were leaving the Botanical Garden you could walk through this tunnel created by plants. Both Amree and I loved the way the roots felt.

We had just two days in Singapore and then it was on to Tioman Island in Malaysia. But while we were in the city, we sure packed it in!