My Sweet Girls

I've been busy working on projects all week. One of them has been editing my pictures and I just had to post this picture of the girls before heading off to bed. They make me smile.

The Spooky Story

by Keely Franklin

A long, spooky goo ate mommies and daddies and kids. The kids were at school. The teacher had been eaten.

The End

Catching Up

Since I haven't posted for quite some time, I'm going to try to start catching up while still blogging about current happenings. The problem that may arise from doing it this way is that those catchup blogs will not be at the top of the blog for those of you who come directly to the blog instead of through a reader or Face Book. To help that issue, I will keep updating this post with the links so you can easily find those catch-up blogs.

Let's start catching up!!
Click on the links below to go to that post.

End Of School Presentation
Makes Me Smile 2
Makes Me Smile
Danshui
July in Review
The Smallest Room
The Waterpark
Haircuts
Quick Trip to Bangkok

Keely's 5th Birthday

Thursday was Keely's 5th birthday! She took cupcakes to school to share with her classmates. I wasn't suppose to bring them until the afternoon, so I didn't make them until that morning. Keely was a little nervous about that when she left for school. They did make it to school though -- on time! That evening we had four college student volunteers over for homemade pizza. We had cheese, sausage and black olive and BBQ chicken pizza. After dinner, Keely got to open her presents and then we went upstairs to our friends' apartment for cupcakes. Keely shares a birthday with another girl in our building and so we celebrated with all of the families in our building. What a fun day!

Jordan got to help clean the beaters after I made Keely's cupcakes.

Keely got a Snow White dress! It hasn't been off much the past 2 days!

The non-birthday girl always gets a present too. Jordan got a Belle dress.

Celebrating the girls' birthdays with cupcakes.

Keely blowing out her candles.

Keely with her cupcake.

Jordan with her cupcake.

Jordan's First Day of School

Jordan's school follows the local school system schedule, therefore, her school was scheduled to start school yesterday. Keely's school is on a different schedule and started yesterday. However, a typhoon day was called Sunday night. Typhoon/ Tropical Storm Nanmadol came across the island yesterday. We didn't see much wind and rain from it, but all of the kids got a day off anyway. Therefore, today was Jordan's first day of school. She was excited Sunday about school but after another day at home she told Jacob at bedtime she just wanted to stay home with us. However, once we were walking down the street all holding hands she started getting excited. She got a little overwhelmed with all of the teachers hugging and greeting her after the summer, but then she got into the groove. All of the children even got Pez dispensers!! Now that has to make any day a good day, right? We'll see if we still think that when Keely gets home!

(Just in case you start wondering, Jordan does have more than this one dress. She actually has many dresses due to hand me downs and some new ones. However, she always chooses this one.)

When the blog posts stop coming...

...I have probably found a new project!

Consistency seems to be missing in my life lately! I get on a roll to updating the blog and then the next thing I know it hasn't been updated in 3 months! One of the reasons this happens is that I find another project to work on during my normal computer time at night. This week I decided to work on some subway art for our living room. We have a nice switch box next to our front door. We have lived here a year and I still haven't come up with the perfect idea to cover it up. I finally came up with an idea that I think we are going to like.

It will be about 20" x 30"

I found this idea on faux gallery wrapping here. Hopefully I can get the subway art printed and "wrapped" this week! I finally finished the curtains by properly hemming them and not just with straight pins! So if we finish this project and hang up a wreath I made a month ago my living and dining area might finally be finished 13 months after moving to Taipei! Hurray!

So that's just one reason my blogging goes astray!

Skyping With Friends

As I was saying in the Bangkok post, all of us really enjoyed our time with Katy and have been missing her. Katy and Jacob set up a Skype time yesterday morning for all of us to talk and see each other. Katy's brother Joshua joined us too. After we all said hi to each other, Jacob let Keely take the IPad into her room to talk to Katy and Joshua by herself for a few minutes. Keely didn't even like it when I was in there trying to take pictures!! After awhile Jordan went in and talked to them too. The girls did get done finally so Jacob could visit with them too! What a fun way to start our Sunday morning and to keep in touch!

Jordan's Day

Jacob worked hard this week to finish as much work as possible so we could spend some special time with Jordan before she goes back to school. Yesterday after taking Keely to school and picking the house up, we went to Costco. We haven't been to Costco during a less-busy time. Jacob and Jordan enjoyed the sample stations without big crowds while I shopped. We took our groceries home and then jumped on a bus to go eat at an "In and Out" wannabe restaurant called "Burger Stop." We have a bus app that we looked at right outside our building to check which bus we needed. We discovered the bus was 4 minutes out so we hurried to the stop and made it with less than 30 seconds to spare! What timing!


Jordan loves all of the tires that are used for decoration at the restaurant. We enjoyed burgers, fries, onion rings and chocolate milk shakes. After lunch we jumped on the MRT to go to one of our favorite stores, the Green Store. That's what we all call it because it is green, though I'm sure that's not what the locals call it. We picked up some new goggles for Jordan and I bought some jump rings for some necklaces I've been trying to make. We then jumped on another bus to rest at home for an hour before it was time to pick Keely up. Jordan loves going out and about with us and so this was a type of day just for her.

First Day of Kindergarten

Keely started kindergarten Monday. She was really excited. When she woke up that morning she found me in the kitchen and asked, "Do you know what today is?" "You start kindergarten?" "Yes!" she replied.

Jordan had been feeling a little left out over the weekend as we were getting things ready for Keely. She doesn't start back to school for another week, so she will have been home with Jacob and I for two weeks by the time she starts back. I happened to have had a second sign because the spacing wasn't right on the first, which was a good thing so Jordan could be in the picture too!!

Keely seems to love school. They seem to be super busy going from one thing to the next, which means she is tired and drained once she gets home. Jordan is enjoying some alone time at home with me and sometimes Jacob when he has a break from work. However, she does often ask me what Keely is doing at that moment or ask if we are picking Keely up after rest time.

Mom and Dad are tired by the end of this week. We definitely aren't use to getting up early at 6/ 6:30 am. I know, many of you have done that for years if not earlier. However, we are tired and we even went to bed on time!! Hopefully we won't all be so tired next week, but other than that it looks like Keely is going to like school.

P.S. I know it's been a long time since we've been around here on the blog. It's been a very busy summer. We are going to try to get caught up -- but we'll see how that goes. Hopefully though there will be more regular blogging!

Quick Trip to Bangkok

The week before school started, we took a quick trip to Bangkok for some meetings. While we were in meetings, the girls had VBS and they had a blast. It helped that what one of their teachers was one of our HandsOn students so the girls already knew her making the first day go very well.

When Jacob lived in Chiang Mai before we got married he became close friends with a family there. When we moved back after we got married, we continued to grow our friendship and spend time with them. They were like family and were the hardest thing about moving from Chiang Mai when we moved to Hong Kong. When we found out we'd be in Bangkok, we started talking to them and their daughter decided to come down and spend the week with us. All of us enjoyed having Katy around and were really sad at the end of the week when we had to get on different airplanes. Thank you Katy for coming to hang out with us. We all love you and you are invited to come spend time with us any time for any amount of time. You are part of the family.

The girls and Katy. Whenever they weren't in class, they were playing games, drawing or reading with Katy.

We had an early flight out of Taipei meaning we had all afternoon in Bangkokg where we didn't have any plans. As soon as Katy got there we just started walking to the SkyTrain and on the way we decided to go to the aquarium. Above Jordan and Jacob are all ready to get on the glass bottom boat where we saw lots of different fish and sharks.

At one spot, there was a photography station set up. It said that you got a mini-picture free. This is our mini family picture!

At the end there is an aquarium tuk tuk that the girls had to get their pictures taken in.

A couple evenings after dinner the girls and Jacob got to swim. (I was doing some things with some ladies both nights). In this picture, Keely is riding Katy the dolphin around the pool.

One morning Jordan got up before the other girls and was entertaining herself with a deflated beach ball. She decided it was the perfect accessory for this season.

We had a bright and early start this morning due to a very early flight. One of our friends that went to the airport with us let Jordan catch a ride into the airport on her luggage cart.

We had a great time getting acquainted with new friends and reacquainted with old friends. However, it's just a couple days before Keely starts Kindergarten and we have lots of things to do to get ready! We better get back home and get back to the grind!

Haircuts

The girls haven't had hair cuts in awhile, and whenever Jacob goes to get his cut the girls beg to get theirs cut too. We decided they probably did need to get a haircut before school started so we finally decided to give a play a try before we left for Bangkok. Keely went first and kept telling me to make sure only a little bit got cut off. The stylist asked us if she wanted to keep her hair down or wanted it put up. Keely said up and this is how it turned out. Braids around the sides of the head and then down the back. She did the same for Jordan (though I never got a picture of her that day because she was being silly). The girls loved it and didn't want to take it out. Glad we had a good hair cutting experience!

Another view of Keely's hair.

I love this picture. It looks like she is so excited about getting her hair cut! Though I think what had happened was that she was intently looking at herself in the mirror and I asked her to smile and she smiled at the mirror instead of at the camera!

Another picture of Jordan in the hair cutting chair. I didn't realize her hair was so long!!

The Waterpark

There is a water park very near our apartment. However, we had never gone. I wasn't sure what it was like and exactly where it was. Then a friend got back in town from vacation in her home country and invited us to go with her family. It was a hot day, but with all that water it was still a lot of fun and wasn't bad at all. The whole pool is about knee deep and have all these wonderful slides for children like Keely. They also have areas were there isn't as much water spraying perfect for children like Jordan. We went back this week with the same family as before and another family. Glad we finally discovered this! We'll have to go more often next summer!

Jordan wanted her floaties even though she didn't need them -- with such shallow water. She also wanted to blow them up herself. She actually did a really good job and I just had to top it off! I was very impressed.

July in Review

July began our summer break. With the girls' Chinese school getting at the end of June and Keely's new school starting in the middle of August we only had 6 weeks of summer. I did lots of planning in June in hopes to get a full summer of fun in a short amount time. July was also a busy month for work with lots of students in town and Jacob out of the house a lot -- so being busy with lots of activities was good for us for that reason too.

7/4/2011

Our first week of summer fun had a theme of ocean animals. I cut out ocean animal shapes and the girls decorated them.

Jordan chose to decorate hers with a pencil.
(And if you are wondering from this picture, she uses both her left and right hand equally in which to write, draw, and cut).

We then put our ocean animals on the wall.

7/5/2011
When Keely was little we used an inflatable kiddy pool as a ball pit. Jordan had never played with it. I thought it'd be fun to have something different out and to get some energy out so we got out the pool and the balls.

The girls decided it was fun to watch their afternoon shows in the pool too!

Some of our friends were going on vacation to the States, and we decided to make them cards, little notebooks, and pencils for the flight.

7/6/2011
One of our ocean activities that I printed off from 1+1+1+=1 was a read and write around the room activity. There were 5-6 words and pictures that I cut apart and stuck around the apartment. They both had sheets that put on clipboards. Keely's just had the pictures on the right hand side and blank writing lines. Jordan's had the pictures along with the words in a dashed type (for tracing). After I gave the girls their clipboards they went around the apartment looking for the words on the walls and then either wrote or traced their words. Keely really liked this activity and asked for it almost every day for a few weeks. Clarisa at 1+1+1=1 does have more of these on her site here and in some of her preschool packs. She posted some of these right as we needed them, which I was grateful so I didn't have to make too many of my own!

Jordan with her clipboard, looking for the words.

Keely writing one of her words.

7/7/2011

My plan for this summer was to do outside activities every morning while there was still shade in our courtyard. Unfortunately that only happened the first week! On this day I filled up water balloons and drew chalk targets on the ground for the girls to aim at with their balloons. I got this idea from here, though the girls didn't know much about angry birds at that time so we didn't draw angry faces on the balloons nor pigs for our targets. If we did it again now they would enjoy that aspect.

This day I also made bathtub paint. I got this idea from here. I used body wash that we already had and realized later on that it was too thin. I bought actual baby wash like recommended and that worked much better and you could actually see the color when painting then.

Our bathtub paints

The girls using the paints.

7/8/2011
During the orientation Jacob was leading, our family would go to dinner with a different group of students each night. We discovered some new restaurants this week including a smoothie shop. Yea for new places and yea for smoothies!

Keely standing with this character while waiting for our smoothies.

7/10/2011

The girls picking up the ball pit balls with the grabber.

7/12/2011
I read around the blog world that a lot of people were saying homemade play dough is do much better and softer than store bought. Before our summer of fun began, I made some.
I used the recipe from here. We kept it in the fridge since we have high humidity and it did really well.

Our homemade play dough. Keely requested blue and Jordan requested pink. I do want to make some with glitter in it sometime. I even have the glitter.

Jordan playing with our homemade play dough.

Keely playing with our homemade play dough.
(The glue was from an earlier project).

7/13/2011
We bought these Play Hut tents a long time ago. I thought it would give the girls something different to do especially since Jacob left town for 4 days. After they asked me to set them ALL up, they were ready for them to be taken down not much later. They did stay up a day or two until I was tired of climbing over them.

Our obstacle course

Jordan crawling through our obstacle course

7/16/2011
Our theme for week 2 was ponds. We had an activity we didn't do this week plus some Hungry Caterpillar activities that I hadn't pulled out in awhile. Most were from 1+1+1+=1's Hungry Caterpillar tot pack and we used the lacing pictures from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Jacob was coming home today so I set up a bunch of activities around the living room to occupy the girls awhile, because there is always extra excitement and energy on the day daddy is traveling.

The girls tossing dice and placing stickers over frogs on a frog grid game found here.

Jordan covering up her frogs.

Keely covering hers.

7/18/2011
Today was travel day for the students for debriefing so Jacob had a little more free time this morning before going to the hotel. The girls decided they wanted to play Mickey Uno.

Playing Uno with Daddy.

7/20/2011
Today finally finished cutting out pattern blocks from foam for the girls to do on pattern mats. The girls enjoyed it for 5 minutes.

Keely doing a K mat with the shape blocks.

Both girls doing their pattern mats.

7/24/2011

Jordan's big thing this summer has been dressing up and got all dressed up for lunch today.
(She's has on a doctor's coat, butterfly wings, butterfly headband and a lanyard with a pin on it from HK Disneyland).