Safe arrival...

Heather's mom Ellen and stepdad Dave arrived here two nights ago without any problems! We are so thankful! I (Ricky) went to meet them with our friend/driver Pak Ashadi (he's the guy who picked us up when we moved here) They flew into Semarang, a big city about an hour and a half away. Ellen and Dave's trip was over forty hours, and I was amazed how good of spirits they were when I met them! I expected them to be exhausted and maybe a little bit like something the cat dragged in, but they were doing great (relatively speaking).  We got home around ten PM, and not too much later everyone was in bed. The next morning Elise and Ian were in for a surprise!!

The kids were so excited!  That's Elise playing Grandpa's new ipad app...a funny little bird that copies what you say in a funny voice...she thinks it's hilarious!

And of course some jumping on the bed!  Ellen and Dave seem to be handling the jet lag very well!  I guess it makes a big difference not having kids to help get adjusted too.  

Today (day 2) we took Ellen and Dave to see our language school.  Fortunately all our teachers were there on sort of  a teacher's only day, so they got to meet many of our teachers.    One of our teachers is a photographer on the side.  As we were talking to the teachers, he was testing out one of his lenses on Elise.  I just found this that he posted the following two pictures on Facebook....what a surprise!  

Again that was not me that took those photos!  Pak Jovan, one of our teachers.  Heather's mom managed to get a photo of him...here it is..

We headed downtown after the language school and checked out some shops.

Believe it or not, Elise and Ian got their pictures taken with Santa while we were downtown.  We get those photos back in a week.  I would say Santa had quite a tan this year!

When we got home our house helper had prepared us an awesome Indonesian lunch.  It is a typical Indonesian dish called "Soto Ayam" and it's a sourt of rice and chicken soup.

They've only been here two days so far and we've had lots of fun!  They're here until December 30th.  

Visitors....So Excited!

We have some special visitors on their way here right now!  Heather's Mom Ellen and stepdad Dave are coming.  If all is on time and as planned, they are making a connection in Seoul, South Korea right now.  Their trip involves four flights, and all told is about 45 hours door to door!  That is one long and tiring trip to come out and spend Christmas with us but we are so thankful they are doing it.  

Our little girl turned three last weekend.  We can't believe it!  We had a fun and special weekend for her.  We  want to put up some more pics later from her fun party.

Even though we are in Indonesia, Christmas isn't completely devoid of the good old fashioned Christmas party!  We had one at our language school the other day.  It was sort of a potluck, and "kebaktian" or Christmas service.  We sang and read verses (in Indonesian!).  That is Chris, one of our teachers who MC'ed the event.  In the background, Selemat Natal is the Indonesian equivalent of Merry Christmas.

After Elise's birthday craziness "subsided" we took a picture together with her decorations.

You can see Elise's sincere excitement about her birthday!  Let that be a teaser for Elise's birthday pictures, coming soon!

So begins the "Birthday Weekend"

There's a lot of funny little things that happen when you're trying to learn a new language. Yesterday I stopped by a local bakery to order cup-cakes for Elise to take to her school today (Friday). It is her birthday on Sunday, and we thought it would be fun for Elise and her friends at school to celebrate with some cupcakes.

When I got to the bakery yesterday, I didn't see any cupcakes. I did see muffins though, so I grabbed those and tried to describe to the employee what i was looking for using the muffin as a model. She said something like "oh yeah, with icing on top. We can make them if you want to order them. Sorry we don't have any examples for you right now!" So we went ahead and ordered twenty cup cakes to pick up the next day. No big deal right?

So today we went to pick up the cupcakes and take them to Elise's school. Here's what we got twenty of.....

Twenty of these precious little mini-cakes that all came in their own little box!  Some poor bakery employee must have been up late last night making them all.

That was a little bit more than we had in mind to give to Elise's friends, but we went ahead and brought them to school.

Elise with teacher Esther.

Elise digs in to her Thomas the Train cake.

This little boy seemed to be enjoying himself.

Im not sure he was to thrilled.  I don't think he touched his cake.

He certainly liked it!  I think this little boy was the first one done.

Elise with all her friends and teachers at pre-school

I mentioned it was the "Birthday Weekend."  So this little girl above, who lives across the back fence from us, is having a birthday party later today that we are going to.  She is turning two.  This morning she came over and she had just "licked the bowl" after her mom made her birthday cake!  

So tomorrow (Saturday) is Elise's actual birthday party.  And Sunday is her actual birthday!  So it's going to be one long celebration I think!

Recent life.....in pictures.

A pretty cool milestone happened today!  Ian just crawled!  He kind of came out of no-where and did it.  We set him on his mat after his nap.  A toy he wanted was out of reach, so he just used his arms to drag himself over to it.  Just like that!  Never did it before.  So surely our lives are about to change as Ian starts to learn how to make his way around the house!  His big sis didn't really do much moving before eleven months old.  Ian's only seven!  He's probably going to be crawling circles around big sis in no time!

Heres the cerita (story) of what we've been up to lately...in pics and captions!  I tried to include some pics from the different things we do every day....like school....the store and downtown...putting up the tree...etc!  Be forewarned, banyak foto (Indonesian for lots of pictures!).




Link to album (ipad users!)

Thanksgiving the Indonesia way!

Well there is no "Indonesian way" to celebrate Thanksgiving....there is no such thing here!  For the people in our neighborhood, it was just another day.  But not for us!
We missed being with family a lot today.  It is the first major holiday we've missed with them.  Thankfully, we had our new MAF friends and fellow Americans here in Salatiga to celebrate with!  We all got together at our friends Daniel and Joy's house.  All in all, we were 11 adults and 10 kids.  (if I am counting right.)  Of those 10 kids...5 of them were babies!  (by the way, we have like four or five more MAF families coming to join us soon.... almost all of them have babies....it's going to be baby mayhem!!)

The food was nothing short of what you would find at a Thanksgiving table back home. What an awesome treat! The food was, however, much harder to make!  There were no wal mart pumpkin pies or anything like that, but the ladies (and respective house helpers) stepped to the plate and made some awesome stuff!  And the Bizztro, one of our favorite restaraunts here, stepped to the plate by selling and cooking a turkey for us....and they cooked it to perfection!  How special.


So all of these pictures were taken at some point today.  Most of them were taken at the Thanksgiving event at our friends Daniel and Joy's house!



Link to album (ipad users?!)

While I am at it, we would like to show you a few pictures from a wedding we were invited to a few weekends ago.  It was November 13th, our 7th anniversary!  It took place in the morning, so what a fun way to start our anniversary!  A friend in the neighborhood invited us to this "pesta pernikahan" or wedding celebration.  It was set up in our neighborhood and all we had to do was walk over!  What an amazing experience.  We showed up at the time our friends recommended, and we were among the first ones there!  Oops.  So they sat us near the front right by the band and MC's.  The MC's, from what we understood, made good light-hearted fun of us quite a bit....comic relief.  Our MAF friends Daniel and Becky and their kids were invited too.  They came a bit later than us.  They and their four kids were ushered up near the front also just on the other side of the iasle from us. Apparently if you are a foreigner, you will be seated near the front at these weddings!  So we had a great view of the ceremony.  It was really neat, and the native Javanese dress and traditions were really interesting.  There was food, speakers, prayers, ceremonys, etc.  No dance floor however.  Here's some pictures we took...



Link to album (ipad users?!)

Later in the day some friends babysat for us and we enjoyed a fun date at one of our favorite places here...the Bizztro.  What a special anniversary!

The weekend again! Another week of language school down. We love the change of pace on weekends because the weeks can get pretty busy with language school, the kids, and homework!

So two afternoons ago, Heather and some other ladies from MAF met here to pray together. Elise was taking her nap, so I strapped Ian in the front pack, and we just set out to walk around the neighborhood. I can't tell you how much Ian likes riding in the front pack. He loves to be up front and center, being able to see everything. He waves his little arms around in excitement. So as we walked along the road, a neighbor of ours was showing his cow to a potential buyer! (Not something you witness every day right?!)


It was a seemingly "well to do" husband and wife looking at the cow. The wife spotted Ian as we walked by and started getting excited. I stopped briefly to wave and say a few pleasantries as is "sopan" or polite here. I noticed the lady had taken her cell phone out and was taking pictures. I came a little closer and said "silakan" which means "sure, please do". She handed the phone to her husband and she jumped in the picture with us. After a few shots they traded places and the husband jumped into the photo. This would seem super strange back home, but here it happens all the time! I was kicking myself for violating my "always carry the camera" rule....I would have loved to have a shot too.

As I continued down the block I stopped and talked with several groups of people, almost all of the conversation was about Ian and their kids! I realized that my precious little son strapped to my chest is the best possible little ice breaker!

Here's a little bit of what we've been up to lately, in pictures....

These first several are from our outing today.  While most of you were watching game seven of the world series, we struck out to head downtown, taking advantage of the "kid window" when both kids are happy and travel well.  I think we left home around the fifth inning, which for us was about nine thirty AM.



Heather had Ian in the front pack, and I was carrying Elise.  We have to walk about a half mile to catch the "Angkota"...the little blue bus we mentioned in an earlier blog post.

Elise and Ian looking cool on the Angkota.  Ian's doing his best P-Diddy impression.  

After a while downtown, Ian konked out in the front pack.

School kids "pulang" or going home.  Kids go to school six days a week here.  They seem to go home pretty early.  But I think they start early too.  This is a society that likes to get up early!  It seems everyone is up and at 'em before five AM.  Not me.

Some MAF friends of ours here had a birthday party for their son.  Elise had a blast playing with the kids and doing some of the activities they planned.  The kids loved the "painting wall."  Elise was into her masterpiece.

Rainy season is here!  Every afternoon for the last several days we've gotten some rain!  We got rained on on the way home from a coffe shop on Friday.  Heather and Ian stayed dry under their umbrella.  Elise stayed dry in the jogging stroller....but I didn't!  

A little over a week ago, we had a few extra days of a break between "units" at language school.  We took advantage to travel and see some of the island of Java.  We went to a little beach town called Jepara north of here.  On the drive, we saw some things that, let's just say we didn't see every day back home.....

A school bus?

There's lots of little busses with wild paint schemes and spoilers on the highway.

Lots of trucks have guys riding on top.  Really?  Not legal in the US!

It's amazing what you will see on people's scooters.

And of course a cattle truck.

Working in the "sawah" or rice fields.  

Then.....the beach!

Ian enjoying the scenery from his shady spot with his "go-pod".

A newly maried couple on the beach wanted Heather to rub her tummy for good luck! (We didn't really understand why, but Heather kindly obliged.)  And of course she wanted a picture

What a fun, quick trip!  On the drive home we stopped at a store in Semarang, a larger city.  They happened to have pumpkins!  We got a couple for Elise to decorate....

We are definitely missing all the sights, smells, and tastes of fall back home! 

Last night, we said goodbye to our new friends Sean and Becca and their three cute kids. They are finished with language school, and headed to serve with MAF in Kalimantan Indonesia. They were so helpful to us when we arrived, spending countless hours showing us how to live here. Scouring my computer for a picture of them all I can find is this picture of Sean from the going away party for them at our house last night (which was really fun).



Oh wait here is a picture of them.



That's Becca and Sean in the back, Sean is the tall guy, and Becca is to the right of him. They are standing with a couple other students and all of our teachers or "pilatihs" at language school. We love our pilatihs. They are such a fun, positive bunch. And they are so patient. Could you imagine teaching people your language all day every day?! They do a great job. It was a very funny moment on Friday when Heather and I were in language class, and Sean and Becca rode off on their scooter after their last day. Sean let out a "waaaa-hooo!" that could be heard throughout the whole school. The look on the teacher's faces were priceless. In Javanese culture (the people native to this island of Java) it is polite to be calm, quiet, and anything but boistrous. And Sean seems like he is a guy who doesn't mind breaking the rules from time to time in good fun!

Speaking of language school, Heather and I just completed our first "unit" of language school (8 more to go!) That is, if we pass our unit 1 evaluation tomorrow (knock on wood!). It is such a relief to be done with unit 1....it is such a challenging time. We were just adjusting to living here....while beginning to grapple with a language we knew nothing about. It feels so good now to have four weeks under our belt, and to be able to actually walk up to and begin a conversation with people in our neighborhood.

Our school takes a few days break between units. It is a welcome change of pace and it gives students an opportunity to head out and check out nerby cities in the island of Java and to get more experience talking with the locals. So we're going to do just that! After our evaluation Monday we are going to strike out for a two night excursion to a nearby city. We're pretty excited. And it is our first trip like this as a family of four!

For lack of time I am going to skip putting the token photo slide-show up right now, but hope to do that soon. Instead here's a short vid I took of Ian today!