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!)