Merry Christmas from Thailand!

What do you get when you put together sunshine, sand, family and good food?  A fabulous holiday in Thailand with the Haskes!  Instead of doing our normal camping/hiking Christmas we decided to meet up with Jim's sister, brother and family in Koh Lanta.  It has been so nice being together for the holidays.  We've had a lot of laughs and fun times together - all between naps, of course!  We have just a few more days in here (how sad!) and then we fly to Bali to meet some dear friends.  It is going to be sad to leave Jim's family, but great to see some special friends.  And plus, it's Bali:)

We made arrangements with Santa to visit us before we left Jakarta.  It's a good thing he is so flexible!  Amelia was so thrilled to find a pair of sandals in her stocking that we could have stopped there and saved everything else for a rainy day:)  She asked us to put them on so she could run around the house.  She continued to do victory laps each time she opened something new.  It was funny watching her reactions - much different from last year.  

 

New sandals and new jammies!  

What more does a girl need?

 Amelia loved her shopping cart so much that she pushed it around the house from the moment she opened it to the moment we left...only taking breaks for food, sleep and diaper changes!

 

Enjoying a Christmas book from Grandpa Steve and Grandma Nancy

 

Grandma Mary Ann sent a peek-a-boo book and without prompting Amelia joined in.  It was the cutest thing!  The blanket she is sitting on was sent from her Aunt Renee in Iowa.  She made it herself and sent it just in time for Amelia to enjoy!  Thanks for that!

As always, Amelia's development continues to astound us!  Just this week she has added some new fancy words to her vocabulary: down (with sign), flower, bubble, rice, cracker.  She is building quite the vocabulary and now tells us night-night when she wants to go to sleep with her nay-nay (paci and blanket) which is something I never thought would happen.  Friends had talked about their son asking to go to bed and I thought, "yeah that will never happen," but it did.  Whew...keeping a consistent bed time routine pays off:)  She is on her second skinned knee from running on pavement faster than her body can coordinate and if she had her way would live on mango smoothies.  (Every time she hears the resort blender go she says, "Yum, yum!")  Needless to say, we are enjoying every minute of our time off with her.  Hopefully you can see her in action very soon either on skype or videos we will surely post.

Missing all of you and wishing you the best for the coming new year.  

Lots of Love from,

Liz, Jim and Amelia

XO

Bring on the ball pit

Belated Birthday Blog

So the best intentions are, well...intentions. I thought that this year would be different now that my Master's studies are finished, but the blog continues to be quiet. Just a video here and photo there. So many events have passed and I have written countless posts in my head, but they haven't actually made it to this space! What can I say? Life is busy!

So, to catch up on what we have been up to, we will start with the first and most important: Amelia's birthday was on October 5th. Since I know several of you have been waiting for photos. We kept Amelia's celebration small and simple. We had her baby group over for an afternoon play date. Lots of yummy snacks, a cowboy cake (no connection to actual cowboys, just a name given by Jim's dad and friend) and a stuffed animal pit made for a fun time.

Photos are taking forever to upload so for now I will just post an album:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lizhaske/AmeliaSFirstBirthday

Watch Amelia Grow

52 weeks of growth captured! This was Jim's idea and I am so glad we did it. It is so incredible to see the growth from week to week.

If you have better suggestions for a song, please post them in the comments section below...

Ahh chooo!

Amelia and Daddy pretend to sneeze...ahh choo!

Happy Oktoberfest!

Amelia discovered the delights of a cold block of ice and a little polka music during Oktoberfest 2011. Cheers!

We had five blissful days last week in Bali as the rest of Indonesia celebrated Idul Fitri, the closing of Ramadan. We checked out a new area, Sanur, and will definitely go back. We had such a lovely time swimming, eating and strolling about. Jim even got in a dive! We have plans to go back in December and will hopefully meet up with our friends from DCS, the Longs.

Amelia is so friendly and loves to interact with new faces. She makes a silly giggle to catch someones attention and then goes through her routine of tricks. It is really funny to watch. By the end of our time at Hotel Sanur Beach, the wait staff knew her name and several other guests had to greet her daily. It is funny to witness just how much people love babies.

We seem to be in a continuous hunch these days as Amelia cruises around with her quickly fading goose step. She is now moving much faster and instead of high kicks is developing quite a quick pace. She wants to climb up everything - including tall shelves and the base of our table. She is over crawling up the stairs and would much rather hold your hands and walk up them. She has even shocked us with a few moments of free standing, but we think walking is a little ways off. We'll see as she is always full of surprises!

Birthday season is officially open as we celebrated with the first of the Bintaro Baby Boom: Zia. She is a month and a day older than Amelia so now we have to shift our focus to think about how we are going to ring in this year. I have plans to put together all the weekly photos and post a slide show. We have never missed a week, but unfortunately our memory card had an error and three photos are unviewable. (We also lost photos from our crab feast on our new porch with Richmond friends.) We decided that we are just going to reenact the photos we missed so that the series is complete. It has been a fun project, but we both agree that 52 is where we stop:)