The Zoo

The zoo here is amazing. It's a cage-less zoo so the animals are right there. It's the most beautiful one I have ever been too. It's just like being in a tropical rain forest. We only live a 15-20 minute bus ride away and got a year pass so we'll be able to go often. They also have a great playground and big water play area for kids. These are from the birthday trip and another day a couple weeks before. What do you think of Samara's mullet? I think it's a good look for her. I've cut in since then but that part of her hair seems to grow faster than the rest!

Birthday Fun

Birthday morning pancakes on Friday

Our friends from Taiwan arrived the night of her birthday and Ben had to work all day and evening so we had cupcakes, ice cream, and presents a couple days late. We went to the zoo the next Tuesday. We had to go to IKEA to get some things on her actual birthday.   IKEA is one of her favorite places to go and she even got an ice cream cone. So spoiled!

Samara turns TWO!

It's hard to believe our little munchkin is two already. It has flown by. Samara is an absolute delight and we are so grateful to be her parents. She's been through a lot of changes this past year and put up with some grumpy parents during this move so we wanted to make sure she had a great birthday. We had to think of something really good.





A pony ride?  No, that was so 18 months ago.





A fun birthday party with cake, presents, and balloons?  All fabulous but we wanted that and more! She got an elephant ride at the zoo!  How cool is that?  She loved it and wanted to go again and ride 'that other elephant'.  I think I even had more fun though.  We also got to feed the kangaroos, which she got a big kick out of. We even had our friend April and her son George (visiting from Taiwan) here for all the celebrations. Those are the two people in front of Samara. Ben took the pictures.

The Warren

We finally got into our condo almost two weeks ago. It is wonderful. We are so much happier here. It's great to get settled and unpack after living out of suitcases and boxes to some degree for the last 8 months. The grounds & pools make you feel like you are in a 5-star resort. Our condo is small but we don't mind at all except the kitchen is like a closet. Here are some pictures of the view. We'll take some more pictures soon and post them to lure you all into coming.

The Warren Country Club

Apartment buildings on our street.

In the distance you can faintly see the mountains in Malaysia.

Pancakes, Pizza, and Poo poos

Saturday mornings Samara makes pancakes with "Daddy Bennie" (as she calls him). It's one of their favorite things to do together. She can eat her body weight in pancakes!





Samara loves pizza. We are quickly burning through our stash of pepperoni so if someone knows anyone coming this way send some to us! With so many laws here you'd think what they do to pizza would be illegal. For example, a 'winter special' pizza toppings are cheese, turkey bacon, chicken ham, cheesy sausage, pineapple, mayonaise with lettuce or cinnamon. Sounds tempting, doesn't it? They have tuna and all sorts of weird combinations. The Hawaiian has crabstick on it.






One day we were getting ready to go swimming but Samara needed to do her business so she stayed in the dining room while I went into the bedroom. I was turned around when I heard/saw everything fly off the bedside table. Samara had grabbed the camera and was frantically repeatedly saying, "take picture. take picture." She handed me the camera, stood in front of me, pretended to grunt, and said, "take picture, Mommy. Take picture of baby going poo poos." It was hilarious. The picture obviously didn't capture the fake grunt but she asked me another time (green shirt) to take one. What a hoot!

Welcome to our Blog!

We haven’t had regular internet service since we got here so that’s why it’s been delayed. For now, we aren’t going to make it private but we may in the future so if you can’t get on in the future just shoot us an email and we’ll send you an invite.

Be sure to go back and start at the beginning of the blog—we’ve attempted to post it in chronological order. The first few posts about Singapore have a lot of detail so feel free to skim over it. We started writing and it sort of turned into our record/journal of the first little while here. I guess we’re not really good bloggers. I am more of a blog-stalker than a blogger and Ben is a boy so it’s not exactly acceptable for him to do it. We’ll add more pictures in the future. Our camera has been having issues for months and won’t focus properly so the foreground is often blurred and we haven’t taken too many.

Also, since we are just posting these to get them up and sitting on a very uncomfortable bench, the blog is a little rough so bear with us until we learn the ins and outs of the blogger. I already have a few questions for you experienced bloggers. Can you add more than five pictures to a post? Can you rearrange the order of posts after you’ve posted them?

Happy Valentines Day!

We hope you all had a wonderful day. This past week Samara and I watched the Charlie Brown Valentines’ DVD and it has the “It’s Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown” episode on it. In it, everybody blames Charlie Brown for losing the homecoming football game because he missed a kick. Of course, no one seems to be aware of the fact that Lucy, the scuz, moves the ball away from Charlie Brown at the last minute—he didn’t even get to kick the ball. I really can’t stand Lucy! It drives me crazy that no one notices that it’s her fault. However, he does get to kiss the little red-haired girl in the end (and anyone who’s lucky enough to kiss a redhead knows what a privilege that is!). Anyway, I hope you had a Lucy-less Valentine’s Day (and got to kiss a redhead!).