Party and a Show

After yesterday's excitement, the girls and I had a quiet morning.  It's good that we did, because the afternoon and evening were busy.

Up first was a pool birthday party.  Since the pool wasn't enough, there was also a giant bouncy house and a pinata.

Needless to say Vivi loved it.  Luckily the bouncy house was deflated promptly at 2:00 pm and it was clear that the fun was done, so extricating her wasn't too difficult.  When we got home, she had a nice long bath.  She then insisted upon putting on her fancy dress.  I thought she would stay in and rest a bit before we went out again, but she spotted some friends out the window, and simply had to go and play.  I told her to be careful of her dress.  To her credit, she was, but she wasn't as careful with her hands and face.

I wiped her down and got her looking presentable, so that we could go and have dinner with another mom and her daughter at the Club.  Then we all went to ISB's production of Hairspray together.  I was really impressed that they had a full student orchestra to do the music.

Of course, half way through the first act, Vivian was SO hungry and kept asking me for something to eat, despite the fact that I obviously couldn't get her any food.  Luckily, the friends we were with live right across the street from the school, so the mom ran home during intermission and grabbed an apple and a banana for Vivian as well as a sandwich for her daughter who had also gotten hungry.  The snack held them through the second act.  Overall, it was a good production and a fun night out.

Vivian and her friend had talked about doing a sleepover, but her friend was too tired for it after the play, so I told Vivian she could have a sleepover with me.  We put on a movie, and she lasted about 10 minutes before falling asleep on the sofa, which is where she is now while I'm typing this.

Hopefully she doesn't roll off in the middle of the night.

A week "off"

My fall quarter finished on Sunday, and I have two weeks before the winter one starts.  Since I"m free of reading assignments and papers, I thought I'd use the time to do some exploring and spend time with friends.

Sunday morning started off with a visit from our neighborhood outdoor cat.  Elena is not sure what to make of the kitty, but she's very interested in him.

On Monday, I went on a lunch adventure with some friends.  We were trying to find a sandwich place that had been recommended to us, but when we got there, we found out they only serve sandwiches on the weekend.  There were lots of other restaurants on the street, and we ended up at one that was a restaurant/antique store.  It was strange, but the food was good.

The name didn't really make sense, and based on the food/beer menu, I think it was a German/Thai place.

On of the bathrooms had some very graphic pictures, and a television playing music videos with gyrating women, so I'm not sure what it's like after dark, but for lunch, we were the only customers, and it was perfectly nice.  One of the best parts of lunch was that we decided to do a book club, and our first book will be The Goldfinch, so I will need to use some of my coursework-free time to read that.

I saved Tuesday for household things, since I knew we had to go to the supermarket, and Young told me we needed to go to Makro as well to stock up on cleaning supplies.  I've been trying to figure out what to do about a Christmas tree, and at Makro they had a seven foot tall fake one for about $50, so I decided that would do for this year, and I bought it.  It's going to be kind of a pain to put together, because it's the kind where you put each branch in to the center, but since all the pieces are long and narrow it fits easily in a small box.  I figure I'll trade thirty minutes of annoying assembly for eleven months of convenient storage.  

Wednesday was another lunch day.  I posted some pictures from last week's trip to the Blue Sky Cafe on Facebook, and several of my friends who hadn't gone yet, said they wanted to go.  Now that I know how to get there, I offered to lead another lunch group.  It ended up being five of us, so we had to use a golf cart that has an extra two seats on the back.  I'm thinking we might want to add the extra seats too, because it comes in handy when you have visitors.  I managed to get an outside shot of Blue Sky Cafe this time.

It's really cute, but I'm worried about how long it will stay in business.  They didn't charge us for one thing when I went the first time, and they didn't charge us for two things this time.  Since we were all splitting the bill, we noticed and told them, but it's hard to make a profit if you're giving away free food.

On Thursday, I was supposed to go downtown with my neighbor to explore a mall called Platinum and then hit the commissary for Thanksgiving supplies, but we had a last minute change of plans.  There was a posting on the expats Facebook site saying that a company was auditioning blond boys between the ages of five and eight to be in a television commercial.  The commercial is going to be shot in the beach town of Phuket, and the company will pay for the flight and hotel stay.  One of our friends figured there was nothing to lose by sending in her son's picture, and he got called to audition.  Obviously she was excited, and really nervous.  She also wasn't sure if the whole thing was legit, so we drove her and her son to the audition to check it out.  

We got to the neighborhood almost half an hour before she needed to be at the audition, so we found a shopping center with a Starbucks and hung out for a while.  The central court area was covered, and had colorful umbrellas hanging down from the beams.  I thought it was really pretty and went outside to take a picture.  It wasn't until I aimed my camera up that I realized what else my picture was going to capture.

I don't know what they're selling in the Playboy store, but I've seen lots of the bunny stickers on cars, nice cars too, that women got out of, so I really don't understand.

After we finished our snack, we spent about ten minutes driving up and down a road until we finally found the little studio.  Shortly after we showed up, several other women we knew showed up with their blond sons, and we felt okay leaving our friend with them.

At that point we were off to the north east of downtown, and we figured it would be better to explore in that area.  The closest big mall is called Esplanade, so we went there.  As a mall, it wasn't much.  We found a place, which I guess was essentially Japanese fast food and ate there.

My friend had sashimi, which was served in a very pretty dish and shaped like a rose, but seemed like a brave choice for the kind of restaurant it was.  My sushi had so much mayonnaise in it that I just couldn't eat it.  Luckily the won tons were fine.  

After lunch, we explored.  It's not a very big mall, so there wasn't anything there that we couldn't find at our mall, except for three things on the fourth floor.  There's a big bowling alley and karaoke place, where you can rent a room for karaoke.  The fourth floor also has an Art in Paradise exhibit, which is this cool 3D art thing where you can stand in the painting and take a picture.  That is definitely on my list of things to do with Vivian.  Finally, the mall also has a full scale theater in it, and it turns out that it's the theater where they're doing the Broadway Beauty and the Beast in February and March.  I was so excited, because they have signs advertising it downtown, but you can't buy tickets online.  I found out why when I bought our tickets.  They are little plastic cards.

They were quite expensive, so I only got two, and I figure it'll be up to Jeff if he wants to take Vivi or not.  I love the show, but I've already seen it three times.

On Friday, I told one of my friends that I would help her out with the American room for international day.  She had said to show up at 8:30, and I didn't ask any more questions.  I will from now on.  It turned out, it was a full day of re-enacting an American county fair for all the first grade classes, who cycled through the room during the school day.  My friend had told me to wear jeans and a white t-shirt, and when I showed up, I got a cowboy hat and a patriotic apron.

At least the American clothes were comfortable and relatively cool.  One of my friends in the Indonesian room had on a traditional outfit that looked like it was made of velvet.  I was in charge of the fishbowl toss (ping pong balls into a bucket full of plastic cups with water and plastic fish in them) and the duck pond/prize drawing station.  It was a fun day, but a lot of standing and a lot of saying the same thing over and over again to kids, which I haven't done in quite a while.

It turned out to be too long a day for me and Vivian, since she was being really rude when we got home, and I didn't have the patience for it, so I just put her in time out, where she proceeded to have an epic crying and screaming fit.  When she finally calmed down, and we talked about it, I found out that all she'd had to eat at school was a banana for snack, corn for lunch, and the blueberry banana smoothie I got for her after school (which she didn't thank me for, sucked down and asked for more, which was part of what got me angry in the first place and now made perfect sense).  My take aways from the day were that I need to start packing a lunch for Viv, and I should remember to ask not only what time I should show up for stuff, but also when it will end.  

Today we have a birthday party, and I bought tickets for Vivian and I to go see the high school's production of Hairspray.  I'm really hoping we manage to make it through the day without either one of us losing it.  I also need to try and take it a little easier on my next week "off".

Kidzoona Crazy Day

Friday is Vivian's day without after school activities.  I've been trying to plan something for that day of the week, so she won't be moping around until the neighborhood kids are done with their activities.  When Jeff and I were at the Beehive shopping center on Tuesday, we looked at a children's play area called Kidzoona.  It's much smaller and more low key than the other play places we've been to like Kidzania and the Funarium (I still have not gotten over these names!).  I figured low key was probably best though, since Kidzania overwhelmed Viv.

In the morning I made my good mommy effort and went to the school to buy popcorn for Vivian's after school snack.  Every Friday, the PTA sells fresh popped popcorn during snack and lunch, but only 2nd graders and up can buy it, because the younger kids don't have free time.  This is torture for Vivian, because the whole school smells like popcorn, but she can't have any.  When she spontaneously confessed to me that she had picked some pop corn up off the ground and eaten it because she wanted it so bad, I figured it was time to intervene.  She saw me when I was at school buying the popcorn, and I got lots of hugs and felt loved.

I came home and did some school work, and then went with friends back to ISB to walk through the grounds and out the back gate to a restaurant called Blue Sky Cafe.  I had heard good things, and it definitely lived up to them.  The set up and decor were lovely, and the food was delicious.  I didn't get an exterior shot, so I'll try for one next time, since there will definitely be a next time in the near future.

After lunch I picked Vivian up, she ate her popcorn and played on the school playground, and then we headed over to Kidzoona with some friends.

I figured she would love the giant rubber wheel, and sure enough, she went right for it.

She ran back and forth in the that thing like a crazed hamster for a while, and then dove into the ball pool.

There was also a slide into another ball pool, so she bounced between the two ball pools and the rubber wheel for a while.  Once she wore herself out, she could settle down and enjoy the role play area.

Some of the ice cream flavors were truly bizarre.  Foe example, there was one called musky melon.  What's a musky melon?  The fruit and veggie stand cracked me up too, because they had the usual apples, bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, and then lots of mangoes.  Yes, we definitely live in Thailand :-)

Every so often she would leave the role play area and zoom back over to the wheel or one of the ball pools, and then she'd run back and try something else.  Towards the end she discovered a music section with color coded songs.  The booklet was turned to Ode to Joy, so she sat down to play it, xylophone style.

She didn't want to leave, but after a couple hours, the mommies were ready to go.  I promised her we could come back soon.

When we got home, we got about thirty minutes of enjoyable Elena company, before she turned into a baby tyrant.  She has mastered crawling and pulling herself up onto things, and so she has no interest in her play area, even though it's big and full of toys.  She's figured out several ingenious ways to escape, most of which involve pushing the big gray, plastic fence that encloses her play area on three sides.  She's really strong!  Once she gets free, it's only a matter of time before she encounters an area she's not allowed into (the entry way with the shoes) or tries to pull something down on herself (a big package of printer paper).  I chased her around and let her explore for a while, but I was already so tired from Kidzoona, that I didn't have much mommy energy left.  When I put her in her four sided, inescapable playpen, she screamed REALLY loudly for a REALLY long time.  I changed her diaper and fed her, but all she wanted was to roam free, and that was not an option.  I finally had to put her to bed, where she screamed for a while, got fed again, and finally accepted defeat. 

I'll leave you with a picture of a happier Elena though.  This is her trying to drive the golf cart.  She's ready to explore everything!

Thursday Night Downtown!

Jeff has been working later this week, so I decided that it would be fun if I met him downtown and we had dinner one night.  I also thought it would be even more fun with friends, so I invited our fellow sky bar enthusiasts.  Since Central World is my favorite mall, I decided we should try the sky bar on the 55th floor, called Red Sky.  We learned our lesson about prices last time, so this time we only did drinks up in the sky, and then come down to earth for dinner.  We made it for happy hour which was buy one get one free, so it was perfect.

I am such a fan of sky bars.  There was a lovely breeze, the temperature was just right, and, of course, the view was fantastic.  It's a 360 degree view too, so we walked all the way around the bar before picking seats at the part we thought had the best view.  There were also some lounger type sofas on the other side, which looked like they could be fun, but they didn't have the sparkly, colorful buildings to look at.

We thoroughly enjoyed our drinks, and then ate dinner in an inside/outside area on the first floor.  There was a live band, and some kind of strange tee pee / tree decoration.

We picked a restaurant called 1881, and had some yummy farang food.  

On the ride back home, we put on a movie in the car, which was fun and a good relaxing choice, since it was an especially long day for the guys.  Even though we were all tired at the end, I'm really glad we did it, and I can't wait for our next sky bar adventure.

Veterans' Day at the Beehive

Jeff and I are learning to treasure the American holidays when he's off, but Vivian has school.  Young takes over Elena care, and Jeff and I can have the day to ourselves.  Since Jeff is a veteran, he got to choose the day's activities.  He mostly wanted to relax, but was up for exploring the new shopping center near our house.  It's called Beehive Lifestyle Mall, and yes, there are bees and hexagons.

We walked around to see what was there.  A lot of the spaces were still under construction, but the usual suspects were there, a supermarket, a pharmacy, lots of restaurants, and of course, plastic surgery clinics.  After shopping at the mall near our house, I was beginning to get used to the idea of plastic surgery in a mall, but then I saw the Snow White Clinic.

I'm really hoping they just didn't read the story, and it's not that they are trying to kill me with their procedure to preserve my youth and beauty.  Yikes!

The other weird part about the mall is that the sidewalk ends and across the street, you have the more traditional Thai shopping experience, a street market.  

After wandering and taking pictures, we had lunch at The Wine Connection.  The food was fine, but eating out has lost most of its appeal, since we have Young to take care of us.  Still, it was nice to go out for an adventure.

Loy Krathong

This Thursday was Loy Krathong, a Thai holiday.  This is a krathong:

It's made from a piece of a banana tree trunk and then decorated with banana leaves and flowers.  It also has a candle and some incense sticks.  You light these, make a wish, and then put it on the water to carry your troubles away.

The Nichada Club had a party organized pool side.

Children were encouraged to wear traditional Thai outfits, so I got one for Vivian, pink of course ;-)  As the evening went on and the band played, many of the smaller children felt that their Thai outfits meant they should get up on the stage and perform.

We got some food and drinks and waited for it to get dark. Nichada had set up a little pier off to one side of the pool area, so that the krathong could be set afloat on the Nichada lake.  Vivian made a tradtional krathong in her Thai class, but we also got her a bread one to use for the night (pink too!).

The bread dissolves in the water and becomes fish food, not that the HUGE fish in Nichada lake are in need of extra food.  We weren't sure how we were going to light it, but luckily there was a flame in place on the pier.

Nichada had wisely used some of their guards for crowd control, so that only a few people at a time could go out on the pier.  They also had guards to hold on to the children as they put their krathong in the water.

Vivi's krathong floated away and joined the others.

We didn't stay very late, since there was school the next day, but it was a fun night.

Halloween!

Despite the fact that I don't like scary things or unhealthy amounts of candy, we all ended up having a great Halloween.

There was quite a bit of conversation about how many trick or treaters would show up.  Apparently last year it was quite a mob scene, so as a neighborhood we decided to have the little ones trick or treat early and then brace for the crowds.  It ended up raining as the night went on, so I don't know if that curbed people's enthusiasm, but even so we went through over a thousand pieces of candy.

Some of our friends live in a subdivision that only has one street.  They didn't think they would get any trick or treaters, so we invited them to come celebrate with us.  I figured we would need to eat as the evening wore on, so I asked Young to make us some food to put on the dining room table, buffet style.  Then I parked the car on the street and set up a table and chairs in the covered driveway space (always plan for evening rain).

I got a nice surprise in the morning, since one of my friends was busy and couldn't make her mani/pedi appointment. She was looking for someone to take it, because she didn't want to just cancel and have the people not make money.  I haven't done any kind of nail maintenance since I got here, and I had seen some people with pretty cool Halloween nails, so I took her appointment.  The place was very nice, and I felt like a queen with one woman doing the nails on my hand and another working on my feet.  I picked a sparkly dark orange color for the polish.  They had tons of nail art designs to choose from, ghosts, spider webs, skeletons, but I kept it simple and just did monster faces on my big toe nails.

My nails were making me really happy, but then I realized that Vivian would come home from school and be sad that I had fancy nails and she didn't.  I mentioned this to Young, who nonchalantly said she had a friend who could come to the house and do nails.  It's not her style to go promoting people, so I really need to remember to ask if I need something.  She called her friend, and, happily, she was available.  I was excited because I figured she could paint Vivian's nails and her friend's nails, and that would buy us some time before trick or treating.

Sure enough, Vivian walked in the door from school and said, "I want to go trick or treating NOW."  I told her that her friend was coming over, and they were going to get their nails done.  She was super excited, and I had accomplished my distraction.

Young's friend had tons of colors.  When we asked Vivian what color she wanted, she couldn't decide, so she said she wanted each nail a different color.

When it came time to pick designs, she decided on lots of different pumpkins.

She and her friend were thrilled, and with all the painting, drying, giggling, and photo ops, we kept them busy until it was time to put on costumes and go trick or treating.  

Vivian was Elsa, of course.  Elena was a bumble bee, and Young really wanted to push her around in the stroller to get candy, so we said, go for it.

They just did a couple streets, and then came back home because Young wanted to finalize food prep.  I had asked her to make a few dishes that we could put out on the dining room table for people to eat as the evening went on.  This is what she produced.

Saying we are spoiled doesn't even begin to cover it.  In addition to making absolutely delicious food, she also has the presentation thing down.  I asked for fried rice for the kids, and she did this.

While Young was making magic in the kitchen, we left Jeff (in his Captain America shirt) in charge of candy distribution, and the moms and kids headed out for trick or treating.  The kids were moving so fast, it was almost impossible to get a picture that wasn't blurry.

Keep in mind, that even in October it was at least 90 degrees outside.  We did a couple streets, and then had to come home for a water break before tackling the rest of the neighborhood.  It had not occurred to me to bring a water bottle for trick or treating, but I will next year.  The nice part about the heat is that the kids were pretty wiped out after about half an hour, so we could bring them back home for dinner without any fussing.

We set up in the driveway.  We had a table for the adults and one for the kids.  We quickly realized that the kids should sit in front and be in charge of candy distribution.

They were pretty ruthless portion control enforcers, when they weren't spilling the bowls of candy of course.

Eventually the little ones got fussy, so our friends wanted to take their two home to put them to bed.  They took Vivian with them.  After they dropped off the little ones, Vivian, her friend, and her friend's mom and dad drove around Nichada to check out all the decorations and parties.  Vivian's friend's dad had been coming home from work downtown, had spent several hours in traffic, and had missed dinner and trick or treating, so we told him to come over and have some food.  By the time they came with the girls, it was about nine o'clock.  The girls were still bubbly, but they also said they were getting tired, so we set them up with blankets and pillows, and Vivian's first sleep over guest kind of happened by accident.  The parents stayed up talking until we were yawning more than talking, and we decided to call it a night, a very fun Halloween night.