Visitors

We have had several visitors at our house over the last couple of days. The first visitor was Santa! Brynn's big gift from Santa was a kitchen and she has been cooking up a storm. She also loves her easel from Papa, Lou Lou and Aunt Faith.

 

Christmas night we met up with several families for a dinner buffet at the Wyndam Hotel. The food was delicious and we also enjoyed a live band. Matt was very happy that the buffet included fried chicken and turkey with gravy.

Matt and Brynn in the taxi on the way to dinner.

Our dinner table included the Brewers and the Whitlocks.

Our second set of visitors are my parents. They arrived late Monday night and we are so happy to have them here. Brynn even stayed up way past her bedtime to greet them when they arrived.  We have been very busy exploring Chengdu, eating and enjoying each others company. I'll will post on our adventures soon.

Granddaddy, Brynn and Granna at Jinli Street.

Christmas Eve in China...

Today is Christmas Eve here in China. Brynn and I started  the morning off by decorating some cookies with some other girls from our school. Brynn loved the decorating almost as much as she loved eating the cookies. I finally cut her off after three cookies and she was not happy. I forgot my camera, but you can probably imagine that we had icing and sprinkles every where. We met up with Matt and another family and headed to Peter's Tex Mex for lunch. We enjoyed a great lunch and then headed home for nap time. We are staying in tonight and hoping Santa got the memo that we have moved to China. I have a feeling Brynn will not be disappointed!

Here are some pictures we took throughout the month.Thank you Granna for the cute Christmas outfits!

Brynn loved decorating the Christmas tree and had a say where every ornament was placed. She even helped daddy put the star on top!

One afternoon we decided to put together a gingerbread house. I went to grab my camera in the middle of the gingerbread house making and came back to find this site. It was just too hard to resist taking a bite right from the middle.

Brynn had a much better time eating than decorating. The chimney never made it to the roof. We both decided it would just be better for us to eat it while it was fresh.

I did not plan enough in advance to get a Christmas card out this year. There is always hope for next year. We hope the everyone has a wonderful Christmas!!

Boo Boo and Beach

Our last full day in Singapore was an eventful one. It started with a trip to the Emergency Room. Brynn fell and hit her head on a bench. It bled a lot and we took her to the ER just in case she need stitches. Thankfully, there was a children's hospital 5 minutes from us. She was fine and all see needed was an antibotic and some TLC.

Her Daddy took her out for ice cream after the ER to make things all better. As you can tell it worked! There is nothing like some Ben and Jerry's to make you feel better. We met up with the kids that afternoon and went to Sentosa Island.

 We were able to take a 15 minute Tram ride to the island.  Brynn and Matt enjoyed swimming and I relaxed on the sand. I forgot by swimsuit, but enjoyed watching Brynn and Matt play in the water.

 Brynn loved the beach. She ran up and down the sand and laughed when the waves splashed her.

 Brynn tried to convince Matt to swim her out to boats in the background.

This is Brynn at the airport on our way home. She was one worn out little girl! We loved our visit to Singapore and hope to go back again one day.

Check Up and Night Safari

While in Singapore, I took Brynn her 18 month doctor's checkup a few months late. She is doing great. One thing I thought was funny was the doctor put her weight and height on the US growth chart I brought and she is between the 5th and 10th percentile on both. He then put her on the Asian growth chart and she is between the 50th and 75th percentile. It just goes to show how much bigger we are in the US.

After her doctor's appointment I took her to Build-A-Bear. I was really excited and thought she would love making her own bear. After about five minutes she was not interested in making a bear and she was having more fun touching everything on the shelves. She has warmed up to Pink Bear and now she does everything with us, even eat dinner wearing a bib!


 One night we took Brynn and several student to the Night Safari. The zoo in Singapore is world renowned and the Safari is the only one like it in the world. We started the night off watching a fire show. Brynn was fascinated by it as you can tell from her face in the picture. I could not get her to look at the camera.

This is us on the tram before entering the Safari. You were not allowed to take any pictures of the animals. We saw lions, elephants, rhinos, hippos and all sort of animals. Matt thinks some of them were fake, because they let us get so close to them. It was an amazing experience and we felt like we were on an actual African Safari. We were allowed to walk part of the trail. My least favorite was the bat enclosure. No one believes me, but I promise a bat tried to attack me.

Singapore

We had a wonderful five days in Singapore. The weather was perfect and the city is beautiful. The students did a great job at the MUN Conference and Brynn and I had fun exploring a new city.

Brynn has probably flown more miles than most people do in a lifetime. She is a great traveler. As long as she is fed, she is happy. She loves airplanes, she found our plane outside the window and watched it for 30 minutes before boarding.

We stayed in a nice hostel in Singapore. However, we did not get in until about 1 am and the guy checking us in our room kept apologizing saying we would have a bigger room tomorrow. We said it was no big deal and we could handle it for one night. That was before we saw the room. All three of us could not stand in the room. We could fit the suitcases on top of each other and that was all of the floor space. We had to put Brynn's travel tent bed at the foot of the bunk bed (it is the neon green thing). Needless to say, we did not get much sleep our first night, but after moving to a slightly larger room (we could fit both suitcases on the floor and Brynn's bed)  it was much more comfortable.  The hostel was in a great location, near Little India and a bus/subway station.

 The next day Brynn and I rested and went exploring Little India. It was a neat experience and felt like we were actually in India. There were tons of beautiful clothing and jewelry shops. We stopped by an Indian bakery for a snack. I asked for something not spicy and they gave us Thosia to try. It was a thin pancake bread they severed with four dipping sauces. The one of the left was our favorite, coconut chutney.

The next day we took the bus the the Botanical Gardens. It was a beautiful day and the gardens were wonderful. There was a section called the Children's Garden. It was perfect for Brynn, with a sandbox, slides, waterfalls and all sorts of kid friendly things.

 Brynn's first attempt to eat a whole apple. She had to work really hard, but eventually got the hang of it.

This is about the 50th time she climbed up the tree house to go down the slide. I was exhausted from helping her to the top and then running down to catch her at the end of the slide. So, I just let her go and prayed she would not fly off the end. She knew exactly what to do and was able to get down on her own and climb up again.  She is becoming so grown up!

This is a friend Brynn made at the slide. They had the best time throwing rocks into the flower pot. I had a nice time chatting with her nanny that is from Indonesia. It seems most people I met are not from Singapore and have moved there to work.

 

The red cheeks, sweat and dirt on her face are from hours of playing. Being a gardener is tough work and Brynn was asleep before we made it make to our room.

My classroom...

Here is a picture of my classroom.

Play Doh and Bowling

I am always looking for new inside activities for Brynn to do, especially now that is getting colder outside. I found some play doh the other day and decided to give it a try. The first time I gave it to her I made the mistake of doing so before dinner.. Brynn thought it was a snack. Saturday morning we tried playing after breakfast. This time the play doh was a big hit with Brynn!

 Saturday afternoon we went bowling for one of our co-workers birthday's. We had a great time! The bowling alley was a lot like the ones in the states, except for the tea room! We enjoyed a great dinner at Pizza Hut!

We are leaving next Tuesday for Singapore. Matt is taking his Model United Nations class for a conference. Brynn and I are tagging along. We have heard Singapore is a great place to visit and we are looking forward to our trip!

Pictures

The last couple of weeks have been pretty quite around our house. We have gotten into a good routine and are getting settled into our new life in China! Here are some recent pictures of Brynn: 

In Beijing we bought Brynn this red Chinese outfit. Brynn and I decided to play dress up and take some pictures.

 Matt took this picture of Brynn in her crib. He said she was playing in her crib before her nap and just fell asleep sitting straight up.

 Brynn is developing quite the sense of humor. She can be so funny and she makes us laugh all the time. She always wants me to take her picture. I told her to go night night and this is how she posed. The cutest part is she is making snoring noises!

 This is an old picture I forgot to post of Brynn and her friend. If look close you may notice I had to do some photo editing on her friend ( you can refer to a previous post on "split pants").

 Brynn dressed up to go to Papa Johns. Yes, they have them in China and on Monday's they have a $2 personal pan pizza special. Thanks to Brian, we were able to enjoy some great pizza last Monday. It was so good and we even got extra for lunch the next day!