I got Bit!

By a Turtle! These little guys were aggresive! We went to the Chinese Gardens today (my camera died before I could get a picture of any of the chinese buildings so at a later date..) But we made a stop at the Turtle preserve. They had about 100 aquariums full of different types of turtles, and then this little pond where you could fee the turtles. I thought this would be fun. Grace LOVES turtles, but apparantly not this close. She kept running away from them. Anyway, so here I am trying to feed them a cucumber. They latched on so hard I almost pulled one completely out of the water and the one jumped up at me and got me on my knuckle! Boy it hurt and I had to shake him off. The lady at the counter came to check on us when she heard me scream and kept saying with her little chinese accent, "I give you medicine" which is fine, but she never warned me they would bite! So I washed my hands and she poured this yellow chinese anitbacterial liquid on my finger, and two hours later it's still a bit numb. Hopefully no further harm will come from this.

These ones stole the cucumber away from me. They were crawling all over each other fighting for the goods.
We saw these cute little buddah statues. Grace loved them and tried to give all of them hugs.
And the fishies! Grace loved throwing the food at them!
Oh, a little story about Grace this morning. While I was getting her dressed I gave her two outfit options (they were cute little jeans skirts with very cute matching shirts). She took one look at me and pulled this blue outfit out of the drawer. She was very insistent in wanting to wear it, I think because it has a very cute matching hat. Well, I wanted her to wear something else, so as I was changing her diaper I snuck on one of her skirts. She refused to put on the shirt and walked around topless for about an hour. As we were getting ready to leave I asked her to go get her shirt. (i had put the other clothes away and set out the shirt I wanted her to wear) Well, what does she come back with? This little blue outfit. So moral of the story: Grace cares about what she wears!

Whoops!

Notice the red bump on the left side of her forehead there? Well let me share her funny story. We met Ben for dinner on Saturday night after he had worked all day. We went to a Thai restaurant (YUMMY!) in the mall. After dinner we were walking back to get a taxi and we walked past a children's clothing store. Grace was walking pretty close to the glass. Actually she was doing her hop/skip/run walk when all of a sudden she did a right hand turn and WHAM, hit the glass window. She stumbled backwards shocked, and then started crying. But I couldn't stop laughing! She had seen a little wooden trike in the window of the store and thought she would try to play with it. That must have been some pretty clean glass! Ben and I laughed our way out of the store while I carried a crying Grace. Poor thing, she had the red mark for at least an hour.

Braids

This is my second attempt at braiding Grace's hair. I think it turned out pretty cute. Of course her hair was flying all over within a few hours, but it's fun to try something new. It took about ten minutes to do and she tore apart the sink and out toothbrushes and ate some tooth paste in the process, but we all sacrifice a little for beauty, right?

Sentosa Beach

We went to the beach a few weeks ago to Celebrate Chinese New Year, and now I'm finally posting some pictures. We had a fun time, but were totally surrounded by Indian people and had so many of them want to take Grace's picture. That was annoying. So besides it being incredibly crowded we had a wonderful time and all got a bit sunburned. (I forgot the sunscreen. oops!)

That is some Serious Bed Head!

This is what we woke up with this morning. The curse of having curly hair I suppose. This is about the worst we've seen it so far. I suppose I could blame it on Grace sleeping in her Big Girl Bed. Last night was her first full night in her bed. She did perfectly and this morning we heard this little knocking on the door. She was waiting patiently for us to let her out. (she does know how to use the doorknobs by the way) So she has taken a few naps in the big bed and if all continues to go smoothly we will be able to move the crib out soon and have more room for her toys. It is nice to have the crib though, so I can threaten to put her in it if she gets out of bed, but she always chooses the big bed if given her choice. She loves to climb under the covers and lay on the pillow.

Tonsillitis

Yep, ANOTHER trip to the Dr. Grace's fever began yesterday around 6:00 pm. It persisited throughout the night and rose quickly everytime the Tylenol wore off. So off to the Dr I rush before they closed this afternoon. I'm glad I did. Poor girl hasn't hardly eaten anything today because her throat must have been hurting her! So, more antibiotics, ibuprofen and another large medical bill. We better get all of our reimbursements back because all of these medical bills are costing me a vacation!

Phuket and my Birthday!

Friday morning we left for an amazing trip to Phuket, Thailand. It is a beautiful island and the perfect place to celebrate my Birthday! This is the airplane. I took a picture of it because you can see the stairs that we walked up to get on the airplane. I have never done that before and tried to take a picture of us on the stairs but they wouldn't let us. So anyway I thought that was cool.We got to Phuket at 9:00 am. We caught a taxi that took us about an hour south to our Hotel. I forgot to take a picture of it. It was a Best Western, but was very nice and had about a hundred trillion stairs. We got tired quickly of climbing up to our room. A few minutes after we got to our room we got a phone call from my friend Tania. Her and her husband Mike were in Phuket for the weekend also and they wanted to take me to lunch for my Birthday. So this is a picture of Tania and me. Yep, she's like my mom and adopted Grandma to Grace and she is so great!
After lunch we headed to the beach. Here's Gracie lounging on the chair. She loved floating over the waves with us and playing in the sand. At lunch Tania and I were joking about the Europeans going topless but she thought they would be more modest because the Thai people are very modest people. But as soon as we got to the beach we discovered that Europeans would be Europeans. We saw quite a few topless people. We were amazed at how comfortable they were walking around like that and I decided that I have no reason to be self concious about my body after seeing lots of not so great bodies in all their glory.

Later that afternoon we found a big Marketplace with lots of Souveniers, clothing and decorations. We had a fun time shopping and Ben was great at dickering down the prices. We got some stuff really cheap!

So my goal of the weekend was to ride an Elephant. So first thing Saturday morning a driver from the hotel took us to and Elephant Safari. It was pretty cool to sit on top of such a powerful creature. He was very gentle and we got to ride for 1/2 hour. His name is Namsap and is 40 years old! Grace was a little freaked out in the beginning, but by the end of the ride she was pretty excited.
Along the way we saw a lot of Rubber Trees. They were collecting the rubber sap dripping down the trunks of the trees. Our driver pulled some off for us. It was just like a rubber band.
After our ride we decided Namsap deserved a treat so we got to feed him some Bananas. He was pretty slimy but it was cool to see the way his trunk worked.
On the way back to the hotel the driver suggested we go the this monkey show. So we thought it would be fun. It was AWESOME. The monkeys were so smart and very friendly. This is me holding one of them. (sorry for the turned picture)
The monkeys did all sorts of tricks. They did pushups and situps and slam dunks and even rode a tricycle. Here he is coming to give us a hug. This one was very loving and gave hugs and kisses. Grace LOVED the monkeys and was constantly immitating them,
This is a Tuk Tuk. We had to ride in one just because it looked fun. We rode about half a mile down the beach Saturday evening just to say we did it. These are all over the roads here.

The beaches were beautiful! This is my favorite picture from the weekend. Ben and Gracie walking in the Sunset.
Our little family enjoying the beach.
Ben wanted to take a picture to the Sprite can. He thought it was cool to see it written in Thai. This is the restaurant we ate at Saturday night. I saw it Friday and really wanted to go back, so the celebrate the end of the funnest Birthday we went. Yes, the tables are really in sand! I thought that was so cool. (again sorry for the turned picture)
This is the front of the restaurant after dark. I loved the atmosphere of the restuarant with the torches and sand. It was so fun. There was also a live band playing all of my old favorites, Chicago, Depeche Mode, and several other 80's songs. It was classic.
After dinner we went home and crashed. None of us slept much over the weekend, Grace woke up at 5:00 both mornings we were there and had a really hard time going to sleep with so much distractions. We made it home Sunday morning and we all had a good nap. It was such a perfect weekend and we would love to go back if we get a chance.