More Pictures!

The last time we took the girls to take pictures they were 2 and 6 months old! This time they were a little but more of a handful. One nasty dirty monkey and a spontaneous dance party later we got a few good ones! It's really amazing how much these girls look like thier daddies.

New Tricks!

We're a little out of order, but these were too cute not to put up! On Saturday we were running around doing errands and Emmy just bust out with this! I had no idea she knew how to sing the whole song!

And of course since she knows the alphabet, she can spell her name!

This is one of our favorite things she says now =) EmmyRose BAK-A-BAK!!! Since she's repeating everything we say now, she knows Blake and my names!

Another Place I Never Thought I'd Go

In my latest effort to try and see most of the world in four months: Singapore! I took a REALLY, like really, quick trip to Singapore for work. I left on Saturday night and got home on Friday afternoon. When you consider that four of those days were in the air, I managed to squeeze a LOT of fun stuff into a really busy work trip. The entire experince was make much better by the fact that I randomly had friends in town. Seriously, what are the chances? Brian and Lyl and I saw Singapore and fought jet lag together!

I arrived at around 4:30 in the morning and headed over to the hotel. (by the way, I'm getting kind of spoiled with this first class travel. Singapore airlines this time ) I was kind of strung out from all that flying (almost a solid 20 hours on the plane) but managed to stay awake to see the sun come up over Singapore that morning. I was on the 50th floor of my hotel with a KILLER view.

Wait, is that? Yes, it's a gigantic building built to look like a ship. It is super clever as you can see al the ships on the horizon behind it. It's a hotel, casino, gigantic luxury shopping mall. They don't do anything halfway here. Everything is new, upscale, and CLEAN. It's almost like you're in Disneyland and everyone is wearing Chanel. My view was Killer in the morning, but pretty much indescribable at night. It's just big buildings in the day, but at night it becomes kind of magical!
After working that day I met up for a drink with Brian and Lyl. We had to try out the Singapore Sling at the Raffles Hotel. This is where the Queen stays when she comes to visit. It's also where the Singapore Sling was invented. The Queen is a high dollar drinker because this drink cost 25 bucks. That's ridiculous. It tastes exactly like malibu and pineapple juice. Not my thing anymore. At least it's checked off my list. Done.
The next night we met up again to do the Night Safari at the Singapore Zoo. I was worried that it might just be the zoo at night and well, it was. Still the zoo, like Singapore, was nice and new and very well done. Here's the only picture I really got. Yeah flamingos! The animals didn't really get the memo that they were supposed to be awake, so they were mostly snoozing. Oh well.

The real highlight was my fish pedicure!!! They have these shops all over Singapore where the fish eat the dead skin off your feet. I decided there was no way in hell I was picking some random shop, so i figured if anywhere was clean, it would be the zoo.

I lasted maybe two minutes because a) it was tickly! b) I started thinking about tropical foot fish fungus and I couldn't shake it. So far, my toes are still intact, so I think I'm ok!

The last night we went out on the town again! My new friend Jacqui is actually Malaysian so she took us out to eat a "local" meal. There was no English here =) I was scared, but it was REALLY good. Just bascially steamed chicken and chili and giner sauce. yum!

After dinner we headed over to try and make it to the top of the ship. We got a little sidetracked becasue the Junior Olympics were having their closing ceremonies. I even got to see the Olympic flame. This is probably the closest I'll get to a closing ceremonies in my life. Everyone had gathered in Merlion park to watch the fireworks. The reflection off the water and the buildings was amazing!
Now, this is the Merlion. Singapore is the "lion city" and this is the logical half lion half mermaid that guards the bay. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but it was beautiful. Random, but beautiful.
I didn't make it to the top of the ship, missed it by a minute, but I guess you have to save something for next time!

Watch Emmy!

I am WAY far behind on posting... due to looking at houses, traveling all over creation, starting a new project where I work my arse off, and just life in general. This video is from the beginning of August, when Emmy had just started talking in groups of words. Why are we not surprised that this was one of her first phrases?


It actually just came our of nowhere. All of the sudden we were all supposed to watch Emmy all the time. Now she usually says this just as she's about to do something bad. Just so she can catch your attention to watch her do it!

Sing along with Emmy

Everyone one MUST do the hand motions, in the exact same way, or Emmy will call you out and stop the sing-along until you do them correctly.

We sing this song probable 500 times a day. Everybody is on the bus at some point. All the dogs, the postman, astronauts. You have to get creative when you sing it so much.




(this one is my favorite)


And finally, I know we're a little late for the Beyonce craze, but she turned the radio on the other day and the song was on, and watch out! Dance Party!

Amnals

Emmy is VERY in to "Amnals" right now. VERY. so we decided while we were down in Sienna Plantation to go a little further to Alvin to a widlife refuge. We groaned at the 16 dollar entrance fee, but within one minute we were giggling like two year olds (Blake and I were that is, because we were busy having fun. Emmy on the other hand was screaming because SHE wanted to do what we were doing) . We were greeted by these gigantic horned (seriously, do you see their horns) deer-things who attached our car and tried to get in to eat the food. Most places make you drive through in your car, but this place actually has a tramtruck that they drive you around in. It's a lot more fun when you're not afraid the animals going to stick their giant horn through the top of the roof of your car and take your rearview mirror our with it.

Ok, I hear you groaning that I'm about to post MORE pictures of goats (WHY are there always goats) get ready to be impressed...

This gigantic, hairy eared water buffalo ate out of my hand!Blake got in some camel action...

WHOA camel....

The tour last about 40 mintues and it's WAY more than goats and cows. There were giraffes, a rhino, lemurs.They actually have 10 or so very endagered animals on the site (the hairy eared water buffalo is one of them. )It was so neat having the animals come up to you. You can't get water buffalo spit on your hand at the zoo.

Emmy spent the entire trip screaming at the top of her lungs "AMNALS! AMNALS! AMNALS!", "eeeeeeeeeeeee-mu", "Moos! Moos!" throwing the food out of the train onto the ground (she didn't really get the concept of the animals EATING the food) and THEN and ostrich came over...
Forget it.. I was all over. We spent the rest of the trip ignoring the endagered species and looking for the ostriches. "Os-ritch EAT! os-ritch EAT!!!!!!" who knew...After the train ride, Emmy took her first ever Pony ride on a horsenamed Elizabeth. She rode all by herself around the ring and her mouth was WIDE open the entire time (this is Vacek for REALLY fun).

We will definetly back to this place!

Old and New Friends

It's my last official weekend before I start back 5 days a week at work (BOOOOO) on a new project so we decided to do it right this weekend! We decided we'd hang out with some friends. We started by taking a trip down to Lauren's house to FINALLY meet the beautiful Andie Lynn!

I wish I would've gotten a picture of her feet because I fell in LOVE! For being the product of two small people she is a chunky monkey, and a CUTE one! Lauren, Ryan, and Andie live on a large piece of land with lots of dogs. From the minute Emmy got out of the car, all she could say was "BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG DOG!, big dog, big dog, big dog." She spent the entire time we were there figuring out ways to get back outside to see the big dog. She kept wanting to "pat pat" her. I think Jandy the Great Dane was KIND of excited when we got in the car to go home. We started off today with Brayden's second birthday party. His mommy Shannon is super creative and she didn't disappoint this year, next year is going to be hard though =) It was a construction theme and they put their new big backyard to good use. It was a "construction site" with plenty of fun activites. There was the dirt pit (a fan favorite) ....

The kids could "build a city on the fence". They could also build a truck, do parachutes and balls.
All of this fun stuff and you know what Emmy wanted to do.. that's right.. Slide.. and slide, and slide, and slide, and slide. Unless she saw a big on the slide and then this is what she did until I removed the bug. (Sidenote: We have a bit of a Bug issue right now. A fly landed on her face for a few seconds not too long ago and it has caused MAJOR emotional trauma. All bugs are bad and she tells them shoooo! See, I've already screwed her up!) You know there had to be dirt cake, Brayden's was in the dump truck. Everything was adorable! But the party was over for Emmy when she got this orange sucker out of the pinata. At this point, she started chucling to herself, saying "num num" and went and sat on the stairs inside by herself and ate the sucker. All that fun stuff, orther kids, and chocolate, and she ate the sucker... by herself. We had a fun time with friends, partying, and eating orange suckers! What a good way to start our weekend!

kangaroo and koalas

I took a little trip down under for work and it was awesome!

This is Perth. It's gorgeous and it sits around the Swan River. You can actually take a leisurley ferry boat to work (that tells you a little about how they feel about working). This is taken from the "Central Park" of Perth. It's up on the hill and is a large nature resrve with hiking trails and nature in general =)

The city is all outdoor and is full of little specialty shops. I actually passed a map store. Where else would a map store survive? The stores, even the grocery store, close at 5:30 everyday. They stay open "late" on Friday until 8:30. Here's a picture of the "mall." Yes, of course I found the mall. They said they hold votes every so many years to keep the stores open longer and it always fails to pass. They said it's a "culture saving mechanism."But Australia isn't about shopping, it's about being outside and hanging out. Hiking, biking, surfing, rowing. If it's on the water and outside, it's a major pastime. There are miles and miles (duh) o fblue water and white sand beach. The Indian Ocean is freaking freezing, especially in winter) but it's beautiful! The beach is a ten minute subway ride from downtown Perth

I was working all week, but I did manage to have a little fun on the weekend. The first day we took a trip down to Freemantle. This is where all of the original prisoners who came to build the British colonies were housed. I visited the prison here and had quite possible the worst tour guide in the history of the world. He read everything in his script (including the jokes) in complete monotone and then paused where we were supposed to laugh at the "jokes".. didn't work out so well. But I got to see the gallows where they hung 50 people or so. They kept this a working prison until 1994 with no working toilets! Two guys shared a cell and a bucket and they had to take it out in the yard to dump it out. G_ROSSSS. They were in the tiny cells all day and then had to hang out in this concrete square for 13 hours a day. Now THAT's what I call prison! The next day I got to check a bucket list item and pet a kangaroo in Australia. Cheesy, yes. Absoultely necessary- OF COURSE! Here it is- the money shot.

Evidently they scratch all the time, but I was a liiiitle iffy after this. Quick flea check!

We went to a wildlife refuge and got to hang out with a bazillion kangaroos, wallabies (small kangaroos) oalas, kookaburras, and the unexpected favorite.. the wombat.There were probably 50 kangaroos in an area where you can pet and feed them. The funniest thing about them is how they lay, propped up on their elbow. We also visited a local cemetery, kind of creepy yes, to see real "wild" kangaroos. This one had her Joey sticking out head first. This is really rare. Usually you just see a foot or a tail like this... kinda creepy!

You could also actually go in and pet the koalas. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't hug it, but I had to settle. They actually DO move.
And here's the wombat, I mean, really, there's no competition for favorite weird animal.
Now, just listen to the video and guess what it is..

Something exotic right.. no, it's a freaking crow. It looks exactly the same but somehow makes this horrendously annoying noise. And they're EVERYWHERE. If there was one bad thing about Perth (besides the 40 dollar breakfast) it was the freaking crows at 3 am outside my hotel window. I thought it was a wild herd of goats the first night. I asked where the goats were and the hotel staff looked at me like I was nuts.

It was a beautiful trip! Hard work, but lots of fun. I think we will definetly be back!