T-H-R-E-E

 Happy Birthday to Andrew

Today he turns three!

 Below are pictures of Andrew's morning at school.  He had to dress up in a cultural outfit from the country he is from.  As you can see, I couldn't think of anything to put him in but a suit.  (Alas a cowboy outfit would have been cute, but where would I get a cowboy outfit here?)

Here are all the ABA therapists waiting to greet their kids.  They loved seeing Andrew dressed up.

Weng is reading Andrew a book here at "table time."  Andrew has four therapists.  Today was a team meeting so the other three therapists are all watching.

We practiced playing "duck duck goose," a game that Andrew has been learning all week.

Next up, time for Andrew's birthday party!  Adam (to Andrew's left) birthday was also celebrated.

Here we are singing happy birthday to Andrew with three lit candles!  Andrew was really scared of the lit candles so he wanted me to blow them out.  There was so much pressure since everyone in the room was cheering for Andrew to blow them out.

Here I am trying my best to keep son #2 from smearing his hands all over the cake.

These are all the kids watching.  Every one of them is on the autism spectrum.

Andrew gets to cut his cake.  They have been reading Andrew a "social story" (a book they made up just for Andrew) for weeks now about his birthday, and how there will be balloons, and he will get to blow out the candles and cut the cake.  He has it memorized.

Andrew actually ate a bite of cake, but Joseph was the one that was excited to eat it.  Keep in mind I made it is GFCF and it surprisingly is was really good.

Andrew wanted to play with the candles on Adam's cake.

We had a fun morning at school.  At 12:30 it was finally time to go home.  Here is a video of the drive home.

The Wedding Dinner of all wedding dinners

 

Mike's coworker Hon Jon got married and invited us to his wedding dinner.  It was incredible, complete with whole fish (head and all), sharks fin soup, and songs (sung by the bride and groom), videos, and toasting events throughout the night.

SHARKS FIN SOUP!  Really I wasn't sure if I should eat it or not...I am kind of ethically opposed to the whole concept but whatever it was already in front of me so by not eating the bowl it would just be wasted.

 

Home is where the heart is

Mike has been working from home this week.  

 

One early evening I walked in to find him and Joseph enjoying some dad time.   

Joseph loves his dadda.

 One thing Joseph loves most in the world is the blender.  When it is ON, he gets so excited he walks around saying "dendah AH! dendah AH!" (aka blender on).  So we have a spare little plastic one I let him play with yesterday and he went nuts.

 I gave him two pieces of celery and a leaf of kailan (Asian spinach) to make a "smoothie."  I did a week long detox this week so I have been making green drinks every morning.   So he sees me putting celery, spinach, sprouts, etc in.  He has not realized that most people would probably think it is strange to put celery in a blender.

He carried the blender and its contents around the house putting the celery in then putting the top on, then taking them out, over and over again.  So funny. 

NEXT UP: Deepavali!

 This week is Deepavali, the Indian festival of lights.  It is a really big deal here since there are so many Indians here.  Helen gets the whole week off.

 We were invited to a Deepavali celebration at our friends house.  Darshini had a big group over for catered Indian lunch, yum! 

 I didn't take any pictures of the event, but I took pictures of the boys in their punjabi suits before we went over.

 I cannot express how many tight curls Joseph has on the back of his head.

Happy Deepavali.  

Love to all.

Rockin

Lately when Mike has to focus on getting work done here at the house, he puts on his big noise-canceling headphones and rocks out.

The other day Mike left the headphones sitting on his desk, so you can only imagine what the boys wanted to do with them.  Joseph only wanted to wear them for a minute, but Andrew walked around the house with them on for a while.

I think the no-pants, show-off-my-diaper thing really enhances the "rocker look," don't you?

Hong Kong: my first visit

Mike and I took a quick overnight trip to Hong Kong (mostly just to go to the LDS temple since we don't have one in KL).  Mike was so excited for me to see a city he has known and loved for years.  I've never even been past the Pacific Ocean before, so all these Asian cities are so new to me.

No we did not stay here.  But I had to take a picture of the Peninsula because it is such a famous hotel. Plus it looks exactly like the Hotel Utah.

I got in at night.  Mike and I flew in separately--he flew in from Bangkok while I flew in from KL.  I was so excited by everything I just kept taking pictures of dumb things (like the above pic).

Okay really, who can resist shopping at "Trendyland" ?

This is us at 9am Saturday morning.  I am ready and trying to get us out the door, Mike trying to get a few more work emails sent.  Okay so maybe he was looking up directions to the temple.  Either way I thought this picture pretty much sums up Mike's life right now (during budget season).  Hotels and a laptop.  In the last few weeks he has racked up Starwood points in Bangkok, Osaka, and Changsha.

Saturday morning on our way.  Thank heavens the signs are written in English too, otherwise I'd be lost.  Mike only speaks Mandarin so he couldn't understand what the taxi drivers were saying (Cantonese).  It was funny because Mike would speak to them in Mandarin and they would look at him like he was speaking Russian.

We made it to the temple.  We got lost a few times (taxi had no clue where Cornwall St was even though it was close to Nathan Rd), but eventually we found it.  The closest LDS temples to us in Malaysia are either Hong Kong, Manilla, or Taiwan.

Seriously how many pictures do we have of the two of us with Mike's arm out holding the camera because we were too shy or too lazy to ask anyone else to take a picture of us.  Actually in this case, there really wasn't anyone on the street to ask.

Saturday underground subway pics.  Hong Kong is so much more homogeneous than the diverse KL that I'm used to now.  Everyone was very Chinese.

Shanny this pic is for you.  Don't you love the name of this pharmacy!  I think you and John should get a percentage of the profits or something.

Goodbye Hong Kong.  I am sure we will be back soon.

Pics while playing

Well the air has been very clear this week so I finally took a picture of the view out of our play room window.

I snapped these shots of Andrew while we were playing.  Note how "with it" he is with eye contact and focus.  He is so much improved from even a few months ago.  Although anytime I take a picture he never wants to look so I have no idea how I got him to actually look at the camera this time.

Really this picture just cracks me up more and more each time I look at it.

Andrew loves this little Thomas the train sticker I put on his train table.  He sits to look at it at least once a day.

Another window shot.  This clear sky is such a treat.