Dec 2006: More Bali Photos

Nash, Grant, and me riding the waves on our boogie boards.

Here's a shot of Mom at the optical shop in the mall in Kuta where she got her glasses fixed - apparently they get a lot of business from the tourists who have confrontations with the monkeys at Pura Uluwatu.

The A&W was next door to the optical shop. Had to get a shot of my Dad by it, even though we didn't actually eat there.

Dec 2006: Bali - Monkey Forest

With a guarantee that the monkeys in the Sacred Monkey Forest are much tamer than the monkeys at Uluwatu, we took a brief trip there. It looks like night, though, because the forest is pretty dense there, and because a huge rainstorm with dark clouds came through. In the above photo, I think Mallory was trying to start a conversation with this monkey.

Dec 2006: Bali Trip

Here are a few more pictures from our trip to Bali. We went to one of the many silver making places one day. This guy is showing us how they make silver jewelry. I think the women got some earrings there.

We also went to another Hindu temple one day. This one had blue and red sarongs instead of purple. And no monkeys, thank goodness.

We had lunch at a restaurant in Ubud with a nice view out the back overlooking a steep valley. Luke's lunch of chicken fingers and french fries was served with a banana leaf boat filled with ketchup.

Dec 2006: Kecak Dance @ Uluwatu

After the monkey experience at Pura Uluwatu, we walked about 100 yards to a small outdoor theater to see a performance of the Kecak Dance. It tells part of the Ramayana story, and there are only about 5 or 6 dancers, but about 30 men seated in a circle who chant and sing for the whole performance.

At the end of the Kecak Dance, they light coconut husks on fire and kick them around the stage. Ashes, cinders, and sparks were flying everywhere. Luckily we weren't sitting in an area that got rained on by sparks. Rememeber, they don't really have strict safety standards in Indonesia.

Dec 2006: Uluwatu temple guardians

Kadek, our tour guide, warned us about the monkeys at Uluwatu. He told us they are there to guard the temple and its grounds. This is a photo of one of the monkeys sitting on a wall surrounding the temple. As you can tell, the setting is beautiful --- right on the edge of some cliffs at the southern tip of the island.

We found out that the monkeys do a really good job of guarding the temple. As we were leaving the temple walking along this wall, a monkey reached out and grabbed my Mom's glasses -- right off her face. Needless to say, it frightened her and all of us quite a bit, especially because the monkey sat on the wall, bared its teeth, and hissed at my Mom as she tried to yell at the monkey to get her glasses back. I yelled for our tour guide (who was about 100 feet ahead of me) to help us out, and a couple of workers at the temple grounds heard me, and threw some fruit at the monkey to pursuade the monkey to give back the glasses. Thinking we had all learned our lesson, my Dad took his glasses of his face and carried them in his hand at his side. This didn't fool they monkeys. Another monkey grabbed my Dad's glasses right out of his hand and took them. This one hopped over the wall and, I thought, started scampering down the side of the cliff. Luckily the temple workers came to the rescue again with their fruit. It definitely made our trip to Uluwatu memorable.

Dec 2006: Bali Trip: Pura Uluwatu

We spent about 4 days in Bali with Mom & Dad. On our first day there, we went to Pura Uluwatu, a Hindu temple on the southernmost coast of Bali. It was a ceremony day at this temple, so all the Hindu people in the area came to the temple, wearing their traditional dress, and brought an offering. They participated in a short prayer ceremony, then left the offering there at the temple. Above is a photo of some of the people coming back from the temple ceremony (I am in the photo on the left-hand side, the one wearing the purple sarong -- all people, including visitors, are required to wear either a sash or a sarong).

This photo is on the grounds of the temple, with one of the main prayer areas behind us and to the left. Mallory is missing from the above photo, because some locals grabbed Mallory to pinch her cheeks and show her to their own kids (photo below). Behind and to the right of Mallory is Kadek, the driver/tour guide we hired for our stay there.

Dec 2006: Airport

I took this photo from the car window on the way to the airport. Behind the guy on the bike you can see a morning market. Vendors bring their vegetables, fruit, meat, etc. and lay it out on the ground for people to buy. I pass this market on the way to work everyday, and I've always wanted to take a photo of it.

Of course when we got to the airport, our flight was delayed for a few hours, so we passed the time eating cream puffs from Beard Papa's (yes, it is a strange name) and rolls from Roti Boy.

December 2006: Mom & Dad Miller Trip to Indonesia

Here's a few photos of Mom & Dad's trip to Indonesia. They arrived on Saturday morning and we took a photo of everyone by the "Welcome to Indonesia" sign. Here in Jakarta, any time there is an event (business grand opening, wedding, retirement party, etc.), they make these flower boards.

Mom & Dad brought plenty of stuff for us, including birthday gifts, Christmas, gifts, as well as many other household items we either cannot get here in Jakarta or are outrageously expensive here.

On the first night here, we went out to dinner with to Oasis, an Indonesian restaurant that lets you sample foods from all over Indonesia. They had several different singing groups performing, and this one played Mexican-sounding music, though we hear they are from Sumatra. Not sure why they insist on covering people with a blanket for the picture. It wasn't that cold.

December 2006: End of Semester Performances

The boys ended the Semester with concerts and peformances. In the above photo Luke is performing some Christmas songs - the entire first grade had matching Santa Claus hats with blinking lights, which they turned on during one number.


The middle school also had a performance night, and Nash played his violin with the orchestra and then his drama group from the Beijing trip did their performance. Nash brought the whole audience to laughter with his portrayal of Romeo trying to get over the wall (yes, the audience was supposed to be laughing).

Grant's class had a performance the same night as Luke. They also displayed art work at the school, and here's Grant proudly pointing out one of his creations.

Photos: December 2006 - Table, Sami Chlaus, Warsi, Sign

Here's a photo of Luke and Mallory eating breakfast at our new kitchen table. In the center of the table is our Weihnachtskranz (German Christmas wreath with 4 candles, to be lit on each of the 4 Sundays before Christmas) and the Christmas Eve countdown candle Heidi got in Scotland.

A couple of photos from Sami Chlaus Tag morning. Sami Chlaus brought the boys and Mallory pillows and filled up their shoes with candy.

This is a picture of our maid, Warsi, and her son, Farhan with Mallory. Warsi's last day of work was yesterday (December 9), because she is going to have a baby in January.

And lastly, I had to put in a photo of this sign for a relatively new bakery near our house. Notice the French name to make it sound exotic. I like how the sign says "the taste are us..." What does that mean? I cannot even figure out what they were trying to say.

Photos: November 2006 - Bananas, Piano, Ship

Grant is our expert K'nex builder.

Mallory loves wearing this dress - she puts it over the clothes she happens to be wearing, and will sing and dance around the house. She has been doing lots of moves recently using this pose -- putting her hands together and moving them around.

Grant, Mallory, and I eating bananas from our banana tree. By the way, there were 123 bananas in one bunch -- I was surprsied at how many there were. We had two trees, one bunch each, and our gardner cut down the trees after harvesting the bananas. Not sure exactly how banana trees work, horticulturally speaking, but we have two new banana trees growing right next to where the first two were cut down.

It is typical to see Mallory dressed up like this. She's wearing her pajamas, but then she has a sweater on over the PJs, with a matching cowboy hat and electronic sword. The picture isn't the greatest - camera strap in front of the lens - sorry about that.

Photos: November 2006 - UN Day & Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Dinner with the Willis family and Ann -- everyone in pilgrim garb, of course.

Here's Grant and Luke in their baseball uniforms, representing the United States at UN Day.

Photos: November 2006 - Mallory's 2nd Birthday

Mallory turned 2 on November 10, 2006. She started out they day with a birthday present that we put in her room overnight - this slide in the photo above (notice Nash and Mallory still have bed-head).

Mallory also received a bubble gun.

Here's Mallory receiving a lot of help from her brothers figuring out her new doll.

She loves her new Magna Doodle.

Because Mallory loves clothes (she continues to change clothes countless times per day), her birthday cake included some dresses and shoes as decorations.

Letter: 27 November 2006

This week

We had a busy week with several things going on at school. Nash had UN Day at the middle school – a day full of activities and programs aimed at highlighting all the nations that are represented at Jakarta International School. The Elementary had UN day a week ago. The students are supposed to wear their national costume. Since we have discovered that the US is ‘lame’ according to Grant because there is no national costume, we decided to have the boys wear their baseball uniforms. They had fun carrying around their mitts and a baseball.

Nash just wore a red t-shirt for his costume. I have a friend that is on the middle school PTA so I told her I would be happy to help if she needed me. She is from Jordan and asked me to help at the Middle Eastern table for lunch since there were only three people helping. So on Wednesday, I was Middle Eastern. I was there with Wesma from Palestine and another woman from Egypt. They had food from Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan and Palestine. Wesma kept saying to me that none of the children would eat the food because all they wanted was fast food. I laughed and said, ‘You mean American junk food?’ We both got a kick out of that especially when the USA table sold out of their hundreds of hot dogs in 15 minutes (the lunch was an hour) and we had hardly sold anything.

I went around looking at all the tables from the different countries. They were decorated so beautifully. The Indians had even hired a cook and a caterer who were on hand cooking the samosas and curry right there on the spot. The other tables had wonderful food, Thailand, Philippines, Japan, England (had the sweets table), Italy, Australia, Canada. The Canadians had snow cones with real maple syrup and huge blocks of ice for the kids to sit on. The South American table was next to us and the women danced to their music from the set up time (9:00am) to the take down time (12:30) it was fun to see how much fun they were having.

Nash came around and I asked him what he had bought for lunch. I laughed out loud when he said ‘Um, a hot dog and a cookie.’ Way to branch out there Nash.

Grant and Luke were in the school talent show on Friday night. They did their ever popular ‘Snowman’ dance. They were the hit of the show. I had had a few mothers come up to me after the rehearsals telling me that the boys were hilarious. On Saturday we were in the grocery store with Luke and several people came up to him and congratulated him saying they hadn’t laughed that hard for a long time. One even asked for Luke’s autograph. He thought that was pretty great. People can’t believe it when they ask me if I helped choreograph it and I say I had nothing to do with it. Little do they realize that we constantly have major productions going on all the time at this house.

Thanksgiving

I have found it difficult to be away from the states at this time of year. It’s just not the same here when no one really celebrates the same holidays so there isn’t that magic and excitement in the air. It’s just another month to everyone else here. I miss the snow and the chill in the air. I miss a lot about it, but we do the best we can.

We invited the Willis family and also Ann Collier (a grade one teacher at JIS who is also in our ward) over for dinner. The bad thing was that everyone had school and work so we couldn’t eat until around 6:00pm. I had made the pies for the Pie Extravaganza (Miller’s I hear you carried on the tradition! Way to go!) the day before. Ginah, my cook, helped me get the turkey in our tiny oven. I had sent her out to try to find a bigger pan because the 20 pound turkey was barely fitting in the 9 x 13 pan. I thought I had an aluminum pan but I must not have brought it with us. Ginah came back empty handed so I put it in our oven and hoped for the best. After an hour the house started to smell of yummy turkey and I had floods of memories come back to me of Thanksgivings spent at my grandparents’ homes in Rexburg and Menan.

I found some canned yams back in September and bought a few cans. I learned my lesson from last year -- if you see something you might think you need, buy it because it won’t be there for long and they will never get anymore in. I have been hoarding canned pumpkin and cream cheese. I have panic attacks thinking about running out!! My friend teased me about it saying that in a year and a half when we move I will be sending out a note to everyone saying I have 30 cans of pumpkin I want to get rid of.

We ate at about 6:30 PM, with everyone wearing our traditional pilgrim hats and we had a great time. The only downfall of the day was that we didn’t have time to relax and let the food settle before pie. We had to eat it almost immediately after dinner because everyone had to get home for work and school the next day. I was so stuffed that I couldn’t eat my usual small sliver of each pie. I could only get down a small piece of pumpkin. That’s okay. We are still enjoying them!

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We are thankful for so many things. When you have poverty literally right out your front door, you realize everyday how blessed you are. We are so thankful for wonderful family and friends that support us and lift us up. We are thinking about all of you this holiday season and pray for your protection and comfort.

Christmas is here

We spent a lot of the day yesterday, putting up Christmas decorations. Assembling a fake tree is not quite the same as cutting down your own, but it’s nice for here. I bought another tree this year and put it upstairs and the boys each have a small three foot tree in their rooms so we have five Christmas trees!!! It’s great. We put lights everywhere and it looks pretty good. Mallory loved seeing everything and has been walking around singing ‘Santa Clause, Santa Clause’ (sung to her own tune) ever since. She will love Christmas day this year. It’s nice to have the house looking festive.

We hope you are all enjoying this time of year.