Getting ready for the big move

Cheesy, yes. The winner's list has made it to our giant mirror in our living room.  It's pretty much a list of things we need to do in order to move without too much stress.  We also wrote down which restaurants we would like to eat at before we leave, places we like to visit, and things to buy. I think so far we are right on track and we look forward to actually checking off all of our items and flying back home in style as a couple of accomplished winners!

Baby Kaiser Month 5

Well, we're more than half way there and Baby Kaiser is still growing nice and healthy!

Doctor Yap counted 5 digits on both of our little one's hands and feet, we looked at a strong vertebrae and a heart does in fact have four chambers. We also realized that Baby Kaiser is a bit stubborn (there is argument if this is a mom or dad trait) because she didn't want to show us her face.  In the video you'll see a beautiful side profile with the best looking nose I've ever seen!  Let the bragging begin!

Doc was also very good about keeping the camera on the Northern region of the babies body so the verdict if it's a boy or girl is still out there! I'm calling the baby a "her" since David is intent on calling our baby "he" and I only want to be fair. : )

Tiny Foot

URBAN BLOSSOM: Monday 28 March, 2011

To All Art Enthusiasts..

Please celebrate with me the opening of my first solo Art Exhibition of Watercolor works on paper at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre this coming Monday, March 28th from 6:30-9:00p.m.

Please visit www.klpac.org for directions.

Hope you can make it!

A few photo's

On our way to the doctor. David's eating his breakfast, an egg.

Ma knows what to take pictures of. 

Signing in.

3-D video of Baby Kaiser at 16 weeks

What an exciting day!  Mom is in town and gets to come with us to our doctor's appointment, and we get to take home a 3-D video of our tiny baby!

David and I are in the talks of a baby-moon. I found out about this term while reading a pregnancy magazine, and just had to hint about it to David. Instead of honeymoon it's a babymoon.  One last trip with just the two of us. We're thinking Western China.. Let the research begin!

Ciao!

The Riviera

For the last three years David's been eating at these little outdoor stalls right next to his office. It's a quick walk across a dirty diaper infested river for a lunch of about $2 per plate. Today we took Ma here for some delicious stir fried rice and David had beef soup.  We'll definitely miss eating like this when we leave Malaysia.

Boy or a Girl?

Babies. Babies. Babies.  David and I plan to keep the sex of our baby a surprise for ourselves and for everyone else.  I don't mind the waiting and guessing but during the last couple of weeks it would've been nice to know if we are having a girl or a boy because with mom in town we've been doing lots of shopping! So far I have resisted buying clothes but since we will be moving away from Malaysia soon I wanted to buy a little Indian outfit that I have been eying for so long. So, here they are, a girl and boy outfit! 

Perth Revisited

Here I am in Perth once again.

I came here about 2 years ago and it was my first time in Australia. Yesterday I was walking into the office with my friend Tim, telling him how I was so wide-eyed taking in everything as this revolutionary expirience.

Now years later I have a completely different view of Australia and Australians. It's no longer new territory and I'm familiar with it all now. I have expectations, which I now have to force myself to stifle so I can stay open to new expiriences.

While I've changed a lot in 2 years, Perth hasn't.

It is still a wonderful place to visit. The quality of life here is hard to match. There is ample beautiful weather, open (clean) water, nature and wealth. It seems that 50% of the population cycles to work here, and everybody is fit and dresses very well.

It's inspiring to be here.

Before, this culture feuled so many wild dreams of mine. I wanted the life here, I wanted to be here. My short 2 week stint left me with dreams that when the dust settled, I wanted to be here and have a family here.

But alas my situation has changed drastically in just a few short months, and my long term dreams have (albiet slowly) have shifted to something different.

While I still envy the Perth lifestyle, my dream is to somehow encapsulate pieces of it (key points mentioned above) and adopt them somewhere closer to home.

For so long I've had little reason to move back to Houston. But that city has changed. The public infrastructure inside the loop alone is amazing. And those changes are driven by a cultural shift in Houston as well, driven largely by a wealthy, younger generation that has come into wealth and driven the changes...a good example being the buffalo bayou partnership expanding greenspace and cycling routes from the heart of the city to the beltway.

So as I jog through the Perth CBD, up to the overlook in King's Park, I'm thinking how good it would be to have this expirience then pop over to Liz and DK's for dinner. Cycle into work, then spend the weekend at the farm.

Next week I interview with Petroleum Houston, and my hopes are up. There is so much there to expirience, to build. I can't wait to see how this turns out.

Until then, I'll enjoy the great food, company and weather that Perth has to offer. It's a bit sad because I may not be back in Oz for quite some time, so I'm soaking it all up.

xoxo

Happy Valentine's Day! 

Finished Painting

Oil Painting demonstration at The Alice Smith International School. 

Finally, my work finished and soon will have a new home. 

Vietnam ::: Sunday

Early Sunday morning we met up with Mike who arrived the night before from Houston. It was great to see him again.  We had some Pho soup for breakfast and extremely sugary iced coffee and later on in the morning Mike's entire family picked us up in a van to take us to a little town South of HCMC where Mike's mom lives.

Eating and drinking in kids sized chairs.  Imagine how much space you save by using these instead of the adult chairs!  I don't think they could pull this off in the U.S. 

Like a true Texan David teaches Mike's nephew how to shoot his toy gun at a target.
This kid was half German and I pulled off a short conversation with him.  *Pat on the back*.

Mike's mom runs a restaurant called Pho 36 right here in this space. She opens every morning for breakfast only, with little kids chairs and tables included.  The room has some awesome speakers. Mike's uncle played Michael Jackson and Celine Dion songs through out the day. David mentioned how anywhere else he would not be able to stand these songs, but right there in that moment he was loving it.  Don't tell anyone I said that though! Ha ha!

Favorite moment. Getting suckered into getting my hair and face washed at the local hair saloon. cost. $1.
The girl (Carrie) with the pink hair tie was our translator since she is the only one in the family who knows  English.  The lady doing my hair is her aunt and Carrie said that she gets her hair washed every morning. 

This is a videotape of David eating a Balut Egg, which is a fertilized duck (or chicken) egg, with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell. GROSS! David is the brave one on our team and ate the egg. Me on the other hand stayed far,far away from it, even though everyone was trying to convince me that it is very good for the baby!  Notice me hitting Mike's uncle's head with the camera while filming. I'm so embarrassed!

To be continued..

Vietnam ::: Saturday

Old American helicopter at the War Remnants Museum used during the Vietnam War

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Last Saturday we landed early in the morning and managed a quick taxi ride to The Equatorial hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. We usually don't stay at fancy places like the Equatorial but Mike booked a room there so we thought we would make it easier on us all by staying at the same hotel. It's funny how a 5 star hotel can still smell like sewage and charges you to use the internet.  I'm not complaining or anything. 

As soon as we dropped off our bags we decided to grab a bite to eat and visit the War Remnants Museum.  I thought it was interesting to find out that they don't call it The Vietnam War, but the American War. Pretty terrible things happened that I didn't realize before. What shocked me the most was that 2 out of the 3 million people that died during the war were innocent people! So sad..

Looks good huh? The Vietnamese use fish sauce in almost all of their dishes.   After living in Malaysia for two years I have gotten used to the taste but since my pregnancy I can't stand the taste of it!  In this picture I'm actually not enjoying my meal but a girl's gotta eat!  

All that walking in the heat of the day made us tired so we decided to go back to the hotel. David went to the pool and was harassed by some kids who kept jumping in the pool right beside him which resulted in splashing him while he was drinking his beer at the bar. I took a quick,  I'm an exhausted pregnant woman nap in our ice cold hotel room with a comfy king sized bed.  Heaven.

Later on in the evening we found a place to eat at the main square of town, and enjoyed people watching and shopping at antique stores throughout the night.  

Before we left for Ho Chi Minh City I always imagined a dirty, hot city with lots and lots of motorcyclist. I never imagined how many there really would be! Here is a video of David magically crossing the street without injuries.

KLPAC Art Exhibition

Good news! I'm going to have my very first solo exhibition of my watercolor paintings from March 28th-April 10th. 2011 at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre. By far one of my favorite spaces in KL.

Baby Nursery Paintings

The day that I found out I was pregnant I happened to stumble upon these cute paintings by a local Chinese artist at Central Market.  Since David and I plan to keep the sex a surprise I thought these bold colors would work for a girl or a boy! They were so cheap too!  I might go back for more.

The Actor's Studio

Kim and I checked out a play this weekend, called "Someone Who'll Watch Over Me"

We bought tickets on Thursday, and luckily they had 2 front row seats just for us! When we sat down, we were literally 1 metre from where one the the actors was, so you could really get into it.

The play was about 3 men where were kidnapped and held hostage in a windowless cell in Beirut. One was an American, one an Irishman and the third an Englishman. The dialogue was heart wrenching and hysterical at the same time.

I never went to any live performances after high school, but since living in KL we've gone regularly. The best show to date being The Wicked Wizards last year when Dad was in town.

I really enjoyed this latest show. It's amazing to see live people acting right in front of you. The proximity to a live person gives the story so much more reality.

At one point, one of the characters was screaming and crying; spitting and convulsing. It is hard to describe how much more real it is when it's a live person suffering right in front of you.

It was a great show, and if you are in KL you should check it out!

Kaiser Updates

We're back again! More than a week ago our modem decided to quit his job and retire.  It took us a while but we've found a replacement and managed to train him well so he could do his job even better than the old one! Ok. I'm going stop talking about our modem like it's a person now..

The holidays seemed to pass quite quickly for us this year.

David cutting beer can chicken

Christmas Eve 

David made a delicious beer can chicken dinner for the two of us. We tried to fry okra for the first time without much success, and ended up burning the whole batch. The mashed potatoes, gravy and chicken made up for it though.

Christmas Eve at the Olden's. 

Christmas Day 

Our morning was filled skyping the good news to our family in the U.S.  More than anything I would've loved to be able to tell them in person, and it makes it a bit tougher than usual to be so far away from the people you love the most.  After talking for a couple of hours we got an appitite and made pancakes and watched Christmas movies all day.

Later on Christmas Day 
David's buddy Eric invited us for dinner that night with his family. As soon as we arrived, David was handed an ice cold beer and I got a drink that tastes a lot like root beer but without the carbonation and much, much sweeter. I couldn't finish the drink and I think Eric's mom picked up on that and gave me fruit punch instead. While we ate our Indian dinner we talked to Erik's uncle who is a Malaysian retired marine and told us all about his encounters with ghosts over the years. (A lot of Malaysians truly believe in them)  He told us he kept a bible with him in bed and believed that God would protect him from all evil.  Eric's mom knew I was pregnant so she made sure I ate extra veggie, and Erik's uncle thought I should eat two full plates since I am eating for two.  David's new joke to people is that since I'm pregnant he's now drinking for two. hee. hee.

New Year's Eve
On New Year's Eve my friend Danya, who I met through Gaelic Football, asked me if I wanted to join her and her partner and their neighbors for dinner at a new Thai restaurant at Bangsar Shopping Centre.  Afterwards we went to their place and celebrated the New Year by watching fireworks displays all around KL. We counted 5 going on at the same time, and the one in downtown was absolutely amazing. It must have gone on for 15 minutes. After the finale we had to laugh at the huge cloud of smoke covering the Petronas Towers. Danya made mixed drinks for everyone and we played games and chatted until early into the morning.

Other fun Things
Earlier on this week I took a Thai cooking class with Danya and Lynne. I learned how to make fish cakes, tom yam soup, Green Chicken Curry, a strange water chestnut/coconut dessert.

I'm actually not stirring anything at all! 

Yummy Fish Cakes

David started taking Classical guitar lessons a while back ago, and he sure sounds good when he practices!  I'm still practicing piano on my own time. I'm learning the theme song for Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky.

Coming up is a trip to Ho Chi Mihn city, Vietnam late January.  February, David is going to Perth, Australia (did you know there is a Perth, Scotland?)  and then he'll be back for a couple of days and on to Singapore. In March he will also go to Johannesburg for three weeks!

My first Feltie

With it being baby season I got an itch to create little dolls out of felt. I found a book at Borders bookstore called Felties: How to Make 18 Cute and Fuzzy Friends by Nelly Paillpoux. The Polar Bear is the first one I made and I feel like I did pretty well!  I want to make a bunch of them and eventually create a Baby mobile for our little baby.  Below is my inspiration found on Etsy by a company called Asial embroidery creations. 

Baby Kaiser

Last wednesday I got my second ultrasound! I can't believe how fast time flies when you're pregnant! This is Baby K. at 9 weeks.  At this time the baby is about the size of a grape. So tiny! I had a happy tear in my eye when I saw the arms and legs for the first time.

Besides taking lots of naps and going to bed early, I've been feeling good and continue to day dream of what the future has in store for us.

Lots of Love

My new sweet baby - spec!

What do you think about my little new baby spec?
MakeMeBabies.com - What will your baby look like?

I had to do it! ha ha ha!