scooter-riding maniac

Gordy has spent the last week perfecting his scooter-riding skills and has already improved significantly.  He can lean to each side to turn it,  He can go up little bumps onto the sidewalk and can also go back down them.  He can go super fast and can then slow down when he needs to.  Thanks Tutu and Pop Pop for the Christmas gift - Gordy is on his way to becoming the next neighborhood hoodlum.

making up stories

Gordy's vocabulary has been improving quickly.  He's constantly asking what things are called (Mommy, what dis called?) and where they come from (Mommy, where dis come from?) and then will repeat our answers as though he's trying to make a mental note of it for later.  

The other day, he took things a step further and used his new found words to make up a story.  We were driving in the car and he announced that he needed to go to the doctor.  When I asked him what happened he said, "lots of bites".  He then proceeded to tell me that he had bites on his ears, knees, toes, etc. and that the bites were from bees.  He then insisted again that he go to the doctor.  I did my best to explain that bees don't bite and that we probably didn't need to visit Kaiser, but that we'd check on the bites later to make sure that they were ok.  He seemed satisfied.

p.s. He didn't have bites of any kind on him.

Santa come!

This was the first year that Gordy seemed to care at all about Christmas or Santa.  So, since he was showing some interest, we played along.  We told him a little bit about Santa and how he would come visit on Christmas Eve.  We put up our little tree and decorated it with lights and ornaments.  

We restarted my Granny Goodwitch's tradition of baking and painting sugar cookies.

We rode our bikes to the Haleiwa Christmas parade to see the lights.

We had a Christmas Eve feast with friends and family.  

We left cookies out for Santa.  And, we opened presents :)

Not sure that Gordy will remember much of the festivities for long, but we all had a happy holiday.

world travelers

After 3.5 years of keeping our feet on American soil, we decided to finally get some use out of Gordy's passport - 10 days in Bali with a day stop-over on each end in Taipei.  We rode (5) subways, (4) airplanes, (4) shuttles, (3) taxis, (2) boats, (2) open back trucks, (2) motorbikes, and (1) high speed train.  Not sure which one was the highlight for Gordy, however, he did fall asleep on each airplane, both boat rides, one motorbike ride and one subway ride.

The trip started off with a 10 hour flight to Taipei where we had a 12 hour layover.  We decided ahead of time that it would be worth while to get a hotel room for our layover and boy were we right!  We had just enough time for us all to ride the subway, catch some zzz's, and then to hit the sauna room in our hotel where we enjoyed a swimsuit-free spa with hot and cold baths.

One more 5 hour flight and an hour taxi ride later and we arrived at our first Bali hotel in Seminyak.  We spent two days there riding around on a scooter checking out our old haunts - our roti canai and tea place (we went there twice), our old Bintang supermarket, our old sprint 8 beach (yes, we did our sprints), our old apartments, etc.

Then, it was time to head off to a new place - Nusa Lembongan.  

All in all Nusa Lembongan was a cool place to visit, but it wasn't our favorite.  Everything was more challenging there and we found ourselves wishing we'd stayed on mainland Bali.  So, we cut our stay on the island short and headed up to Ubud.  Ubud was 3 days of great food, super good massages, and of course, the monkey forest.  Gordy absolutely loved the monkeys!!  We ended up spending almost 2 hours in the forest just walking around searching for the monsters.  And, he couldn't get enough of the Bali coffee or the watermelon!

Before we went home, we decided to spend our last 24 hours in Uluwatu enjoying some 3-4 star surfing.  Sadly, the surf was only a 1-star in Todd's book, but Gogo had a ton of fun swimming and playing at the beach.  And, on our way to the airport, we were able to stop for one last massage and one last roti canai and tea tarek - yay!

Our stopover in Taipei was not too exciting, however, we did make it to the top of the 101, which is the 9th tallest building in the world.

We are calling the trip a success!!

Halloween 2018

Gordy still has no idea what Halloween is.  So, we celebrated the holiday with some pumpkin carving, pumpkin seed baking and eating, and some beach time!  Happy Halloween!!!

Our pumpkin picking adventure: