Bali Miscellaneous

At the end of any trip, I'm always ready to go home. 

I look forward to boarding my flight and heading in the general direction of "home," wherever it may be at that time.

I miss Bali though. 

I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of that vacation.

I haven't felt that relaxed (yeah, maybe it was the four spa treatments) in a long time.

My kids and husband had a great time and the food was amazing (very important).

The people were some of the warmest I've ever met and the country was beautiful.

I still was glad to be on my way home but Indonesia has won me over and if anyone were to ask me I would tell them to go. Go. GO. 

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Travel is like knowledge.

The more you see, the more you know you haven't seen.

-Mark Hertsgaard

Coffee and Poo in Bali

So Chad's favorite part of this trip was the coffee plantations. Well... the coffee plantation and the babysitting available at our resort. He enjoyed the coffee tour so much on our first day outside of the resort that we had to go to ANOTHER one on our next adventure. Oh and we had that coffee that you've probably heard of that comes from mongoose poop (i.e. The World's Most Expensive Coffee). No big deal.
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A cinnamon tree

A cocoa tree... Rhett loved using the ones on the ground as footballs.

Our teas in all their glory but the coconut coffee won my heart.

In case you're wondering, the poop coffee was really smooth and delicious. Thanks to the mongoose, anything that was bitter is now gone.

A coffee bean... we opened one up and licked the inside. They are very sweet and I wasn't at all surprised that those little critters enjoy eating them.

Vanilla bean vine

Turmeric tea

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

-Helen Keller

Read more about the Luwak/ Mongoose coffee here.

February 14, 2014

Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable.

-The Wizard of 

Christmas in February

Christmas 2013 will forever be remembered as the Christmas where the person formally known as Amy threatened to cancel Christmas and narrowly avoided telling her three year old son that Santa does not exist as a result of prolonged lack of sleep. 

To sum our Christmas up, I lost my shit.  

The saddest part about this was the fact that the incident that pushed me over the edge was there were no new slippers under the tree with my name on them.

True story. 

I tried to blame the Zero REM sleep combined with two cups of Chad's extra strong coffee for the meltdown but in hindsight, it does not make me feel any better.

I think back on Christmas morning and all I see is the three sleepy faces looking peculiarly up at me as I go on some non-sensical tirade about how noooobbooodddyyy cares, everyone is an ingrate, our Korean kitchen can just go up in flames because it burned my dutch baby and how much I. HATE. CHRISTMAS.

By mid-morning, I just wanted to curl up and die with embarrassment.

By dinner time, I wished I could have started the entire day over.

By bedtime, I was happy to see December 25, 2013 come to a close.

Before falling asleep (but after I apologized to my husband), I said a silent prayer asking for forgiveness. I prayed to be a better me tomorrow and everyday leading up to Christmas 2014. 

And I may have put a plug in there about new slippers as well.

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And because I don't want anyone thinking I'm a worse mother than I (admittedly) was on Christmas, I did do a little 1st birthday party for our Ava.
"Party" is used loosely here as it was more of a glorified play-date but it was good food, great company and some Christmas cookies were decently decorated so overall it was a nice birthday for her.

So far my quiet prayer for 2014 has been answered (and I got new slippers in the mail a week after Christmas) in case you were wondering.

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“You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don't help.” 
― Bill Watterson

Calvin & Hobbes

Our Ava

Ava is the only baby I've ever met that has resided on three continents prior to her first birthday. 

She has only slept through the night 16 (!!!) times in the 416 days she's been on this earth.

(yes, feel bad for me)

She says mama, dada, baby, hi, bye, yes, amen and "he did it." She says a lot of other really important stuff but no one understands her. 

Ava blows kisses and high fives her brother all.day.long. He must be her hero.

She loves dancing naked. Her signature move involves grabbing her muffin top (and then maybe peeing on the floor -which may explain why we don't indulge her in this way very often).

She has not one... but two chipped teeth. 

When it gets eerily quiet in our house... Ava is doing one of two things: playing in the toilet or looking at a book.

Her awesomeness is only equaled by her naughtiness
and that's a lot of awesomeness.

I am 1 month and 19 days late in posting this but I blame severe sleep deprivation.

Happy birthday to an amazing little girl. 

I wish the rest of your years to be as exciting as your first.

xoxo

Mom

"I know a girl, she puts the color inside of my world"

-John Mayer

No title... just a little this and that.

You don't take a photograph.  You ask, quietly, to borrow it.

  -Author Unknown

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