Wallace's Swimming Party

We went to one of my friend's little boy's 4th birthday party today at the condos. It was a swimming party so I knew both the boys were going to enjoy themselves...and sure enough, they had a blast! I was so happy to finally see E engaging with all the other kiddos. Prior to now, he was always a bit too little to hang with the other kids, but now he is finally getting to that age where he can have fun even with the older kids. He had such a good time that I thought I was never going to get him out of that pool. Cooper even had a great time. His little friends Diego and Alex were there too, so he had his own crew to hang with! He splashed alongside Diego and loved every minute of it. And since it was a birthday party, I let Evan indulge in all the "fun stuff" too, so he stuffed himself with some sugar cookies we had made to take to the party, extra helpings of cheese puffs, and even some chocolate cake. I'm surprised he didn't puke after eating it all since he doesn't normally have these fun things on a regular basis....especially not all at once! When we were leaving, he told me he couldn't wait until his next birthday party!

We're back online!

Sorry for being out of touch for so long, but we've had 3 long weeks of internet issues...don't even get me started. So hopefully we are back up and running for awhile - it's been about 4 months since our last issues with the internet company, so hopefully it will be another 4-5 before I have to deal with those people again!

Anyhow, I have so much to catch everybody up on, so you'll have to back track on the dates to catch up. Since I'm creating this blog so the boys (and ourselves) can have for later, I want to be sure I capture all I can and start back up where I left off over a month ago!

The change in the background is in tribute to the upcoming little man's 1st birthday! I can hardly believe the little monkey is going to be one already. His BeBe and Boss will be arriving in less than 2 weeks to help him celebrate - so we are really looking forward to their visit. I really need to catch up on the posts before they arrive or I'm really going to get behind since I'm sure I'll have tons of pictures to share with everyone of their visit and all we have going on while they are here. Cooper was only 3 weeks old during their last visit to Malaysia, so needless to say we didn't get out and do much of anything. We are going to try and get out a bit more during this visit - along with a 6 day trip back to Thailand for Coop's birthday. What special little boys we have that get to go to the beach for their birthdays - hopefully we aren't spoiling them for later. I'm sure they won't remember much (if any) of this time when they get older, so at least they'll have these blog postings as memories. I found a place where it says you can turn your blog into a book to preserve it as a hard copy...so once we move from here I'll have a book printed saving all our Malaysia memories...how fun!

Check back in soon for the updates and loads of pictures......
I'll leave you with a photo I took during our attempt at getting Easter/Cooper's 1 year pictures taken earlier this month - don't they look so happy!! The actual photographer's pictures turned out a bit better (although still not real quality pics, but we'll take what we can get here) - of course, it was still impossible to get ONE picture of both boys looking in the same direction and both smiling - I had to settle on one where they both had a semi-smile and at least looking in the direction of the camera. I guess since I've never taken them regularly to have professional pictures taken they just aren't used to the process. You should have seen Marte and I trying to get them to even sit next to one another and STAY long enough for her to snap a good one. I think candid pictures are going to be the way to go next time because the posing ones are just impossible!!

Gymboree and Dinosaurs

Today, we ventured to KL for another set of classes at Gymboree, to do some grocery shopping at our favorite grocery store and caught a dinosaur exhibit at the nearby Mid Valley Megamall. Since Evan... and now Cooper... love dinosaurs (he loves to make his roaring sound when you talk about dinosaurs too now...it's not just a lion's roar any longer!), I thought they may enjoy it. Evan was a little scared at first (I have to admit they were a bit lifelike...and they had some really loud dinosaur sounds playing as well), but once I assured him they weren't real, he relaxed a bit and even posed next to some of them for pictures. Cooper of course, would have gone right up to them had we let him out of the stroller. I can already tell E is going to always be the more timid and cautious one while his younger brother is going to be the absolute fearless one! I really do love seeing their personalities develop and seeing how very different they are. I think it's definitely going to make for a challenge, but will always keep things interesting I'm sure. Life would be too easy if they behaved exactly the same....of course they are going to be totally different :-)

As for Gymboree on this particular day, Evan joined the 3o month music class for the first time and had a great time. He had really grown out of the younger class so I was glad to move him up. Today, it was all about getting the kids to hold hands and keeping a circle while walking....what a challenge this proved to be!!

Cooper was also trying his first music class today(he'd only been to the playgym classes previously) and he had a really good time too! He loved shaking the maracas and banging on the drums the best....and the peek-a-boo session through the neon scarves was also a bit hit as you can tell!

Also known as the Malaysian ant....I think we've seen this size in our house before....just kidding...but I'm not kidding when I tell you I HAVE seen the biggest ants I've ever seen in my life before, while we've been here!!

This is the tarantula that E was a bit hesitant to stand next to at first...I think it was a little too furry for his taste!

Coop at least got front row viewing in the double stroller since E chose to walk...I think he enjoyed that part!

Easter time!

We had a wonderful Easter this year! Our Easter festivities started off a couple of weeks beforehand when I tried to get pictures of the boys in some new Easter pjs my mom sent them. Once again I had intentions of sending out some Easter cards and once again, never got around to sending them. This time I actually made the cards, I just never put them in the mail....guess I'll be prepared for next year (yeah sure, as if I'm going to remember that I actually have them next year!).

Next, I decided we were going to make some Easter cookies for E's school friends since I found some Easter cookie cutters that I never got around to using last year. You know me, the first thing I thought was where can I find some box sugar cookie mix. After searching the grocery stores high and low and finding nothing, I finally decided how hard can it actually be to make homemade sugar cookies....so I got online, found a great recipe and believe it or not they actually turned out beautifully (if I must say so myself....especially for a first shot at it). The icing was even a piece of cake, although very time consuming I found! As I (and Marte also helped me....she was the one rolling them out...I can't take all the credit) was finishing up, Andrew came in and asked how they tasted....we hadn't even tried them yet....I said "who cares, it's for a bunch of 3 to 6 year olds....as long as they look good!" But they actually ended up tasting pretty good too! I impressed myself.....so much so that I had to capture a picture at the result of my first real baking attempt!! 5 years ago I never would have thought I'd be baking cookies for my son's preschool class...it's crazy what motherhood does to you!!Our next project was dying our Easter eggs. We've yet to find a place that sells white eggs, they only seem to sell brown eggs here for some reason, but we did end up finding some that were an off white shade that ended up dying just fine. E had alot of fun dying the eggs and putting stickers all over them....Coop, on the other hand, just wanted to pull the table cover off and almost knocked over the coloring cups a couple of different times. So we stuck him in his walker and steered him clear of the project area...as you can tell in the pictures he wasn't very happy about this!! Maybe next year, kiddo!!

We were planning on going to KL on Easter day so we decided to have the Easter bunny come for a visit on Saturday instead. He sure was good to the boys this year - they got tons of new books (Cooper got his 1st Bible), a couple of new dancing Easter bunnies (check out the video below of Coop dancing to his!) and some other small Easter goodies as well as a new black/white board. Surprisingly, Cooper even seems to enjoy the new board - he loves to help his big brother draw and then erase, but unfortunately he also likes to try to eat the chalk.....and then gives out his famous shriek (I'll have to post a video of him doing this at some point) when you tell him not to put it in his mouth.

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
We then had a small egg hunt for the boys...as we did last year, we hid some inside (to minimize the time spent outside in the Malaysian heat) and then hid a few outside (just to spend a bit of time outdoors!). The boys thought it was tons of fun even if it was just the two of them...of course, I guess they don't know any different. Evan isn't going to know what's going on when we finally make it to a proper egg hunt!! After a quick water balloon fight to get ourselves cool again... they gathered up all their eggs, came inside and opened up their goodies. For the next week, it was nothing but talk about how great this Easter bunny guy is....Evan can hardly wait for him to come back next year!!

On Easter Sunday, we travelled to KL to check out some of the things they had going on at the mall where we attend Gymboree. They had a rabbit petting farm, egg decorating and cupcake decorating. Evan had a great time and really enjoyed feeding the rabbits. He was a bit hesitant at first, but after he saw me he became a bit more comfortable with it. Cooper, my little fearless one, wanted to jump right in, but only wanted to tug at the poor rabbit's fur!

We would have loved to have gone to Easter Sunday service at our church back in Houston and had an egg hunt with family and friends, but since those weren't options, we made the best of our time here and had a wonderful Easter by ourselves! We look forward to our next Easter....hopefully we'll be back in the states by then!