Three Cakes, Floaties, and Bunny Chopsticks

It looks like our move-in date will be July 25th.  Yay!  That will make our hotel stay just 3 days short of a month.  If we can make it until then without getting kicked out, I will be feeling pretty good about myself.

Last night our Bishop's wife had us over for dinner.  They have triple girls (17) and another girl who is 13.  Unfortunately, the bishop had to stay late for a work dinner and the triplets are serving mini-missions in Taiwan, so it was just the mother, Nancy and their 13-year old, Molly.  The girls instantly became obsessed with their 2 tiny dogs!  Cora wouldn't put them down, even when they pretty clearly communicated that they didn't want to be thrown around.  We had a wonderful conversation with Nancy and her daughter and got lots of great info about living in Taiwan and the school the girls will be going to.  It sounds like even though it is technically an American school, the social language is actually Chinese.  Originally, the Taipei American School was intended for children of parents from the USA, but now she said that most students speak English as a second language.  While you still have to have a foreign passport to attend, the school has come to be a top choice for many Taiwanese families, whose children were born in the States, but have since moved back. I guess our girls will get more Chinese than we thought!

Yesterday, I was feeling adventurous (aka slightly impaired in my judgement) and decided to take the girls swimming by myself.  Before Sterling left for work, I scoped out the pool to make sure that the hotel's rooftop pool wasn't surrounded by inviting ledges and other Mabel lures.  Honestly, it is pretty good.  Not 100% child-safe, but what is? We got all of our floaties, towels, sunscreen, snacks, diapers, wipes, water bottles, and other random junk into two bags and we were ready to go!  I strapped Edie into the ErgoBaby, assigned Mabel to drag the huge bag of floaties, Cora insisted on bringing a bag of non-pool toys, and I got the other bag.  Of course, this pool is only accessible by two flights of stairs, so there is no way you can take a stroller.  Haha.  The pool attendant seriously acted like we weren't even there!  No eye contact.  No smiles.  Nothing.  I struggled to blow up all of our plastic devices while still holding Edie because she would run into the pool otherwise.  Finally, I motioned for him to help me with putting one on Mabel.  This was clearly out of his comfort level :)  Anyway, we did all get in the pool and had a really great time.  Cora and Mabel chatted with the only other couple who was there.  Not sure how much they understood, but they were nice and played with them a little.  Cora kept summoning them to follow her around.  If nothing else, it was entertaining.  About 1 1/2 hour in, Mabel needed a diaper change in a pretty big way, but there was no way I could change her by the pool, or get everyone into the small changing area, so we just had to get out of the pool and go up to our room.  It seriously took me 30 minutes to get everyone up to our room!!!!  Mabel started running around and I couldn't catch her.  Then Cora spilled juice everywhere.  We had pretzel crumbs all over the deck, and towels laid out all over the place.  Edith was crying and we were all slippery from sweat.  As I've said before, the humidity is pretty wild.  I couldn't carry everything, so I tried forever to get Mabel to carry the bag of floaties and that went horribly.  Cora begged to shower in the shower by the pool and I needed to go to the bathroom.  So great.  And the guy awkwardly stood there.  Hmmm.  I'm still not sure how we got everyone and everything back up to the room, but we did.  And guess what?  We went swimming again today.

Explosion of pink at the pool!

Hey, Mabel.

Lookin' good, Cora!

Cora's 4th birthday was on Saturday, July 9th.  As many of you may have seen on the news, Taiwan had a huge typhoon.  Fortunately, it totally missed us.  We got a tiny bit of wind and rain, but nothing that did any damage.  But because we thought that we going to be stuck inside on her birthday, we got a cake earlier.  I mean, you don't want to be stuck with out a cake, right?  Cora picked out a chocolate cake at a little bakery there.   We decorated the hotel room for her the day before, borrowed a lighter from the hotel restaurant and had a little party for her on Friday night.  She was so excited!

Our little family birthday party!

Cora got her first Barbie doll, Belle.  

At Chili's.  They even sang to her in Chinese and she thought it was the greatest thing ever.

Cora with another cake that Sterling's co-worker dropped off at the hotel for her!
We also had a cake when we had dinner with the family in our ward, so she had 3 cakes!  She wasn't complaining.

Horrible photo of some of the streamers we put up for Cora's birthday

You can't really tell from this photo, but on the way home from Cora's birthday dinner at Chili's, we got SOOOO soaked!  Like, there were inches of water everywhere.  Sterling and I put plastic bags around our shoes to kind of keep out of the rain, but then we were just slipping everywhere.  Crazy and fun memory for us and girls.  They LOVED it!

The weather was great (which means no rain, but still a million degrees and super humid) on Saturday, so we decided to drive to our soon-to-be neighborhood and explore.  We did the walk from our new apartment to the Taipei American School and drove by Mabel's school.  For lunch we stopped by a place called Sprout, recommended to us by an American family who just moved home.  Loved it!  It was a restaurant filled of dishes like ones I wish I could make.  We got a healthy lunch and fresh juices and then, just when we were ready to leave, a server let us know that there was a play place in the basement.  Win!  After playing there for a bit, we drove to another playground.  This playground at Lanyu Park is by the Shidong Market.  Sterling watched the girls while I went to the indoor market.

This is a permanent market set up in a building with vendors selling all sorts of things (mostly food) like seafood, vegetables, fruit, fresh noodles, unidentifiable parts of animals, dumplings, and various kinds of rice.  Upstairs are little mini-stores selling clothes and jewelry.  (TMI--I also got to try a squatter toilet for the first time there.)  I loved the market, but I found myself not quite knowing how to act :)  Anytime, I made eye contact with a vendor or looked for too long, they started talking to me.  Normally, this is totally fine, but, you see, when I have no idea what they are saying and they have no idea what I'm saying, it just gets kind of awkward.  Haha.  I'm so excited to have a kitchen again and begin cooking with all of these new ingredients!

Edie waiting for food at the Chinese restaurant in the hotel.

Why wear one pineapple fanny pack when you can wear two?  (Can't remember when this was taken)

Passing the time in the hotel...

She wore these at dinner tonight! On the way to the Thai restaurant (located in a big mall), we walked through the make-up and perfume counters.  Cora and Mabel tried on some fancy blush and then they each selected what kind of Chanel perfume they wanted to wear.  They were feeling pretty special--and we think they are.  Edith was a champ and was patient with us all :)

We got goggles today while we were out picking up a few snack items from the grocery store!

They told me they were going to a swimming party.  Awesome.

Edith practicing her clapping skills!

The hotel workers and these girls have a special relationship that involves the girls getting lots of candy and being in lots of photos.  It's funny, though.  Cora is often the one asking to be in photos with Pei.  One time Pei showed Cora how to do a pinky promise and now they do it all the time!

We also got kid training chopsticks for Cora and Mabel today while we were out.  For lunch, we decided to get noodles so they could try them out.  Pretty good, girls!

Ordering when I'm by myself is kind of a joke.  I seriously only order things that have photos of them, point to the photo of food I think I want, and hope that I didn't order something with tripe.  This soup noodle bowl in the photo above was only okay.  Today I had better luck :)

During the day, the girls and I often go to the mega mall across the street to get Jamba Juices and noodles.  This week they have a big Peppa Pig display out with toys that kids can try out.  So, sometimes we just camp out there :)

We get lots of stares and people pointing no matter where we go, but this woman just sat down and watched the girls play for probably a good 10 minutes.  I figured if she could watch them play, I could take her photo.  She kept talking to me in Chinese, and I kept smiling and nodding.  Wish I knew what I was agreeing to!  Oh, well... 

So

many

NOODLES!

A few nights ago, the girls played with the lobster head during dinner and Cora poked out its eyes.  Classy, Larsens, classy.

Some sort of pistachio cake, balancing on raspberries on top of semi freddo.  Our dining experience was very unlike the experience of our fellow diners.  Nothing like 3 kids climbing all over you to make you feel like you are in a fine restaurant.  Never again, but the food was delicious!

The girls fell asleep on the way home from church and we didn't want to wake them up, so we drove around for awhile exploring.  We came across this great neighborhood near the fabric market that I am so excited to visit!  Sterling is a rock star driver.  When we come back to this area, it will definitely be without kids and a stroller.

I wish you could have all seen Sterling's face as we through these streets.  You could tell he was in love with this city. 

I saved the boring photos for last.  Well, we don't think they are boring, but they definitely aren't as cute as photos of the girls.  Here is our new apartment.  I'll take some more next time we go!

And they play area that is in our apartment building's basement

Good night everyone!

 Love you all!