Culture Night: Indonesia

Nate had been waiting a long time for his turn to pick the country.  He really wanted to pick Indonesia so he could talk about Draco lizards.  He learned about them on Wild Kratts and loves them.  I thought it was pretty cute.  So, Indonesia it was!

For dinner, I made these recipes. It could have been better than it was except that I overcooked the beef a bit (had to cook them inside) and I also should have taken them off the rack and covered them immediately because they got cold fast.  The fried rice with eggs were good.  We were all nervous about the jackfruit when I learned that jackfruit = durian.  Joe had tried durian at his old firm when someone brought it in once and it almost made him sick it was so strong/terrible.  Apparently, jackfruit is pretty mild, though, and didn't really have much flavor.

So, here was the spread:

After dinner, Nate talked about animals, Elizabeth talked about geography, Natalie talked about food, I talked about languages, and Joe talked about the tsunami.  That was sobering to teach our kids about.  I still remember watching the news when it happened--we were in CA right for Christmas and I was pregnant with Elizabeth.

It was another successful culture night!

Winter Break

We had a pretty quiet week after Christmas.  I decided it was now or never and decided to potty-train Eli.  He was pretty resistant to the idea so I was nervous about how it would go.  Thankfully, it went really well!  He was excited enough about his lightsaber and other incentives that he was motivated.

His completed potty chart:

He had finished it in a week!

So I spent most of the week waiting around for him to do his business:

Joe spent the week working on his continuing education.  He finished that, too!

We did celebrate a little bit on our anniversary.  The kids were sweet and made us this breakfast to share:

That evening Christine brought Lucky over and babysat the kids while Joe & I and Tom & Shari had a joint anniversary date.  We went to dinner and then went bowling.  It was a lot of fun.  I was worried about how Eli would do while we were gone (visions of Christine having to clean up poop disasters) but he did fine!

He earned his trip to a fun jump place before the break was over so I took the kids one day.  

They had a blast!

I,  on the other hand, was freezing the whole time.  It was like 15 degrees outside and I don't think they heated the place at all (which was fine for those who were jumping, not for us watching).

When the potty chart was filled up, Eli got his lightsaber.

He was one happy kid:

I'll finish off with this cute poster that Elizabeth made for us:

We sure have great kids.