Trip to the US

We made a quick (week and a half long) trip back to the US a few weeks ago. We went to Phoenix, Arizona for the annual general meeting for the company Damien works for and then we spent a few days with our families in Utah.

 While in Phoenix we gave Audrina her first bubble bath. She was scared of the bubbles and stood up the whole time she was in the tub trying to avoid the bubbles. I decided it would be fun to give her a little bubble hair. She didn't seem to mind.

We had a few rough nights trying to get adjusted to the new time zone (15 hours behind). Audrina ended up in our bed a few nights because that's the only way we could get her back to sleep. And we needed our sleep.

My mom came as our nanny to help with Audrina while we were there. They had lots of fun together!

The first night we were there, they gave out hats for everyone and we got this little pimp hat for Audrina. She looked so cute in it!

On Friday night they have an adults only dinner and most of us from the Malaysia project went in Indian attire since we live next to Little India here in Kuala Lumpur.

The Malaysia team

We also had a woman come and do our henna for the event. I had her do a peacock up my arm. It was beautiful!

During the adult only dinner, they had a toddler event for my mom and Audrina to go to but she slept the whole time. She was still recovering from the time change I guess.
 

Saturday morning my mom and I got up and ran the 5K they had. It was an 80's themed run so they had wigs and other 80's items to bling yourself out with.

Those of us that ran from the Malaysia project.

Mom and I chose these awesome wigs from the 80's attire to wear.

Audrina was terrified of the mullet wig! I came in the room with it on my head and she was fine with it. Then we put it on her head to take a picture and she started to freak out. It worked out well though because there were stairs at my grandma's house in Utah we didn't want her going down by herself. We put the mullet wig at the top and that stopped her from going near the stairs!

We managed to get a picture of her with the wig on.

Grandma saving Audrina from the mullet.

Still recovering from the traumatic experience.

 
While we were in Utah with our families we went to the zoo, aquarium, City Creek Center and just spent time together. It was a fun trip. I'm glad we got to see our families, but hopefully next time we're together we'll have more time.

Audrina helped me unpack when we got back to KL.

Daddy Daughter Time

One

Today Audrina turns one. I can't believe it's been a year already! She's grown so much and learned so many new things in the past year. We love having her in our family!

 

2 days old

2 months - Atlanta, Georgia

She's full of personality and very intrigued with new things. She can stand very well by herself, but is hesitant to take any steps. I think to date, she's taken a few steps about two or three times. She's almost got it figured out. I think she's a bit nervous about falling. I don't think it will be much longer before she really starts to walk
though.

6 weeks - Hawaii

6 months - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

She loves to play peek-a-boo and wrestle on the bed. She says mom, baby, and boo. A lot of times she'll try to repeat a word I'm telling her, but none of those words are audible clear. She likes to dance/head bang to music. She's very interested in trying the food we're eating and wants to feed herself. She doesn't like to get her hands dirty though. We celebrated her birthday with some of the other families here and she wouldn't touch her piece of cake.

9 months - Koh Phi Phi, Thailand

10 months - Siem Reap, Cambodia

11 months - Singapore

We'll have celebrated her birthday four times this year by the time we see all of our families. I don't think she'll mind. We look forward to the next year and all of the new things she'll learn.

We love you Audrina!

Mom & Dad

almost 1 year

10 Months

Audrina is 10 months old! She's growing so fast and learning so many new things. She has five teeth now and is working on her sixth. She has her two front bottom teeth, one front middle, and the two next to those. It's pretty funny seeing her teeth since she has a big gap!

Look how silly her top teeth look!

She crawls super fast and is into everything! Sometimes she gets going too fast and her arms can't keep up with her legs so she face plants. She's pulling up on everything and even lets go when standing for a bit. I don't think we're too far from having a walker on our hands.

She walks by pushing her high chair around!

I made this dress! It's so fun to see it on her.

She loves to open the cabinets and pull everything out. If you leave anything electronic out she'll find it and chew on it. She loves to play hide and seek on our bed. We throw the blankets over her and let her pull them off. She loves the pool so we try to go swimming as often as possible. And she loves people. She stands out here with her blonde hair and blue eyes so everyone has to stop to touch and talk to her. (She's going to have a great immune system after this.) She's always giving them big smiles and pointing her finger at them. They think it's great!

She makes lots of sounds and can be quite loud, but the only word we understand is mama or mom. She also says ba or aba a lot but we haven't figured out what that means.

She was done with pictures by this point!

She's a lot of fun! I can't believe she's ten months already. Next thing I know we'll be celebrating her first birthday!

Malaysian Wet Market

This past weekend Damien, Audrina, and I ventured to Chow Kit to see the wet market where the local Malays shop for food. It was a very eye opening experience! Here are some picture of what we saw.

*Disclaimer: Don't continue reading/looking if you're grossed out easily.

Produce section

I see these beans everywhere here. I'm not sure what kind they are though or how they use them.

 I think these are a type of large legume. 

 They have a ton of different peppers here.

Damien and I always wonder what this is when we see it.

Long beans, they're very long. 

We picked these next two fruits up while we were there. This one is a mangosteen. They are one of my favorite fruits here. They have a dark purple skin on the outside that you have to pull away from the delicate white-fleshed fruit.

This is what they call snake fruit. You can see why they call it that. The skin of the fruit looks like snake skin. They grow on palm trees, according to Wikipedia. We got some to try since this was the first time we'd seen this fruit. I would say the taste reminds me of hairspray and the texture is unlike anything I've ever tasted before. It's kind of coarse and very firm and crispy.

Now onto the disgusting part, the meat and poultry section of the market. 

They're really into dried fish here. The smell is horrible.

Snails.

More fish.

I think this is a water snake or some sort. They were still alive and moving around in this bucket.

 These catfish were huge! This guy was trying to catch one for someone to take home.

 After they catch it, they kill it at this station with a large knife.

 

  

 

More dried fish. This time it was just the head.

 

The beef section. This part grossed me out the most. I think that's cowhide on the left and tongues on the right.

Rolls of lard.

Cow heads. 

Poultry

Quail eggs. They're kind of cute looking with all their spots and how small they are. I've never tried one though so I don't know what they taste like.

I think this chicken was cooked in some sort of yellow spice or maybe it was just brined. Not sure!

 Desserts

 This guy was frying up some kind of breaded food.

Nothing like a day under the tents at the food market.