Fun in Jakarta

Wow, what a city!  Jakarta has about the same population as NYC.  It was so fun to be with a group of people today brought together by the Indonesian version of Parenting Magazine (see details in on the Valuesparenting blog).  We had so much fun with about 100 women and 6 men just learning from each other!

Afterward we hired a car from our wonderful hotel (Four Seasons) and drove to the furniture district.  It was fun just to drive through the city and we found that the furniture we have is better than anything that we saw.  We did find absolutely amazing furniture and sculptures created from giant roots from teak trees. Some of the roots were from trees that were a thousand years old!  Here are some of our favorites (although I talked Dad out of buying any...more stuff)!

A lounge chair.  Dad REALLY wants this but it weighs about 800 pounds.

 

This guy was AMAZING!  Keep in mind that it's all ONE root!   The first McDonalds we've seen since we left home.  See the Krispi Creme sign in the background?

One Final Thought from Saigon

As we take off this morning for Jakarta and three days of full-day seminars, we are realizing how lucky we've been to just relax and enjoy this very interesting country.  Such good people!  We met such a cute new father on a hovercraft yesterday as we went out to see an Island. He was taking his wife and brand new 9 day old baby home for the first time.  He decided immediately that he wanted to have nine children.  His wife was horrified!  We have met such wonderful people and eaten some awesome food...presented so beautifully...and some pretty strange stuff too!

 

  Aquarium in the Majestic Hotel on the waterfront.

Spring rolls, extraordinaire!

 

  On to Jakarta!

The Big Tour and Dad's Birthday!

So after a speech at a high school in Manhattan Beach with about 400 parents, we almost missed our plane on our way to Saskatoon, Canada!  It was absolutely a miracle that we made that plane which was the only one that would have gotten us there in time.  We did make it, but our bags didn't. Dad ran across from our hotel to the mall to get some shoes to give our speech in.  We had two really terrific groups there (see the blog at Valuesparenting.com).  Then it was off to the Big Tour beginning in Vietnam.  Wow have we had a great time here!  (Despite the fact that they again lost our bags and our hosts had us coming in two days later so nobody was there to pick us up.  Just added to the adventure!

There are 4 million motorcycles in Saigon!  The traffic is absolutely hilarious!  We spent two days in the Mekong Delta with a cute guide named Hung...Eli's age. He took us on several boats, several sizes, to a village where we had a fabulous lunch (elephant ear fish) and then rode bikes about five miles through villages, seeing the real thing!  Very third world.  Absolutely fascinating.  After another 2 1/2 hours in the car we found ourselves at a pretty crappy hotel but the most amazing experience at the floating markets.  Literally hundreds of boats loaded to the hilt with wholesale produce. They start to sell to retailers at about 4:30 a.m. every morning.  Then we walked through a market.  Pictures: 

Hallway of our first hotel.  Strange mattress? and fake flowers, but cute. Wish we'd taken pictures of that crazy hotel on the Mekong Delta.

Out the car window!

The floating market

 

 

                  

Here we are back in the city at the War Remnant Museum, the Reunification Palace and with the ever present motorcycles!

 

            

The birthday boy!  Couldn't find one thing he wanted in this whole market!

        

It's the same scene out any window! 

     

A random wedding.  Cute couple!  

 

             Our great friends at the YPO Vietnam Chapter

Blowing out candles after a great birthday dinner at a fabulous Vietnamese Restaurant.  Fascinating place and such interesting people! 

Guys' Cruise

Wow are we lucky or what?   In April we had the rare priviledge of having three of four daughters on a cruise and now in October we had the fun of having all our sons!  It was a bit of a crazy situation as we had many people who had signed up to travel with us (both were speaking cruises) up to a year ago, we never saw.  How weird it this?  They oversold the cruise so we had to go on a different Carnival cruise ship with 11 of the overflow people which we were suddenly the Cruise Directors for!  It was so fun, but we're worried about the people who thought they were going with us.

The trip was not without other glitches as we couldn't get into Roatan because they were having riots in the streets due to a huge increase in electrical costs and then a tropical storm was due to hit Belize just as we arrived there so we turned around and went back to see Chichan Itza, a place we're always wanted to see! 

Anyway, a great time was had by all. We celebrated Dad's birthday a little early with a fabulous chorus of Jamaicans who sang a new Pizzazy Happy Birthday to dad after dinner one night. Tal couldn't join us until the last three days but it was so fun to have him with us every minute we got!  We treasured every minute with our great Eyre guys and appreciated three wives who had to live without their husbands for a whole week.  Who knows when we'll ever have that opportunity again???

Since pictures are worth a thousand words here are a few: 

 

St. George Kids and GOLD!

We had so much fun taking care of the St. George kids, particularly the Looslis while Saren and Jared went off to Mexico for a second honeymoon.  A great time was had by all! Movies, Bajio, McDonalds, school schedules, and just knowing the daily routine of both the Looslis and the energetic Eyres next door was such fun! When Saren and Jared got home we enjoyed the school carnival, the Reflections contest which Aja ran like a pro and not without a lot of time and effort.  We also got to see Les Mis and Big River at Tuacan.  They were both fabulous!  FUN! 

 

I took the weekend while Dad finished the landscaping and brought the horses up for the winter on Sunday.  The next week was non-stop Senior games.  Dad won the bronze in doubles in tennis, the bronze in the triple jump and Gold in 3 on 3 basketball! They had a lot of fun. They played
in the 55's because one of their guys was 59, but Dad is almost 64 (2 1/2 weeks) and one of the their guys was 68. They were
awesome....especially your DAD! Looslis came for the final but Jonah
and Aja are having a big garage sale today at Teresa's house because she is moving to AZ! They're serious about selling or renting their house so they're selling lots of stuff too. Sure has been fun being close to these two families this week. Aja did the reflections contest which ended at the School Carnival on Thursday night. She did a fabulous job!
Ana won first place for photography, Ashton won first prize for video
(starring his snake and horny toad) and Isaac won 4th place for a
beautiful poem! FUN!
Hope you're all well. We're headed out to meet the boys in Miami in a few hours. Josh is already in Fort Lauderdale looking for a shuttle to Miami where our hotel is. Thanks to you wives for letting your husbands kick up their heels for a week. We'll try to get them all fixed up by the time they return.

 

Earthmoving in Progress

 

Wow, we are really moving the earth around at BCRANK.  How about BCRANK is the property, Baliwood is the house...just to get that straight!  Dad has done a magnificent job of lining up the ducks to get the pavers in on the patio, the fabulous Wellesley Lampost installed and even a bridge or two to get to it as well as a beautiful water fall that is the first thing you see when you walk into the great room (after the mountains).  We are klling ourselves to get it all done before we leave for the fall. Even a few tree grace our property, the lawn is in the they have hydro-seeded all that dirt so we can keep the weeds down and get it looking nice for next summer.