December Events

Sooo much has been going on here in last few weeks. December is always crazy it seems. We finally saw the last of the beautiful fall colors and now everything is stark and barren. This reminds me how things looked when we came here almost 1 year ago!

My 2 monkeys are always, always on the go and always coming up with something. Here they are having a guitar and cello duet.

The first week of December we had the St. Andrews ball. This is a huge Scottish event and a great excuse to get all dressed up and generate some money for local causes. Zoe did my hair and make-up, (She knows a lost-cause when she sees one..) so I looked pretty glam!

Here's the 5 Disney Princess all cleaned up. I think this is the first official picture of the 5 of us in one place!

I was in charge of the Whisky tasking event. They had to taste 6 whiskys and there were 9 whisky descriptions given out: 6 real ones and 3 red herrings. They had to try to identify the 6 whiskys. A few folks got 3 out of 6 which I thought was pretty good!

Lots of glasses to fill...

My buddy Aurora. She's a Korean-American who is now an Expat back in Korea! Don't know what I would do without her. She speaks and reads Korean so I am always bugging her to help me find something/translate something/call for something...

We found this place in China called DH Gate. You pick a dress, send them your measurements, and they custom make it for you. A bunch of us went for it so here is the "DH Gate" crew!

After St. Andrews we tried to get into the Holiday Spirit, which is kinda hard in a country where Christmas really isn't a big deal. The Smiths went to Australia for the holiday so they let us put up their Christmas tree. That made the apartment feel a LOT more like Christmas!

Sasha wrote a letter to Santa to tell him that we would be in the Philippines for Christmas. She even wrote a section in for Teddy with him dictating and her doing the writing. What a great Big sis!

And then there was the NOV Christmas party. Sasha and I were basically told that we had been signed up to play our fiddles in front of 600 people. Great. We were less than psyched to begin with and then we got lost getting there and took 1 hour and 45 minutes to get to the event which it turns out was 20 minutes from our house. We barely had time to scarf down dinner and we were up!

My face in this picture pretty much says it all....

Sasha and I decided to just play for each other. Here I am drawing strength from her and trying NOT to look at 600 people!

Me and my girl:

She was amazing as always. Went white as a sheet about half way through, but carried on none the less!

At the end they gave us special gifts. Including bears for the kids that are as big as they are. Did I mention that we live in a tiny apartment?

In other news, I have a new camera!! My other one broke and I got a tiny one to run with in the Disney half marathon, but it takes lousy pictures so I got a real one. The pictures are AMAZING so from now on the blog is going pro-style yo!

Sasha of course HATES being my camera test-subject....

Teddy half way up the hill on his resting rock. We have to stop here every day.

.....and showing me his EPIC muscles.

Addition to the family Alert:  Jeff has been wanting a fish tank so the kids and I got him one for his birthday while he was away on a trip. We have had a blast watching the fish, naming the fish, and just looking, looking, looking....

We even have some "ghost shrimp" there are 3 males and one female. This male has scored a huge food flake.

The female ghost shrimp is upside-down under the filter and that dark mass on her abdomen is tons of eggs! We'll see what happens with that.

Of course no camera test is complete without shots of the furriest members of Team Stolasz....

Max is comin' in for a love...

Here's the whole fish tank set-up. We moved it to the kitchen table so we can watch the fish while we eat. Makes it feel kind of like a Chinese restaurant....

Santa meanwhile got the Christmas card, sent the kids videos which you can see HERE and HERE, and then told them that he was going to bring their stocking stuffers to the Philippines but bring their big present early so they could have it on the plane! So on Saturday the kids got to open their big present from Santa. He rules right? Sasha has been wanting a DS for about a year and was just on pins and needles wondering if Santa was going to come through for her.

It's a "Cars" game!

Playing some crazy cooking game that she wanted...

Teddy and Dad try to figure out this new technology.

Both of the kids also had their Christmas shows this last week so I will try to post pics and vid from that in my next post before we leave. I'd better get on that... only 3 more sleeps until we go to the Philippines!