Bridgette getting personality

Bridgette is starting to get some real personality, lately. She is starting to want to get into everything and put it in her mouth.

Here she is with Claire and Mary. They were born around the same time in Whipple Park. They were Rebe's running buddies and all pregnant together. We wanted a picture before we all separated. Pretty hard to get them looking at the same time! We will miss our friends!

Bridgette got a stack of rings for Easter this year. She has not figured out how to stack the rings yet, but she has figured out how to put the yellow post in her mouth. We aren't quite sure if that was what it was intended for. She really loves this toy though.

Tokyo Day 2

Day 2 we went on another tour, this time to Nikko National Park, about 1 1/2 hours outside of the city.  It was nice to see another area of Japan that wasn't big city.  It was even colder than the day before and a little drizzly.

We first saw a Shinto Shrine plus Buddhist temple.  It was super interesting because they were together in the same place.  Most Japanese people participate in both religions.  Shinto= Gods in nature, the religion in Japan before Chinese influence.  Buddhist= Buddha, ancestors.

This was the entrance to the temples.

 For some reason, I thought we'd see monkeys on this tour, but it actually was just the monkeys on this building.  "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil".  Major bummer!

 We loved all the lanterns along the walks.  So cool.  I guess I am blocking it with my head, but you get the idea.

 They took us to a traditional Japanese restaurant with quite the spread.  We had tempura, noodle soup, soy roll things, pickled vegetables, rice and fruit.  It was fun and the dishes were so neat.  The vase looking things had 3 levels where different food was on each level.  You just worked your way down.

 After lunch we stopped by a waterfall.  Do you see it?  Yea, it was really foggy!  It was raining a little harder, so we switched jackets so I could cover Bridgette.

 Muscle jacket!

 Our last stop was the Imperial Villa, which is a vacation house for the Emperor's family.  It was cool to see the traditional building style complete with paper walls, sliding doors and the beautiful painted sliding doors.

 We flew home the next day which went very smoothly.  It felt so much shorter because it cuts off 2 hours since the earth is rotating in your favor.  Awesome!  Tyler caught a flight in Chicago to LA to apartment search and I headed home with Bridgette.  When we got home in the yucky snowish weather, our house was freezing!  Like 55 degrees freezing.  We both bundled up until the heat finally kicked on.

We are feeling like normal people now and are happy to be back.  Bridgette was such a good baby and so flexible.  She deserves some sort of award!  We had a wonderful experience and are so glad we took the opportunity to travel and see the a different part of the world before Tyler has to buckle down and be super busy!

Tokyo Day 1

We left early in the morning for Tokyo.  I am in love with the Japanese airline we flew, ANA.  It was awesome.  Both ways the cute flight attendants gave Bridgette a toy before even taking off.

We went to Shinjuku park to see the Cherry blossoms.  It was beautiful!  We were there past the prime, but there were lots of late blooming trees out.  I loved this view of the blossoms and the downtown buildings.  If you're wondering why we're all bundled up- it was FREEZING!

My big girl sitting up all by herself.

That afternoon we went on our tour of Tokyo.  They took us up to an observation tower to overlook the city, which I didn't see much of because Bridgette was screaming and needed to nurse.  Oh well.
We then went on a cruise down the Sumida river where we could lots of the buildings downtown.  It was fun.  The crazy Kenny G look-a-like who took this picture cut out Bridgie.

They dropped us off at Asakusa which is a shopping center and has a Shinto Shrine at the end of it.  I loved all the cute souvenir shops.  We lost track of time and only had 5 minutes to see the end!

Giant lantern thing.  I made Tyler do a peace sign since we were here, right?

Me with the Pagoda and peace sing.  (It reminded me of the Friendship Pagoda firework- remember Laura and Erin?)

After that we went to the Imperial Palace where the Emperor still lives with his family.  You couldn't actually see much since they don't let you any closer than this.

We are glad we set up these tours because we felt totally lost not speaking the language or knowing what to do!

Peas Please?

Nope, didn't think so!

She's happy to not have to eat them anymore. 

 Too bad for her, we're trying them again today!

Hualian

After we stayed in Kending, we took a long train ride around the bottom of the island and ended up in Hualian.  It is on the mountainous side and it's a big jungle.  It was beautiful!  I love all this green!

The first day we went to the Taroko Gorge National Park.  It was a rainy day, but managed to get in a quick hike before it really started coming down.  We hiked along the river with ginormous boulders and the brightest blue water I've seen in a river.

 

 

We then rode a bus to the gorge part of the park.  It was so cool because the cliffs are so high up.  We walked along the road and somehow we were the only ones without cool hard hats.  Apparently we missed the memo, but sustained no injuries from rock slides!

The gorge- you can't even see the tops of the cliffs.

Some random taxi driver volunteered to take our picture here and told us about some rock formations we couldn't find but pretended to be really interested in.

On the way home, we took a taxi to Tyler's favorite chow fan (fried rice) place from his mission, but when we got there it was closed down!  Bummer!  We walked a little and found another yummy place Tyler would eat at when he was here.  We both got curry fried rice....mmmm.

We stayed in the most ghetto hotel I've ever stayed at, courtesy of my cheap husband.  (It was so bad I made him pinky swear that he wouldn't make me stay in a crappy place like that again!)

The next day we took it easy in the morning and let Bridgette take a good nap, and then headed over to a park nearby until our train ride home.  We found these gorgeous lilies on our walk.  They were everywhere!

We made it home and had one day to do tons of loads of laundry in our tiny washer/dryer before taking off to Tokyo.

Kending

 

After Tyler finished up working at the hospital, we all took a trip down to the Southern part of the island, called Kending.  It is a fun resort town on the beach.  It was so hot and humid, but perfect weather for swimming!

Bridgette took some time to warm up to the ocean.  The first day it was really windy and the waves were loud, so she wasn't a big fan.

When I tried to dip her feet in she would pick up her legs and whimper.

A little weary of the whole ocean experience:

 

After a little torture, she got to play with Daddy.  No, this isn't our sweet hotel on the beach.  We walked down to the beach and tried to be honest and not swim at their beach, but some their lifeguards came over and told us we had to swim over there, so why not?  Since we were there, we took advantage of the umbrellas and lounge chairs.

 

Day 2 was great!  We went snorkeling at a quiet cove.  The fish were so different from other places we've snorkeled at.  We saw tons of fluorescent fish, a couple eels, a huge sea urchin, and big angelfish.  I forget how much I love seeing a whole different world!  The place we rented snorkel stuff from had us wear these awesome space suits, which we laughed at, but ended up loving not getting fried.

There was a really shallow tide pool where we let the babies play.  Bridgette actually liked playing in the water and kicking her legs.

Day 3 we went to another quiet swimming beach complete with giant umbrellas to rent and tacky remakes of American songs playing on loud speakers.

Here's my Island Cutie!

Our sweet setup.

Me and my ocean-loving baby.  She loved playing in the water and kicked her legs like crazy!

We loved seeing this part of Taiwan!!