How I spend my time... by Keanu

I've been busy these days. Mom's at school all day and Dad's teaching most evenings, but I'm home most of the time. In addition to helping Kate with so many things, I've got a lot to do, like...

Building ramps (and other things):

Taking pictures of my creations:

Making s'mores in the broiler (with mini marshmallows and chocolate chips):

Putting puzzles together:
Walking on couch cushions:

Running:

And just plain being cute:

As seen in Taiwan - keep out of reach!

We've been doing some baby-proofing around our house in the last couple of months. One thing we've done is put corner guards on the sharp corners that are in easy, everyday proximity of the baby, like this.

Adhering these was pretty easy - just use the double stick tape included in the package - so I didn't really NEED the English directions on the back of the package. However, I thought this warning was interesting...

Hopefully they mean that the kids shouldn't play with the tape and that the guard itself isn't potent to babies.

Having English included on directions is usually quite welcome, even if we sometimes have to guess at what it means.

Goo My Goot

This post got me thinking about how my German has been pretty much covered with Chinese. Whenever I try to think of something I used to know in German, all I can think of is the Chinese equivalent.

Well, tonight at dinner, I remembered an important phrase for eating: schmeck goot. (I'm sure I didn't spell that right, but I think maybe any foreign language is like Chinese - it doesn't matter how it's spelled). So I dunked the garlic bread into my spaghetti sauce and pronounced it "Ahhh, schmeck goot!" and got uproarious giggles from both kids. After a couple more bites of the schmeck goot sauce, I asked Keanu, who usually eats plain noodles without any sauce, if he wanted some schmeck goot, too.

"OK," as he also dipped some garlic bread into the sauce and declared it "goo my goot!" His sister giggled happily from across the table, which only produced more "goo my goot!" and more spaghetti sauce down the hatch!

Maybe I'll have to come up with other phrases in other languages to get him to broaden his food repertoire. Got any good ones?

Me: We didn't brush our teeth yet. (we're almost ready for bed.)
Keanu: I brushed my teeth yesterday (so I don't have to brush them today)!

Tennis on Friday

Returning...

Helping...

Longing...

Wordless Wednesday

Typhoon weekend

Last weekend Taiwan weathered a tremendous typhoon. We all had the day off work on Friday and Saturday was a typhoon day, too. Saturday also happened to be father's day here in Taiwan and in spite of the typhoon, we couldn't get reservations for dinner that night. Instead we had pizza at Yoyo and Chen-Yi's house. We also spent Sunday with them enjoying indoor, dry activities. We spent a lot of time at the Tai-mall in TaoYuan which is basically a 6 or 7-story filled with fun things to do: roller blading, badminton, arcade games, restaurants... the list goes on and on. Yoyo and Keanu enjoyed the arcade style bowling and soccer game (although they didn't do so well with the soccer). Then we had a buffet dinner at the Ponderosa steakhouse!
As you can imagine, it was beyond crowded as the country was being drenched, but overall, it was a good time!