A Short History of a Little Bit Less Than Everything

What could easily be just a picture/caption form of a blog I'm going to turn into a lengthy story-telling time just for your benefit! Hopefully it won't be too long...but here goes!

*EDIT - We've updated our Shutterfly account with new pictures of our vacation & elephant adventure if you'd like to check those out! ----->

We've had a heck of a past three weeks! And it's been wonderful almost every step of the way. We had so many creative ways to announce to the blogging world about our most exciting news...but alas I may just resort to just saying it. I'm pregnant! That's right. Preggo. I begin my second "trimester" today. How exciting! So visiting a "qualified" doctor with an up to date ultrasound machine was one of the things we did in the last few weeks. Upon hearing that we're scheduled to deliver in Bangkok, Thailand, we quickly asked around for recommendations of doctors at the hospital there (rated among the top 10 hospitals in the world!). So we made a pit stop in Bangkok amidst all the other travel around Thailand and got to see a doctor. This hospital amazed us. Their efficiency was incredible. Maybe we'll include more detailed stories about our visit there in later posts. But for now we'll just say that we're so thrilled to be delivering there. If only our parents happened to be residents of Thailand...that's the only thing that would make it more convenient.

So, while in Thailand we got to do all sorts of stuff. Our first couple of weeks we got to see Shane & Shane perform just about every day. That was one of our most favorite things ever.

After eating lunch with them, seeing them roam around our hotel, & hearing them play for four days in a row...Brandon really started to feel like they were best buds. Another fun friend was in this picture also...that's whose hand is resting so delicately on Shane's shoulder, but sorry friend, we cut you out just to be a little safer. :)

Brandon even pulled a ridiculously romantic stunt and requested from Shane B that he play the song that my sister sang in our wedding (by Shane & Shane). It was great. I mean, it was no Bekah, but it was great. :)

While there we ate some great food as well. Turns out that our stomach may have adjusted too well to Chinese food though, because each time we ate some tasty American food we got the not so fun diarrhea afterwards. But that usually didn't stop us from digging into Outback, Tony Roma's, or Burger King. And one time we even spotted lunchables in a grocery store so we stopped and had those for lunch!

Another favorite of those two weeks was of course getting to spend time with some wonderful friends we met just before coming over here. I could post a million pictures all day long of their beautiful faces, but for their security and your sanity, I won't.

Another thing we did...and I'll refrain from saying that it was a 'favorite' also because it definitely was not...was ride elephants.

You might be thinking, "Can you ride elephants when you're pregnant?" Well, I have no idea if you're supposed to or not, but I wouldn't recommend it, not because it made me sick (it seems hardly anything has made me 'morning' sick the last three months) but because I'm not sure I'd recommend it for anyone. I mean, it's one of those things we're glad we did because it's cool to say, "Yes, as a matter of fact I have ridden an elephant." But it's not one of those things you'd want to do everyday. Maybe riding on the elephant's head, or actually sitting on it's back rather than up on a stool strapped to the things back would have been more comfortable. There's really no good way to describe how rough it was, but again...at least we can say we've done it! And hey, after the ride we got to stop and eat some fruit for awhile and it was the BEST pineapple we've ever eaten in our lives. So that made it totally worth the jostling about.

After our couple weeks of meetings and such we headed to Bangkok for a night where we did all the medical stuff at the amazing hospital there, and then began our week long vacation/anniversary trip of Tropical Thailand Paradise. The first night we spent in Phuket with some friends from a neighboring country. It was great to catch up with them, swap culture-shock stories, watch a few episodes of Lost, & get a tan. Then we headed over to beautiful Phi Phi Island by ferry. There are two sides to Phi Phi Island. One more public, partying-scene, type of vacation...or one more private, serene, secluded side, with private beaches type of vacation. We chose the quiet side since we live in the land of 1.3 billion people. It was so wonderful to get to see the stars at night, watch the sunrises and sunsets, & feel the warm tropical breeze. We stayed in those cute little bungalow style houses. It was so beautiful. This is a picture of our hotel's little private beach with all the long tail boats that took us in and out to the ferries.
This part of the island wasn't damaged too much by the Tsunami but much of the other side was. It's incredible how much they've already built it up in just a few years.
We went on a snorkeling day trip and got to see some amazing fish & also some beautiful islands.

Here's Brandon way out in the water with all his snorkeling gear on.

It was a wonderful vacation...a place I highly recommend.

After leaving Thailand we got to stay a few days in Hong Kong to meet up with my sister who happened to be traveling through with a group from her University. Our families did an awesome thing and sent us all sorts of goodies to bring back with us. Mostly maternity clothes, but there were a few food items that were much appreciated, and some birthday gifts! Thanks fam! It was so nice to see her, jet-lagging and all!

We returned this past saturday...the day before our anniversary. And we were so tired from all the travel that all we did to celebrate was to eat cereal for dinner. Sounds strange, but that's quite a celebration for us here! We brought back four boxes of cereal with us (we would have brought back more if our suitcases had room). So we celebrated by eating some Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Kellogg's Blueberry Delight for dinner!

It's nice to be back in our home!