I'm married to an Ironman

Last weekend we went to Phuket - an island in Southern Thailand - and Jonny completed an Ironman 70.3. Which means he swam 1.2 miles, biked 56 miles, and then ran 13.1 miles. Yes, he is a real man. He's been training for months, despite his biggest obstacle - me. I have been the negative Nelly telling him to stay home and snuggle and watch TV instead of going to the gym, and I'm the one always trying to talk him into ordering pizza or McDonalds or anything else not on the Ironman diet. I'm terrible. But going to this race really inspired me to change. Practically everyone down in Phuket that weekend was racing, and they all had freaking amazing bodies. And the average age was forty-something. So I now have big plans to become a triathlete once I'm done with all this baby business. We'll see...

Crossing the finish line.

How Jonny originally sold me on the race - the beautiful location.

Why not walk your elephant around the hotel pool?

In some ways, my girls could not be more opposite. Maggie is extremely cautious, and AJ is constantly trying to get herself killed. She now swims by herself with floaties, and actually screams if anyone gets too close to her because she thinks they're trying to help her. Maggie stays parked on the first pool step (See picture with elephant). Takes after her mom. :)

Happy Thanksgiving

I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time which was a success since the Marriot provided most of the food. I did however do the centerpiece all by myself without any help from Pinterest.

Every day when Jonny gets home from work the girls act like it's freaking Christmas morning. They both squeal and scream and run outside begging him to take them for a ride on the scoot. My arrivals home do not get quite the same reaction. Lately Maggie's favorite thing to say to me is "Mom, sometimes you make me so sad" because I've done something as horrific as tell her to clean up her toys. Fortunately for my mother-ego, she still calls frantically for Mommy when she has a nightmare. When I go in her room, she stops crying and says, "I need a snuggle." What am I going to do one day when she stops saying that!!!

Every Saturday I drag the family out to do some kind of outing since I am at heart a Christensen and feel we need to be productively seeing Thailand while we live here. This last Saturday we drove to the fair which was a very sad fair by US standards. The whole trip was worth it though when Maggie rode the motorized scooter around this little track. She payed absolutely no attention to the road and just looked around and smiled while weaving in and out and running into all the cones. Jonny is convinced she is going to be as bad a driver as me one day...

My sister pointed out that I haven't really put a belly shot up here yet, and the reason is because my pregnancy fat face is just too much for anyone to have to look at on here. So I had the great idea to take a pic of Maggie kissing my belly, and because of the delay in our camera, this was the best shot. Doesn't AJ look so stinkin cute? It's hard to believe I still have two entire months left.

Happy Halloween

I discovered Pinterest for the first time after hearing so much about it on facebook. I went to it one time, and then wasted about two hours looking at stuff. I haven't been back because I already waste WAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much time on the computer and I really don't need another addiction. But the one good thing that came out of my little Pinterest jaunt was that I found some cute Halloween treats and the next day I pretended to by domestic/crafty for about an hour with Maggie. Hopefully now that is out of my system. Oh, except I realized yesterday that since we will be here this year for the holidays, no one is going to be cooking me Thanksgiving dinner. WHAT! I am going to have to do Thanksgiving?!? I actually started calculating what dishes are involved and my skills with these dishes and went into full-blown panic. Luckily I then remembered that a friend had told me you can order a Thanksgiving dinner out here, and so that's what we'll do. WHEW! Crisis averted.

Here is my little Pebbles and Princess on Halloween. There are two other American families in our neighborhood, plus I gave candy to a couple other neighbors to give to the girls, so our trick-or-treating lasted about five minutes. The girls were thrilled. We almost didn't have any festivities because the Thailand floods tried to cancel Halloween. Because it rained pretty much nonstop for the past few months, there are now massive floods here. We've been really blessed to not have seen any flooding around our house, but it is not comforting to see all the Thais around us building huge walls in front of their driveways in preparation...

Last weekend I insisted we spend a family day at the aquarium and take advantage of how empty the city is because so many people have evacuated. The roads are empty compared to normal. Meaning I only almost get into maybe two accidents rather than five when I drive somewhere. AJ absolutely loved the aquarium and kept saying "shishy" over and over. And as you can see in the above picture, she kept trying to take her shirt off so she could get in with the shishies.

My cute babies. I think I've mentioned before that the average Thai is a size 2. This is most likely due to their excellent portion control. This is a picture of the Oreo McFlurry I ordered from McDonalds. The container is always less than half full, and amount of ice cream you get is maybe 1/4 cup. I always have to order at least two. They must think we are such pigs :)

Someone hiding in the drapes.

Showing Some Love for Thailand

My husband commented that most of my posts on here are negative about Thailand, which I of course vehemently denied, and then when I went back and read some of them, I realized he was right. It's not that I hate it here; I actually really like it. I just have such a talent for complaining, I didn't want to put it to waste. So I am going to try something new today and write a very positive post about living here. Here are my favorite things about Thailand:

1. Having a maid. We recently let Jhoi go for a number of reasons that I won't elaborate on since I'm pretty sure all three of my readers do not have maids and certainly don't want to hear about what possible complaints you could have about one. As a result we were maidless for a short period before we hired a new one. I was actually excited to have the house to myself for a while and figured doing the household chores would be easy. I was wrong. And I realized that I am such a better mom when I don't have to worry about the house. When I'm in cleaning mode, the kids are no longer my adorable little munchkins; they turn into tiny monsters that can destroy my house five times faster than I can clean. Rather than playing with them or reading to them or doing anything fun with them at all, I am constantly trying to get them occupied and contained so I can go back to cleaning. I think I'll look back on our time here and be so grateful that I got to spend a few precious years just focusing on my babies while they were still little.

2. The weather. It's always warm and I'm in heaven. I just love love love being able to wear flip flops year round. And there are the hugest thunderstorms here that put the ones in Georgia to shame. It's been raining so much though that the country is flooding right now, but the government has somehow diverted most of the water around Bangkok so we've been fine, but all the poor people in the countryside are flooding :(

3. The food. It's so yummy and cheap if you buy it off the street. I'm over my food poisoning incident.

4. The people. They are so polite and nice and hard-working. The other day I was going to the pet store and I pulled into this super crowded parking lot, and there was only one tiny spot left. Let me remind you that I drive an 11 passenger van. The parking lot attendant took one look at me and motioned for me to get out of the car so that he could park it. And he didn't expect a tip; you rarely tip here. People just give good customer service because it's their job.

5. Seeing my husband a lot more than when we were in the States. He is the most hands-on dad I've ever seen. And we both obsess over the same stuff. We are still playing Agricola for hours and wasting lots of time watching TV series. We just started Dexter.

Okay, please don't think I'm bragging about my life. I still have lots of rough days where I desperately miss America, but I do like it a lot more here than I've previously let on...Anyways, here are some random pics of what we've been up to:

This is how I productively spend the free time given to me by having a maid.

Maggie and her friend, Anna.

When Mags got into my make-up. I think she did a pretty good job.

AJ's favorite toy is my calculator.

In cute dresses made by their talented aunt Christine.

Sickies

So last week we all got very very sick. Probably from food poisoning. It was the sickest I'd ever been in my life. Maggie got so dehydrated, she had to spend two nights in the hospital. And it was very very messy. The first night, we just laid towels on Maggie's bed and probably went through 20 of them. It was the first time she'd ever thrown up, and it was so so disgusting. I think we're recovered, but I also think some wierd Thai parasite is still living inside me. The whole experience made me miss America. I don't care what everyone says, we have the best healthcare in the world (if you are lucky enough to be able to afford it). When I asked for bedding at the hospital, they brought me a towel. Am I a little worried about having this baby out here? YES

Well, on a happier note, the day finally happened. AJ discovered the joys of TV. I've been trying to get her interested since she was born, but finally about a month ago, she became captivated by it. :) :) :) So this is what our house looks like every night from 7 to 8:

Utah

So this will be a boring recap post of our summer. Sorry. We went to Utah for a little over three weeks, and it was awesome. It did not start out so awesome with a 23 hour flight delay in Tokyo, but I don't even want to think back to that terrible weekend. Just know that the flights between here and the US are very long and exhausting, and anyone who I've told to come visit us, just forget it. However I should mention that Maggie was super happy the whole trip because she never had to sleep, she got all the TV and french fries she wanted, and she got to look at airplanes the whole time. The rest of us were not as thrilled. Anyways, here are some pics from our trip:

We stayed at my lovely in-laws and they were the perfect hosts. They babysat our kids at least 8 hours a day, cooked dinner for us every night, and wouldn't let us pay for a thing. They are the best.

Maggie's camping look. We went camping up in Idaho with Jonny's family. And by camping, I mean that Jonny's parents actually rented us a house by the campground where the rest of the family stayed. Gotta love being married to the favorite child :)

Jonny and I snuck away to Park City for a couple of nights to celebrate our five year anniversary. Check out this sweet view from our room. Yes, that's a hot tub on our balcony. Yes, I got in even though I'm preggers. I pretended I was in the bathtub so it was fine.

Alpine slide in Park City.

Maggie had a huge princess birthday party thrown by her favorite aunt Amy. She turned three. I can't believe how big she's getting. :( :( :(

I got to spend lots of time with my friends. Here's a picture with Diane, who just got preggers!, and Amy. Yes, my hair is all gone. I love how the first thing every woman asks me after seeing my hair is, what'd your husband say. Um, he was the one that talked me into it. I think he was tired of seeing me wear my hair in a pony tail for 200 days straight.

We saw lots of my mom who is now serving a mission in Salt Lake at the Family History Center.

Well, those are all the Utah pics I feel like putting up. Three days before we had to leave, we went to an ultrasound place and found out I'm having a BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so so so excited. I didn't think I cared what I was having, but once they told me, I couldn't stop crying. Jonny is going to have to work extra hard on teaching him boy stuff because he's entering a home filled with dolls and dress up clothes and pretend make-up. Poor guy.

Side note. I was really excited to put Maggie in preschool for maybe two days a week this fall and then I started investigating preschools out here. They are insane. Like $10,000 a year insane. Can you believe this madness???????? And I feel like I'm in crazy land because pretty much everyone I know is paying this ridiculous amount and it is so not a big deal to them that they never even mention the tuition so that when I go to check the school out I practically pass out in shock when they give me the "fee schedule." So I am now preparing myself for having three children soon at home with me all day long, and no, I am definitly not one of those moms that is going to start teaching preschool every other week with a friend. At least I didn't think I was one of those moms...So please just pity me and quit complaining that the preschool at the Methodist church down the street just raised their rates to like $150 a month or whatever.

AJ now wants to do everything just like her sister including eat yogurt by herself. So cute :)

Morning Sickness in Thailand

As I stumble to the fridge early in the morning, reeling with nausea, I open it hoping to find some magical food that will make me feel better, and instead this is what I see:
Jhoi's blasted fish diet!!!

Side note - Maggie now sleeps inside her pillow. So cute :)

What we've been up to

Maggie is doing so good in her little soccer class. Jonny takes her out for ice cream after every practice to celebrate her winning the race they do every week. She always wins and she's the only girl. I'm so proud :)

AJ thinks she is a pug.

Jonny has been devoting his time to preparing Maggie for the Olympics. He makes her run an obstacle course everyday complete with push-ups and high knees. He really needs a son.

So I'm working on it. Here's pod #3:

I'm due January 28th. Yes, AJ will only be 20 months old, and Maggie will be 3 and a half. Unless Maggie has a total change of heart, we'll have three in diapers. Morning sickness has been terrible, I think mostly because of all the weird Thai smells. Jhoi is on a fish only diet, and so the house is constantly smelling very strongly of fish. The thought of Thai food right now makes me sick. And the worst part is that I have zero access to most of the food I'm craving. We're going back to the States to visit in a month, and all I can think about is what I'm going to eat when I get there. Here's my most recent list:

Chicken Crispers and Chicken Enchilada soup from Chilis

Chicken soft taco from Del Taco

Pork Salad from Cafe Rio

TGIFridays - everything on the menu

Ben and Jerry's Milk and Cookies Ice cream

Inn&Out Burger and Fries

This is torture writing this list. Anything I should add?

One more cute picture of my babies.

Love/Hate

One thing I love about living here is that we get to go to gorgeous places like this whenever we want:
Last weekend we went to Hua Hin beach - it was beautiful. And a miracle occurred and Maggie actually road on a horse with Jonny. She is normally scared of her own shadow, so we were all in shock.

One thing I hate about living here is driving in this: (Note that here, you drive in the left lane, so everyone just decided to start driving into oncoming traffic to avoid the jam on their side of road...)
Last month I got in another wreck - I hit a scooter who was passing me. It was very traumatic for both of us, but everyone was okay. Then Jonny was riding our scooter and got hit by a car as he was passing it...Karma. His was actually more serious, and his head smashed so hard into a metal gate, his helmet cracked. Thank goodness he was wearing it!!!!! But he's okay and still takes the scoot around. The driving here is so crazy, I already know that I'll get in another wreck while I'm here, but since I drive at most 10mph and I'm driving the biggest thing on the road, I know I'll be okay.


Side note - Yes, we are crazy, but we took Maggie out of swim lessons (It was best for everyone) and we put her in a soccer class. I know, I know, she's only two. But look how stinkin cute she looks. I don't like to throw out the word prodigy, but we're thinking 2020 Olympics.

AJ's first birthday

I know most moms say they can't believe their baby is already one, but for me, this has felt like the longest year of my life. But the best part of the last year was definitely little AJ joining our family. She is so sweet and funny and mischievous and fearless that we are absolutely in love with her. And she has somehow managed to survive an entire year with daily beatings from the two-year-old monster that has taken over Maggie's body. AJ is still tiny - last time we went to the doctor's, she was in the 6th percentile. Here are some pics from the peanut's birthday party:

Showing off her new trick.

She loved her cake.

Eating the wrapping paper.


We love you sweetheart!