Welcome to Kohsamui Thailand

One advantage of living on this side of the earth is that we are suddenly near many places we wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity of visiting. This year for our Christmas we decided to go to Kohsamui, a little island in Thailand. We stayed in our own quaint bungalow and had immediate access to the pool and beach where we spent much of our week.
Nathan and I are pretty sure Kennedy out did herself with this most recent "chuck the kid" picture that is a requisite for any vacation. Check out those lines!
After a day of traveling (one 3 hr flight to Bangkok and another hour to the island) we arrived late afternoon and wasted no time exploring the pool and the beach. We stayed at Coco Palms Resort and we found the accommodations perfect for our little family. The best part is how cheap they were.

So far Ander gets an A+ for traveling. He has been such a champ about messed up schedules and routines. I have to give a huge shout out to my friend Alina who gave me her bassinet when we moved from California. The bassinet part can actually fold up so I just packed it in a suitcase and then we would bring it out poolside with us and Ander would have somewhere to lay. You can lift up part of it to a sitting position so he could see what was going on, or we would lay it down and put up the shade and he would take his naps just a few feet away from where we were playing. It was the perfect thing to have, thanks Alina!

It was such a nice week in that we had no obligations or appointments. We did what we wanted when we wanted and we did it as a family. My favorite part was that we were able to just be together. I caught the above picture through a window as they sat having a conversation.

(I can't write a post about how awesome time with my family was w/o saying that it was real. As in, plenty of meltdowns from tired children and the occasional crying, whining and fighting. I write this in an effort to keep it real, for us as much as anyone. I tend to like to remember good times as purely good times when they are more accurately marbled with the realities of day to day living as a family).
I saw this lady above ^ fishing off our beach while we had breakfast. I thought she was eclectic and fascinating.
Confession: I had never really tried Thai food before. I lumped it all in under the oppressive "Asian" umbrella. A highlight of the trip was when I discovered I in fact love Thai food! Not even on the same playing field as Taiwan food, I am sorry to say. This place below where we ate one day for lunch had good food, however some of the art work had Nathan and I working hard to keep our children distracted from it. One of the things I am learning about traveling and living in different parts of the world is that you can't control everything your children may see (ie- 'immodest' statues, inappropriate advertising etc) . We aren't going to hide from this fact of life but we are learning (trial and error) how to use those types of things as teaching moments for our children.

Lot's of tailor places in Kohsamui, all sporting mannequins in their windows wearing sweet priest collared suits like from the early 90's, so radical. Nathan found this place particularly questionable, check out the second line below. Ahh well, service is overrated.

Okay, at this restaurant Kohen kept begging to have this coconut drink he saw a picture of in the menu. Food is also very inexpensive so we finally said, sure, have your creepy coconut drink. The ^ picture is of these two pretending to drink after they'd already tried the straight young coconut milk and didn't appreciate it's icky flavor or strong after taste. We decided to video Aly trying it for the first time. I present- Her Reaction:

You may have to click the little part that moves next to the 'play' button to get it to play. I have no idea why. Let me know if it continues not to play.

If you didn't catch what she says, I'll write it in the comments.

stay tuned for more on Thailand...