Christmas Carols by Kennedy

Kennedy recently started taking piano lessons. She has loved the Christmas carols. She asked if I would video her playing them so her grandparents and cousin Laynie could see. I am so proud of her progress with the piano. Merry Christmas!

Iron Gullet

Natalie and I took the babies to Wellcome, the local grocery store. I never attempt to take them on my own for many reasons: street parking a mile away, stairs leading into the store, and teeny carts whose seats hurt the child's nether region; to name a few. So it was an adventure outing for everyone. 

I told you the seats hurt em. That ^ is not a satisfied costumer.
Anyway, I did my shopping while Natalie took my phone and, with mouth agape, started taking pictures. I avoid the things she was taking pictures of but after several years I have become mostly desensitized to some of the greater food offenses. Mostly.

 Plus I don't regularly use Jelly Fungus in my cooking.

.... Or congealed Duck or Pig Blood. Asians do slip pig blood into lots of meals and soups though. Out of sheer 7 yr old eagerness for a free sample, Kohen recently downed a chunk of Pig Blood at a store before I could intervene. Nathan claims Kohen knew what it was... I find that doubtful.

 Not everything is offensive and shocking, doesn't Wild Lotus just seem like, romantic and mystical? Maybe the name of an Asian Romance novel or something. Though I doubt these greens would be on the cover.

 I personally don't like my snacks to have so many... claws.

These gourmet grab-n-go's can be found in the bakery section. I believe there is mayonnaise in the ones on right. I haven't figured out how they get away with never refrigerating this stuff. Must be these people's iron gullets.  

Free Birth Control

While we pulled over for a few minutes Natalie filmed this choice video to send to my other sister. 

Nathan's quote "I only laugh to keep from weeping." Anyone know where that's from? :)

Half Marathon in Taroko

 Saturday morning while all the runners got up at 4am to head down to the race, the rest of us slept a few hours more.

Silks Place is the most beautiful hotel in Taiwan I'd venture to say. Pictures don't quite do it justice.

 We got up and had a leisurely breakfast and the kids went out butterfly catching.

 There were hundreds of beautiful butterflies all over the grounds of Silks Place.

 Kohen was the butterfly hunter. He had skills. He even managed not to mangle them as he caught and released them.

 Stunning scenery every where you look.

Meanwhile, Nathan was running a half marathon. Love this picture.^He is over the YM in our youth group and they had all been training together for the half. Pretty cool for them all to accomplish such a huge goal together. For you runners who might care, Nathan's time was 1 hr 56 min.

 Nathan, Ross, Jeremiah with the YM.

Back up at the hotel... Silks is the turn around point for the marathon runners and though none of the 42 runners we knew were running the marathon this year, we went out front with our neighbors and friends and let the kids cheer on the runners for a while. Jia you!!! (give gas!)

 The runners loved the little cheerleaders and one runner came up and motioned for Kohen to come run with him and off he went. K, bye?

 I started walking that direction when they took off and after they ran across the bridge the guy helped Kohen onto the sidewalk headed back to me. Kohen thought it was "pretty cool".

 All the runners would come by and give the kids 5's as they ran by. It was so hot out, they'd been running uphill for miles; I think it lifted their spirits.

 Next we took the kids swimming, indoors since we didn't bring sunscreen. In one pool there were hundreds of rubber duckies which inspired a few games.

There were about a dozen kids from our ward swimming and they spent quite a bit of time throwing the ducks all from one pool to another. I hope they got the sense of satisfaction they were looking for. I just wanted the activity to poop em out and I think it worked.

Speaking of poop. This is Brandie snuggling with Ander, teaasing and holding their noses after he was showered off. It's all fun and games till someone poops in their swim diaper. I do not wish to clean something like that ever. again.

 I love my sister Natalie's eye in photography. She takes the coolest shots at the coolest angles.

 The view from our room.

 The next day when we headed down the gorge we stopped on the rope bridge again. For some reason I was 10X as scared as I was last year. The space between the rope and wood seemed to gape open in a way I don't remember and I was worried that Ander would... I don't know. I was just worried.

So we took a quick picture and Ander, Scarlett and I headed off of the bridge.

Auntie Natalie and Kennedy

 Aly climbing on the wires that (hopefully) secure the bridge. As we walked onto the bridge Kennedy said, "Mom, why do bridges like this always fall down in the movies?" Um... that's an alarming and untimely observation, right?!

The gorge is stunning and the water is a very unique color. There is marble all over in the gorge walls. 

Meedle and Beeg

Up at a Buddhist Temple

Can you see the marble?

 The shrine for all those who died building the road through the gorge.

 This gives you some perspective on how ginormous that marble boulder is when you see the person on the platform!

 Between Natalie and I, we took hundreds of pictures. I tried to narrow it down. I really did.

 On the way home the weather turned quite nasty. The roads are already treacherous so we pulled out for a few minutes to let it pass. The "I have to pee!" alarm went off several times over so Nathan earned the Father of the Year award by taking turns escorting the girls out in the down pour and holding an umbrella for them while they did their business. (ps- everyone was decent at the time the pic was taken.)

Basically, if you have visited us in Taiwan and we didn't go to Toroko, you need to come back cuz you haven't seen the best Taiwan has to offer. And if you haven't come yet, put it on your list!!

The Road to Toroko

Natalie made it just in time to come with us to Toroko Gorge. It was our first trip with 5 kids so I was glad we had extra hands and we weren't going too far. Last year there were massive land slides a week or two before we were supposed to drive down to Toroko and at the last minute we had to find train tickets. But this year we were able to drive down on our own.

(Stopping in Nanao)

All things considered we made good time and didn't even have to stop that much. There are 8 seats in our van and every one was taken so things were real "friendly" and occasionally a bit unfriendly. Luckily Natalie has endured worse in her life so I never saw her reaching for the door handle to relieve herself of our periodic insanity; but believe me, I was watching for it!

We went through a series of long crazy tunnels which take hours off of the now 4 hour drive. One old tunnel was tall and super narrow, there was little room for error.

The drive is unbelievably gorgeous, I had no idea. It was another stunning day and the views were breathtaking, though so were the sheer cliff drop offs along much of the drive. 

We stopped in a quaint little town, Nanao, for a quick break. It was a lovely little town. Part of the drive is quite windy and since we were in such close quarters and I was taking no chances with chain-reaction-barfing, everyone got Dramamine'ed. Things were nice and quiet for a while there:

(Aly's neck = ouch!)

The closer we got to Toroko National Park the more beautiful it was. The two lane road is narrow and made me a bit nervous since I know landslides have swept buses and cars off and into the ocean before. I tried to focus on the beauty and not worry. It worked some of the time.

At one point traffic came to a stand still right before we entered a tunnel. Everyone was getting out of their cars and walking around. So Nathan, Natalie and I got out and had ourselves a little photo shoot. Supposedly construction was why we were waiting- thought you might want to know since it's always maddening to be stopped and never know why.

It was a good day for a photo shoot. I feel like the background almost looks unreal it's so pretty. But since I have no photoshop skills I assure you, you get what you see, for better or worse!

When we entered into the actual gorge Natalie was dying and having the perfect response you hope from a visitor. She was half hanging out the window trying to capture it with her camera. It's pretty much impossible to get pictures that show how ginormous the gorge walls are, vaulting up higher than you can even see in some spots.
The roads are extremely narrow in some streches and we had to back up a bit for this bus to come through the "two way" tunnel through the mountain.

I'm not usually a fan of driving anywhere stuffed like sardines, and there was that one time we all almost died when Kohen took off his stinky Keens, but otherwise this trip wasn't too bad and thankfully the scenery was perfectly distracting. It was a great start to our weekend gettaway!

(ps- I told ya she was hangin out the window ;)