Family Fun

At his favorite place - Din Tai Fung - watching the magic happen

Wanting to make sure Daddy didn't miss any of the action!!

Some amazing impromptu pics with the iphone!

love love love love love.

Baby girl's first dumpling dinner (where she got to eat)

Fun with grandpa!!

Flower Market and H in school

Me and the kids went with my parents to the flower market one morning - it was my first time going and I was immediately taken by the beauty of it all!!!

I love orchids - they were my wedding flower...  As soon as we walked in, it was orchid heaven!

(Grandma's version of heaven)

Anyway, we painstakingly explored the market - which was quite tough with two babies, the tight pathways, and the ever-increasing crowds, but it was still great!

Then a huge thunderstorm rolled in in the afternoon.  I love thunderstorms - provided I am safely tucked in at home, which we thankfully were on this particular afternoon!

Few snaps of the girl....

Hudson continues to love school.  He is the first one on the mat every week and sit patiently waiting for class to start.  He picks a different number to sit on every time and takes his responsibility (for sitting precisely on the number) very seriously!

No time for conversation - class is going to start!

As an aside, he is always completely silent at school, listening intently, but never responding.  The other week, I sent him with Anny instead and the teacher said he talked the WHOLE time!!!  So bizarre, given that I am in a totally different room during his class....  So we are going to experiment again this week and have Anny take him and see what happens.  I hope it was just a fluke - I like taking him to school!

Hello Kitty, Disney Show, Monkeying Around

I think we moved the the right country given my love of peal milk tea and Hudson's slight obsession with Hello Kitty.  I thought it would be fun to take him to a Hello Kitty themed bakery/restaurant.

The food has a reputation for being expensive and awful, but I couldn't help but get a few kitty-shaped desserts!

True to expectations, they weren't the tastiest, but they were definitely the cutest little cakes I've ever had!  :)

One of Devin's work colleagues was kind enough to invite us to a Disney show that was on last weekend.  Since Hudson has an unhealthy Mickey addiction, we decided to feed it further and indulge him.

(iphone was no match to stage lighting...)

For some very bizarre reason, both my husband and son assumed the show would be in English (?!?!) and were surprised to discover otherwise.

I really enjoyed the show, but about halfway through, Hudson had had enough and started saying loudly "Mommy, want to go home!!!"

Sad.  We did this for you!!!

In his defense, 90 minutes is a long time for a 2-yr old, in a language that he hasn't yet completely grasped, and a show primarily featuring Disney princesses 

(Why do you think Mommy loved it so much?)

And in my husband's defense, all the actors were western, so it was rather amusing watching them lip-sync in Chinese..

Mommy was feeling brave (or lazy) the other day and decided to feed the girl breakfast-in-bed style..

She loved it, and actually, it wasn't too terrible a mess!  

Mom was able to confine it to her little picnic blanket. :)

There is a vet by our house that occasionally has random monkeys (or perhaps the same one) wearing a diaper and swinging around.  I finally decided to go in for a picture.

...which ended up turning into a much closer encounter than I had anticipated.

Monkey took a liking to my dad and was trying to kiss him.

Thankfully he did not oblige, but it was pretty humorous, nonetheless.

Our encounter was swiftly halted when one of the people in the vet came over to tell me to be careful because the monkey could attack us at any moment.  Vet visit is over, kids!!!!

Grabbed Hudson and ran away!

Grandparents Visit = Date Night!

Grandparents came to visit and baby girl rode in the stroller for the first time...

Loved it!!

We went exploring and walked around downtown and stumbled onto the Miss Grape competition...  

Quite amusing!

Then we left the kids and grandparents so we could go out on our first "real" date night in a long while.  

We went back to the fancy mall we had visited on Mother's Day and dined in the nicest restaurant I've been to in recent memory - L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon

http://www.joel-robuchon.net/#/en/restaurants/12/

What an incredible treat!  It was FANTASTIC!!!

Dev's cauliflower and lobster soup

My fancy veggie stack

SO excited to be out without the kids!!!!

Fish dish of some kind

Life-changing pumpkin risotto

At first I was skeptical of the set up - bar style, watching the kitchen...  I prefer to look at the person I'm eating with!!  But it was pretty cool to watch them work.  The kitchen was spotless and run like a well-oiled machine.  There weren't many people there that night, and the chefs worked efficiently and mostly silently.  Very impressive.

This was my fish course and the least tasty of the meal...

Dev had a pork dish which smelled amazing

and both of us were given these shells filled with delectable mash - yum!

Dessert was my favorite.  

Some kind of magical passion fruit dessert, with a granita on the bottom and an amazing foamy meringue-like thing on the top, with a passion fruit custard in the middle and a cookie straw thing that melted in your mouth, complete with edible butterfly.

(they should have me re-write their menus, don't you think? ;)

It was a PERFECT, gorgeous evening and we found a roof-top bar to have an after-dinner drink.

Fab views including Taipei 101

Really feel as if Taipei is an undiscovered travel destination.  It is such an amazing city!!  

Quickly vaulting to my top 5 places in the world...

As we were walking home we came across this bizarre display - possibly collecting money for an animal shelter or something...??

And though it was after 10pm, there were a ton of kids everywhere (including a little girl at the bar with mom and dad)

Yes, we are lame and our special date night complete with "late night" drinks ended shortly after 10.  We are parents now, life is different, and I missed my baby!

Apparently, next time I should just bring them with....

Random street performers we passed by.  

I wanted to stop and watch a couple doing Carpenters songs, but Dev vetoed me...

And finally some snaps of unknown produce (which is something I encounter every time I go shopping!).  The above look like pears, but they are massively huge and are some kind of vegetable.  

The below look like quite warty, I was put off even to touch them.

Anyone able to identify these?