The Brosko Fiasco: Everything

We haven't posted anything in a while. I have a little of everything on here, but mostly it's pictures of our big trip around Asia. We were gone for about 27 days between 8 days in several places around China and 17 days on a cruise that covered places in Southern China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore, plus travel days in between. I've had a rough time adjusting back to normal life. After this vacation, I've realized that I don't think I was born to live without servants. I mean give me a break - dishes, housework, laundry, chores, chores, chores, CHORES! I can't take it. I need to be on perpetual vacation, or live real life with servants. Someone needs to rectify this!! ASAP. I mean it! Taking this long of a break from reality made it hard to come back. We saw amazing things and experienced a lot. I can't wait for the next trip....to anywhere where I don't have to do dishes or clean. If you want to donate to this worthy cause, I can get you routing numbers to my vacation fund.

This is me floating around like a weirdo, it's what I do when I can get away.

Singapore - Universal Studios.

William on his birthday. One of the cruise's chefs made this cake for William. He had requested strawberries and was pretty excited to have his very own cake.

Universal Studios Singapore

Halloween 2012

William as Batman.

Ben's costume was pretty cool because his red eyes faded to black and back to red at intervals. He was proud because several kids out trick-or-treating were scared of him.

Dragons at the quietest parade I've ever been to. The Japanese people are so subdued compared to Americans.

3 little con artists trying to get me to buy something.

Beautiful colors.

These guys in the parade had such short costumes that their butt cheeks were hanging out, the kids thought that was hilarious and still talk about it.

William just got done pressing the bidet function on the toilet...AGAIN. He has done this several times because he can't resist pressing the fancy buttons on the fancy Japanese toilets (the seats are heated and it's wonderful). He ends up soaking wet with toilet water all over his shirt. It's lovely. He's also covered with red ice cream who's flavor was aptly named "Sweet Devil".

The lovely commissary on base had only rotten normal sized pumpkins to sell or these little ones. We made due, as usual.

Glammy is in town, can you tell? Her grandchildren are bejeweled, even the boys.

Veronica won this bigger pumpkin at a festival. She won it 5 minutes after we got there and guess who had to carry it the rest of the night? Me.

We have a wonderful aquarium here on our island.

Giant Whale Sharks in captivities.

Hanging out with the sharks.

We can ice skate in Okinawa too!

Ben did pretty good.

Veronica was pretty frustrated and went home with a sore bum.

William was small enough to fall and not get hurt, in fact I think he liked it.

First season of soccer.

Glammy made the rounds to every function, practice and game. She left here tired I'm sure.

Just a cute picture. We were bowling, we were all really bad at it.

Watching the Packers with Glammy.

Big ferris wheel ride.

Great views of the island and the ocean from here.

Beach time with Glammy.

A little pilgrim with a treat.

Our squadron Santa visit.

We're in Beijing China, I can't believe I'm in China!!!! Temple of Heaven.

Our tour guide helped us get lots of family pictures.

It was snowing which was amazing leading up to Christmas. Just what we needed to remind us of what Christmas was like for Troy and I growing up.

Tiananmen Square, with Chairman Mao's picture in the background, all the awesome communist military parades happen here as well as many quickly squashed protests.

Chinese tourists in Beijing from the countryside. We were the first foreigners they'd ever seen and they desperately wanted a picture. I assume our picture is now framed in their house.

Just beautiful decoration on this old wooden walkway

The Great Wall of China! Holy Crap.

We climbed to the top of a segment of the Great Wall just outside of Beijing.

It was a beautiful misty winter day - or just more smog.

The stairs were steep and covered in packed ice, but we made it without any head injuries. It was hard work!

600 year old stone carvings that line the procession route of the Emperor going towards his tomb.

The kids felt very grown up drinking jasmine tea at every meal like the Chinese do. Plus it was freezing outside and it was nice to have something warm.

This charismatic little boy followed us all around (with his Mom) one day at the Summer Palace.

This security guard was pretty interested in our blue eyed William, so he picked him up to get a closer look. The Chinese were in awe of us everywhere we went. We had 3 kids which is unheard of in China and the kids had light hair with light eyes (except Ben). We were often followed, people openly stared at us like we were being inspected. They took pictures, 100's of pictures and if we stopped for a family picture, people would come running to snap the same picture our tour guide was taking. We felt like celebrities.

Troy's Chinese zodiac is a Dragon, it's also the symbol of the emperor.

The Phoenix is the symbol of the empress.

He might have rabies.

I run this family ragged in order to see the world.

The Terra Cotta Warriors in Xi'An China.

Google these warriors, it's pretty amazing.

Did you know that all of Asia celebrates Christmas? It's like Christmas lite . Christmas minus Jesus. It was nice that we could still keep up the Christmas spirit after we left home.

This is what happens if we don't keep moving in China. The kids get mobbed for pictures. I was happy to do it if the kids felt comfortable and they were pretty good sports about it. They just stood there and smiled. I figure we were single handedly improving Chinese/American relations.

Shanghai, China

Again, someone needed to look harder at William. Troy had to step in on this one.

Troy is pretending to be as excited about Koi fish as the kids were.

Just another family picture.

Troy is pictured out at this point and can't manage a normal face for a picture.

Shanghai at night.

It snowed in Shanghai and according to our tour guide that's a very rare occurrence. We were excited. We walked around this part of town for a while because our tour guide kept telling us to "lollygag" HA. He was also a big fan of the 80's hit show "Growing Pains" He kept telling us were the Seaver Family from the show and was especially excited that we had a child named Ben because there's a Ben Seaver on the show. The American 1980's have hit China.

In each place we stopped in China we had our own tour guide and driver. It made us feel important. This driver in Shanghai was especially friendly and nice to us.

Veronica in Hong Kong.

Our cruise ship docked in Hong Kong

Tis the season.

Halong Bay Vietnam - floating village where people live.

Sanya, China on Christmas Eve at the beach

We thought this guy was dead.

He wasn't. Even though he might be close.

Guess who?

Lots of fun in the surf.

It was very beautiful, very relaxing.

Very tiring.

Hoi An, Vietnam - they actually still dress very traditionally. These hats were everywhere - not just for tourists.

Troy may have had enough of touring and seeing slightly unimpressive "museum exhibits" in small villages. Smart ass.

Vietnam will stick out in my memory as a place that seems poor, very dirty (garbage everywhere) and filled to the brim with motor scooters. Given how jam packed the roads were, I am still baffled that I didn't witness any car accidents or run over bodies.

This dead rat snuck up on us and freaked Veronica out. It was huge.

Na Trang, Vietnam - The surf was too dangerous to get in. It was worse than it looked in this picture. Troy and I both got bashed around and drug under water. Troy still has the back injury to prove it.

Ahhhhh.

Water puppets in Saigon. Pretty cool actually. We're now fans of water puppetry.

"Uncle Ho" - aka Ho Chi Minh.

The Rex Hotel in Saigon - famous from the Vietnam War.

Presidential Palace in Ho Chi Minh City, where the North Vietnamese rolled in with tanks and won the war.

Crazy Cambodian Market. It's their version of Walmart, but dirtier, with animal slaughter on site and motor bikes driving through the aisles.

Sihanoukville, Cambodia - on our way to the beach.

Who says you need a trunk to carry big loads?

The whole family can fit! That's 4 people!

Troy relaxing at a Cambodian beach. It was beautiful.

I was diggin' this rig.

Pattaya, Thailand - We could have been mauled.

It's not every day you can touch a tiger with or without a fence between you and them.

Ben is trying real hard to play it cool.

Lots of parrots on us.

Troy had to do it too.

Buddhist monks at the botanical gardens in Thailand. I liked how they could use their monk belts to hold their cell phones and cameras.

Veronica

William

Ben

Me - this only cost a couple of dollars. I'm glad the elephant didn't think I was too heavy. I can't believe that all my kids were ok with doing it. I think they might be braver than I was at their ages.

Safety isn't really much of a concern in Thailand. We were able to walk around, touch and feed these elephants with nothing stopping them from trampling all over us. It was awesome. We love elephants now more than before.

We did an ox cart ride through the countryside.

This lady is spinning silk.

Troy, William and Ben riding an elephant

These elephants were very sweet, we fed them a ton of bananas. I hope they're treated well when tourists aren't around.

We're on an elephant in the water.

I'm thankful for the house I live in. Some of the places we saw were pretty rough looking.

Ko Samui, Thailand. This lady was laughing at Troy because of his sense of humor while haggling.

Pirate night at kids club on the cruise ship.

Singapore - The zoo. It was amazing, the best zoo I've ever seen.

Early on in the cruise, these two kitchen workers, Sinta and Maureen from Indonesia, took a shine to our kids. William declared them his girlfriends.

Universal Studios Singapore. Super fun and the kids are getting tall enough to go on the fun rides.

We're back in Japan and we finally opened our Christmas gifts on Jan 11th

As usual, we have a bunch to open thanks to our generous extended family.

Finally!! The kid had to wait so long to open these.

We rented a tent and told the kids that Dad would sleep with them in the backyard. It's been cold out which is way better than hot tent sleeping. Anyway, it turns out that there wasn't nearly enough room for Troy to fit in there with all 3 of them. So I figured they could try to sleep out there by themselves, thinking they'd all be back in the house in about 1 hour. They didn't.

They weren't scared at all. I however, slept on egg shells all night, with my bedroom window open straining to hear any signs of distress. I finally cried uncle and brought them in at 5:30am before the sun came up. I figured if they got up with the sun, they'd probably stay up and be crabby all day. So I pulled them inside and we all went back to sleep. I was finally able to rest. I think that means my kids were tougher about it than I was.