HKG047: Grammie Saved the Day!

mmm, enchiladas!

after livie saw the signs i made for her room and quinn's, she made one for our room!

impromptu family pic...someone saw me trying to get a pic of the monkeys and offered to get a pic of all of us

monkey girl

monkey girl in action

super tired q right before he boycotted his nap

this is about an hour after the boycotted nap. quinn is half nekid because he got ice cream all over his shirt.

a sign for livie's door

a sign for quinn's door

goods from the new delhi market in TST

when you insist on getting up at ungodly hours AND skipping your nap, you end up laying down to play for good bits of the day

a few weeks ago, i blathered on about peanut butter...specifically that the store-brand peanut butter here tastes and looks much like wall-paper paste. i went back to buying skippy. well, this week i did my shopping online, and one of the many benefits of that is being able to see your running total BEFORE you check out. the total was getting higher than i budgeted for, so i cut some corners...one of them being peanut butter. as soon as i had my next breakfast, i was cursing myself for not cutting some other corner. this stuff is pretty horrid. enter grammie...in the box of wonders she sent us is a tub of skippy natural. oooooh, grammie! you saved our thursday...and every subsequent day for at least a week. i will use the other peanut butter for recipes. in fact, i made a shake with it today, and it worked just fine for that endeavor.

grammie also saved the day by sending us tortillas. i made chicken enchiladas tonight with my first-ever home-made enchilada sauce. it was a hit. i made something different for the kids b/c i made the enchiladas spicy. well, 3/4 of the way through dinner, they congregated around my plate with their mouths hanging open, so they got some enchilada, too, and they loved it...spicy and all!

other than these two highlights, today was rather insane...a comedy of errors. here's the top 10:

1. i accidentally requested a tour of a boy's school and got a brief email this morning informing me as such. embarrassment number one.
2. i took our paperwork into the kindergarten that livie will start attending in a couple weeks...without any cash (neglected to read an entire pamphlet that came with all the forms we needed to fill out). embarrassment number two.
3. i had to take livie back to the dr. today b/c she, once again, has a UTI. in my non-professional opinion, this is caused by the fact that the doc gave her a 3-day prescription for antibiotics two weeks ago (my experience in the u.s. is that this is typically a 7 to 10 day prescription). we got into see the doc pretty quickly, but we sat with him for less than 3 minutes. he refused to see livie and told us she needs to see a pediatrician (the doc we went to today is a GP). he told me that it would be easy...i just call one and we get in. notsomuch. right now, it's looking like we will be spending tomorrow morning in a doc office (attempting to be seen on a walk-in basis) before we head back out to the school to pay the money we did not have today. frustration number one.
4. while doing dishes earlier today, i heard some commotion and went to find that quinn had shoved part of his bedding into the toilet. frustration number two.
5. prior to the toilet event, i had tried to put quinn down for a nap. i had to go in to try to settle him after 20 minutes of quiet rioting. and then not quite 20 minutes later, i hear him against his door telling me "to infinity and beyond" in increasing volume. funny, yes, but frustrating. of course, as soon as we sat down in the shuttle this afternoon, he was out cold. *sigh* oh, and he was up before 6:15 again this morning.
6. while we were at livie's school today, the principal invited us to use the playground when we were done with the business stuff and while we waited for the bus. livie got busy playing, but quinn was either staring off into space or wandering aimlessly. after we missed one bus, i gathered them up to leave b/c i figured they weren't into it enough to warrant missing another bus...this was about 10 minutes after we entered. quinn wasn't having it and threw an epic tantrum. and then he bit me. he's never bitten me before. i did not react in a "pc" way...i scolded him and told him no biting. this was embarrassing, but a few minutes later, i felt this gentle hug and looked down to see quinn giving me puppy-dog eyes. this crazy boy melts my heart into a big puddle of ooze sometimes!
7. yesterday, we got to meet two hamsters and ever since, we've been talking about getting a couple hamsters for our family. josh has been oot the last few days, so the discussion was on hold until we could talk to him. during a random conversation between me and the kids this afternoon, quinn informed us that he does not want a hamster. he wants a snakey. i asked him about the snakey, and he changed his mind and said "no! i wanna a doggie!" so i asked him if he missed copper and sookie. he adamantly told me "no miss cookie! miss coppa!!!!" i found this hilarious. sookie is rather nefarious...we love her, but she's ALWAYS on someone's ^&%$ list b/c she's always doing something either crazy or bad. i never would have guessed that quinn had something against her, though, since i assumed he never understood that she was "bad."
8. one of the major highlights of the day today was a delivery from the new delhi market in the TST area. i drooled over the packages, and then later, when we'd left and come back, i started drooling again b/c of how good our house smells now.
9. i think i made a dangerous discovery today. the kids insisted on eating the last banana yesterday, so i didn't have the supplies to make their new favorite snack, a nutella shake. instead, i made a nutella and peanut butter shake. it was delicious. i accidentally made it too thick, which just made it more delicious. i think this may turn out to be a problem.
10. the concept of copyright and trademark mean pretty much nothing here, though there are constant warnings to avoid buying counterfeit goods. josh has hit upon a super inexpensive DVD source in GZ (the thought being that they are cheap because they are pirated), and has been working on replacing some of the kids' movies that we left on a plane in LA. twice now, we have gotten what we deserved...once with a disc that just plain does not work, and tonight with a movie that is OBVIOUSLY something someone filmed while sitting in a theater.