What The Edsalls Are Up To: February 2011

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Apple Tarts Anyone!?

We're going to turn this into a family food blog for a couple of posts. I'm sure no one minds! This weekend was the International Food Fair at ISB. What a party! It's a big, big fundraiser for the PTA, and I think they raked it in this year. This being my first year, I had no idea what to expect. But it was somethin' else!

Lots of delicious food from all over the world filled the gymnasium- no one left disappointed- unless you were one of those that worked a booth or table the whole time and missed out on most of the actual eating. But, there's always next year.

D and I volunteered to bring homemade apple tarts. I found cute, little, aluminium tart pans (with lids !) and D, Tess, and I set to work on Saturday morning.

Pastry! Different working with shortcrust in this humidity, but we got it!

Mixing the flour, sugar, and spices.

Tess on apple duty.

Fill those babies up!

D got to decorate, not with sprinkles as she requested...

but with little apple cut-outs for the top.

C could also participate... at a separate table... with Pla-doh. Love him to pieces, but not underfoot while baking.

Almost ready to bake.

Packaging for delivery!

Baked 70, donated 69. The kids and I handled the mandatory quality control.

So pleased (and cute)!

Mmmmmmmmmmm!

Loved having D and Tess to make the day so fun and rewarding! Also lovely to watch them all sell at the food fair!

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Family Trip to The Rose Garden

Friday was a holiday here in Thailand so T and I took the kids to The Riverside Rose Garden. Beautiful place south of Bangkok. Thai cultural village where you see and get hands-on with Thai dancing, weaving, Martial arts, garland making and fruit carving, music, painting, silk-making, pottery, rice farming, Thai cooking, etc. So fun! Then, a big buffet lunch, elephant rides, (small)floating market, and Thai Cultural Show.

I took so many photos, I decided to just put them in a slide show with brief captions.

For those of you interested in going:
Km 32 Pet Kasem Road, Sampran
Nakorn Pathom 73110
Tel (034) 322 544
http://www.rosegardenriverside.com/

Thai art and craft workshops from 10am - 12am (That was not busy at all, allowing us lots of time at each station.)
Yummy buffet lunch
Nice playgrounds
Lake with pedal boats
Beautiful grounds
Elephant rides and market
Cultural show at 2:45
Awesome day out for the family!

Friday, February 4, 2011

January Excursions

One of the many wonderful places in Thailand is a resort town about 2.5 hours from here called Hua Hin. We've been twice now because it's a great place to take visitors when we want to get out of Bangkok to see something other than the city sights. Seaside so lots of great fresh seafood and all of it at nice price.

We took a family trip in December with my mom and went again last month with my dad and stepmom. The kids really loved the beach and I think we all could have spent hours on our condo balcony taking it all in.

Silly.

Serious.

C has gotten the hang of this swimming thing.

Poolside beach or beachside pool?

Old restored train station in Hua Hin.

One of my favorite things to do thus far in Bangkok is to take the water taxis down the Chao Praya River into the city. Much more interesting than sitting in Bangkok traffic. All our visitors have been troopers and fearlessly followed along as we made our way onto piers, boats, ferries, and canals, trusting my thin but apparently functional Thai language skills the whole way.

This last time, we decided to do a Klong tour. "Klongs" are the canals that once ran through much of Bangkok. Many have been filled in to make roads and streets, but there are still canals running through parts of Bangkok and lots of life on them. People sell things from their little boats, there are convenience stores that you can only reach from the water. Quite the sight. I plan to take Todd and the kids soon, so I'll post more pics of canal life when the 4 of us go together.

Waiting for the locks to open.

The canopy over my head was begging me to take a photo of it's stripes.

Canal life- a great big lizard!

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Happy...

...100th Day of School!

That's a necklace of 100 Fruit Loops D is wearing. She also wrote as many words as she could for 100 seconds, Hula Hooped for 100 seconds, bounced a ball 100 times, ran a 100-meter dash, and hop-scotched by 5's to 100! Was a fun morning for me too as I got to be a parent helper!

Happy Chinese New Year! D has been drawing rabbits on everything for the last week.

...and Clean Feet Day?

I had to put this in. The kids came in from outside the other day with filthy feet, and knowing how I am not a fan of black footprints on the white tile, they took it upon themselves to wash their feet in the bathroom sink. I walked in to D soaping C's feet up and giving them a good scrub. Thought it was cute.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

February Already??

Hi Everyone! Sorry for the absence from blogging. We had so much going on, I had little time to write about it. But I know that the holidays are busy for everyone. So chances are, you were too busy to read my blog. So we're even. :)

December and January saw us:

spend a weekend in Hua Hin Thailand with my mom (mom took this snap of D at sunrise)