Beautiful Bali - Part 1

I know that I won't be able to get it all out in one shot, so here's part 1 of our Bali adventure!!

It's no secret that a McMillan family trip wouldn't be complete without a bit of drama and that's how our story begins. Most of you know that I now work 2 days a week and during that time Kylie is in daycare. Before going on I have to say that I *LOVE* our daycare center. The girls are wonderful and Kylie really enjoys herself there, however, it's still a daycare (aka germ haven). The week before we left for Bali both days that I picked Kylie up she ended up with a fever by bedtime. I don't mean your typical low grade, teething fever either. I mean 101 and up. When she would wake the next day it would be gone. Very weird but no big deal. The week we left for Bali was no exception. Wednesday she was fine, but Thursday by the time she had dinner her temp was 101.7. How is this different than the week before you ask? It lasted the entire next day as well. By dinner time the fever was gone but I wasn't convinced it wouldn't reappear in the middle of the night. All I could think was "Great, now Kylie will be sick the entire trip. Why did we ever think it would be okay to travel with a 14 month old?"

Just when I think that Kylie is my biggest problem another one comes along; my eyes are starting to hurt.  I know weird right? So I think "Oh, it's just because I am tired, no big deal", and I get ready for bed.  While in bed I get the really annoying feeling that something is in one of my eyes.  I stick my finger in it, trying to get it out and nothing.  I rub it, but that only makes it worse so I decide to get out of bed and look in the mirror.  What I see when I get in there is two very red, blood shot eyes staring back at me.  I suspected then that I knew what the problem was so I put some drops in the one that was hurting the most and got back into bed, without telling Jamie.  When I wake up the next morning I am now positive that I have the same viral infection in my eyes that Jamie had a few weeks before.  How annoying!?  First off it's annoying to have the damn problem in the first place because it hurts but secondly it looks freakin’ terrible!  The whites of Jamie's eyes were covered with bright red veins and everywhere he went people asked if he had pink eye.  Who in the hell wants to walk around like that, much less go on vacation to a place that's on your bucket list and look like ass in all the photos??  Not this chick!

So, it's the morning of our flight and I look like I'm coming down with pink eye.  Great.  Kylie seems to be better and no sign of a fever exists.  I think to myself "Okay, I can work with this.  As long as Kylie is good, I can work with this".  As luck would have it though Kylie was not "good" and was a complete nightmare the entire flight over!  Well, maybe not the entire flight.  She was okay for the first 45 minutes or so and she slept for about 30 minutes almost 3 hours into the flight, but for the rest of the time she was a nightmare!!!  I don't know what happened to the kid.  I felt sooo bad for the couple behind us because once upon a time we used to be them.  No kids, relaxed and waiting to hang out and drink cocktails on the beach all day.  Yes... that used to be us (sigh).  I know exactly how they felt listening to a crying kid for the entire flight.  I gave 'eat shit' looks to the parents of those kids just as they did to us not too long ago!  They have no idea how bad I felt about it!  It was the longest 3.5 hour flight OF MY LIFE! 

The best part, her shitty attitude didn't stop once we got off the plane.  She was a nightmare on the bus to the terminal and in the immigration line.  She was so loud that the immigration officer called us up to the front of the line to get us through.  She then asked the people if it was okay and they all replied "please, go ahead"!  How embarrassing!!  Alas, we made it to the villa and things quickly started to turn around.  Kylie was excited to have room to move around and the private villa with yard and pool ended up being well worth the money as it gave her plenty of space to burn energy.  We went for a swim and then took a walk down to the main street where she fell asleep while being carried.  She slept like a log that night and Jamie and I enjoyed some ‘in villa’ massages to relieve the 'stress' from the trip!  Yes my friends, things were starting to look up!  I'm also happy to report that my eye never got as bad as Jamie's and by Sunday afternoon it had cleared up.  Thank goodness we had some drops left over from Jamie's issue!! 

Our private villa and compound

 Taking a much needed swim!

The villa at night

Jamie patiently waiting for the massage people to get there ; )

Sunday we did a walking tour in a little town called Ubud about 45 minutes north of where we were staying.  We weren't sure how Kylie would take it but we decided to arrange a sitter through our tour guide just in case Kylie became possessed again.  What was supposed to be a 3 hour tour + lunch ended up being about 7 hours (including lunch).  With the drive time we were out from 7 am until about 4pm.  Kylie did AMAZING and had loads of fun.  The sitter was great, even though I felt the need to take over on some parts of the tour (see photos below!!).  It ended up being a very magical day; filled with once in a life time memories that Jamie and I were so glad we were able to share with Kylie.  Even though she won't remember it, we will (and we've got the photos to show her later on).  Here are a few photos from our beautiful tour!

Photos of a typical Balinese family residence (click here to learn more about the set up)

Kylie and I in the family Temple

  Jamie at the entrance

Rice paddies

(All still farmed by hand.  Each stalk is cut and planted by hand!  Farmers only earn about 50,000 IDR (about $55 USD) a week doing this)

Rice field that is about 1 month old.  That's a resting house for the farmers to break in since they don't have enough time to leave during the day.

Very narrow, downward walkway we had the pleasure of walking through. (I took over with Kylie here!)

Where it gets dark it turns into this...

But this is what it took us to! The photos don't do it justice!

Kylie enjoying the walk through the village and the attention from some local children

Beautiful temple at the end Pengukur-Ukuran temple (aka Temple of the giants) built in the 12th century

Yes, I carried Kylie all the way up those steps!  Very scary!!

The next day we hired a baby sitter at the villa and Jamie and I spent the day hanging out and shopping.  We went down to the famous Kuta Beach and I have to say that neither of us was impressed.  The beach itself was nice, but being from Florida (Pensacola) and currently living in Perth (WA, Australia) I've definitely seen better!  I've also never seen so many people trying to sell you something in one place.  The would even go as far as walking in front of you, so that they could block your way while trying to get you to look at something.  It was seriously annoying and made the afternoon pretty blah!  It was nice to spend some time together taking our time having lunch and walking around though.  It's something we don't get to do nearly enough anymore!  After our shopping adventure we went back to the villa, hung out around the pool and took Kylie out for a yummy dinner!  All in all a long, but wonderful day!

Me on Kuta Beach

Hanging out with my girl, she loved the pool and the yard!

I attempted to upload a video here, but its taking forever so I'll save it for another time!!

 

Sorry to say folks that this is where part 1 comes to an end!  Stay tuned later this week for "Erica's birthday in Bali (Bali part 2)".

First Birthdays and More!

I'll first start by saying I suck, yes, I know.  Over a month without an update is unacceptable.  I feel as though I have been saying this in many of my posts lately, but alas, I am here to fill you all in on life at the McMillan household.

It's been so long since our last post that I'm not sure where I left off so I'll just fill you in on the recent stuff.  For starters my beautiful baby girl is now 1!!!  Well, I'm so late in posting this that she's actually 1 year, 2 weeks and 5 days old but who's counting?  On the actual day I arranged to have the day off so that we could relax and hang out.  For her 'big gift' Jamie and I bought her a playhouse and spent the night before putting it together since work would be keeping him away on the actual day.  I was dead set on her receiving her gift on the actual day, so after our late night out (I almost forgot about that but I'll fill you in below) we came home and stayed up until almost 2am putting it together. I have to say that is was as much fun as I envisioned! <--- lots of sarcasm intended!  Slightly buzzed and trying to be quiet is not a good combination for putting together a kid’s toy!  We managed it however and this was the end result!

The next morning, at 5:30 am Kylie woke up and Jamie brought her in to see her gift.  She LOVED it and hasn't stopped playing with it since.  I was exhausted but this face made it all worth it!

After playing with her new house it was time for the 'Birthday Girl Breakfast'.  Instead of the usual toast and eggs, french toast or pancakes I decided to change them up and replace the blueberries for chocolate chips.  This was the first time she's had chocolate and after eating 2 entire pancakes I think it's safe to say that she enjoyed them!

We spent the rest of the day shopping, meeting Daddy for lunch and of course more playing in the new playhouse!

To celebrate her 1st birthday we decided to have a small party with a few close friends.  Me (being the Martha Stewart, super mom wanna be I am) decided that I would do the cake myself.  I am fairly crafty and despite what most of you think I really am a pretty good cook, especially when it comes to baking.  Clearly, a cake decorator I am not however, and my vision for her 1st birthday cake did not go as planned!  The original idea was to have a butterfly theme with individual butterfly shaped and decorated cakes for everyone.  Kylie's cake would consist of a round base with one of those butterflies sitting up on top of it.  Of course the week this is all suppose to take place my oven breaks, and the main setting used for cooking is not heating up.  I can still use the grill option though and I decided that it's probably best to do a trial run before the big day.  Thank goodness I did, because the oven is a piece of crap!  It didn't cook evenly and I had problems with the actual butterflies themselves.  Since the butterfly cakes turned out to be a mess, I decided to just do one for Kylie's cake and do cupcakes with butterfly chocolates for everyone else. 

In deciding this the week of the party I forgot that I was in Perth, Western Australia!  If you are looking for something last minute I can guarantee that they will not have it!  Something so simple to find back home like butterfly molds, is like finding a needle in a haystack here...impossible!  So, I had to adjust my plans once again.  The big idea was the same, Kylie's cake the way I planned and cupcakes for everyone else but instead of chocolate butterflies they would get sugar butterflies, no big deal.  Then Saturday came.  I was smart enough to make most of the food the day before.  I even made the butterfly cake for Kylie's cake the day before so going into the morning I was ahead of schedule.  I made my homemade butter cream icing and got the cupcakes done, no problems.  I made my 'grass' on the top of the cupcakes and placed the butterflies on them and they looked pretty good!  Next I started on Kylie's cake.  First I iced the round base, then started trying to ice the butterfly and it just look like s*%$!!  You couldn't even tell it was a butterfly!  It looked like a big blob of icing!  I was devastated!  It was an hour before everyone was suppose to show up, Kylie was due to get up from her nap any minute and I hadn't finished getting ready yet !  I had to scrap the entire idea and in the end Kylie ended up with a plain round cake with really bad writing that said "Kylie's 1st Birthday" on it.  I should have used butter cream for the writing as well, but tried to go the easy route and bought a tube of writing icing that was pretty much crap!  It was thin and gel like and just crap!  When I tried to scoop it off to redo it with butter cream it just smeared all over the place so I had to leave it since I just didn't have the time to mess with it.  Luckily Kylie didn't care what it looked like and had a good time eating it regardless!

The party was a success and a good time was had by all!  We were sad that all of our family and friends from home couldn't be here, but were thankful to the friends here in Perth that helped make it special!  That evening we opened gifts and that was about all Kylie could handle for the day! Below is Kylie at the start of opening the gifts and at the end!  It took her a while since she felt the need to play with everything as she opened it but I think she enjoyed it!

The following weekend was a long weekend for us.  Due to the holiday's we had Good Friday off followed by ANZAC day and Easter Monday (celebrated on Tuesday).  We spent the weekend relaxing, shopping, going to Kings Park and of course eating lots of chocolate!  Kylie received her first Easter Basket and I must say that I think the Easter Bunny did a pretty good job.  Here are a few photos of our weekend!

Hanging at Heathcote Reserve and testing out one of her gifts, the Smart Trike

 Lunch at Kings Park

 First Easter!!

My little bunny, such a cutie!

I swear this has been one of the fastest years of my life! I feel like it has been just a few weeks since we celebrating Christmas and now we're only a few days away from Mother's Day. Over a third of the year gone and I can't for the life of me recall where it went.

I'm sure that the upcoming month will go by just as fast. The afternoon of Mother's Day Jamie leaves for about a week to make his rounds around Australia. Once he gets back we've only got 2 and a half weeks until we leave for Bali. A trip that is much needed and both of us are equally excited about! The idea of taking Kylie to a country such as Indonesia worries me a little though and I've got my fingers crossed that she doesn't get sick while we're there. I'll try my best to post again before we leave!!

I'll leave you now to enjoy some of Kylie's 1st Birthday photos!!

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about our late night out!  So, there was a big convention here in Perth for the oil and gas industry and because the company that Jamie works for is in the oil and gas they had purchased 2 tables for the dinner on the last evening.  We went thinking that it would be a pretty boring evening and we would be desperate to get home but it actually ended up being a good time.  Evidently this event is kind of a big deal and all of the 'who's who' for these types of companies in the Asian Pacific region attends.  The dinner was good, the open bar was even better and the entertainment was well, entertaining.  The highlight of the entertainment portion of the evening was when Guy Sebastian did an hour long performance for our small crowd of 1,600.  Seeing as though we've been overseas for the last 3 years I don't know how popular he is in the US but over here he's kind of a big deal!  It was quite funny to be out on the dance floor with the CEO's and VP's of huge companies getting down to his music when clearly they had grandchildren who probably had his music in their IPods!  In the end it was a good time but we didn't get home until 11ish, which is why we were up so late putting the playhouse together.  Not because we are a little challenged in the toy putting together category!!

Pure Hell!!

So, I thought that 3 weeks without a blog was bad! I guess I just set a new record. Please see below for my excuses!

The last few weeks have been absurd! The title of the blog says it all, but I'll give you the details.  In my last post I told you all that Kylie was sick. Well, that lasted 2 weeks! It was a nightmare! High fever, runny nose, it was bad. When we finally got the fever under control the runny nose hung around for another week. It went on nonstop, all day and all night. Not to mention all of those teeth that were hanging around, well, all except for 1 were still 'hanging around'. I swear she has to be setting some sort of record for not only how long a tooth that is completely visible can go without breaking through the gums but also how close one can be without breaking through as well. 4 of them were so close I could actually feel the pointy little corners through the gums and yet only 1 managed to come out during that time. Aghhhhhhh!

Anyway, after all that we managed to have about a week that went well. During this time she became a little "daddy's girl" and started to follow him everywhere. Not to mention all the kisses he got from her without even asking for one. She would just crawl over to him, climb into his lap and lay one, or two and sometimes even more on him. When I would ask for one she would just turn her head. She even pushed me away one time and crawled after him crying. Can you believe it? She wanted him over me! I found the entire situation a little annoying; Jamie however loved every minute of it! So for the most part we were having a great week and then someone stole my baby! Not literally, but seriously that's how I felt.

For about a week Kylie was a different kid. There were a few days that I thought my child must be seriously advanced because the terrible 2's had arrived an entire year early!! I couldn't walk three steps, much less out of the room, without her breaking into a full blow screaming fit. It didn’t just happen when I walked away from her either. It happened if I took something away from her, gave her food she didn’t want, put her down after holding her, etc, etc, etc! Her eating was funny, her sleeping pattern turned into shit and frankly her overall attitude wasn't any better. This went on for AN - ENTIRE - WEEK - FOLKS! To make matters worse, when I say her sleeping pattern was shit I mean it. She would go to bed with no problems but would wake up screaming at least once a night. She would then wake up around 4:00 - 4:30 and would be up for the day. I wouldn't get up right away and instead tried to let her stay in her bed hoping she would go back to sleep. The longer she stayed in there the louder she got.What this meant for me was that I was up no later than 5 am for an entire week, even after waking up multiple times during the night. Trust me when I tell you that it wasn't even this bad when she was a newborn!

Then, on Monday (a week ago today) something just 'changed'. No more screaming fits and she was eating and sleeping much better. I don't know what did it, but all of this sudden my Kylie was back. As god as my witness, you would think you were dealing with a different kid! Jamie and I can only come to one conclusion. Even though she didn't have any signs of teething during the 'hell' week (as it is now referred to in this house) she did start showing signs of it during this last week so she must have been teething (as we now have another tooth). Along with the teething we think, or rather we know, she had a massive growth spurt during that week as well. Every weekend Jamie and I take the dogs and Kylie on a series of morning walks. This past weekend we put Kylie in the stroller and her feet could actually sit on the bottom of the foot rest with her knees slightly bent. They did not touch the foot rest the weekend before. During 'hell' week she also stopped standing up. When I would grab her hands and get her to pull herself up to standing she would scream and start to cry. I thought it was really strange at the time but chalked it up to her being in a bad mood. I had also mentioned to Jamie during this week that Kylie's waist looked really small. After weighing her she hadn't gained or lost any weight so I think it was just the extra length making her look so small. So, our conclusion is that she was teething and going through a growth spurt. Are we right? Who in the hell knows, but I have to think that there was a reason for the madness and these are the reasons I’m using! I am happy to report that the last week has been wonderful and my little girl is just as happy and silly as ever.

Things with Jamie and I are going good as well.  2 Friday's ago we had someone from the daycare come over to watch Kylie so we could have a "date" night, which was great.  When we were ready to leave Kylie went right to her and didn't even pretend to cry as we left.  That made the whole 'leaving her' for the night thing easy to do!  We went to a place called Halo, which is in downtown Perth right on the river.  It was great to go out for a nice, relaxing dinner, enjoy a bottle of wine and not be rushed.  Overall it wasn't as good as The Boatshed, but it was nice to get out and try something new.

I’m really enjoying being back at work and after tons of research I've finally booked our hotel for Bali. I am excited to report that the first week in June I, along with my beautiful little family, will be relaxing on a beach or at the pool in our villa with a cocktail in hand. Since we had to push the trip back from April to June because of a thing Jamie is working on at work, we will actually be in Bali on my 30th birthday due to the holiday weekend at that time. If I must turn 30 I guess that's as good a place as any to do it!

We have also made our reservations for the 2011 Clemson trip which will be taking place in September. The lake house has been reserved and everyone has confirmed their attendance!! It will be the first game we've been to since 2007 and everyone seems to be really excited about it. Beautiful scenery, great football and wonderful friends, we can hardly wait! The only thing left to do now is purchase our plane tickets and decide what we want to do with the rest of our time in the US. We're trying to decide if we want to do a beach house or a cruise, but aren't sure at this time what we will do. All I know is that I am totally ready for a US vacation, not just a visit for the holidays!! Hopefully the time will continue to go by as fast as it has up to this point.

I almost can't believe that Kylie will be 1 in less than a month. I'm not exactly sure where this past year has went, but somehow it's come and gone : ( As excited as I am about Kylie turning 1, I am equally just as sad. For starters my little girl is growing up! Before you know it she’ll be taking the credit card along with the car and telling me she would rather hang out with her friends than with me. I also hate that she will not have a big party with family and friends for her 1st birthday. She's got some really cool birthday gifts and the only way you guys will see her open them or see her face when she gets them will be from photos. The thought of it makes me really homesick even though I know she will never know the difference. Since I'm now getting really sad, I guess I’ll end the post here.

Hope you guys back home are enjoying the beautiful spring weather I keep hearing about!! It’s now fall here but we’ve still had a few high 90 – 100 degree days here so it doesn’t feel like fall. Not to mention there’s no football on so it can’t possibly be fall, right? Keeping with usual tradition, here are the latest and greatest!

Even with bedhead she is too freakin' cute!

The 2 loves of my life!  Could they be any better lookin'?

1st Valentines Day

Toddler fest, the only thing she was old enough to enjoy!

With friends at the park.

Playing in the backyard

1st swing ride!  She loved it!

Biggest Slacker!!

Yes, I know!  Three and a half weeks without a blog is just unacceptable!  I mean seriously, it's not like I have anything going on, right?!?  Well, actually; wrong!! 

As of my last blog Jamie was away, I was deciding between two different jobs and we were eagerly awaiting cyclone Bianca's arrival.  The cyclone drama was very short lived, as it literally dissolved once it hit the warm waters off the Perth coast.  In a matter of like 8 hours or something it went from a category 3 to a tropical low.  The night before there were some heavy thunder storms in the city (about 6 km north of where we are) and lots of people lost power but we didn't even get one rain drop!  The day it was suppose to make landfall it was a little windy, but that's it.  Not even one cloud in the sky. 

The contract on the other job I mentioned came in and everything was as we discussed in my interview so I accepted.  Yay!!  I am now officially working again.  I started my new job working in the Operating Suites at a nearby private hospital a few weeks ago and I LOVE it!  Kylie is doing really well in daycare and that makes the whole 'work thing' that much easier.  Not to mention I am only 5 minutes from her daycare and Jamie is only 10-15 minutes away if I can't get out.  It's been a little weird adjusting to the new routine but so far things are going well.

Jamie is back from Melbourne and even though the tennis finals weren't as exciting as they were last year he said that things went well.  Best of all, being the AWESOME husband that he is he brought back Krispy Kreme blueberry doughnuts!  I hate that he has to go on these trips, but I absolutely love it when he comes home!!

On the home front not too much has been going on.  Kylie and I have a pretty packed schedule now that I've started working and Monday through Friday is pretty non-stop.  Monday we have swimming, Tuesday mom's group, Wednesday and Thursday I work and Friday we have our workout with Ann the trainer.  Even though it's only 1 thing each day when you factor in Kylie's routine (breakfast, am and pm naps, lunch, chasing the dogs around, etc) it makes for a full day!  The kiddo is non stop! She has mastered the 'crawling' thing and has moved on to pulling up on everything she can get her chubby little hands to grip.  She also chases the dogs around, which is freakin' hilarious!  She thinks both of them are called Budder, and as she crawls after them she yells "eh bu, eh du bu", is so cute I can't stand it!  She'll even slap her hand on the floor and call them the same way.  I don't think they think it's a cute as I do, but they take it pretty well.  At the moment and for the past few days Kylie has been in rare form.  Not only is has she been sick since Saturday night with a cold and a temp of 101-101.8, the poor dear also has eight teeth that are trying to come in.  Yes, that's right I said eight!!  She has four on the top that have made their way to the bottom of her gums and are picometers away from breaking through and two more on the bottom that have been hanging around for the past two weeks.  If you ask me, she has good reason to be a little off.

As far as my vacation dilemma Jamie and I have decided to go ahead and plan for Bali.  Because of work we have had to push our trip back until June instead of April which actually helped in terms of the cost of the flights.  However, I completely underestimated the costs of the trip to begin with so it looks like even after factoring in the cheaper flights we are easily going to go over my original estimate.  On a good note, the Clemson schedule has finally come out and we are in the process of getting that trip planned as well.  It's looking like 2011 is going to be a vacation filled year and I can't wait!!

Of course I can't end a post without the updated photos!!

Afternoon nap with her tiger! (9 months)

(This is the one that Jamie got all on his own before she was born.She loves it and sleeps with it every day!)

An afternoon of swimming

First full day of daycare!  This is the before...

and the after! 

Just playing around!  Jamie used to put the colander on his head too! (9 1/2 months)