Beautiful Bali part 2 - Erica's 30th Birthday and more

So, in part 1 I told you all about our flight over to Bali, the villa, our tour of Ubud and the famous Kuta Beach.  One part I forgot to mention was our visit to the Santi Agrowisata during our tour of Ubud so that's where part 2 will begin.

After our visit to the temple Wayan took us to visit a plantation called Santi Agrowisata.  Here they grow several different types of fruits, coffee beans, teas and spices.  There are a few things about this place that make it unique.  The first, they process all of their own chocolate, tea, coffee and spices.  Everything is organic and available for purchase from the gift shop.  The second thing that is unique is that they still hand roast all of the coffee beans.  There is even a guy that sits out in the tasting area that you can watch as he does it.  The third unique thing, they make and sell Luwak coffee.  If you're not familiar with it, Luwak coffee is one of the rarest, most expensive coffee's in the world.  It takes several steps to make it, some of which are a little, shall we say... "unconventional".  Click here and here to see some videos that explain it.  The second one is in Indonesian, but it was filmed at the place we were at.  Jamie and I are not coffee drinkers so we did not find it or the Bali coffee very nice but we did find a vanilla coffee and a lemongrass tea that were wonderful.

View while sampling the coffee and tea at Santi Agrowisata

 Still roasting the coffee beans by hand

Okay, so on to the day after our visit to Kuta Beach, my 30th birthday! Jamie and I had already arranged to have a babysitter for the evening so I wanted to make sure we spent the day with Kylie.  We started out with a wonderful breakfast arranged in the villa.  Not really different from any of the other mornings up to this point but I was surprised by the staff of the resort with a cute little birthday cake next to my banana pancakes along with a "happy birthday madam" from all of the staff that I encountered, even the cleaning staff.  It was a nice touch and very thoughtful of them to think of me.  After breakfast I opened (well, with Kylie's help of course) my gift from Jamie and Kylie, which was a beautiful new watch.  I absolutely didn't expect a gift like that at all so I spent most of the next few hours staring at it and asking Jamie if he wanted to know what time it was. 

Enjoying breakfast with my girl!

What could it be?!?!

Flowers and a gift?  It must be a special day! (Note Kylie in front of me ready to go!)

After getting ready we grabbed a taxi and headed out to Sanur Beach, which is known for being a family friendly beach due to the calm waters and 8 km walking path.  It is also one of the few walking paths in Bali that is 'pram friendly'.  We walked along the beach, had lunch at one of the resorts and then rented some lounge chairs and went for a swim.    It wasn't Kylie's first time to a beach, but it was her first time in the water at a beach and she loved it!  She even tried to do "safe pool entry" into the water, which was DAR-LING!  When a wave would come she would quickly crawl up the beach away from it and then try to scoot herself back into the water.  She also enjoyed playing in the sand and her way of telling us was by covering herself in it from head to toe.  After our afternoon out we headed back to the villa to relax before our big evening out.

Sanur Beach - They had these little 'rest spots' all over the place, pretty neat

 "They better hurry, this muffin isn't gonna cut it!"

My 2 favorite people!

 Lovin' the water!

Cuddles from my sweet girl, happy birthday to me!

That evening Jamie and I had reservations at Ku De Ta, which is the hot, trendy place to be in Bali.  We arrived for drinks and watched the sunset and then went to our table in the dining area for dinner.  I can say that I've seen better sunsets (Krabi, Thailand for example) but the place itself was pretty neat.  The drinks and atmosphere of the place were good and the food was wonderful.  Jamie and I didn't find the price to be expensive but for Bali it's considered extremely pricey, which is one of the reasons it's so trendy.  They are big on security as well.  Just to get inside the door you are searched twice!  The walk from the 1st search area to the 2nd search area maybe takes a minute at best, and that would be a very slow casual walk!  It's such a hot spot that after the bombings in 2001 and 2005 they decided that they might need to increase security as they felt that if anyone ever decided to bomb outside of the Kuta area they would be a possible target.  Crazy right?  We had a wonderful night, drank a little too much Sangria and headed back to the villa.  The original plan was to go out to a club of sorts after dinner but that never happened since we are too pathetic to hang out past 10pm anymore!  How sad right?!  Since we had already went through quite a bit of drinks at the restaurant it was probably best that we didn't continue our night elsewhere, seeing as though we needed to get up with Kylie in the morning!  I'm telling you, the whole "travelling with kids" thing really puts a damper on things!

The crowds starting to gather...

to watch this sunset

The hubby!

Enjoying the evening

The view from our dinner table, a little blurry after too much sangria!  This is probably the same way we were seeing it!

 Happy Birthday to me!  And a wonderful birthday it was!

The next day was our check out day, so we had breakfast and relaxed around the pool.  I hated that we had to leave so soon, but I must admit when you are travelling with a little one you are almost relieved to get back to your own surroundings.  At least I was!  For our first 'real' family vacation I was extremely happy with how Kylie did.  With the exception of the flight over, she handled being in a different environment really good.  I was concerned that sleeping would be an issue but she continued to sleep through the night with no problems.  Thank god!

Playing in the water one last time!

A few photos of our villa

  

 Flowers from the trees that shaded the pool

All in all it was a great vacation.  Had we known at the time of booking that we were considering not going back to the US at Christmas we would have definitely stayed longer though!  Next trip - home to the states with a side trip to Clemson, let the countdown begin!!

I'll leave you with one last taste of Bali.  Photo courtesy of the Bali international airport!  Only in Asia!

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!!