Chinese New Year Celebration is a big celebration here. Most of the Chinese schools have three weeks off. Our children have one week off as they just had a Christmas break. Chinese New Year is based on the lunar calendar, which is why the dates change from year to year. This year we decided to leave the cold, grey skies and the fireworks behind. We have spent the last two Chinese New Year’s break here in Shanghai. Our adventure trip was to Bali with our good friends, The Humes. As I blog forward and backward, you will read about the Humes family. Mary and John are “older” parents, as are we. They have two girls, Kelly – age 8 and Erin – age 6. Kelly and Emersyn are in the 3rd grade, but not the same class.

We enjoyed 5 nights at the Grand Hyatt resort in Nusa Dua. A nice surprise at the pool was a slide. Mary and I looked at the website very carefully for the pools offered to the kids…no slide was mentioned. It was a good one…a long one with a turn in it. The area around the slide was shallow. The various pools of the resort connected by canals, but we spent most of our pool time in front of the slide. We bought tubes for the girls, which made the slide “much gooder” as Elle would say. We enjoy the beach activities of digging in the sand and shell searching. Elle is still not to keen on the salt water. I am not complaining, as she is safer on the beach.

We spent a day at a water slide park called, Waterbom. It was fabulous. Elle could go on all the slides but three. The park was well designed which resulted in no lines for the slides. Most of the slides were large tubes you go through on inner tubes. Going down in double inner tubes was the most fun for everyone. There were four slides that you went down on mats, face first. Elle loved these also.

After our beach/pool fun at Nusa Dua, we drove up to Ubud. Ubud is more of an art/cultural/shopping center. Ideal for Mary and I…not so ideal for four girls. We stayed at Alam Indah, the same place we stayed at six years ago when Emmy was 2-1/2. We walk through the Monkey Forest to get to town. The girls enjoyed the monkeys, but not on them. Emmy had this one on her head. She was fine, I was more the Mom…what if she gets lice from that monkey, what if he scratches her, what if…what if…good he jumped off!!

One morning, the boys took the girls hiking through the rice patties. Mary and I “ran” into town to go shopping – Kid free. We managed to “power shop” in our limited time. We came home with silver jewelry, a bronze Buddha head and small bronze horse (one can pack anything) and other smaller treasures.

The boys in return spent the next morning at a cooking class. We all came to enjoy the tasty Thai lunch the boys made for us.

The hotel staff is very friendly. Aiyu was still working at the hotel. The girls had fun playing with the staff and the very large black ants. No photo of the ants. The first day, Elle was screaming as this giant ant was climbing up her leg. (Elle has that loud little girl scream) By day two, the girls had made the ants pets.

No one was ready to leave Bali, as the people are very kind and gentle. We only had two nights in Ubud…I guess we will have to come back, again.