THE Eunice Burns: January 2015

Phuket on Christmas Day

We have been a lot of places since we moved to Laos. Most of those trips have been anything but relaxing. Lots of people go home to Europe or Australia around Christmastime, but it's really the best time for weather in southeast Asia. We went to Phuket, which came highly recommended. Matt did a bunch of research on the best beach and resort for families, and he did a fantastic job! It was definitely the most relaxing of any of our trips so far, because the hotel and the beach were our destination, not just a place to collapse at the end of a busy day. And, the clientele was almost exclusively families of young children, who understood when our kids had total meltdowns on the beach or at breakfast or anywhere in between. (And we understood when their children did the same!) It was wonderful.

We went to the beach Christmas night to see if we could watch the sunset, but it was pretty cloudy. We did buy some slingshot helicopters and we had fun shooting those up in the air.

The resort was all decorated for the holidays, which was fun.

One of the recommendations for Phuket is FantaSea. I thought it was just a circus type show, but there were a bunch of other attractions to keep us busy before we got to the theater.

There were two white tigers, but it was hard to get good pictures. One of them was sleeping for a lot of the time we were there, but then the other tiger sneaked up on her and they had a little fight. It was intense.

They had little carnival games.

This is the outside of the theater.

It was definitely not a normal Christmas Day, but it was fun to spend lots of time with my little family in a very beautiful place.

This is a different day on the beach... Photos on Matt's cell phone. This is one sand castle Matt made with the boys. We had to keep them busy on shore if one of us wanted to go swim in the deep.

We had great big waves on one of the days. It was hard to get a good shot of him, but Matt rode a few waves all the way in. Scott even did some body surfing and caught a few. I saw him go under a couple of times and I was worried, but then he stood up and said, "That was awesome!"

Pre-Christmas Christmas Morning

For Christmas this year, we went to Phuket, an island in Thailand. We had our "Christmas morning" on Saturday, December 20 so we could avoid hauling presents to and from Phuket. A good time was had by all, and it really felt like Christmas even though it wasn't ;)

This might be my favorite picture of me as a mother, so far. I really loved watching them enjoy the gifts they were given.

The simple joys...

They're so attentive on Christmas...

Matt lost his wallet in Bangkok, so I took the liberty of getting him two new ones. Just in case.

This was such a funny moment. When we were shopping, Scott kept saying he wanted a bow and arrow. We knew if we got one for Scott, we had to get something simpler (and cheaper) for Bobby. So, we had Bobby open his bow first. So, you can see it in Scott's face... and Bobby's face is also priceless. Scott did get a bow and arrow later, have no fear.

And because I'm already feeling nostalgic about it, here's an old-looking picture of my boys playing so well together with their new toys.

It was a good Christmas.

Snowflakes 2014

Well, I think this might become a tradition for me, so I'll post the snowflakes I made this year. I started out thinking I would do more girly things than last year (star wars and superheroes) so I started with butterflies and ladybugs, but then Scott wanted me to do ants. So, after I finished doing three bugs, I decided to switch gears and do Christmasy things.

Butterflies