Birk Adventures

I don't have anything particularly exciting to blog about today, so I decided to blog about the hidden spiders we saw in Hong Kong. If you glanced at the picture above and didn't see a huge scary spider, look again! He's in the middle, maybe a little to the left with long skinny legs spread out. Our last Saturday in HK we took a ferry to nearby Lamma Island, which is smaller and only 12000 people live on it. It was very charming. We landed at a little floating fishing village and hiked across the island to another ferry which took us home, stopping for a swim in a beautiful beach. The pathway was lined, sometimes covered, with trees. At one point I looked up and noticed a big spider in its web, hanging above me. As I looked around, I realized that they were all over and completely camouflaged themselves until you started looking for them. Once I started seeing them, I got a little panicky and ran away with Marian to a break in the trees. See if you can find the spider in th

Here are some entertaining videos of Marian. One day in Hong Kong I heard her making the same babbling noise over and over. I realized that she was actually saying a word and by process of elimination, discovered she was saying "umbrella." Since then it has become our favorite thing to have her say. She knows it's funny so she loves to say it for people. Several times she's been in the middle of a tantrum when I've asked her to say it. The tantrum goes on hold while she charmingly looks at her audience, says umbrella, then laughs harder than anyone. What a ham! This next one has umbrella and some of her other new words (we're still working on them, especially watermelon). I discovered that she knows how to say Book of Mormon one night when I was trying to get her to bed. She would not come to get her pajamas on and kept saying "muh-muh-muh" and pointing at the bookshelf. Finally I realized that she was reminding me that we needed to read Book of Morm

But better late than never, right? Important event #1 I am late in blogging about: Happy #25 Birthday Adam!! As of Sunday Adam is officially in the quarter-centurion club (a title I've had for a while). It was a little crazy as I worked the night before and on his birthday. Thanks to so many who called so he wasn't lonely on his birthday! I am so grateful for my Mosobo. The kind of husband and father he is has totally surpassed my expectations. Not that I had low expectations, but just that he is amazing. On top of that, he teaches me so much about being a good stay at home mom, as he is a much better cook, cleaner, seamstress (is there a masculine version of that word?) and home-maker than I am. My whole life I thought that when I got engaged, my parents would sit me down and ask if my future husband treated me well enough. Instead, after I got engaged, my mom sat me down and asked if I treat A