Family Picture

This was a casual attempt to get a decent family picture that is more currant than others.  It was so sunny before church that the pictures turned out a little darker than I would have liked.  This was the best one I guess.

Halloween

I must admit that Halloween is not one of my favorite holidays, but I'm a good enough sport and we made it through all the festivities yet another year.   It begins with picking pumpkins at the school "pumpkin patch;" very expensive pumpkins imported especially for the holiday I might add.  This orange variety doesn't exist here.  

Then the fun part.  Pumpkin guts we call it.

The final results.  They were supposed to make the face of their pumpkin for this picture. 

 School parties.  This is Xander's first grade class.  Ella got to go to the party and she just fit right in.  

Getting ready for trick-or-treating.  We had dinner with the Bruschke's then headed out into the mobs of people that crowd the streets of the little American community up here.  This year we had a bat, a pioneer, Harley man again, a witch, and 2 ninjas.

Maggie is on a no candy or junk food diet for a year so she handed out candy for Cami.  Abigail and Breann ended up selling water bottles towards the end of the night and made some money.  That was the highlight for her this year.

Hope your Halloween was as spooktacular as ours.

Cameron Highlands

In Malaysia, about a three and a half hours drive up a windy road from Kuala Lumpur, one of the largest cities in the country,  you find verdant, rolling hills of lush teas leafs and cool refreshing air.  My sister and I headed there for a quick get away last week.  We flew 30 minutes to KL and then drove up into the highlands by taxi.  We stayed in a lovely manor, restored into a hotel (although with only 11 rooms it was more like and inn or B&B.)  After resting for a bit, we enjoyed high tea on the terrace of the hotel, drinking strawberry tea and eating biscuits with fresh strawberry jam, as the highlands are also known for growing strawberries as well as tea.  Everything we saw was picturesque.  It was hard to choose which to post.

On the drive up we saw lots of little bamboo huts and things such as these for sale on the side of the road.  The natives in the area, aboriginals they are called here, collect these fruits in the jungle and sell them.

 The drive up to the highest peak in Southern Malaysia was long and windy but worth the ride.  After an amazing view at 6666 feet, we entered the mossy forest.

It is a rain forest that is up so high in the cloud coverage that it remains moist year round, hence all the moss. We had an amazing guide and he called it "Pandora's Box." There are only insects and birds up here, along with a lot of exotic plants.  There really was a sense of another fantasy world about it.  

I wish I remember what these are called, but they are insect eating flowers all throughout the forest.

In the afternoon we drove through miles and miles of the BOH tea plantation, stopping for some tea (peppermint for us,) learning all about the history of tea and how it is harvested, processed, packaged and distributed.  We were surrounded on every side by these rolling patchworks of tea bushes.

 In this picture you can see the blue barracks where all the tea employees live.  They come from other countries and stay for 5 years, cutting tea leaves 6 days a week, all day long.

Cami and I with the old British jeep we toured in.  When the British left, they also left behind a small fleet of Land Rovers.

A local woman harvesting tea.  She will get paid by the kilo after a days work.  

The final stop of the day was at an aboriginal village.  We sat inside a man's longhouse and learned about the customs and way of life of these Malaysians who still live in the jungle and hunt with blow guns, poisoned darts and sling shots.  Cami and I both got talked into trying out one of his blowguns.  He still hunts every morning.  There are no cars here, and it would take about a day to walk to the little town and get food.

 We had a brief shopping excursion at the Central Market in Kuala Lumpur before heading to the airport.