GoJeronimo

Monday, February 20, 2012

Photo cards available soon!

5x7 Folded Card

View the entire collection of cards.

Photo Copyright Jeremy Wilson

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Our fearless leader, Pak Arbain, has become addicted to Facebook and on Tuesday's ride he lead a scenic route with lots of photo opps. Here's one of the goofier ones!

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Hi all, long time no see!

We just had nice visits to Singapore and Jakarta during our Spring Break (our second in SE Asia).

Some highlights included:

Singapore-

-Gabriella’s 2nd through 5th flights completed (all went mostly smoothly!)
-Gabriella had a ‘All looks great!’ check up from her neo-natal doctor and is now 5.99 KGs/13 lbs. and 58 cm long. She gained 500g/1lb and 2.5 cms in just 2 weeks!)
-Jill got a root canal!
-Jeremy had his shortest and cheapest dentist visit in history! ($20!)
-Iza said she liked Singapore (impressive after the previous 2 month hell there!)
-We got to reunite with Robin (big saviour during pregnancy with Iza!) and Joel and Rachel again. All shocked at how big and healthy Gabriella was!
-We shopped like Dooms day was approaching. Grocery/baby stores love us here!
-The whole family got to go to the awesome Singapore Zoo. White Tigers are GORGEOUS! Manatees are HUGE! Howler Monkeys are LOUD! And it’s weird to see a Flying Fox (bat) pee up close! There’s an awesome water park that Iza loved, too!

Jakarta-

-First real visit to the ‘Big Durian’! We had a relaxing stay with the Schwartzkis, whom we worked with the whole time in Warsaw. They’re kids have grown a ton and were excellent playmates with our then sickly Iza. Ask Kat to sing you any Queen song. Any!
-Taman Mini. Hard to describe this place in so few words... it’s a humongous indoor/outdoor Indonesian museum/theme park which represents every major island/culture group in the massive archipelago. A MUST SEE!
Biggest highlights there were the finger biting fish, religion-row, the bomb shelter toilet slide that Iza was a champion at climbing and sliding, the very well organized Insectarium (Indonesian bugs are FREAKY and HUGE!). There 4 hours and maybe saw 1/40th of the place! And only 90 cents to get in! :)
-Jeremy played Risk! for the first time since high school against Ken, his son and his friend. Jeremy crushed them all! Ha, ha, ha!
-Jill got to spa it with Rhonda and Kat. She has a lovely, first ever, dark red set of toe nails. Sexy!
-Iza got rainbow-painted toe nails!
-Gabriella and Iza got absolutely mauled by mosquitoes in their house. Hopefully no Dengue mosquitoes got’em!

Other notes:
-Gabriella’s eyes are still blue.
-Gabriella is smiling and cooing lots, and is starting to giggle more!
-Gabriella just did her first roll today! (Tummy to back, in a big cotton diaper!)
-Iza can reliably count to 10 and sometimes 12 and has been singing her ABCs for 2 months!
-44 days until school is out!
-Iza starts school in August! WOW, does time fly!

Friday, September 25, 2009

Summer 2009 Highlights

Iza preparing to fly back to the states... is that a tentative smile or what?

A visitor at a neighbor's 2nd floor balcony. Not sure if it was poisonous or not but it was exciting trying to sweep it off w/o our shoes on!

This past summer we made it back to the states and hopped around Illinois, Wisconsin and even made it to Seattle for 3 weeks. It was a family, friend and fun-filled summer and we've just been too dog-garned busy to update this site in a while. Iza passed 2.5 years over the summer, saw some old friends and cousins and really blossomed and matured after being around so many older kids! More pics, videos and stories will be added throughout the coming weeks. Stay tuned and enjoy the video!

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Gross, strange, yet important

From the Sierra Club newsletter:

Recycle Yourself

Americans don't love to think about this, but we'll all end up contributing to the billion-dollar funeral industry--and to say it's not the greenest of enterprises is a deadly understatement. According to Mark Harris's Grave Matters (Scribner, 2007), Americans entomb more than 1.6 million tons of concrete and nearly 830,000 gallons of toxic embalming fluid annually, plus immense amounts of steel.

The solution? Forethought--and green burial. Colorful Coffins (colorfulcoffins.com) sells biodegradable caskets and urns. The ARKA Ecopod (naturalburialcompany.com/ecopod), above, is made of recycled paper, looks like a peapod, and comes in vibrant colors; it's also handmade and biodegradable.

To find a Green Burial Council-certified funeral provider near you, go to greenburialcouncil.org.

"Yes, can I have a coffin in mango, please?"
;-)

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Hosting Baby Group... finally

the gang getting settled...

I had signed up with a Baby Group/Play group back in Warsaw after becoming a stay-at-homer, but never made it to any events due to locations, weather or just dealing with the plain old stress of being a new dad. Here, however, things are a little more manageable and it's a much smaller expat community (though not everyone is an expat in the group)..., and Iza's much older and better suited to these kinds of gatherings.

Iza and I were supposed to host a month or so ago but Iza got sick so I canceled. Today, though, the masses braved the long commute across town (most come from the far side of BPN), dealt with our serious security, fought over limited parking spaces and heaved their little tots up 3 flights of stairs... just to see Iza and I.

There must have been some novelty in coming to a dad's baby group event, as no one remembered seeing such a crowded gathering before!

A new comer, Carmella, from Mexico. She told me that one of the purple and green plants I had growing makes a very nice, subtle tea though she didn't know the name of it. Should I try it?!

Hunter, Ami (AH-mee) and her baby Zoe
(see the resemblance!)

Viona 'n Thomas
She's the ringleader of the whole shebang

Viona even brought her parents along. They're also from the Netherlands and have visited her twice in the last 7 months, each time for 2 months... gotta love being retired!
(Note, that big rod on the wall will soon be holding Jill's beautiful Mongolian yurt piece that's finally being sewn to a nice fabric backing... the flat is almost fully decorated!)

Hunter "The Terrible" Trumpeter
He clocked Iza really hard on the head with a heavy plastic toy.
OUCH!
Amazingly, it was the only time Iza cried or complained during the entire event. Fantastic!
She really composed herself well the whole time with all the kids playing with "her" things and sitting in "her" chair. She finally had a meltdown ten minutes after the last kid left... and then begged for "more babies" the rest of the day ;-)

Iza loves Viona's dad. She tends to hang with him at every baby group. Something about needing that father figure around, I guess ;-)

Dua preggies swapping pain and joy tales

Baby Avae, being unusually shy

the group getting into full swing, I think we reached at least 30 mums and tots in our flat.
A new record!

Danielle is a super mom, with 3 kids all under 5.
Ugh.
She's also the leader of the 'songs and dances' part of Baby Group...

Here's some of them doing Ring around the rosies.
They also did the Hokie-Pokie, Row, row, row your boat, I'm a little tea cup and some others. It was amusing as everyone from different countries had different versions/words/gestures to go with these popular tunes. Iza only seemed to know the Rosies and Row, row songs, as Jill and I play/sing those with her, but she enjoyed the rest. I'll let you know when she actually takes part in the singing... but she did sing a few tunes later in the day just to me and mom!

Thanks and sampai jumpa! (SAHM-pie JOOM-pah)
See you later!

Monday, April 20, 2009

Happy belated xmas

Just got this shot from Leila's dad today... it's too cute not to post. Leila is Avae's older sis'.
We went out a few days before xmas and sang carols on the ridge with little candle lanterns on sticks and musical antlers on our heads. T'was fun!

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Activities of late...

Howdy all, been busy as usual, and we just returned from a fantastic trip to Malaysian Borneo, in the state of Sabah. But first, here's a few pics from the last few months.

Climbing Club!
Brent and I started a kids climbing club. There's a 'sports dome' here in town which showcases several events, but outside off the parking lot is a nice, huge climbing wall:

It's about 20+ meters high and we get to climb the scaffolding on the backside to hook up the top ropes. Centered here are two 'speed climbing' routes which locals practice on all the time for such events in the X-Games, etc. Indonesia has produced several speed climbing champions and we've seen them reach the wall in 1/4 the time it takes us to!

we're teaching them all the basics about balance, climbing with 'quiet feet', keeping 3 points of contact, using arms, not legs, safety and communication. It's a great group of kids and we've seen tremendous improvement in a very short time!

Of course, there's plenty of fun to be had, too!

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more riding:

Sir Paul (red helmet) was heading off to a new post so we had 2 or 3 farewell rides. Greg crashed on this one, and Paul had a doosie of a fall and puncture on the last ride which I missed due to illness. Our rides are rough and tumble enough that we average one person crashing per ride.

Here's one of the steep slopes we ride down on our urban jaunts. Not too steep but very slick sometimes.

This is Pak Yayang. He is our 'caboose' and an incredibly strong and gifted rider. He has helped so many people out and is one of the happiest people I know. He is nearly the sole reason I want to learn to speak more bahasa Indonesia!

Sometimes it's not the riders who crash!

Pak Eko (like 'echo'), he has blossomed incredibly in my short time here, and still on an old school bike like mine (though I usually cheat and ride Jill's)

OK, so the hills here are steep, and photos usually don't do it justice. But these are stairs and only 2 guys could somehow manage to get up this ramp on the left... and then even got up the stairs at the top of the hill?! This one's called 'Snakes and Ladders'

this is what we feel like after trying such silliness

another good weeknight ride out!

some local boys enjoying our antics
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Iza update- our little baby is no longer. She titles herself as a 'little girl' (except during a horrible midnight breakdown last night. Ugh!). Now at 27 months, she's getting more and more dexterous doing more wild dances, somersaults and getting more intricate with her drawings with crayons and pencils. She's also learning bahasa Indonesia and her new favorite word is 'sama sama' which means 'same thing/similar'. Her hair has gotten incredibly long, especially in the last month... we can pull it back in a pony tail no problem now, but she and I are due for a haircut, so uncle Develan, sharpen up those scissors! Here's my babe and babes:

Iza and her best friend, Avae

there's my girls!

Iza and daddy enjoying Baby Group
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Teaching Design & Technology (D&T)-
I am the new D&T teacher at the school now, since every other teacher is overbooked with their own classes. It is a hands-on class taught separately to each grade, from K to 8, about a week each. Basically there's a problem that needs to be solved and the kids need to devise a plan to solve it with either restricted or open ended materials (and guidance!). Grade 1 made a cool freight train from milk boxes as the 'seas were rising and the school and its supplies needed to be moved inland to a higher elevation' (they were learning about transportation of goods. Grade K made Chinese New Year's paper lanterns, with designs representing the four season on each side. The older kids had a great time, too. One of my favorite projects was a 'paper column challenge' project. The 4th graders were learning about ancient Greece and I upped the anti by asking them to design 4 to 6 paper columns that will be strong enough to withstand at least 10 big literature books, which were 4 pounds/1.8 kilos each. They could only use previously used A4-sized paper and glue sticks. The kids didn't think it was possible at all...

one unique 'square' shaped design, which held up very well to repeated book crashings because of the previous folds.

One girl won last year's D&T schoolwide challenge (egg drop from 3 stories high) and is VERY likely to become some sort of engineer. Super talented girl! She tied with 2 others with holding the most weight, over 85 pounds!

pretty insane for paper and crappy glue!

Next up was another cool project, a rainforest canopy research outpost! Grade 2 was learning about the rainforests around the globe so I thought I'd put everything into perspective so they can learn what a challenge it is for scientists to learn about everything at such a great height.
they had to design a 'tree house' for their science team to stay/sleep

and a safe, stable canopy bridge

and a mechanism to get them and their equipment up and down the trees (the height of everything is to scale relative to the Lego people)

enjoying the view

Hope you enjoyed the much overdue update... next up our Kinabalu trip!