Vacation ???

I love vacation, but why oh why does Gemma think vacation = pester mommy to DEATH! I love my daughter but I can not play every second of the day. Why is it that by the time we have children we have too many responsibilities to do stuff with them? Dishes, laundry, work, feeding other baby, shopping. It's only day 2 and Gemma wistfully said, "Is Annabelle coming to play with me?" Which of course cuts my heart as a parent, but also makes me want to raise a girl who knows the world does not revolve around her.

Anyway...

I love Taiwan and most things about it, but here is something I hate: shopping. There is no Walmart here, so I can't get everything at one place. We don't have a car, which is normally fine but then at this time of year when you want to go to a bunch of different places you are the the mercy of public transport. 90% of the year this is fine but for example my shopping needs for the next two days include 5 stops, all far away from eachother. (For those of you who speak Taipei-ese JingMei, Shilin, Shida and Gonguan.) Although none of these are hard to get to really, the time constraints are stretching my patience. Thankfully Chris and I had a great experience at Toys R Us, and they even gift wrapped our stuff. I found what I needed at JingMei, and now know where to buy basic Taiwanese kids clothes. Pray tomorrow goes equally well. I'm going to try and cram two trips into tomorrow. Gulp!

I am really happy with what we got the kids. As I was wrapping presents tonight I was feeling very thankful that there are gifts that my kids will love under the tree, and that there is even more than 1 gift. It is such a blessing to be able to provide things for our kids. And of course, a huge thank you to my Dad and Sheri, and Baba, who also bought wonderful things for the kids. It will be an awesome Christmas at the McKenzie house. (PRAY PRAY PRAY I get what Chris wants for Christmas tomorrow; there is only one Adidas store with his size left so pressure is on!)