Taipei

Evie and I took a walk while Ethan was supposed to be napping (but he wouldn't nap). He has had a really hard time napping and sleeping since his accident. He had a few good nights before we left for Taipei but he was up about 5 times last night. Once he even crawled out of his bed and was dragging it out of the room it was in. We put it in our room and he went back to sleep but he still woke up crying a few more times...




















I love IKEA. The closest store to us in the US is Chicago which is about 8 hours away, so it's always a treat when we get a chance to go.

We didn't get much sleep last night so we had more fun than usual testing out the chairs and beds.


































The kids always have fun playing in the kid/toy section. Evie found a huge puppy to drag around. She is turning off the lights in the display so her puppy can go to bed
















The next time I checked on Evie she was in the bed herself. She said she was just playing like she was tired. She looked pretty cozy though.





















Ethan is happy he found something he can bash. Check out the video below for the full story.
















The toy section was big and there were a lot of kids there today. Ethan was quite the entertainment for these girls passing by. They watched him and played with him for about 30 minutes. One time I looked at him and they were all around a table having a tea party







































We went to Fridays for lunch. We have only been there three times in Taipei - once a year for the past three years and randomly we have sat at the same table all three times.















Evie is all of a sudden camera shy.

















Unless of course she's mashing her face with a balloon.

This is the Taipei Arena. Like everything in Taiwan, it suddenly appeared, a massive structure where the year before there was just a dirt lot.

We see these characters are all over town advertising the flower expo.

The 2010 New Year Countdown Party started with a parade on December 26th. It was a great parade - I personally love the dragons like in the video at the end of this post. The dudes inside where sweating up a storm, red faced like Dylan when he has a few beers (love you Dylan...from Joel).

You can't have a parade without snoop dog.

Just down the street from Taipei 101.

The Taipei Floral Show runs for something like 6 months this year and they were using every possible method, including a float, to promote it.

This is the Backstreet Boys Taiwan style. Actually, who knows what they were saying, but they sounded quite nice. Note the obligatory leather jackets, white T-shirts and jeans.

This dragon would blow steam periodically.

Joel was on full alert searching for Adam's apples on these ladies.

Part man, part woman, this is some Japanese comic book hero they are pushing on the kids everywhere in Taiwan.

And his bride we assume...

Post-parade, the kids played in the sandbox with Taipei 101 in the distance. This is behind the Taipei City Hall for no apparent reason. There's nothing for kids within a square mile of here, but of course we found it last year and it's consistently exceptionally clean.

Moments before baby Barbie was forever lost (to Evie at least) in the Taipei sand box. I imagine it made some other little girl very happy when she found it later.

Of course, Ethan wanted to be buried in the sand. And, his father was happy to oblige, digging holes and then burying E in sand over his waist. Not so surprisingly, Joel thought it was also cool to bury willing Taiwanese children in the sand (to what seemed the delight of their horrified mothers). Rarely does not speaking Chinese have such benefits. You can just smile and act really, really, really stupid when you are being yelled at.

VIDEO: Parade in Taipei

VIDEO: Ethan at IKEA, Taipei