Christmas BREAK

The official first day of Christmas break started today. Sleeping in this morning was lovely. We had a lazy day just hanging around the house. We did make a quick trip into town looking for cat litter. Who would have guessed it would be so hard to find.

Last Friday John surprised me with a quick trip to Kuala Lumpur. It worked out perfect because Friday was a half day of school so we caught a four O'clock flight to Malaysia. It's about a fifty minute flight so with the time change we were checked into our hotel and out Christmas shopping by 7:00 pm.

John and I have become quite familiar with KL. It is a wonderfully modern city that is easy to navigate around. For me it was a bit of paradise and a big breath of fresh air. I probably more than anyone, get completely stir crazy living in camp. Malaysia has an IKEA and I love walking around looking at familiar items. The Ikea in Seattle is just like the one in Malaysia and I love that.

The best part was that they had live Christmas trees which smelled amazing. John and I probably looked ridiculous standing in the isle smelling the trees. One of the reasons I had wanted to stop at IKEA was to buy wrapping paper but they had already sold out. I did find some at Toys-R-Us. Yep, they even have those in Kuala Lumpur. I wish it had US prices. It is EXPENSIVE!

We topped off our evening out with dinner at Bubba Gumps. All I can say is YUM! Saturday morning John and I got up early and headed out for round 2 to do some grocery shopping. We have a favorite Chinese market that we go to called Ampang Grocery. They carry a lot of imported items. We managed to wipe out our entire shopping list except for one item, tarragon, which they only sold in kilo size. A Kilo of a grassy like substance is not what you want to try and get through customs in Pekanbaru! Overall not to bad.

After an hour flight delay we were headed back to Sumatra. The kids were excited to see all the stuff we brought back with us and we were excited for the mini-vacation.