MY FAVORITE JEANS

This being my last week of summer vacation, I decided to do some things I probably won't have time to do once school starts on Monday. One of those activities was cleaning out my closet. In addition to throwing away/donating two garbage bags of clothes and shoes, I also found (in the far, dark corner of my closet) my favorite pair of jeans. Now, you might ask yourself "why are her favorite jeans hidden in the back of her closet?" and the answer is quite simple... I should have thrown these jeans away at least two years ago. There are three holes in the seat of the pants - two of those holes are three inches long. In addition to the holes, the jeans are about to fray in the knees and the bottoms are shredded. They look ratty and are inappropriate to wear in public, but I love them. I have been holding out hope that they will miraculously fix themselves.

Not wanting to get rid of these jeans once and for all (especially not when I'm heading back to school and it is okay for me to wear jeans), I turned to the only resource I thought could help... the internet. I googled the make, size, and style of my favorite jeans. And after over an hour of searching, I found an ebay vendor who was selling a pair of my favorite jeans. Without hesitation I placed a bid! The auction ends on Monday. So far I am the only bidder. With any luck, I will have in my possession in the next couple of weeks a replacement pair of my favorite jeans. If I win the auction, I will throw my old jeans away.

TAIWAN

We returned home to DC last night after much drama at the airport in Taipei. We're still not sure what happened and are so thankful to be back home (24 hours early no less). More details about our airport woes later. I haven't had the time to go through the 300 pictures we took while in Taiwan, but did want to get some of my favorites online. We had a wonderful trip...

As I noted in my last post, it rained almost the entire two weeks we were in Taiwan. Here's a picture to give you some idea of the amount of rain we had.


Uncle David playing the Wii with Andrew and Matthew.


David and Robert battling it out during an intense game of Wii tennis!


Lucas, a loyal 10-month-old Steeler's fan in Taiwan.


Our family...


The menu at a BBQ restaurant in Taiwan. You just point at the fish you'd like and they'd prepare it perfectly for you. We had about six dishes at this restaurant. The squid and the shrimps were my favorites.


And one of my favorite sites in Taiwan... Did you know that the Promised Land is in eastern Taiwan? Well, according to this sign on the highway it is!

IT'S RAINING OUTSIDE & I CAN'T GO OUT AND PLAY

Ah...my first posting from Taiwan. We are in Tainan visiting with David's family. We arrived last Monday - the weather was beautiful. A week ago, we hopped a train to the eastern side of the island for a week at the beach. Our plans were quickly changed by the first two typhoons of the season. We came back to Tainan late last week and have been stuck indoors ever since. It has been raining cats and dogs. There has been incredible thunderstorms (which my two year old nephew calls 'fireworks') and the flooding has been severe. We've spent our days playing Wii games, visiting David's mom, watching movies, visiting the world's largest department store, hanging out and eating some of the best food in the world. Tainan is known for its street vendors. Little 'mom & pop' shops on the side of the street each serving a single item - noodles, dumplings, prawns, seafood BBQ, and (my favorite) shaved ice with mangoes and a sweet syrup. I have tried some amazing food here! David has taken several food pictures that we will share once we are back in the states.

Yesterday David and I took our almost six year old nephew, Andrew, to see Ratatouille. It was a wonderful film. Pixar never disappoints. I highly recommend it.

We've heard that the rain might stop on Thursday, but we're not betting on it. We've also heard that another typhoon is scheduled to arrive on Saturday. In the meanwhile, we'll continue to play games, watch movies, play catch (with the soft ball), go swimming (indoors), and just hang out. David said before we left the United States that he'd be happy just sitting in a room with his brother and the rest of his family. He will go home happy.