The Hill Family

Bali is paradise.  We saw incredible things, met friendly people, ate delicious food, had wonderful weather and even relaxed a little.  Which is not something that we normally do no vacations.  We spent a week in Bali and then headed to the Gili Islands and then back to Bali for a few more days.  This is Bali - part one.  Tirta Empul This temple is also known as the holy spring water temple.  This is a Balinese Hindu temple.  The springs here are believed to be magical and have healing effects.  After walking around the temple, Simon asked if he could join in.  They gave him a sarong and he jumped right in following the leads of the others in the spring.  I don't know if it had magical powers, but he had a good time.  I thought about going in, but didn't want to be wet the rest of the day. If you look closely, there are little baskets on top of the water fountains.  These baskets are offerings, and...

Java Java is the most populated island in Indonesia.  We stayed away from the capital Jakarta because we really didn't find anything interesting there.  The original plan for this trip was to head straight to Bali, but after some research we found out that on Java there are two major sites, the Borodorur temple and the Prambanan temple complex.  So we decided to stay a week in Java.  We stayed in a city called Yogyakarta which is very close to both of the sites.  I am really glad that we stayed the week.  The temples were so impressive and different from anything else that we had seen. Prambanan temple complex The Prambanan temple complex is the biggest Hindu temple complex in Indonesia and was built during the ninth century.  We spent the day wandering through the temple complex.  You can walk through the temples.  Our kids had a great time running around the grounds. I had to had this pict...

Our trip was really long and so I have decided to break it up for blogging purposes. There will probably more posts about this trip than you want to see or read about, but when you travel for three weeks there is a lot of stuff to cover. Our first stop was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was cheaper to fly there than strait to Indonesia, so we decided to spend a few days in Kuala Lumpur and really liked it. Thean Hou Temple The turtles were a big hit with our kids. one word - delicious! Petronas Twin Towers Behind the towers they had a huge park with a wadding pool and the biggest assortment of children playground equipment that I have ever seen. Our kids had a blast! This picture is out of order, but we had a layover in Oman for five hours. Luckily they had this awesome children's playplace full of soft toys. It made it the easiest layover ever. Batu Caves I think Auburn walked up almost all of those stairs. There is a Hindu temple inside of the cave.

We had a doctor's appointment today. Luckily, we were able to do Auburn's three year and Conley's 18 month check up all in one. The nurses laughed when they realized that Conley only weighed a kilo (2.2 lbs) less than his older sister. I get the question "are they twins?" everywhere I go. People expect Conley to be able to do more because they think he is much older than he is. I think the percentiles might be off for the US. I think Auburn is actually in a higher percentile in height in the US, but I am not sure. I just used the scale in their German book. They did great, Conley didn't even cry for his last vaccinations. They are both healthy and right on track for all of their developments. We feel so blessed! Conley height 87 cm/ 34 in - 90 percentile weight 12.5 kilos/ 27.5 lbs - 75 percentile Auburn height 98.5 cm / 38.5 in - 50 percentile weight 13.5 kilos / 30 lbs - 40 percentile