Author Archives: lubabob

Katy, Gabe, and Max had the opportunity for an extended stay in the USA in the Spring of 2017. We went on many adventures together- some of which will also be chronicled on this site. The first one was a visit the the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, NC. Katy’s best friend Athena and her daughter Carys drove down from Black Mountain to join them. Also, all the Stair cousins (except poor sick Henry) rode along with Gabe and Max from Wilson.

We saw A LOT of animals, but the best part was spending time with each other. Instead of posting photos of all the animals, we will focus on pictures of the the cutest kids in the world enjoying those animals.

And then, we found some eggs in the middle of the path. Everyone, crawl in….

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And then, the long walk back to the car.

Every January, the whole of Neogen India loads onto a party bus and heads to one of nature’s beautiful creations for the day. They invited our whole family to accompany them. The boys were amazed by a bus built up with a big sound system (which was constantly on), lighting effects, and a disco ball. The aisle was constantly full of dancing bodies. A celebratory mood lifted everyone.

On the way, the bus pulled into a service stop- the only one I have ever seen in the wilds of India. There was some playground equipment (but mostly too broken down to play on), a cool bridge that spanned the river, and most importantly, bathrooms.

The river was beautiful and peaceful. We really enjoyed hiking by it and playing in it before and after lunch.

I actually have some videos of the epic splash fights the co workers got into once we got into the river, but this sight does not support video. Gabe and Max were included in these battles with joy and energy. The boys especially loved that everyone’s favorite target seemed to be Bobby. It’s good to be the Bossman.

When we moved to India, Katy made Bobby promise that we would make it a priority to still get to the temple at least twice a year. The closest LDS temples to us are the Hong Kong, China temple and the Manilla, Philippines temple. A little research showed us that it would take only a little more time to reach the temple in Taipei, Taiwan, so we decided to make it a week-long trip and add touring around Bobby’s old mission to the trip. 

 

We went to the temple in Taipei first. Bobby and Katy took turns attending the temple while the other stayed with the boys. The temple was within walking distance from the hotel. After normal Indian traffic, Taiwanese traffic was a piece of cake to navigate.

We got a great lunch at a Korean restaurant. All of us remembered how to use chopsticks (mostly). Luckily, nobody minded if we just jabbed the food.

After lunch, we caught up with one of Dad’s friends from his mission, Wang Rui Si (“Willy”).. He took us to Jiu Fen – a place with incredible coastal views of Taiwan, an “Old Street” full of shops, and a very cool temple. Following are some pictures that Katy took with her birthday present- a new camera.

 

For Dinner, we had everyone’s favorite – Dumplings! We have a great video of Max shoving a whole dumpling in his little mouth, but we can not post it here. Let’s just say, no dumpling will ever be safe from Max again. They all live in fear of his name.

Bobby went to the temple first on Thursday. While he was there, the rest of us went to the park and Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. They had super fat squirrels! Gabe was not impressed.

After Katy went through the temple, we met back up with Willy and went to a famous temple in Taipei. They had an awesome dragon fountain.

For dinner, Willy took us to a Hot Pot restaurant. You get to make your own barbecue sauces and cook your own foods in a boiling pot. We all gained about 14 pounds. It was great! Now it is one of the boys’ favorite dinners.

After dinner, we went through Taipei’s largest night market. There was so much stuff to see! We had to keep a tight eye on each other not make sure not lose anyone. A few Christmas presents may have been purchased in the night market while the kids were being distracted.
Night markets have all kinds of crazy food. Including blow-torch barbecue.

After walking through the night market for hours, we all decided we needed foot massages.

We spent Friday morning packing up the stuff from our hotel and driving around Taipei. We found a famous dumpling restaurant for lunch. The boys were amazed by the sheer volume of steamers they had there.

On the way to Alishan Mountain, we found the coolest rest-stop in the world. They even had an indoor aquarium there. Taiwan Rest stops are now the world standard as far as this family is concerned.

The views on the way up to mount Ali were gorgeous. It was a long 4 hour drive, though.
When we finally made it to the hotel on the top of the mountain, the boys were most excited by the bathtubs. The apartment in India only has showers, so they haven’t had a chance for a good soak in a while.

Mount Ali is famous for it’s sunrises. Unfortunately, you have to get up at 5:00 AM to see said sunrise. We managed to get everyone up and out in time for the bus and the huge line at the old-timey train station that takes everyone up to the viewing platform.

They had a viewing platform on one of the peaks. The boys argued that it was meant to be a place to meditate and practice Kung Fu. Obviously.

When it was all said and done we had walked over 15 km around the top of the mountain. We had to pass back through the cloud layer to get down off of the mountain.
That evening, we were able to catch up with one of Bobby’s work friends from his days back at AEGIS, Mike Lin, and his family. They hadn’t seen each other for almost 10 years. The boys all got on really well.

On Sunday, we visited the ward in Taiwan where Bobby spent 8 months of his mission. A lot of the members actually remembered him, to everyone’s surprise. We did sacrament meeting in Mandarin, but decided to skip classes, as only Bobby would have understood what was going on.
After church, Bobby took everyone to a restaurant from his mission days that serves “Bing” – basically a bunch of shaved ice with syrup and 8 different kinds of fresh fruit on it. The boys were impressed.

After the park, we all decided that we had way too much walking for a few days, and needed to rest. We did go out later and got an entire dinner out of street food – cancer chicken, fresh-baked breads, and fresh juices. The boys loved it. Katy was just glad that they brought it back to her in the hotel room where she was resting up.
After lunch at the Bing shop, we wandered the streets of Tainan back to our parking garage and found a park full of exercise equipment for older people. The boys had a ton of fun on the exercise equipment.

On Monday morning, we all slept in, and then headed out for classic Taiwanese breakfast – bacon Dan Bing (egg pancakes) and sausage hamburgers. It was a breakfast fit for kings. Afterwards, we decided to head to Dai Tian Fu, a temple that Bobby had found out about on his mission that has animatronic versions of Buddhist heaven and the 18 levels of Buddhist hell.

The dragons had an awesome Koi pond at the bottom with voracious mutant-sized Koi.

Katy wanted to take a QiLin (Chinese unicorn) home with her. We decided that customs may object. Not to mention the cats.

The boys were REALLY NOT into the levels of Hell. It freaked them out a little, so we don’t have many pictures of that. But the workers were fascinated with the boys. All of the workers at the temple kept telling the boys how handsome they were.
The 18 levels of hell were basically like a Halloween haunted house, with animatronic demons torturing evil humans. One of Max’s favorites levels was the one where liars were run over by large crushing devices. Gabe was basically creeped out by the whole thing.

The grounds were beautiful all on their own, full of statues and gardens. And there was another temple on site as well.

The inside of the temple had a massive golden Buddha statue.

After the temple, we met up with some of Bobby’s old mission friends for another hot-pot lunch. Ricky Chen was helping some of the Elder’s from the ward move that day, and brought them along for the fun.

Max insisted on thumb-wrestling with the Elders. They didn’t seem to mind.

Monday night, we found another night market to visit. The boys were super-excited when they found out that the night market had Lego mini-figures for about $1 each.
The boys were even more excited when they found out that the night market had cotton candy. We’ve only seen it once in our year in India. You can see how deprived they are :p

Bobby was super-excited when they found a food cart in the night market that made cheese and bacon sandwiches. Seriously, a huge block of cheese, wrapped in bacon and fried. These people deserve the Nobel prize.

On Tuesday, we spent the majority of the day driving back up to Taipei. We managed not to strangle anyone in the 4 hour ride back up from Tainan. Both Bobby and Katy thought this was a major achievement. We booked a spa hotel back on the north side of the island that specialized in hot springs and spent the afternoon and evening playing in the hot pools at the hotel.
Again, an awesome hotel room, and their favorite part? The bathtub. Both of the boys had a long soak in the huge tub that night. But it was an AWESOME tub!

Gabe thought the wooden bucket should come standard with every bathtub.

Our flight back to India was, unfortunately, a red-eye. Our flight took off from the Taipei airport at 11:30 that night, so we still had plenty of time to see things on the northern side of the island. We decided to try to scale one of the now (hopefully) extinct volcanoes that are on the northern part of Taiwan, but the weather turned against us. After hiking about a 1/2 km straight up the volcano trail, we were all so cold and tired, that we abandoned the idea.

Walking up the path to the volcano’s crown.
The further up we went, the wetter and colder it got.

The boys were not impressed by the sulfur smell coming out of the volcanic vents.
The point at which we decided we couldn’t see the beautiful view through the rain clouds, and were tired of being cold and wet.

Everyone was ecstatic to see the parking lot.
We decided to eat a late lunch at TGI Friday’s, so we could have real American style hamburgers before returning to India. There was much rejoicing.

After lunch, we had some time for shopping before heading back to the airport.

 

Bobby was invited to help a group of young men attempting to film a 3D commercial for BMW. They wanted someone with an English or American accent to be the voice for the commerical which they would shoot in scenic Munnar- tea plantation country. Bobby agreed as long as they covered the cost for the boys and I could come along.

Bobby spent time with them, ironing out the script for a couple of weeks before the shoot. Then we drove four hours out from Kochi. We found some nice places to stop along the way and snap a few pictures.

We found a grassy area next to the river where the boys could get out and wander around for a little bit.

Max chilling on the balcony of the hotel where we stopped to rest. We thought the shoot would happen soon, or at least be close by, but we loaded back up in the car and headed into the hills for another couple of hours.

We passes a bunch of these stands selling things to tourists. None had actual walls. People were walking around with sweaters and jackets tied around their waists. No one warned us that the temperature was about to drop. A lot.

The windy roads made a stunning back drop for the shoot.

Especially with the cultivated tea plants on the hill sides.

We stopped on a mountain top for the final part of the photo shoot. Everyone was hurrying to get done before the rain in those clouds started falling. But, the boys were just so excited to find a grassy place where they could run and roll and play.

They really enjoyed the open space and clean air, even if it was cold. At least until the rain came. Then we hid in the car until they were done with Bobby. A six-hour car ride got us back to our flat very late.

 

Traditional boat races are held in Kerala, India every August. Some of Bobby’s coworkers set us up to experience them at a local hotel. We drove out of town for a couple of hours to a hotel that had set the rooftop up as a viewing place with bleachers and snacks. The TVs were broadcasting an upclose view of the races.

Each boat differed in size and the number of rowers. Some were huge and some only had about 10 oarsmen. One boat was entirely crewed by women in saris. The crews practice for months leading up to the festival.

The festivities began with a parade of the boats. Then the heats began. It took a little while between heats for the boats to get into place, but then they raced right by the hotel. The locals gathered to watch and cheer down by the water’s edge. But plenty of other people had paid for rooftop access like us, to be able to wait more comftably between heats.

I have to admit this was one of the less enjoyable of our little adventures. Things were very slow and nothing was in English. The hotel over booked the rooftop, giving mutltiple people the same seats. And we were so far from the action. But it still was an adventure! We did something we had never done before and added to our experiences and understanding.

During our summer visit back to the USA, Bobby and I decided we needed to make a little time just for our own family so on the way back from our Pennsylvania trip, we stopped in Washington DC for a couple of days. We walked, we ran, we biked…and we had a blast! I wish we could have gotten tickets to go into the White House (one of my big dreams) but since you must order them through your Senator and must prove you live in his or her district to get the tickets, they are not really available to US citizens who live outside the US. We still had plenty to see.

We started with the Washington Monument, but we were too late to get tickets to go inside. I don’t think Gabe would have been willing to go all the way up anyway. The Park Ranger gave us a scavenger hunt for the boys to do at the various monuments in DC.  They got really into it and HAD to find the information at each site before we were allowed to leave. Then we hit the National Archives Museum where we got to see the Constitution of the United States. It was fabulous! We spent a long time in there learning all sorts of cool stuff, but we were not allowed to take any pictures.

All our legs got pretty tired the first day, so we started trying new ways to save energy for when we really needed it: hence, the Metro. We visited several of the Smithsonian Museum’s building, but for some reason I seem to be missing those pictures. The Natural History Museum had a great Kids’ Museum inside it that my boys just did not want to leave.

Of course we had to stop by the Lincoln Memorial. But first, we discovered a rental bike shop. I think the boys enjoyed biking on actual sidewalks more than anything else we did on this trip. They miss it. By the time we made it to the Memorial, they said they were too tired to climb all those stairs, so Bobby and I went into the Memorial ourselves. By the time we came back out, they were most of the way up the stairs, playing. Still wouldn’t go see Ole Abe though.

We ended our trip at the FDR Memorial which is stunningly beautiful. I truly admire FDR and his wife Eleanor Roosevelt but this Memorial, etched with so many great words, made me admire them even more.

So, I realized that I was only recording our adventures in foreign lands on this site. That’s not fair! Our family has also had some great adventures in the USA as well, so I am going back and recording them too.

In June of 2016, the Stair side of our family decided to go on a quest to visit some family history sites and the Priesthood Restoration site in Pennsylvania. Not everyone could attend though. We missed Ben, Ed, Scarlet, and Mike. They all had to work.

After visiting family and checking out all the places where our family had lived over the years, we headed to the Priesthood Restoration site in Northern Pennsylvania where Moses appeared to Joseph Smith and passed in the keys to the Aaronic Priesthood.

The Visitors’ Center was full of information in easily understandable and enjoyable exhibits and surrounded by beautiful woods with trails.

One of the trails leads you under the highway to the other side where you can experience Emma Smith’s parent’s (the Hales) home and a restored version of the small home that Joseph and Emma Smith built while living on her parent’s land. A pair of Sister missionaries will lead you on a tour.

 

If you are up for a little longer walk, you can even visit the peaceful site where Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdrey baptized each other in the Susquehanna River.

And of course, if you traveling with a whole bunch of little boys, you won’t be able to resist playing there too.

August 2016

When we told our boys that we were moving to India for several years, the only request they made was to see the Taj Mahal before we left. Well, check it off the list! We took an extra day while we were in Delhi to drive out to Agra.  We did not have enough time to see the Red Fort as well, but the entire trip was definitely a once in a lifetime chance.

The Taj Mahal is a beautiful and elaborate mausoleum built for the King’s favorite wife. It is famed that she was so highly favored because his first two wives could not give him children, but his third wife gave him many children.

 

No pictures are allowed inside the monument, but we took plenty outside. It’s hard to smile when it is so hot. Check out some of our favorites.

After we finished at the Taj Mahal, our guide took us to the shop owned and run by the family who originally set the semi precious stones in the decorations on the tomb. The same family still does all the maintaaince work on the monument, as well as make and sell other things out of marble and semi precious stones. We saw picture frames, jewelry boxes, end tables, and lots of chess tables. We bought the one below- to be held as an heirloom in the Creasman family forever after. May we all play chess and try to kill each other many times!

Bobby and his co worker joined us on our adventure to Humayun’s Tomb during our time in Delhi. It was an extremely hot day. But the site was beautiful and fascinating. It is a tomb structure similar to the Taj Malhal but not as big and showy. We had so much fun climbing on things and exploring.

And my absolute photo from this trip: