Happy New Year!

Celebrating Hedquist style: Eating, playing games, eating, watching movies, snuggling and eating. That's how we rang in the New Year halfway across the world with our little family of 5. First we made pizzas:

Then we watched movies and played games into the wee hours of the night.

Well, 10:30 anyway. That's when Sophie and Lucas finally keeled over from sheer exhaustion and became completely dead to the world. We tried all forms of torture to wake them up at midnight when the fireworks started booming all through the city, but were totally unsuccessful. Too bad, because what a view we have from our apartment! We watched the whole Taipei basin light up in celebration of 2010.

New Years Day was completely beautiful (didn't you hear? Global warming is only on THIS side of the world. . . . .) so we decided to spend the day at a park downtown which had just opened a new playground and was holding a flower festival. BAD IDEA!!! You'd think that after 7 years in Asia we'd learn that when everyone has a holiday, we should avoid public places at all costs.



But, the flowers were beautiful and it was fun to get out with hundreds of our Chinese brothers and sisters.

Sophie was completely oblivious to the "hello! hello! little girl!" and picture taking that surrounded her like a tornado as she played in her little fairy garden.

And now, let's get down to business and discuss the real reason for this post. This multi-faceted gem contains a thousand words. A special thank-you to Shaun for using his skills to covertly capture this image (you may want to click on the picture to view it in it's enormity for full appreciation.)

I have titled it "People watching people watching people."

1. Who is most interesting?
--the super cute foreign devil baby with blond-white hair
--the woman pointing at the baby

or

--the man who is getting his jollies filming the previously-mentioned woman?

2. Lady, show some dignity. You are a mother, or at least I think you are unless you carry your poodle around in that stroller, as some Taiwanese women are apt to do, in which case your outfit might make more sense. . . . . Anyways, I digress. You do not wear spiky-heeled pleather boots and a white spandex uber-mini to the public park, or ANYWHERE for that matter. It is you who requires the finger-pointing. And no, I am not just saying these things because I'm jealous. Really.

3. What in the world is that man going to do with his video footage? Probably the same thing I am doing. Check youtube with the following tags: new year, taipei, flower festival, and "what is she wearing???"