Charlie has a birthday!

Catherine LOVES birthdays and loves birthday parties even more. So, when she informed us that it was Charlie's birthday, we couldn't deny her throwing Charlie a birthday party. Luckily, we had just bought Play-doh in KL and had lots of supplies to make a "cake". Here everyone is singing HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Charlie. Yes, even Molson got in on the fun!

For those not famaliar with Charlie, a long-standing member of the family, Charlie is the stuffed monkey in the chair in front of Dave. The dress was Catherine's when she was about 4 months old. Charlie used to wear one of MY baby dresses when I had Charlie when I was very little! So, needless to say, Charlie has been around awhile!


Catherine helps Charlie blow out the candles on her cake. Notice the cake has real (play-doh) candles and frosting around the edges!

Catherine, as hostess, cuts the birthday cake.

We all enjoyed Charlie's birthday party and are not sure how old Charlie really is??

Some of the highlights from our trip to KL

OUR HOTEL-Staying in a great suite at the Berjaya Times Square Hotel whose lobby sits on the 14th floor, because it sits atop a 13 story mega mall! The mall includes a HUGE borders book store, a bowling alley, IMAX theater, children’s amusement park and theme park complete with a roller coaster! We really enjoyed strolling through the mall and got a babysitter one night and saw an IMAX movie called Haunted House which was in 3-D! Our room was great, because we could watch a movie while Catherine slept in the next room and the small kitchenette where we could keep yogurt, apple juice and other snacks.

KL HALF MARATHON- We planned the trip to KL specifically to run in the KL half marathon which we did on Sunday morning. Start time was 6AM. As this was a chip race, Dave and I decided to be the last ones to cross the start (better than the last ones to cross the finish!) as we started 3 minutes behind the official race clock and thought we would see how many people we could pass! We have to check the official results to see how we fared. We ran a respectable pace in the high heat and humidity and probably hovered around 9 minute miles. There were some rolling hills, not ONE mile marker, very few water stops, the fact that this pregnant lady made 2 pee stops in the first 5K and the course was possibly a bit long so the race was challenging to say the least! and We ran the whole way together and finished feeling good. We enjoyed cooling off in the tents with cool mist fans and baby pools! We also met the # 2 finisher in the men’s marathon, a sweet guy from Kenya. He said he didn’t run that well and finished in…2:16!!! In typical African fashion after talking with us for about 3 minutes, he wanted to exchange email addresses! Catherine was in good spirits playing with the babysitter when we returned to the hotel. We REALLY enjoyed the buffet breakfast this morning!

EATING GOOD FOOD- We visited the Bukit Bintang which is the famous street with lots of hotels and restaurants. We couldn’t resist eating at the Planet Hollywood AND the Hard Rock Café! We also ate a wonderful Italian restaurant the night before the race and I enjoyed homemade linguini with red sauce loaded with seafood. Catherine had a pizza with Buffalo mozzarella straight from the fire oven! We indulged and had Baskin Robbins, New Zealand ice cream and Italian Gelato. Dave had his minimum ration of at least one Starbucks daily.

[Note: if we were currently living in the US we would never eat at such a western resto, but we cut ourselves some slack since we live in Dhaka!]

TAKING IN THE SIGHTS-We visited the famous Petronas Twin Towers, the KL Menara Tower, Chinatown, the new train station, the King’s Palace, the downtown park complete with butterfly garden (largest covered zoo in the world?), Independence Square (start/finish for the race), the KL monrail and countless malls, shops and restos.

The famous Petronas Towers

The Petronas Towers or Twin Towers are the tallest twin buildings in the world. They were completed in 1998 and were the tallest buildings at that time. Now, the Sears tower and the Taipei 101 top them. The towers have 88 floors and a sky bridge (the tallest in the world) at floors 41 & 42. Patronas, Malaysia’s national oil company occupies one entire tower and the other one is home to various businesses. Maybe you remember the Towers from the movie, Entrapment, with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones? The first several floor of the Towers are a huge mall, which we did visit. Catherine got a new pair of crocs and we bought some Play-doh! We enjoyed fresh fruit smoothies and a walk through the great park just at the base of the towers.

We decided against a tour up to the sky bridge as it required getting to the Towers prior to 7AM and getting free tickets for entry later in the day. Plus the entry does not take to you to the top of the towers but only to the sky bridge. We figured since our hotel room was on the 37th floor, we didn’t need to go through all that hassle for a few more floors! We did however, go to the KL Menara Tower. More in a future post on this visit.

PS Isn't it amazing that someone with that baby bump can hold up those Towers?!

We’re back!

Just a quick note to say that we are back from our long week-end in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and had a great time! Although it was a bit hot and humid during our half marathon, we brought our own Gatorade and enjoyed the course and getting to run the entire race together. More posts to follow this one on the all of the fun things we saw and did.

Eating pizza has never been SO much fun!

Catherine enjoyed her last meal in KL before we left for the airport to head back to Dhaka. She decided to dine al fresco and had lots of fun eating unsupervised. Dave and I were busy packing with all of our new purchases. You don’t go anywhere outside of Bangladesh without taking AT LEAST one empty suitcase to bring back various purchases. I did take a quick moment to snap this photo!