Taiwan or Bust

Flying with 2 boys is a daunting task...even with both parents. Not to mention that Justin has been pretty rebellious these past few month and Dylan has also become a little more high maintenance as his personality develops. We left our apartment around 8:20pm...arrived at Tom Bradley Terminal a little before 9:00pm...got through baggage check and security by 11:30pm....did a little duty free shopping...headed to the gate around 12:15am...departed LAX around 1am...flew for about 14 hours...and arrived around 6:30am. Let me just start off that the flight was crazy. Not because of the airline...Singapore Airlines is a great way to fly...but our kids put us at the brink of insanity. If they act poorly in public at least there is a feeling that we can escape someplace to deal with them, but in a airplane...everybody knows your business and there is no place to hide. You are left to feel like one of those incompetent parents who can't keep their children in check...you know...the ones who we shake our heads at in the lines of the grocery market or the ones at Target who drag their kids and we think to ourselves that we wouldn't place ourselves in that situation. Well, it happens to the best of parents (at least I keep telling myself so I don't feel as bad) and it happened to us.It's not entirely their fault...they are kids afterall...Dylan was dealing with congestion and crying a lot...Justin was overly excited and stayed up till 3am PST watching his personal airline TV and consequently would wake up in a weird semi conscious state crying...that is more our fault for letting him stay up, but we were trying to keep everybody peaceful and the time changes would have jacked everything up anyways. Anyways, here is Justin posing with Stephanie just before we are about to get off the plane after arriving in Taiwan. She is a Singapore Airline Stewardess that helped us out. At the age of 3 Justin is already picking up on airline stewardesses. There was another stewardess named Jasmine who I believe is the head stewardess, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get a picture of her with Justin. I don't know how Nancy is going to make it back to the US by herself with two kids. Godspeed with her. This is about 12:00pm with Nancy and the kids on the roadway path to her mother's restaurant. We are walking over there for lunch. Nancy's mother's restaurant is a mid-sized yet cozy restaurant in the countryside. It has grown a lot since I was here 2 years ago. It is one of the most popular weekend getaway restaurants in the Danshui area. This is one of the many ducks that live on the restaurant property.Here is Justin fishing in a Koi pond with a fishing net. Nancy's mother set up Koi ponds not only because it is aesthetically pleasing, but also for children to catch fish as an activity to keep them entertained. Of course no one ever catches anything because the fish are too fast and smart to be caught, but it sure keeps the kids busy.Well this is only day one and it is only 3:oopm. I'll keep posting as much as I can.