Funny Things I Heard Them Say

The other day, after intently listening to the story of Adam and Eve and how they first sinned, Daniel looked up at me with his very serious eyes and said, "Mom, Satan is a jerk, and a liar, too!"

And in response to my Thai aunt (whose English is the Australian brand) when she mentioned Helen's mummy, "That's not right! A mummy is a dead person in Egypt!" Oh, thank you, classical education!

Sam just turned 2. I know, I know, where did those 2 years go? And little Abi slept 7.5 hours last night! Life is good.

More on Abi

Pun put up the last post for me, which I am very grateful for, otherwise you wouldn't be seeing any pictures until now. I am still figuring out what our new "normal" looks like with 4 instead of 3. All you who have larger families, I can hear you smirking! :) Anyway, as with all our births, Abi decided to come late. She was our earliest birth, though, at just 6 days late! She was also my easiest and shortest labor. In fact, my friend who helped us with her birth began to call people in for her birth when I thought I still had a few hours to go. She was born 15 minutes later. And she was our smallest baby. She is such a sweet, petite little thing. The first night she only squeaked like a kitten when she woke to eat!



Our Sweet Abi...

Truly, we have all fallen head over heals for Abi. She is so easy to care for and so much fun to hold and kiss. All 3 of her brothers and sister are in love with her and fight for turns to hold her.

Helen, Daniel, and Sam

Abi and Helen share the same due date (Aug 20) so we were wondering if they would share their birthday as well. That didn't quite happen, so 4 days after Abi was born we celebrated Helen's 6th birthday with lots of friends and family.

Helen, Daniel, Sam, and Abi on Helen's birthday.

Today Helen started 1st grade and Daniel Preschool. It was a bit crazy as I am trying to figure out a new curriculum in combination with Sonlight. I think it will be a great year once I get the logistics down.

Throw in a visit from Grandma and Grandpa from Utah, some extra outings to the Crocodile Farm and Elephant Island with them and we are keeping busy.

Home Improvements

Sam, 16 months, hanging out on the patio.


We have been in our new house, it's hard to believe, for a year and 4 months! Over the months we have been making progress, not steadily, but in spurts. Lately, lots of exciting things have been happening...



This is our front patio area. Pun put down concrete tiles and we added a table and chairs. We sometimes eat breakfast or lunch out here. It is very well shaded so it feels sort of secluded and cozy. Most recently, Pun "planted" this stump in the flower bed and then put in flowers.



We put down rocks in all the little areas where there was only dirt and then planted creeping vines to grow on the walls.



Ok, so don't look in the planter here. Look at the planter. It wasn't there before and it represents several hours of sweat and back breaking work on a very hot summer day for Pun. This wall runs along the back of our yard. The kitchen window faces it. When I do dishes this is what I see. Before we put the planter in a couple weeks back we had been throwing all our "compostable" garbage here and it was looking pretty ugly! I hated staring at it every day. But, in all that we threw out there to compost, several plants began to grow on there own including a nice tomatoe plant which has already given us 8 tomatoes (and we didn't do a thing!) What you see is what has grown up on its own, except for a couple little plants we stuck in there to see what would happen. This will be a little vegetable garden as soon as we go pick out our plants.

Our bedroom has been the last on the "honey-do" list for so many reasons, but lately we have begun to tackle it and I am so excited about this room! We have it almost all the way painted. It was supposed to be red, but when the red paint that we chose actually went up, oh boy, it was a mistake:


So we changed to a brick red terracotta sort of color. It is beautiful! (the picture really doesn't do it justice)




I would say we are 70% done. I am waiting for Pun to help me move some heavy furniture so I can finish.

This last weekend Pun put up wood shelves that he made for the two recessed spaces on either side of our balcony doors. I have been waiting and hoping for these for weeks (months, actually!) and I couldn't be more thrilled with how they turned out. Now the hard task of organizing them to be beautiful and functional awaits.




We are planning to work more this Saturday...I can hardly wait to see what we will get done!!

Hello again (part 2)

I meant to do all this in one post, but then my pictures messed up and it was just easier to separate it into two posts.

So, I was saying, shortly after we got home from Chaing Rai, my parents came for a visit. The kids were counting down the days until Grandma and Grandpa arrived. Having my mom here was such a help. She really took care of our family while I felt so pukey.



Helen and Daniel took some walks down our street with Grandpa.



We also spent some time painting, which was a lot of fun because Grandma and Grandpa painted! What you will do for your grandkids...



Daniel turned 4 while my parents were here. We celebrated the ususal way with cake

and presents.



Helen couldn't wait to try on Daniel's new pirate suit!



Sam really bonded well with my Dad and my Mom.



At the crocodile farm...crazy man putting his head in the croc's mouth and the kids and Mom holding a baby tiger.



Helen showing off her Northern Thai Tribal costume

We have also been hard at work trying to get more done on our house. It is amazing how much time it seems to take! Such a long list of projects I have for Pun (and me, too) to "finish" house. Our favorite phrase these days is "little by little". I will post pictures of this soon.

So I am back online. There is much to tell. I will try to be faithful and continue sharing.

Hello again

Yes, yes, I know it has been awhile. Of course, lots of things have been going on since I last wrote. The main reason I have been away so long (if you don't already know) is that I am 19 weeks pregnant. I have finally reached a point of "normalcy" in this pregnancy. It seemed to take me longer this time to get over the morning sickness and I have just been so tired. I am due late August and we are so excited to meet another new baby!

Though I have been under the weather we have still kept relatively busy. Over the new year we went with our dear friends up to the village where they have been working for years writing down the people's language and then translating the Bible book by book as well as several other cultural type books. It was, to say the least, a fascinating experience and one that endeared us to these people. Here are a few pictures:



The annual Christmas party for everyone in the village



A guest at the party



Going on a hike through rice fields


Daniel and his best buddy


Northern Thai children performing music at the market

Burmese monks at the Thai-Burmese border

And of course, a few wild life pictures. One sad little gecko who just lost his tail!

And a very large spider in the tree.

We are now 11 weeks into Helen's kindergarten year. Wow! We are having a great time. Even before we moved to Thailand I longed to home school. Now, it is nearly a necessity. I do think that I might be just a bit more excited about it all than Helen. Daniel hangs out with us for as long as his interest lasts. He's only 3 1/2 so some days that's not long at all.


Here is a typical day for us:

* Bible story, one hymn (we usually spend about 3 weeks working on the first verse of a well known hymn), and Bible verse for the week

* Read Alouds: this usually includes a Mother Goose poem and a fable or another short story

* Either a Science or a Social Studies read aloud. We are currently reading from a Berenstein Bears Science book, and an Usborne book about different kinds of jobs people do

* An early learning worksheet

* And occasionally, a fun hands on project/game

This lasts anywhere from 30-90 minutes, depending on the interest level.


After lunch when Sam and Daniel take naps Helen and I work on:

*Handwriting

*Math

*Thai

*Spelling

*Reading

*Art

*Memorizing Poetry


Though it looks like a lot, we don't usually spend more than 10-15 minutes on any one thing and we certainly don't tackle everything everyday! Our afternoon session is about an hour.

We are using Sonlight and though at first I had other plans for home school, this has turned out to be a great fit for us now. It is a literature based history program, meaning that history is the base of the curriculum with lots of period literature added in. For the most part "living books" (books written by one author who is knowledgeable and writes from his love/interest on the subject) are used instead of textbooks. Also, it does a great job with world cultures and missions. It is a curriculum well known for its excellent choice in books. If you love to read to your children, the Sonlight catalog is a great resource for finding books worth reading.

Bonnie and Clyde

My One Year Old

One tired little boy...

One adorable lady bug birthday cake filled with chocolate chips inside...


One fat little belly from a day full of eating...


Happy Birthday to my One Year Old!

Healthy Snacks

I have one child who would prefer to eat only fruits and vegetables. She tells me after a few bites of ice cream that she has had enough. She would agree that sugar is not good for you. I know. She really can't be mine. This child definitely belongs to Pun.

Then I have another child. He's a sweet boy. He wakes up in the morning with a silly grin thinking about candy. He will warn me not to eat all of the cookies (ice cream, cake, candy, ...) so there will more for him later. For him, there is only one food group--sugar. The rest is complimentary. Now, this is my child.

Children in Thailand typically do not eat sweet things. Or at least they do not crave them the way my son does. They eat things like seaweed chips or squid-on-a-stick as seen being sold by this lady.

Just seconds before I took this next picture, the little boy behind the girl in a pink dress was tearing into his squid stick. Seriously, I thought he was going to growl. My kids watched in shock, not convinced that it was as delicious as these children made it look.

So imagine my surprise when my children (both the responsible one and the one like me) began eating Taro. What is Taro?


Well, it is made of flour and fish and pressed into long, thin, dry strips. It tastes fishy. Apparently, this package is Bar-B-Q flavor. My kids don't like fish, they tell me. But they love this stuff. I think some of it is made from squid. These days it is not uncommon for me to hear:

"Mom, do we have any 'quid'?"
"Yes."
"Oh, good!"

I watch him tear into it with a big sweet smile, but I am not so convinced that is as delicious as he makes it look.

Dear Grandma and Grandpa

I can walk!

Love,
Sam

Passion Fruit

How can it be that I have been here 2 years and am still trying new fruits? I just ate my first passion fruit last week and I am wondering where they have been all this time? Oh my, I love it! Not for those who like their fruit sweet, this is a sour one. Some in my Thai family don't even care for it. Not me. This last week I ate 15 of them, 7 in one setting. I can't get enough. Have you ever seen it? Tried it??

Doesn't look like much from the outside.



Inside, bright yellow with little crunchy edible seeds. You scoop out all the yellow with your spoon and eat it up. My mouth is watering.



If you come to my house, you will have to fight Sam and me for them! He is the only other one who likes them!

The Woes of Digital Photography

I have been trying to capture a picture of Sam's new smile. He just pushed 4 new teeth through and has the cutest crooked grin. With digital cameras, I always seem to fail in getting the exact expression I want, because my babies faces change between the focus and the click!

"Oops!"


"This one?"

"Maybe, tomorrow, Mom."

I have been collecting snake stories for awhile now. Not intentionally. I just keep hearing them. I would have blogged about these, too, but I am well aware of how much time I devote to animals on this blog, so I have refrained. I could have told you the one about the 10 foot python in my father-in-law's yard that he clubbed to death (he thought) only to find him missing the next morning and then spotted by 2 others later. I could have told you how my aunt had to call the zoo to get another large snake out of her tree. Or how about the cobra my neighbor found in his yard, or the viper in my other neighbor's yard. These are all recent. In the not too far past, my father-in-law had to deal with a king cobra at his ranch. No worries, though, that is a good 2 hour drive from here.

I now have another story to add to my collection. Yesterday, on the day Pun stayed home because he was sick (Thank you, Lord!) we had our own visitor. I looked outside, and there he was! Chills went up my spine! Of course, I alerted my whole family. I really wanted Pun to come immediately. He came several minutes later.


The kids and I enjoyed all the drama of it. Pun finally caught him under the wheel of the car. Before it was all over, the poor thing lost his tail. Pun called security to help. He must of crawled up into the car because he was being spotted on all sides and never appeared again.


No worries, though. He was just a common (non-venomous) rat snake.

Helen and Daniel decided to plan a snake trap. Here is what Helen came up with, with Daniel's suggestions at the bottom.




Pun was proud...