Croc Farm!

This past Sunday we took a trip out to the Crocodile Farm...what an experience! In addition to seeing lots of cool animals, I think we may have been one of the main attractions with all of our little blonde, blue eyed kids! The girls were like movie stars....people kept coming up to them and taking their picture, stroking their heads, and wanting to be in pictures with them! Rick and I wonder what they do with the picture of them and some cute kid(s) that they don't know when they get home?!?!?! We were pretty much the only westerners there (the place is a bit far out from the city and not as many tourists go there) which I'm guessing is why we drew so much attention.

In addition to us providing some entertainment, the Croc Farm itself was pretty cool! They had a crocodile wrestling show, complete with guys putting their hands and yes, heads, into the crocodiles' mouths, and elephant show where the elephants were skateboarding, walking on a tight wire, painting, driving a cart thingy, and coming right up to the stands and taking money from your hand with their trunks (they suck up folded bills like a vacuum cleaner and hand them right to their trainers - neat!) The kids (except Nate, who was scared) got pictures with the elephants and got to pet them. And speaking of pictures, you'll also see one below of Rick with a crocodile! It freaked the kids out to see Daddy right there with one! The place was also pretty much a zoo - but not like any zoo in the US. I felt bad for the animals because the cages were small and not always in the best of shape, but I have to say, I've never been so close to a tiger that I could put my hand into the cage and pet it, if I wanted to (and I didn't!) The kids held the hand of a friendly monkey who was reaching through the bars shaking hands with everyone, and Leah pet a racoon, too. Believe me, lots and lots of Purell hand sanitizer was used that day!!!

Happy Birthday, Leah!

Leah celebrated her 5th birthday on September 10th! On her actual birthday, a Wednesday, she took cupcakes into school and we celebrated that night with just our family. Since we were in the middle of moving that week into our house, we didn't have our party until this past Saturday, September 20th. Leah had a great time with 7 of her girlfriends from school and her brothers and sister, swimming at the pool here in our neighborhood, playing, and eating birthday cake! One of the neatest things about her party, in my opinion, was that she had kids from the US, Canada, Thailand, and South Africa, and one other country (not sure where) there! That definitely wouldn't happen at home in AZ!

Now What's Up With Us!

Now that you are updated on the big happenings, here’s a little of what’s been going on with us on a day to day basis.

The kids are loving school! They have friends from all over the world….an experience that just wouldn’t happen in the US! Leah’s best friend is from South Africa, Caroline is good friends with a little girl from Thailand, and Tim seems to be friends with everyone from everywhere….Ireland, Thailand, the US, Australia, you name it! They are getting involved in lots of activities….Tim is in Cub Scouts and the girls are in Girl Guides (international equivalent of Girl Scouts.) Caroline is a Bluebird and Leah is a Littlebird. Each kid is also taking an after school class – Tim is in team handball, Leah in beads and bracelets, and Caroline is in a making stuffed toys class. There were probably 75 classes to choose from, and if we had wanted to (and had unlimited funds for after school activities!) they each could have been in a different class each day! All three older kids are also taking Thai in school, and also really enjoy that. Tim seems to be picking it up the most quickly, and will wander around the house spouting out phrases in Thai that only he understands! J

Nate hangs out with me every day. He goes to the store, rides in the golf cart with me, plays on the playground, etc. The highpoint of his day is picking the kids up from school – he loves the playground at ISB, their school. He also LOVES our driver, Yai (rhymes with guy) and runs around saying “Yai Yai the driver guy!” If it’s the weekend and we aren’t going anywhere and Yai is here, Nate will head outside and hang out with Yai. Yai, fortunately, seems to like Nate just as much, and will pull him up and down the street in the wagon, play ball with him, etc. If you were around Nate much at all before we left AZ, you’d know he talked but half the time you couldn’t understand him. Well, since being here, he’s also had a speech explosion and talks like crazy, 95% of which you can actually understand!

For me, I’m busier than I thought I’d be! We have a maid Monday through Friday now, and that is really a strange (but good) thing to get used to. (Everyone here has one….I haven’t met anyone yet that doesn’t have a maid!) She keeps the house very clean, does all the laundry, irons everything (I’ve never before had my underwear and PJs ironed!), makes dinner about four days a week (some Thai, mostly western food – all good!), and keeps an eye on Nate if I need to go somewhere without him. She also will babysit if Rick and I want to go out on the weekend, which is really nice. You probably wonder what I do with all my time now that I don’t have to clean the house, do laundry, or make dinner?!?! There is so much to do here, if you want to do it all, that you could have your day filled pretty much every day. I’m involved with the women’s group that meets once a week at church, a newcomer’s group (only once a week, too, only for 6 weeks), and I run Leah’s Littlebird group along with someone else. Between that and running kids to and from school and to and from activities, I’m pretty busy. I also am still teaching online for Grand Canyon University, and that definitely fills in a lot of time.

Rick is really liking work a lot. He’s getting busier and busier and more involved in a broader range of activities the longer he’s there. His commute is really the worst thing, overall, of anything here in Thailand. He leaves at 6:15 am and doesn’t get home until about 6:45 or 7:00 pm (later on Fridays because the traffic is so bad!) But he enjoys working with his group of engineers and has made some friends amongst them and with the other Americans at the facility, which makes things go much more smoothly for him day to day.

We also celebrated Leah’s 5th birthday this past Wednesday! It was a pretty quiet celebration here at home. She took cupcakes into school for her class that morning, then had Phad Thai for dinner (made especially for her by our maid, Goon), and more cupcakes for dessert. We’re going to have some of her little girlfriends over to swim at our neighborhood pool next weekend and have a little party for her then.

Here’s a few more pictures of kids, etc.:
(Leah’s topless because I didn’t want her to get chocolate icing on her school uniform shirt. The other pictures are taken in our carport and on the street right in front of our house!)

Our Permanent Digs!

We finally moved into our house! Yippeee! I suppose the delay really wasn’t that huge but it sure felt that way to us. First, our sea shipment was supposed to arrive on August 29th….but it was a week late. Then, Rick’s work permit (which we needed to have the shipment released from customs) was supposed to be ready on August 28th……but it was about 10 days late. Then, even though we had both the sea shipment here and the work permit in hand……the Port Authority went on strike because of the protests in Bangkok over the current Prime Minister…..yet one more delay! However, finally on September 8th, we moved into our house and now we have all of our own stuff around us! It was like Christmas, sleeping in our own beds, eating off our own dishes, having more clothes to wear, opening boxes full of toys and kids stuff, getting our bikes! We still have a few piles of stuff to put away but mostly, we are settled in now and just need to buy a few things for the house, hang some pictures (we have concrete walls with less than a millimeter of plaster on them….it’s HARD to get nails into them!), etc.

Here’s a few shots of the house, inside and out:
(Nate was asleep - that's why he's missing! The outside pictures are the front door and the backyard.)

Our First Visitor!

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated the blog….I couldn’t get on the site because of password problems. But that’s straightened out now so get ready for a big update! I’ll split it into a couple of posts so that the pictures make sense.

Things are going well here and we are really settling in. At the end of August we had our first visitor. Rick’s brother, Paul, was in Asia on a big business trip and headed out to Bangkok for a weekend to check out our new digs. Of course, we weren’t in the house yet so he got a taste of apartment living, instead. It was really nice to see someone from home….and to have some delivery service from home, too! Paul brought all kinds of important stuff like Leah’s birthday presents, bubble gum (hard to find here!), and Oxi Clean, just to name a few things! Let’s just say his suitcase was a lot lighter when he left Bangkok!

We did try to get out and about and see some tourist kind of stuff while Paul was here, too. We headed out to Wat Arun, the temple of the dawn, with the intention of going to the Royal Palace after that. Wat Arun was really neat (See pictures below!) and a bit different from many of the other temples around here. Because of the protests going on in Bangkok, we took kind of an indirect route to get there (not a good idea to drive through the middle of an angry mob!) and the kids got to have their first ferry ride across the river. The water was muddy brown, like all the rivers here, and full of floating plants. The kids, however, liked it anyhow! We also went to the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (can’t remember the name in Thai) and saw a giant gold Buddha figure that was easily 100 feet long! The kids got a kick out of putting little 1 baht (Thai currency) coins in the collecting jars in there….I believe there are 100 jars and they put a baht in each one! We were headed to the Royal Palace after that but didn’t make it over…it had already been a long day and we were tired from the heat and humidity, so we headed home. That night we took Paul out for some really good Thai food, though, at a restaurant right on the river near us. And Sunday we headed to Chatuchuk market…..a weekend flea market that covers acres and acres. It’s like a dollar store that goes on and on and on and on! You can find absolutely anything there from handmade furniture to pets to used shoes to Thai crafts to silk flowers to silk fabric to magazines from 1986…you get the idea! We also hit one of the big malls downtown, MBK, for some electronics, had lunch at Hard Rock Café Bangkok, and the of all that, the kids thought riding on the BTS sky train (raised commuter train through Bangkok) was the most exciting!

Here’s some pictures of the weekend:

(by the way, the one of Leah and the little statue is funny….she saw that statue and said, “Look, that queen is holding the remote for the TV!” )