All My Bags Are Packed, I'm Ready To Go...

If only it were this easy and comfortable to transport two small children across the world...

Okay, all are bags are really not packed (but we're getting close!) and we are not ready to go just yet, but in 24 hours we'll be on an airplane beginning the LONG journey to Atlanta! We've had a good week of tending to seemingly unending details, saying some temporary but significant farewells, and thus far have had no major emotional breakdowns (this week, that is. We won't talk about last week:). We're privileged to have two "homes", but the business of transitioning between them is uncharted territory. Thank you to those of you who are praying for us through this long travel and transition, and most especially for these dear children as they adjust to all the changes ahead.

We'll see you soon, Atlanta folks!

To The Beach!

It was a huge treat to get to take a break between periods of chaos last week and go to the beach with our friends and teammates, the Henrys. Their family has been an amazing provision for ours the past two years. I've found a kindred spirit in Crystal, Emmy absolutely adores her best buddy PJ, Tim and Paul have become good friends, and even Asa and Calvin stop grabbing toys from each other long enough to have fun sometimes:). And not to forget "Baby Dell", as Asa calls little Adele, with whom he is completely infatuated. Yesterday he was composing music in her honor, hitting spoons together and chanting rhythmically, "Ba-by-Dell, Ba-by-Dell" (she wasn't here when this was happening, but she seems to be ever present in his thoughts!). It would be hard to overstate how much their friendship has meant to us as we've built a new life and new relationships here over the past two years. When we return from the U.S., they will soon be leaving for seminary, so this is truly the end of an era for us, but certainly not the end of our friendship.

Some snapshots of our time...

This was our homemade "sala" (Thai for a covered pavilion), providing much needed shade from the sun- made from a tarp, bamboo, and tree! We felt so native.

I'm not sure what he's doing- looking at an airplane?- but I love this picture!

There was lots of golf on the beach...

Almost 19 weeks now!
There's definitely something happening in there...

PJ and Emmy enjoying Ronald's company and waiting for an after-dinner ice cream treat.

Have I mentioned how much we're going to miss these friends? We love you, Henrys!

2 Years...Almost

Well, he won't really be 2 for another three weeks. But we decided, for simplicity's sake, to go ahead and have his two year old checkup before we leave Bangkok...

Here's our big boy waiting for his appointment. He had to take a quick break from playing on the waiting room playground for a picture. We found that it was harder to get him to sit still for a 2-year old checkup picture than it was for his 1-year old checkup...go figure!

And here the doctor is listening to his adorable little heartbeat. He was an amazing trooper during his appointment, going along with every aspect with good humor. When she rolled him over and gave him a shot, he didn't even cry, just looked mildly puzzled.

He weighs 29 pounds, which puts him in the 50-75th percentile for weight, and is 3 feet tall, which puts him in the 75th-90th percentile for height. Our doctor told us that you can double the height at 2 years old to get a general idea of how tall a child will be when he or she grows up...so she told us Asa will be 6 feet tall! We all got a good laugh out of that! At this rate, we'll truly be looking up to our children when they're adults!

A few fun almost 2-year old Asa facts:
-He is still completely attached to his dog, and he calls it "mii maa". "mii" is his word for please, and "maa" is Thai for dog. If we ever lose "mii maa", we're in serious trouble.

-He has a few regular Thai words, like "maa". Another is "bplaa", which means fish. He won't say dog or fish, only "maa" and "bplaa". He also says "my ow", (Thai for "I don't want it"), when he doesn't want something. So a common sentence might be "My ow mii maa Mommy" (I don't want Dog, Mommy).
-He always puts "big" in front of a number of words- anything to eat is a "big bite", any money is "big Baht" (which is Thai currency), fish are always "big bplaa", and a ball is a "big ball".
-He loves to look for "jinkjokes", the small Thai geckos that are everywhere. He can commonly be heard exclaiming, "uh-oh, jinkjoke!", and our Thai friends at church love to help him search for them. We have a couple of jinkjokes that live in our house, and sometimes we'll hear the one that inhabits the window area over the couch making his little gecko noises, much to Asa's delight. I wonder what little creature he'll find to be fascinated with in Georgia?
-He still makes sounds for lots of words- all animals (except for "bplaa"!), and he makes big exciting sounds for trucks and motorcycles.
-He's a big boy and wears undies all the time, except for naps and nighttime. We have an accident now and then, but love not washing all those diapers!
-He somehow seems to become more lovable by the day. I know I'm highly biased, but how very thankful we are for our boy!

And a bonus picture...the same day Asa had his appointment, Emmy had an immunization (which she met with her usual hysteria- bless her heart) and hearing and vision tests. A big day for our doctor-shy little girl! Here she is wearing cool 3-D glasses to check her depth perception. I'm very thankful to report that all is well with both her eyes and her ears- we thank God for good health.

Elephants and Boats

Often on the way home from somewhere in the evening, we'll see an elephant walking along the road with his owner, out trolling the streets to find someone willing to pay to feed him sugarcane or bananas. Usually we're on a busy road and just enjoy the sighting, but tonight we were on a smaller road near our neighborhood and impulsively pulled over for some up-close elephant time! I think these animals are so amazing and love that we get to see them with some regularity. To think that to our children an elephant sighting is commonplace! On the other hand, Emmy recently asked me if there are still horses alive in the world, so it will be good to have some horse pasture sightings in Georgia!

We also had the fun this evening of having dinner with our neighbors. They are a sweet family who have a shop at a nearby mall and work all the time, so our time with them has been very limited. As we approach our time of being gone, we've made it a priority to get together with them, and we went to this fun restaurant nearby that's on a pond with boats. The area of the restaurant at which we ate tonight (it's all outdoor, as are many restaurants here) is accessible only by boat, so we took a boat both before and after dinner.
These are people we could be really good friends with if we could all just slow down and find time to spend together. They have two precious little girls close in age to our kids, he plays both guitar and piano (kindred spirit for Tim), and you can tell by her countenance how kind she is. True to the generous nature of Thai culture, they brought gifts tonight for our children and insisted on buying us dinner to send us off to America (even though Tim is officially the "Pii", because he's a year older than Charlie, and so culturally he's supposed to buy dinner.) I hope in the future we can make it a priority to have more time with them; something to look forward to when we return!

Saving Lives, Drinking Coffee, Pouring Concrete...

That pretty much sums up the week we just had with a really great group of people from one of our family's partnership churches in Atlanta. Four couples came and brought us tremendous fun and encouragement. And besides that, they taught CPR classes to the community (a real asset in a place with very little infrastructure for emergencies), hosted coffeehouses that brought lots of new people into the church, and worked on a tremendously long and hot project to pour a concrete slab in front of a new building our team be using in ministry in the slum area in which we work.

I was planning to post some pictures, but this video Tim made until the wee hours last night really gives a great overview of their time. It takes a few minutes to load, so you may want to leave it and come back to it. If you want to make the investment to watch, it gives a good look at our area of Bangkok and some of what life and work looks like here...