This and That

It has been quite a week here. But more about that later. Right now I have a photo backlog...

In early June (or was it late May?) we went up to Khao Yai National Park, a great outdoors sort of place we really like that's about 3 hours north of us. It's nice to be out in the jungles of Thailand. It was a pretty low scale wildlife day, as there were no elephant sightings, and only one monkey, but he sat and devoured the bananas we threw to him, peeling them efficiently with his limber little hands and downing them as quickly as we could provide them. Speaking of monkeys, isn't this little guy the cutest you've seen?

This waterfall was absolutely magnificent...

...but this little miracle was even more so!

This is part of the group we went with, comprised mostly of the college interns that have spent the summer here with us working alongside us. They have been a real blessing to us as a team and as a family.

When I said there wasn't much wildlife before, I forgot about the leeches. They were abundant. And incredibly agile. I always thought leeches were flattish and attached themselves flatly to your skin, but these guys are long and tubular, and you could actually see them standing up on one end on the trail, waving their bodies around looking for someone to latch onto! Really gross. They were tenacious, and our whole family got leech bites except for our little guys, who were riding up high...



Asa doing battle with the tiger at the welcome center. He's an actual park native, killed some years ago and now he graces the welcome center as a warning to all visitors to beware the wildlife!

Changing course, here's Emmy arabesque-ing during the mini ballet class she took a number of weeks ago at the church, lead by two lovely ballerinas who are part of the intern group. Such fun!

We decided to forgo the embassy 4th of July shindig this year, thinking that the late hour and travel would be too much with an infant, so we had a picnic at our nearby King's park, and it was perfect. Hot dogs, chips and salsa, watermelon and apple pie. A good time was had by all and we were home for bedtime! You can see in this picture that Emmy recently lost her other top tooth. That makes all 4 front ones and she looks so beautifully like a growing up little girl!



Julian considers our country's history...these flags were a project with Daddy that morning.

Enjoying the sand and water table Daddy recently built for them. You can see part of our little garden in the background. It's looking pretty wild out there, but no produce yet. We're novices, so we'll see what comes of it.

Finally, here's our Em and Melanie being silly together, which is what they do best. Melanie worked with us for two years and has just returned to the U.S. to apply for and prepare to come back and work long-term. She has been a great friend and 'auntie', and we miss her very much!