Year of the Tiger

Well, we've had a woeful lack of snow around here. You just can't expect it in 90-something degree weather. The hot season is upon us and it is HOT. Makes me tremble to think what April, the hottest month, will hold. While we've had no snow, we have had tigers...

and lions...

...and, less glamorously, lots of germs.

But first things first. We had the opportunity to go up to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand to help with a conference for people working in south Asia, mainly for Tim to lead worship. So we had a lovely time getting to know some lovely people and the kids got to do a VBS led by some really great folks who came from Atlanta for that purpose. What a blessing for us. Emmy now has new friends who live elsewhere in Asia and is part of a 'girls club' that wears water bottle cap rings and has plans to keep in communication via email. We took her out of school for a few days for our trip, but as it turned out, her grade was closed for the week because of a number of H1N1 cases.

We had done elephants, monkeys and snakes before, so we decided to enjoy some tigers this time around, which was a treat.

Isn't he beautiful? I just wanted to show you that they were, in fact, alive. They were very docile, but they insist that they don't drug them; they're just trained to be around people and apparently are naturally lethargic in the heat of the day. I do hope that's true. The visits are also highly supervised. They don't allow children in with the adult tigers (seems like a good precaution), so we enjoyed the 4 month olds, and they were indeed beautiful. Just look at those paws- it was fun to touch them!

Chinese New Year coincided with Valentine's Day weekend this year, and we were invited to celebrate with some friends who had quite a party. Tim was working and missed the fun, but I'm glad we went ahead. I have a vivid memory of being at Epcot as a child, in the China area, watching dancing dragons, and it was amazing to stand in a friend's yard and watching dancing lions as an adult! I wonder if our children will remember it? Perhaps Emmy will; probably she'll remember that she held her hands over her ears the whole time as the accompanying drums were quite loud!

Emmy receiving her 'red envelope' at the end of the party. These are traditionally given (with money inside) to celebrate the New Year.

Valentine's Day was quiet. We had a little fun with breakfast, and then I had a small scavenger hunt for the kiddos. Unfortunately, the Wretched Stomach Bug of 2010 had hit Asa by then, so only Emmy really enjoyed this activity. Still, it was sweet...

finding a clue

treasure!

This book was part of their treasure, and I highly recommend it, especially for adventure loving boys like ours. We didn't know until we read it that one of the characters is named Asa! Bonus!

(As an aside, we ordered books for the holidays from betterworldbooks.com, and I highly recommend them because a) they raise funds for global literacy, b) they save books from landfills by specializing in used books (almost all of the ones we ordered were used and former library books from around the States, but we have ordered new from them too and have been pleased with everything) and c) they ship anywhere in the world (free in the U.S.!). That's my little plug.

This is what most of Valentine's Day looked like, an on the couch, watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang sort of day. Delightful movie, by the way. Asa was the only one suffering at this point, but Julian began reminding us what he'd had for breakfast about lunchtime and Tim joined in the fun later that afternoon. The girls remained well, amazingly. Girl power!

Just for fun, because I love the expressiveness of this child!

Dancer, Artist, Warrior

Any day (and week and month) that begins with an overflowing (cloth) diaper, oozing its murky contents on to every available crib surface, causes one to enter with a certain level of caution and suspicion. This wasn't our most stellar day. But Julian cheered me considerably after lunch with his enthusiasm for dance, which I captured on video. I wanted to post it, but, alas, he was scantily clad, and we're a little funny about that. I'm going to mail it to grandparents, but if you'd like a good laugh, let me know and I'll send it your way.

A few recent things:

Emmy's first art show, displaying her work from the first semester of first grade.

Khaw Meow is doing just fine, and becoming an integral part of the family.

He's cute with clothes on, too...

Sometimes, on Tim's day off, he'll take Asa on a boys' adventure outing, often riding the soeng taew to the King's Park for some treehouse/paddleboat fun. If we time it just right, they go during Ju's nap, and it's amazingly great for me. They come back all hot and sweaty and sometimes bring somtam, chicken and sticky rice for lunch...yummy.


This guy is our little warrior. He emerges from his bedroom each morning, clad in next to nothing, with a sword in each hand. He directs me to be nefarious characters and dragons all day long so that he can defeat me. He only wants to read books with battles (hard to come by in appropriate form for a 3 year old), and scours every book carefully for any picture of swords, shields, spears, even guns. He'll take shovels and machinery if no pictures of weaponry are available. I often coerce him to read Beatrix Potter, Robert McCloskey and Winnie the Pooh, and he enjoys them once we're into them. He also loves fairy tales, because he loves the princes with swords.

After some recent, ahem, incidents, I'm really trying to develop his sense of knightly honor and valor to extend to love for his siblings. Our recent drill has gone like this:

Me: "What is your duty?"
Asa (standing at attention): "To protect Julian!"

It's working, too. He still occasionally bops him on the head with a sword, but he's becoming quite aware of the need to close doors so our little bottom scootcher doesn't head for the hills (or the stairs), and that sort of thing.

And this was fun...our friend Catherine brought us polynesian sauce from her trip home over Christmas, so we had a taste of home!