O Lord that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness! - William Shakespeare

This is the closest we got to turkey this year. Our incarnation of these little birds was decidedly tropical, with dried mango wings and beaks. Candy corn, which is usually used for these birds, is cute, but not so tasty, anyway.

Thanksgiving was actually pretty challenging for me emotionally this year. I hesitate to even say that, because I don't want to come across as complaining about my circumstances (which are not lacking at all), but I also know that it's easy, from a distance, to paint our lives as one big ray of sunshine, when the reality is that there are plenty of regular struggles here, as in everyone's lives. So, in short, I missed home and all that it entails on Thanksgiving, and what could be more natural than that?

But at the same time, I appreciated the opportunity to choose to give thanks for what we've been given and the extraordinary privilege of being where we are, and to celebrate in our own special way right here in Bangkok. Thanksgiving is not a holiday in Thailand, but the words Thais use for the day mean 'Day to Thank God'. So it's special to share our holiday and tradition with our friends here. We had a banquet at the church of American and Thai food, and we even had a group here from the Philippines who joined in the culinary contribution. Here are a few pictures from our evening...


We had quite a few traditional Thanksgiving dishes, but this portion was far more interesting pictorially, really. I mean, don't you think the Pilgrims and Indians picked their fish clean on the first Thanksgiving? Most traditional Thanksgiving foods are laden with butter and/or milk, so I feasted on rice, noodles and Chinese dumplings (the green and yellow balls above- quite yummy).

Okay, did anyone else have a sink full of frogs at their holiday celebration? We didn't eat these guys last night, but they were brought especially for one of our teammates by his dad, who was visiting. Parents are the same everywhere, really; it's just like Tim's mom sending him Twizzlers. Asa sat on a trash can and watched the frogs being cut up. His reaction? "Poor f-wogs."

And here's our Julian, who will not tolerate being held by anyone but Tim or me at this point in his little life, with our dear friend Tang, for whom he makes an exception. She has quite a way with little ones, and has been a tremendous blessing to our family.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

Many Faces

This was his daddy's gown when he was a baby...it is the epitome of softness, like sleeping in your favorite 34 year old t-shirt. I love his expressiveness in these pictures...






Best quote of the day, from Em: "Deborah gave me seaweed at lunch today, and I LIKED it! Can we get seaweed for my lunch?"

Shrimp Without Faces

We went to the King's Park the other day and ended up on this fabulous little tram that ferried us all around. We didn't know why it was there, as we often don't know things here, and just bumble our way through whatever happens to come into our path, but it was fun. Julian had a big time.

He's clapping his hands and waving bye bye. I've caught myself humming "If you're happy and you know it", and then looked down to see him clapping his sweet little hands, eyes and mouth wide open. Oh my.

Halloween was low key but fun this year. We've acquired some friends, which makes life so enjoyable . So these lovely children joined us for some festivities...



In lieu of real orange pumpkins, we painted bulbs of garlic orange (well, Asa got creative with his...) Isn't that brilliant? I can't take any credit for it, it was my brilliant friend's idea. Then we watched Charlie Brown and hid candy for them to find. I think my children now think that a candy hunt is part of the traditional Halloween celebration.

We also made some amazing pumpkin bread the old fashioned way...


On an entirely different note, this is where we get our Pad Thai. We like it with shrimp, and Asa asks for his "without faces". Shrimp faces are unsettling.

Our Pad Thai man is married to the vice principal of Emmy's former Thai preschool. They're both highly skilled, but in vastly different fields!


Other tidbits...

-We had our first ever parent-teacher conference recently. Doesn't that make us officially grown up? Emmy's teacher described her personality as 'effervescent', which I thought was just right. She's doing great academically and socially and wow, we're so thankful.

-I recently sat on the songtaew across from a very elderly man with a mesh bag full of live turtles.

-My favorite recent Asa quote- he and Tim were out riding bikes, and Asa looked up and said to Tim, "I love being with you."

-My current favorite Asa word- "goow" (girl)

-My favorite recent conversation with Asa was all about bottoms- whose you could talk about and whose you couldn't ("Is it okay to say that Julian has a cute bottom?"), in what contexts it was okay to talk about them, etc. He got a little offended at me for laughing, I think.

-The other day I passed a woman riding a motorcycle wearing an Atlanta Hawks shirt.

-I rode my bike to get a haircut this week. Also paid $4 for the (pretty nice!) haircut. How's that for efficient?

-We had an odd cold spell come through at the beginning of the week with overcast skies and highs in the mid 80's. It was glorious, and Emmy wore her jacket to school:) It is officially the beginning of "cool season", so we shall see...

We Have a Tooth!

Way to go, Juju boy!

Multiples of 3

The dramatic rain has subsided here for now, and hopefully we're all done. It's still raining every day, for the most part, but not so drastically. There are still some deep waters to drive through, but the roads are drivable now. The water really destroyed a lot of the roads around here, though; it's like driving through a disaster area!

And in family news, we took our boys last week for their 9 month and 3 year checkups. Actually only Julian was scheduled, but our awesome pediatrician graciously fit Asa in while we were there. So here's the latest on our little men...

Julian was mad as fire during his visit, because he was missing a nap, so Dr. B didn't see his sunny side, but he sure does have a sweet smile when he's rested. Completely gums, though; no teeth yet. He weighed 18 pounds and 6 ounces, putting him just under 25th percentile. He was 29 inches long, putting him about 75th.

Asa was in a cheery mood, as is the norm with this little sunshine-y boy, but he can turn to the dark side quickly these days if his will is thwarted. He doesn't so much cry, though, it's really more of a wail that gets under the skin quickly. A poor taxi driver had to endure it in a confined space most of the way home today. He has the most endearing little habit, though, of coming back after his wailing has subsided and saying, "Mommy, I'm sorry I...(wanted a cookie for breakfast, or whatever)". He's a really, really lovable little boy.

He weighed 34 pounds, putting him at about 50th percentile, and was 40 inches tall, putting him off the charts for height.

Julian is growing by leaps and bounds. He looks so much more grown up as the weeks go by. He's doing lots of leaning way over and stands well with support, but has shown no desire to crawl as of yet. His siblings weren't crawling at 9 months either, and these things are supposed to be genetic. So we'll enjoy the stationary phase while it lasts!

He's recently mastered his pincer grasp and can feed himself O's and bits of bread with impressive accuracy. If you cheer for him after he does it, you're rewarded with the BEST, big gummy grin. He has the carbs and the praise, so he's delighted. I really wish I had a video of this. Maybe soon.

Asa has picked up Emmy's habit of narrating his play, and I'm frequently told something along the lines of, "You're a bad man (or giant, or dragon...), and the good man (or knight or soldier...) poked the bad man with his sword!" (at which point I'm supposed to feign injury). Some of Asa's favorite things these days are riding his bike and big wheel, learning to catch a ball with and without a baseball glove, looking at books and being read to, drawing, eating (lots), playing with Emmy, taking his clothes off (I dress that child several times a day!), dressing as a knight, building with Legos, and generally making his way through the house leaving chaos in his wake.

He's learning the catechism along with Emmy, and we really must get them on video soon...we love hearing Asa say, "Father, Son and Holy Spi-wit".

Ju is a real mama's boy (and daddy's, too...). He's not keen to be in anyone's arms but ours when we're out and about, much to the disappointment of sweet friends who'd like to cuddle with him. But from the safety of our arms he enjoys all the attention he gets, and he gets lots. He's flirted with constantly at church, and I rode the songtaew with him in the sling today and felt like quite a spectacle with my little white boy with blue eyes strapped to my body...all eyes were on us and I heard several "dtukata's" (doll) as we made our way to our seat.

He's talking a good bit, but no 'mama' as of yet, sadly. Whenever I ask him to say it, I always get "dadada", which is fun for Tim. Soon enough my time will come.

And a picture of big sister, just because...


*these pictures are all from Family Fun Day at Emmy's school, which was a very fun event involving multiple sports and swimming on the school's facilities...it lived up to its name.

Today (It Finally Stopped Raining)

It was raining at 6 am this morning (after hard rain the night before). An hour later, I was on my way to school with Emmy, still raining. An hour later, I was in a meeting at the school, still raining. An hour later, the meeting was winding down and I realized the soccer field was underwater. Still raining. I walked through the downpour and pulled our van to the edge of the parking lot, saw that the water in the street in front of the school was extremely deep (it's always bad in heavy rains, but this was seriously deep water). Seeing a car come through up to its bumper and a truck with steam pouring out of it trying to get through, I realized I musn't do such a thing to our poor vehicle. So I pulled it back in to the parking lot and considered...I had a baby to feed at home, so only one thing to do...shoes off, pants rolled up, umbrella up, step off the sidewalk and into the nearly knee deep water, wade to a taxi. Two taxis (the first one ran over something hidden in the flood and had a flat tire, so I stood on the side of the highway and hailed a second one), and over an hour later, I was home and so glad to be there!

I went in and took the hottest shower I could muster with our warm water heater, put on a sweater I dug up on a high shelf (all that wading made me cold!), we made hot chocolate and spent the rest of the morning hoping it would stop raining. The street in front of our house was running like a river (see picture above), and we were some of the fortunate ones; the flooding was not severe in our neighborhood and lots of folks we know here had flooding in their homes today, not to mention all the people who live in pieced together homes...I just don't know what they do at times like this.

As we stood outside (after Tim fished our trash can in so it didn't float down the street like some others were doing) and prayed about the rain stopping, I felt a scurrying on my bare foot and jumped like a crazy woman to escape the humongous roach that had just clambered over. The rain finally stopped around noon. I've never been so happy to see rain end. We got word that the children at Emmy's school would be bused out to the highway and picked up at a business there because the roads leading to the school were impassable. So Tim undertook what ended up being a three hour round trip to collect her. They had a big adventure on the songtaew and bus, and arrived, finally, with Emmy in his arms as he walked through the water down the street. Here are some photos he took while he was out...

our street




our friend Ying braving the water to buy coffee!

School's cancelled for tomorrow, and we hear the rain is supposed to continue for a few more days. We would appreciate your prayers for safety, especially for all the people who suffer when it rains like this.