Tonight

Making Merry

We did our tree decorating last week, and it was big fun. I'm a terrible idealist, and my ideals were blissfully fulfilled this particular evening. Tim was pleased, as he often finds himself caught in the crossfire between my ideals and reality, poor thing. We decorated, had yummy tomato soup for dinner (your recipe, Kim- I love it!), watched Rudolph, then had sugar cookies and hot chocolate with mini marshmallows (a luxury courtesy of our dear Christy). Our two 'big kids' decorated the tree almost entirely, with a bit of art direction from me and my hanging of the high, most breakable ornaments. Tim was standing by with the super glue to repair ornaments as they were unpacked :). The fly in the ointment is that we can't locate Asa's stocking, which is, I think, an unfortunate consequence of carting things across the world and back. Hoping we locate it soon, but if not, Tim has volunteered his, and Asa is laid back enough to be okay with that, thank goodness.

I know you're all wishing you had orange curtains right about now. If you come to Thailand, perhaps we can find you another set.


Our tree is really a bit on the Charlie Brown-ish side, but once we get the lights and ornaments on it looks homey and sweet. Tim was able to capture it at its best with his artsy perspective.


Little brother enjoyed the evening tremendously, too, and is now having a big time yanking the lowest ornaments off the tree and banging them around mercilessly. I should pause and say some words about his newly turned 11 month old-ness...he is, truly, super cute, with his big grin and 4 teeth coming in. One of our favorite family dinner time activities is to all begin laughing at once, then watching as Julian looks around at all of us and break into giggles himself. He is saying 'uh oh' and 'peekaboo' (although that one would not be recognizable to anyone but us!), and doing his 'more' sign at meals when prompted. He continues to be extremely attached to me, and experiences distress when I leave the room or hand him off to anyone (although he will not say "mama", and consistently says "dada" when asked to say my name!) Actually, we think he's pretty sensitive and he tends to get overwhelmed when a lot of activity happens at once around him or during transitions, like people coming or going. He's still not doing much moving, just scooting a bit, turning around in circles, and standing while holding on to us,mostly. I keep telling myself to enjoy it while it lasts and that he'll get going in his own time. We shall see.

Our first grader had her school Christmas program last night, in which she gave an inspired performance as a feline in the story of creation, and sang two great songs. Here she is with two friends that went to the show with us:


And preparing to go on stage:

The program was based on the Jesse Tree advent devotion, which traces history from the creation of the world until the coming of Christ. It was extremely well done, and obviously the little ones were cute, cute, cute. We're doing the Jesse Tree devotions for our family advent celebration, as well, using ornaments that were made in Thailand by a ministry that helps Thai Christians get seminary training.


And, just for fun, here's my favorite family interaction from yesterday:

Emmy: Mommy, I love you more than anyone else in the whole world!
Asa: I like Daddy better than Mommy.

26 Countries, One Community

Have I mentioned how really, really neat Emmy's school is? We're so grateful that God has given her the opportunity to go to an international school, and one that is a Christian missional school at that. International school in Israel is one of Tim's fondest memories of his growing up years, and we have likewise enjoyed the community here at ICS tremendously. Emmy's best friends in her class are from Australia, India, Korea and Thailand, and it's been fun to see God's provision of dear friends for her and the way they show their affection for one another: drawing pictures and sending 'friend love notes' back and forth. I've saved several "I love you, Emmy" notes to go in her baby book. The picture above is with one of her sweet Indian friends, all dressed in her beautiful sari for the recent International Festival...

An annual tradition for ICS is "International Night", which was altered slightly to become an International Festival this year. The tag line for the festival was "26 Countries, One Community", and it was a fantastic celebration of the diversity at the school. There was a stage show, in which students and others in the community represented their cultures with singing, dancing, etc. Then we adjourned outside, where different countries had set up booths with food, games and activities representing their cultures. It was pretty amazing. America had hot dogs (ball park, Chicago, or New York style!), patriotic tattoos, pinwheel making, cowboy/Native American and football dress-up, live music, and a fun game called 'corn hole'. Here are some pictures from the day...

From the stage show...

This group was made up entirely of Thai children in the first grade!

Beautiful northern Thailand costumes

Korea

Our American kids singing "This Land is Your Land", with our very own Tim (not pictured:) on the guitar and harmonica!

India

And from the outdoor festival:

Tim, being the talented one in the family, did quite a bit for the festival. Here he is helping to provide live music at the American booth.

Playing dress up in Japanese kimonos...

...and then on to Korea!


Emmy showing her American pride!


In front of the backdrop that Daddy painted...

Quite a few hot dogs were consumed and two out of three children fell asleep on the way home!

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...