finishing the week

Our first week back in country is over.  Even after just a short three week trip it's still an adjustment any time we cross international borders!

This particular adjustment was certainly on the trickier side, since we were without Matt!  {He, on other hand, only spent about 14 hours in country before he left again.  Apparently this is a man who likes passport stamps, huh?  And he had a solidly successful week, and even saw some pretty great stuff, before returning to our welcoming arms on Friday.}

On Thursday afternoon the kids and I met friends for dinner.  This bus makes Luke ridiculously happy.

worth every penny.

And it is, now that I think about it, mere pennies to ride.  All three boys are still short enough that they ride for free, and with only three paying passengers the six of us ride for about a dollar.

The best news of the week (apart from Matt's return) is that spring showed up!  Yay for warmer temps and sunny days!  We have spent hours and hours of the weekend outdoors.

We finished the weekend with Matt's birthday!  Actually, we celebrated most of the weekend.  First with a Saturday bike ride down to the river.  [It's a great riverside greenway but there are two road crossings on the way to/from.  The nice thing about a long line of colorful bike riding kids is that they tend to stop traffic - plenty of gawkers! - and we cross in safety! ha!]

and we came home to dessert #1.  Julianna (and Lydia.... but Julianna led the charge) made this gorgeous cookie cake for Matt while I went for a run Saturday afternoon.  This girl is becoming quite the kitchen helper!

We partied more today and finished with dessert #2 but I'll have to save that for another post.  Sunday night and I know I need some rest before this next week comes rolling down the pipe.

And just like that, we are back at normal pace here.  Our transition home was, well, speedy :)

Monday afternoon, off to speech for John Paul.  I had the big kids with me and we played outside while we waited for John Paul.  Monday was the only day so far that wasn't wet and rainy, and I'm thankful we got some time outdoors!

We went straight from speech to the car insurance place where I was unsuccessful at renewing our insurance for another year.  Ahhhh, sometimes life here can be complicated.  Our insurance expires on Friday so unless I can figure out another way of dealing with it before then I'll be car-less til sometime next week when Matt can take some time to go figure it out.  Not a huge deal since I don't drive much anyways, but still.... sometimes I just wished things here would work smoothly!

After car insurance we went to meet friends for dinner and the afternoon/evening sped by.  Home again for bedtime and look who lost another tooth!  He's laughing hard, often, about the fact that the "tooth fairy" is out of the country.  It's an on-going joke that Matt pretends like he's not the tooth fairy and the kids all know that (obviously, of course, certainly) it is Matt.

So on FaceTime yesterday when Matt said, "Isaac, you'll never guess who I saw walking down the street in _______ while I was on my way to my meeting" Isaac busted out laughing, "Dad, it's not the tooth fairy! I know it!"

And then Tuesday morning, bright and early, it was off to school.  First day of the spring semester is a half-day morning so all three kids were out the door and off to see their classmates, get their spring semester books, and all that beginning-of-semester excitement.  Boo that it was raining.

Starting today (Wednesday) we are back to our local school afternoon schedule.  These next months (March, April, May) are going to fly by.  I just know it.

traveling days

Well, we are home.  And it's cold and gray and drizzling.  Pretty much what I was expecting but still....

Our trip home lasted about 16 hours - and the kids rocked the whole thing.  Matt and I agreed we would take them anywhere.  Even Luke (ha! just kidding.  But there was a season when a simple drive downtown with Luke screaming in his car seat was about all I could handle.  Luke has never advertised himself as an easy child!)

But look at that cute little almost-4-year-old foot.  And all those tan, mosquito-bitten, happily scratched and bruised legs!  [Clockwise from Luke is Lydia, Isaac, John Paul and Julianna.  and thanks Julie, for supplying our growing feet with a nice collection of keens.  love them]

We landed at 11:15 pm, and Matt was back at the airport early this afternoon.  Boo.  He'll be home Friday by dinner time.  I was really sad to say goodbye.

And this week is looking to be challenging in many areas - all the re-adjusting to life back at home, and it's back to home school, and Chinese school, and all those other realities that are conspicuously absent on vacation :)

whew.

vacation family picture

Juniper Tree, Dolphin Bay, February 2016.

This is what we looked like :)

the beach at low tide

Should I clarify that the beach is not crowded?!?!  

That's Isaac digging for hermit crabs.  At low tide and with tide pools everywhere there are approximately 100 different kinds of marine life available to catch and corral and torture.  

These girls along with some other friends on the beach started an aquarium!  If you look closely you can see a live starfish in Julianna's bucket.  They dug out a large shallow pool and filled it with everything imaginable - hermit crabs, sand crabs, clams, sea snails, star fish, and a number of things that I could not identify!

John Paul on the beach catching hermit crabs is hard to explain.  It's an amazingly loud, excitable, wet and sandy energy that results in plenty of captured marine critters (and an early death-by-fingers for more than a few!)

And sometimes we just walk down to the beach and drink our mango-pineapple fruit shakes and enjoy another minute of vacation.

It's 7:20 in the morning.  The boys are already outside playing!  The little two are up every day before 7 (often by 6:30) but I can't complain since it's so bright and sunny and praise the Lord for sunshine!!!  It's amazing and refreshing to wake up to blue skies and sunshine and I don't care what time it is!  

Also, they typically change clothes and go right out to play so I'm enjoying relaxed mornings.  This retreat location operates on a full board basis and breakfast starts at 8.  I'll see the boys then.  

My girls got their hair braided at a little shop right next door.  The process took about 3 hours total - thankfully we spread it out over two days (braids one day, beads the next).

It looks super cute, works great for pool and beach and is easy to manage.

I hope it lasts through the end of this week.

Every day after lunch we come back to our cottage to rest. and read.

I love this picture of Matt serving dessert a few nights ago.  Meals are served family style in a dining hall and you can see all the little faces carefully watching the cutting of the pie!  [we have a friend sitting at our table too]

And big news for Isaac - lost his first tooth!  Good thing the tooth fairy doles out rewards in many different currencies.

The past few days we've spent the afternoons on the beach.  Low tide and plenty of tide pools and enough sea life to stock an aquarium.  I'll get some pictures of that posted in the next few days.

Only three days remain and we begin the long journey home.

sai cave (in a motorbike side car)

Matt is always on the lookout for an adventure.  And it rarely takes him long to find a good one.

So after a day or two settling in at our vacation location he and two friends rented some motorbikes (one with a sweet little sidecar) and set out to find a cave in a nearby national park.

With little information and a lot of unknowns he went the 'safe route' and decided this was a big kids only adventure.  Better luck next time, little boys ;)

and the whole morning was a big win!  they arrived back home just in time for lunch, starving and filthy and full of smiles

the hiking dads

kids climbing the mountain

finally at the entrance to the cave

down down down

Matt and the BK3

Refreshments before heading home

vacation pictures

So what I've got here is a smattering of pictures to share.  We are busy relaxing!  ha!  Actually our entire time here has been amazingly relaxing.  We are staying at a retreat center type place that caters to families like ours and it is kid-paradise.  And we all know that kid-paradise is a recipe for a great vacation for the entire family.

My kids love that they get free run of the entire grounds.  Gated and fenced and full of everything fun (foosball, ping pong, play room, kids' library, swimming pool, swings, playground and piles of friends - most brand new and some lifelong buddies too)

We woke up Monday morning and watched a little Super Bowl .... in our swimsuits, of course.

Later that day I received Happy New Year phone messages from John Paul's foster mama.  We've reconnected with her recently and she is eager for us to come visit her :)  I'm not sure when we'll get up to her province (it's probably a 20 hour drive from our home) but we are thankful to keep this precious lady in our lives.  I snapped this picture of JP at the pool to send to her along with my Happy Lunar New Year message!

Our first day here was extremely windy and the ocean was as rough as I've ever seen it.  By day two it had calmed considerably and these girls LOVED playing in the breakers.

The boys cannot get enough of the sand.

Dig dig dig.  Add buckets of water.  Repeat.

Check out this baby hand of my almost-4-year-old.  Won't be long til he's as big as his daddy.  But not yet! (that's the manager's cottage in the background.  We live in the cottage next door to them.  a retired English couple runs the place.... talk about a sweet job - Isaac wants Matt to get a job here!)

Today the ocean was smooth as a lake.  That's the Gulf of Thailand there, with one of the many many islands out in the bay.  The three girls (Julianna, Lydia, Kayleigh) are out on a sand bar about 8 inches below the surface - and they kept walking further too.  Even the little boys went well past this point!  Crazy to see them so far out in the water!  Julianna asked if they were going to fall off the continental shelf :)

[and yes, we kept an adult close by when all the kids, especially the littles, got so far out]

At sunset it starts looking like this - and the hermit crabs are everywhere!

Not bad for a day at the Juniper Tree.

Oh, and we sleep well too.  really really well :)

stop #2

Our first week in Thailand has come and gone.  It was quite full, but not exhausting.  The kids loved it all... the camp activities, the pool, the friends, everything.

They picked up a ton of loot too, good thing one of our duffels was half full when we arrived because they filled it up!  My absolute favorite are these bridges - symbols of the many transitions they navigate and cultures they cross.  I'm hopeful these will make it home relatively unscathed and I'll search for frames.... would love to have these hanging in our home.

and all too soon it was time to say goodbye to our conference buddies (some new, some old)

and we were on the road again.

Today was the first day of vacation!  woohoo!

and here we are

Our travel day was smooth as could be. Hong Kong was wet and overcast which is a bummer since it's such a pretty place to fly through.  We landed in Bangkok right on time and got to our hotel by 6pm local time.  Not too bad.

How'd you like this seat on the airplane?  These little people were awesome - and I actually only sat here for takeoff and landing, Matt was here for the bulk of the flight :)

All that travel is totally worth it when sunset looks like this...

And the kids spend HOURS in that pool!

This week all of us are in different programming during the days but the big four kids are probably having the most fun.  They are in a kids camp designed specifically for kids that spend their childhood outside their passport country.  Their leaders are college-age and recent grads who grew up all over the world.  It's a fun place for them to learn more about their 'normal' and start to embrace the gifts and challenges of a highly mobile childhood.

And the leaders brought all kinds of fun snacks and treats from the States, including these nabs.  Luke loves them (he snags them from the big kids since he is not yet old enough for camp)!

Today was free day and the boys spent several hours on the beach this morning.

The girls too :)  It's a pretty spot to spend a holiday, and we are back to 'camp' and meetings tomorrow for a few more days.