Vacation pics.

Okay, I finally have the pictures up from our finale trip in Thailand -- check them out here.

Something to Do

Well, it's now after midnight and I was thinking I ought to catch up on blogs that I haven't read in a while and then thought that I should probably post myslef and save the catching up for another day. Still loving being back but I don't really have a whole lot of exciting things going on. We're still looking for a car although we're hoping to buy one on Thanksgiving day. We've been in contact with a guy in SLC selling an Accord. He's been out of town but will be coming down to Provo on Thanksgiving so we'll check it out then.

I know that most of you that read this already know this but I'm going to repeat it -- Craigslist is awesome. Thus far we've gotten a dresser and desk for FREE and a lot of other things we need cheap. I bought two TVs for $45 - one a 26" and the other a 19".

I finally have some work to do -- a temp job for 2 weeks starting on Monday. I'll be working with Prometric (the company that does the GRE) working on their website. Should be fun!!

Trea turned 3 on the 4th of this month. Doesn't seem like she's been with us for three whole years. She keeps wanting birthday cake. Shortly after we moved in at my parents' home Trea became familiar with The Sound of Music and has watched it about 400 times. She loves all of the songs and tries to sing along. It's so cute to watch her sing and dance. She wants mom and dad to sing too. In the car she asked us to sing one of the songs and then said, "go ahead, sing." She's such a trip.

Kristen's parents are in town for Thanksgiving so we are having turkey dinner twice. We just figure it's making up for last year in Thailand. It's been really nice to see them again. I feel really lucky to have awesome in-laws.

Well, yeah it's kind of boring ramblings -- I'll have to try and post sometime when I'm not half asleep.

Land that I Love

We're back. Our last few weeks in Thailand were quite hectic as you can imagine. The last few weeks before a move are always that way but going around the world kind of adds to it. You know, as happy as I am to be home there are some people that I'm going to miss a lot. We had some wonderful experiences in Thailand and hope some day to have some more. I really don't miss the ants.

Having my parents come and vacation with us was sooo much fun. What makes it so great is that my parents are so laid back and easy to travel with. We had asked them what they wanted to do and see and they were pretty much of the mindset that we knew the country and they would be happy with whatever we planned. So we did just that and planned everything out. It was kind of fun playing travel agent. We planned it so that we were through by about 4:00 most days and had the evenings free so the kids could take it easy. That worked out really well. The one difficult thing about travelling with my parents is that they ask so many questions that I can't answer. They want to know what all the plants are, everything about Buddhism, dates, and stuff like that. I can't say I blame them wanting to know but I just did a lot of shoulder shrugging and said, "I don't know." I should have just made a bunch of crap up -- they would have believed it :-)

We have a ton of pictures that I still need to get off the camera and post so look forward to another Picasa album from the trip.

It is really nice being back. We've only been back four days but I'm really enjoying it. Mostly there are just so many little things that you don't even think about that make living here so great -- clothes dryers, hot water, potable water from every sink, warm home-made bread, ovens, carpet, and the list goes on and on.

The girls did great on the flight back. We really are blessed with good travelers. Now the problem is getting their little internal clocks to do a 180. Yesterday Trea slept from 2:00 in the afternoon until 11:00 and then was up all night until 6:00 this morning. Luckily Grandpa (bless him) took her outside all day. She really wanted to be outside so he let her "help" on things he was doing around the yard, and played too. It really wore her out and she was a beast when she came in this evening but hopefully she'll sleep a good sleep and make a good step toward adjusting.

Now that I'm not sleeping when you're awake (or vice versa) feel free to call or IM and we can talk (all three of you readers).

Homeward Bound

Seemingly back from the dead. I'm still bogged down by a bunch of paperwork but I've got some serious senioritis (can you still call it that when it comes to things other than school?) and can't focus on working so I'll finally blog a few random things. Also taking up some time and preventing me from blogging: I reformatted the hard drive and re-installed Windows. I think I'm just going to plan on doing this every 9 months to a year because it works wonders for a sluggish computer.

We are now in our last full month here. I've loved Thailand and will miss a lot of things about it but not that the decision has been made to go back home I just want to get there. Although I love it here there are so many things I'm looking forward to when we get back to the US -- hot water from every tap, washing clothes in hot water, pulling hot clothes out of the dryer, snuggling up in a blanket and enjoying some hot cocoa, home-made bread, and the list goes on and on.

So, we leave Khon Kaen (for Bangkok) on the 3rd of October and then my parents will arrive in Bangkok on the 4th. We will do some vacationing with my folks for about eight days and then we're all flying back together (that will be wonderful with the kids)!

Teaching KG has been great for me. I really love my kids (most of them) and am going to miss them. You get to see so much improvement when they are so young (3-4). Not only with their English but the things that they can do -- gross motor skills, fine motor skills, behavior, social skills, etc. It's really wonderful. I wish I could have been in KG last year. Oh well.

We've sold most of our large things except the car. We're getting down to crunch time with the car and I'm starting to get a little worried.

Did you notice the favicon for my blog (it's the tiny icon to the left of my blog url)? I had a lot of fun figuring out how to do it. (I used this article if you want to try it too). It's a picture of Trea if you can't tell.

Speaking of Trea, this morning she wakes up and says out of the blue, "Jesus is coming." I'm like, "okay." Then she says, "I talked to him." I questioned her, "You talked to him?" and her response, "Yeah, I talked to Jesus."
Okay, so how's that for a kind of weird start to your day -- not bad, per se, just a little weird.

Anyway, don't have a lot for now other than to say I'm alive and I'm homeward bound in just over a month.

Pictures

Well, I know you're all anxiously awaiting a new post but all I've got is a link to some pictures of my two precious little ones. Hope you enjoy them. I hope to post again soon -- things have just been a lot busier this semester than I had anticipated.