A Bunch of Burts

Warning Martha W!! This post contains snake pictures!

This past week we were up at our co-workers house for a birthday party, meeting members of their church visiting from the States, and a trip to the new village to move forward in getting the rental houses figured out.

One morning, an unexpected visitor was found in the yard.

You can see it moving off the edge of the patio, and the spot of blood where it used to lie. eek.

A neighbor smashed it in the head, but then generously left it right there on the patio. By the time Greg and I arrived from an errand, the kids had largely wandered away, the excitement gone.
Then, as I watched it, it began moving. Escaping. It was supposed to be dead.

You will never guess who came to the rescue.

Guess again.

Give up?

Who would believe that Ema would be the one to mercilessly crush the head of this serpent, bravely, without being asked or forced?

Ema of the Great Spider Incident of Jungle Camp, involving bloodcurdling screams, neighbors running to her rescue with knives and guns, and one tiny spider. Or Ema who after watching half of Ben Hur could not sleep at night for fear of leprosy? Who sat on a bucket all day when we went to the beach so that the tiny little sand crabs would not touch her.

We prayed that Ema would overcome this fear of crawly things, knowing we would surely encounter a wider variety here in Thailand, and God is faithful!!! She is our best tick picker, cockroach killer and now snake destroyer. You go Ema!

Since our new village is nearly surrounded by rice fields, it is not a stretch to think we will find more of these in our yard and yikes! maybe house. Glad you live with me Ema.

Ema is not the only one who has done some growing and changing these past years.

Where is the little boy I brought to Thailand with me? Ready to go fishing Thai style!

Yes, that is a gun for fishing. A long nail is attached to fishing line and triggered by a slingshot action. Water, mud, fish and gun. What could be more fun than that?

And Leah, whose years left at home with us I can count on one hand, (we will not think of that now) is growing daily into a young lady.

She measures often to see if she has passed me up. Last night Greg declared she is as tall as I am and maaaaybe, a hair taller. I must have been slouching.

Thank you God for these three kids! I can’t wait to see what Your plans for them hold, and how You will continue to use Greg and I in their lives.
We know You have good things to come for those who love You and follow You! Life with the Lord is never boring.

We have found that opening our school days with a time of worship, Bible reading and prayer is a great start to our day.
(and yes, we are still not done with our school. I know it is nearly July. But we are almost done. One more subject to knock off)

Not attending an English church, we all really miss the time of singing and worship, so we have our own.

The problem with our morning worship time is limited knowledge of hymns and praise music.
We have a couple of song books and a hymnal, but since Mom does not read music we are limited to the ones I know. Or the ones I sort of know.

But there are some great songs in the hymnal and praise book that have lyrics I want the kids to have running through their heads. And mine too.

One day I googled one of the hymns hoping for a sound bite to help me figure out the tune, and found a surprise.
YouTube has TONS of hymns!
People singing, or just playing the music. We have learned several news ones from YouTube.

A couple of our new favorites are Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah and Days of Elijah.

Learning new songs to praise God on YouTube works for us.

Lots of other ideas await at We Are That Family

Rainy season seems to be upon us. Cooler nights, awesome thunderstorms, perpetually damp laundry, and mud.

Ema’s watering can is a bit superfluous, don’t you think?

How are we already in the third week of March?

One of our most important events of the last weeks was of course the birthday of my only son!
Zach is now 11 years old, which seems totally improbably since he was just a sweet baby.

Zach asked for a cookie cake this year instead of regular cake. I think Ema wants some!

He had a great birthday party last week, Greg took him and some friends paintballing at a field just down the ringroad from us. As surprising as it sounds, it was less expensive than taking him bowling like we did last year! Everyone had a blast and Zach had a great time connecting with his friends from Grace that he does not get to see as often now that we are homeschooling.
We love you very Zach and are so thankful for your 11 years, and pray that God will be your leading influence this year and every year as you grow into a man of God.

Last week both Ema and Zach played in futsal tournaments as well. Futsal was a new sport to us here in Thailand and it is very popular. It is somewhat like indoor soccer, but played on a basketball court with a smaller and harder ball.
Zach was goalie and did a great job. Goalie is not a position I would like to play, but he seems to enjoy it.

Ema is a defense player. She has not had as much experience as the other girls on her team, but she played her best and came away smiling, that is a good sign.

That is Ema with the bright blue socks, always easy to spot her!

Ema’s team did well in the tournament, and came away with third place, but only gave up two goals the whole day. Since they did so well, they were invited to go back last Saturday and play in the JV tournament as they needed one more team. That was a lot of futsal for us last week. (which translates to not too much school )

This past Saturday Leah and I were invited on an outing with the girl who sold ice at our neighborhood store. Since we buy a bag of ice every day, Leah saw this girl alot. She invited us to go to a waterfall and the temple with her. What I did not know was that she was sneaking off of work to go, and now does not work at the store anymore. Yikes! This young lady is only 17 years old and has clearly been on her own for a while. She seems interested in developing a relationship with us, and so we would ask your prayers as we interact with her and get to know her better.

Leah and A on the trail down to the waterfall

Whew! The month is not even half over. But something good is coming up for me at the end of this month, our anniversary! We have already conspired, er, I mean arranged to have the kids stay with some friends for the night. Definitely looking forward to that.

December is always a busy month for us, with both our daughters having birthdays, and of course Christmas!
We were blessed to have guests visiting us this year for Christmas, so we were out and about doing touristy things as well over the week of Christmas.
Here we go, a look at Christmas 2008 in Chiang Mai.

The final touch– Greg placing the angel on top of the Christmas tree.

For our church Christmas party, I was in charge of the treats and sweets making group. Which is pretty funny, because the first year we attended, and I asked if I could bring treats, I was told they eat “food” at their Christmas party, not kanom (sweets), and this year it was an official group! These are just some of the cookies we made, and frosted, and yes, devoured!

A couple of my decorating crew, So-paa and Pilene

Christmas dinner at church, all sorts of tasty curries and stir-frys and other wonderful treats, in addition to the cookies of course!

Sopaa and I getting ready to help serve food, with her darling son, Fineek

Ema had a dancing role in the Christmas program at church, she did great! It is hard to learn the routine when you are not sure what the directions being told to you mean.

This year the Christmas play was an adaptation of “The Three Trees” Zach even had a speaking part. He was a carpenter turning the trees into the manger and boat.

We had good friends come to visit, and so of course did some touristy things as well. An elephant ride is always fun!

Nothing says Christmas like a great big snake draped across your shoulders, right Zach?

Zach is always up early on Christmas morning to dig into that stocking. Our friend Abby is right there with him.

Thanks for the fun gingerbread house Casey! The kids did a great job on it, and enjoyed eating it afterwards as well.

Our kids and the Olson’s, a fun combination!

The church carolers came by on the Friday night after Christmas. They go to everyone’s house in the church and don’t stop until they are done. This year they finished around 5 am. Thankfully, they got to our house just past 11pm.

Of course we had more treats for them.

Hope you had a very Merry Christmas and found Joy in celebrating that Christ has come!