Monday, July 28, 2008

Tea for Two

Last Sunday, Evie turned 7 years old! To celebrate we threw a tea party for not just two, but 10 little girls. They all wore fancy hats and white gloves and drank apple juice out of crystal tea cups. Evie and all the girls loved being little ladies for the day. Here's some pictures:

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Tiger Kingdom

Here's Winnie to tell you all about Tiger Kingdom and her adventure there: "Well, it's so fun. And I got to play with the tigers. The baby ones and maybe you should too! But you got to clean your hands at the end. That's all." (Evie was too scared to do it this time, but quickly regretted her decision when she saw how much fun Winnie was having, so we're hoping to take her back for her birthday so she can play with them too.)

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Happy 4th of July!

The US Consulate here in Chiang Mai had a special celebration for July 4th. We were able to go celebrate with all the other Americans living here right now. They had all-american food, music , and fireworks. Cory was especially excited to get some Mountain Dew, which is not sold in Thailand and is imported specifically for this event. The girls had a grand old time running all over with friends and new found friends. Here's a picture of them with Caleb and Hannah, friends from the homeschool co-op. It was a great night and we enjoyed it with Cory's mom, Penny, and Bob, his step-dad, who are visiting right now. We're having fun showing them around Chaing Mai. Today Cory took them on a trek to see the hill tribes, ride elephants, and go bamboo rafting.

Monday, June 16, 2008

The Centre

Cory just put together this promotional video for The Centre. Sorry the quality is low, but blogspot wouldn't let us post the higher quality videos that are this long.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Swimming Like Fish

Being able to swim year round definitely helps kids get used to the water and learn to swim. Evie and Winnie like to "swim" but would not put their face in the water or go under. After swimming with friends, who could all swim like fish, for a couple hours on Friday and Saturday, they both all of a sudden decided to go underwater! And they loved it! Today I took them swimming again and they were trying to stay under for as long as they could! What a drastic change to not wanting water to touch their face. Living in Thailand is definitely helping them get over some of their fears. Here's a video of Evie:

Monday, May 5, 2008

Somewhere over the Rainbow

Winnie turned 5 years old on Thursday! She got some special gifts from family back home, like an elephant ride, gymnastics classes, and a calico critter house! On Saturday we threw a birthday party for her and invited all the friends she has made from the homeschool co-op we go to. It was a Wizard of Oz theme and Winnie was Dorothy. We had it at the Centre, where Cory works, and decked it out with a lifesize tinman, a big emerald city, and a 30-ft yellow brick road! We even threw water balloons at the wicked witch (drawn with sidewalk chalk) to make her melt. Winnie had a lot of fun and is excited to be a big 5-year-old now! Cory has been busy at the Centre. There was a team from the Philippines in to help for one week. They did a lot of special things with the students during this week and saw three accept Jesus into their lives! It is exciting to see God working in the hearts of the students at the Centre.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Songkran

This week was Songkran, the Thai New Year, and they celebrate with lots of water! They see it as a time to clean everything and have a fresh start for the new year, but it has evolved into a country-wide water fight! You can't drive down the street without kids throwing buckets of water at you, and that's just outside the city. Down by the moat, people ride around in trucks with ice water in huge barrels and things get crazy! Unfortunately our car broke down this week, and we were unable to get it fixed until after the holiday is over, so Cory has had to ride his motorbike out places and get wet, wet, wet! He didn't seem to mind though. It has been so hot! April is the hottest month because temperatures are around and over 100 degrees everyday and it never rains to cool things off. We've been spending a lot of time in our bedroom, which is the only air-conditioned place in our house. We'll eat meals up here, do school, and we've even had the girls sleep in here for the past few nights. Our family celebrated songkran by having family water fights everyday for the past 5 days. The kids got really cool water guns as early birthday presents from their Aunt Jeni. They are Winnie-the-Pooh backpacks filled with water connected to water guns. When the kids would put them down to go in the kiddy pool, Cory and I would grab them and ambush them! We've also been relaxing in our "hot tub"! Cory and I are both missing food from home apparently, because last night I had a dream that they had Eggo waffles here at the grocery store. When I told Cory this morning, he said he dreamt we were back home and he was eating good cereal, like Golden Grahams which is over $8 a box when you can find it here, so needless to say we don't buy it!