Thailand part 2

Thailand in pictures:

When we arrived at the zoo, we watched the zookeepers try to shoot the lioness with a tranquilizer gun. The zoo is fabulous, in that very few animals are in cages. The safety factor is questionable because there are just ditches that separate us humans from...say, the King of the Jungle. This particular lioness had tried to jump the gulch and got stuck at the bottom.  

We pretty much dominated the zoo tram. 8 kids, 6 adults.

There was a smaller pool at the house we stayed at and a larger one down the road. We went swimming multiple times a day and had a blast.

Mimi and Malachi playing word games on the computer.

My mom and I oooh'd and aaaah'd at the orchids that were sprinkled all over the place. These were looped around the Buddhist shrine placed in the backyard.

Minus the Asian eyes and obvious Buddhist influence, this line of children felt like a great representation of the cousins.

At the town center, waiting for our ride. 

A 3 story Starbucks. Um....yes, thank you.

Sitting in a median with traffic, tourists, honking horns, passing monks, and big tour buses Malachi uses his super focus powers and finds a place to read. 

Acting as Papa Eagle, Brad stands in the busy intersection and tries to keep the number of kids at 8.

Mimi and Selah.

We also did the Chiang Mai Night Safari. Where you also throw out any contrived safety standards. 

You can pet the zebra, giraffes, gazelles and boars.

For Thanksgiving, we had some amazing Thai food, followed by pumpkin and apple pie.

It was a great trip. Now, it is back to real life. 

A little Thailand update

Here's a quick update on our Thailand trip. 

One of the first nights, we learned to cook a little pad thai. Here's Kim looking like a Thai cooking school brochure picture.

  We headed to Maesa Elephant Park. The kids had a blast.

We have a pool at the house we're staying at and the kids are in it at least 5 hours a day.

Cousins.

Uncle Casey and Selah

Makaria and I riding our elephant. The driver of our elephant took my camera and did his own little photo shoot while we tried to fend for ourselves on the back of a pachyderm.

Malachi hangin' with the elephant.

Selah's turn.

After the elephants did their paintings. It's pretty amazing to watch these elephants paint flowers, mountains, and landscape.

A Buddhist Monk snapping a picture with his Smartphone.

At Huay Kaew waterfall.

That's it for now!

I'm excited about...

I'm totally not excited about iridescence. Although if you're choosing between chiffon and iridescence, then I'd be excited about it. Chiffon is ok for princess costumes and bitter bridesmaids dresses, but not much else. 

I am though excited that our family will be going out of country for a few weeks. We've got some things to take care .

One of them being sleep. 

I'm going to purposely try not to blog much while we're there because I want to pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist. I want to hide and avoid responsibilities. Although we will be with my sister and her family and when that happens, a blog will inevitably need to be posted.

BUT, I do have exciting news that I'm not sharing yet. This news does not require a moving van or peeing on a stick. 

I'll keep you posted.

Meeting our Neighbors

We met our downstairs neighbors last week.

We met our downstairs neighbors last week because my two youngest decided to de-clutter their room by throwing things out their window during rest time.

I discovered this little organizational technique when our apartment managers came upstairs and said they could see a little white hand and then a little black hand peeking out the bottom of their windowsill.  Down 3 stories, they had tossed a huge comforter, a large crocheted blanket, two full baskets of laundry, 15 books, a dozen pieces of Chinese homework and rocks out the window.  I meant to get a picture, but I was so angry at the time that I let it go.  But here's the re-enactment of the pile we brought up afterwards.

We were picking underwear and socks out of their trees.

I'm sure they are chomping at the bits, waiting to invite us over for dinner.  I won't hold my breath.

Reformation Day 2011-John Calvin

We had our annual Reformation Day celebration. Last year was Luther, this year we celebrated John Calvin. Since he was born in France, but did a majority of ministry time in Switzerland, we had a hodge podge of foods for dinner. 

Swiss Zopf bread

French Tourtiere (this was super good)

French green beans

Swiss glazed carrots 

Swiss Aargau carrot cake

The kids composed a newscast theme song on Garage Band. As the song played, John Calvin and I walked in for his interview. Malachi covered the first half of his life. He ended as Calvin decided to switch to studying law.

We took a short break while we switched costumes and out came Selah. She continued the interview and then went on to explain TULIP. She concluded by telling of how Calvin was riddled by sickness for most of his life. 

As we ended the interview, she left the stage and I told about his dying in the arms of his friend, Theodore Beza.

Then it was on to play "Pin the petal on the TULIP." Everyone was blindfolded and spun around. 

Yes, that is a shirt thrown over some of the older kids. We are very serious about cheating during our game. 

After we finished up, we had carrot cake and hung out for a bit. We had a blast celebrating with everyone. 

And now for next year...

Homemade Butterfingers

I almost cried when a friend gave me candy corns because it was the holy grail left in my recipe for homemade butterfingers. The recipe came from here. Her pictures are way less ghetto than mine, so feel free to head over there to take a look. 

You'll need a 16 oz. bag of candy corn

1 c. peanut butter

chocolate bars (the recipe calls 16 oz. candy coating, but I don't have candy coating, so I just melted Dove bars)

Stick the candy corn in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Take them out and stir. Then, put them back in for 15 seconds at a time and stir. This took about 2 minutes total for me. Who knew you could melt candy corn?! 

Then add 1 c. peanut butter to the candy corn and stir it up.

Pour it out on a pan and form into into a rectangle. Or a rhombus. Or a pentagon. That way, you can justify this being a homeschool lesson. The recipe calls for using parchment paper, but I didn't have that either. So, wax paper it was. I put mine in the fridge for about an hour. The mistake I made was not cutting them about 30 minutes in. I then needed a hacksaw to cut them up.

Here's the candy corn and peanut butter. Don't feel the pressure to buy one with Chinese characters on it.  That's just the world I live in. I used creamy because in my 10 year old head, I remember Butterfingers not actually having peanuts in them. 

I took 6 bars of dark chocolate and melted them. I burned them a little, but I still managed to throw down 6 or 7 of these. No love lost here. My friend used milk chocolate and said they were great too.

Mine are not at all pretty because of the putting in the fridge too long incident, but I will say that these were wonderful. So take all those candy corns from your kid's Halloween stash and tell them it's for the greater good that they donate these to you. It can double as a homeschool lesson on socialism. 

Do I have to run around?

If you know my husband, have met my husband, or seen my husband stand in line at Starbucks, you will know this post confirms that our oldest son does indeed share his DNA.

It was a beautiful day and I forced lovingly sent my kids outside. This is his idea of "playing outside."