The Joys of Rainy Season

Day 43:

Today was a holiday, again.  Seems like there are a lot of holidays here, but that's okay because I'm usually behind on planning, studying, and housework. And for some reason, having that one hour that I normally study with Kruu Jeab seems to put me into "work" mode.  I got a ton done today: laundry, lesson planning, scheduling, meal planning, home school, and general house cleaning.

Not a lot happened this morning, I cleaned our bedroom, the kids played, Doug helped a friend of ours take his car to the shop.  When Doug came back, I put Kora down for a nap and then made lunch. We had chicken and macaroni.  Pi Tone showed up while we were eating and stayed a while to play with the kids in the yard. About 15 minutes after Pi Tone got here, Pi Jam stopped by as well.  He only stayed a few minutes, and I decided I get my laundry hung out and then take pictures of all of them playing, by the time I did that Pi Jam was gone and Pi Tone soon after.  They played hide and seek, wish I had pictures to share, but, despite appearances I do other things besides stalk my children with a camera/ipod.

You never know what you'll see on the road here. Doug took this picture while he was out today.

She's such a big girl, she loves to eat and she even uses the fork to stab the food.

Kees did not eat this lunch, but I put it in the fridge and told him he couldn't have anything else except water until he ate it.  He happily asked me for it about 3 hours later, finished it all and then ate dinner.

Kees is giving me mother's day gifts, today he gave me a car, a plane, a marble, a shirt, and a bra. I explained that a bra is maybe not something to give as a gift, but he was insistent.

Once they went home, I took the kids over to the school room and we did school for a couple hours, then Alicia came over.  Then, it started to rain.  After a very hot "hot season", the rain is so nice.  Rainy season also means our air is finally getting cleaner, YAY!  Thailand basically has 3 seasons: Hot, Rainy, and Cool.  I love them all for different reasons.  Rainy season is so nice because it will be hot and sticky, then cool and rainy all in the same day.  Today, the rain drops were nice and fat and cool. They felt so refreshing!  I can't remember if Kora has ever gotten a chance to play in the rain, so I think today was her first chance to really discover the joys of rain and mud.  Doug has been working on my ipod trying to get my Thai audio stuff worked out, so I took most of the pictures on his iphone and they aren't all showing up on my ipod now, so I only have a few. Maybe later this week I can make a facebook album to show more of Kora's many facial expressions about the wonderful rain.  I am so thankful to be able to experience these things with my kids.

He smiled for me for this picture....what??  Not sure if y'all have noticed, Kees willfully wears his shoes on the wrong feet and likes them that way. He knows they are wrong, but he chooses to wear them that way.  We pick our battles, this is not one we choose to fight.

She was happy about the rain!

Grandma brought us this umbrella when she visited, we love it!

What is this stuff???

Figuring it out.

Sweet girl, I love this one.

Finding muddy puddles.

Trying to catch some rain.

One side affect of rainy season is laundry challenges. We don't have a dryer (most people here don't), so we hang everything to dry.  Now it's raining every day, usually around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, it rains for about an hour and then overnight it rains a little bit more.  It's kind of strange how you can almost predict the rain and it kind of rains on schedule here, NOT like Oklahoma! :)  Since it's fairly obvious that it WILL rain, I have to be sure and move my drying rack under the covered part of our porch area.  In our old house we didn't have a yard or any covered areas outside our house, so during rainy season we had to bring the laundry into the house.  Now I only have to move it a foot over and it's not IN the house.

Drying rack on the left, pile of clean needing to be folded/put away on the right.

The tap water is not drinkable here, so we have a water truck that delivers water in these crates.  When the bottles are empty we set them out to be picked up and replaced.  We are almost out, hope they come tomorrow!

And there it is, God's promise! Can't wait to be able to share about it with our friends here in Thailand.

Tonight we watched Iron Man 2 and tomorrow we are hoping to watch the third one at the theater.  Hoping our visa stuff goes quickly. My friend Alicia went to immigration a while back and was there from 7:30 to 12.  We've never had to stay that long and I hope we don't have to tomorrow.  I've already packed a large bag of snacks to stave off impending doom and prepped "entertainment" bags for each of the kiddos and books of course.  Hoping we keep Kora out of trouble, last time she was quite a handful, now she is much more mobile and much faster.  Yikes, I should really head to bed.  More tomorrow, love you all!

Oh, one last thing.  Sunday afternoon I was catching up on some bible reading.  I'm reading the bible in a year, and I read some everyday, but some days if it's really late and I know I won't get much out of it I just read one chapter and then catch up later. So I was catching up in Mark and there was some really good stuff. One thing that stood out to me was in chapter 2, you should read it for yourself, anyway, I was impressed with the fact that Jesus considers us "with him".  Have you ever seen in movies or shows where someone important is able to get their friends special privileges by saying, "It's okay, they're with me."  The disciples were caught picking  heads of grain on the Sabbath, big no no, and when the Pharisees called them out on it, Jesus spoke up for them and likened it to when David was hungry and ate the bread of the presence and gave it to those with him.  Then he went on to say that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.  What stood out to me about this was our connection with Jesus, how we are with him.  The bible says we are co-heirs with Christ, that we will rule and reign alongside him. His blood covered our sins and not only that, it in enables God to see us as IN Christ Jesus.  That blows me away.  How awesome is that?!? One sweet day, we'll be in heaven and Jesus will be there to greet us, inviting us into the very presence of God because we are "with him".

Have a super happy Monday!  If you think of us pray that our time at immigration goes smoothly and that I find my wallet...I'm thinking it might have fallen out of my bag at church on Sunday.  It's not majorly important, just has my Oklahoma drivers license and a small amount of cash, thankful Doug had the ATM card and I didn't put our entire monthly budget for groceries in there. ;)