No GPS, no cell phone, no problem

Day 134 (Monday):

This is from LAST Monday....

Please tell me this is not an indicator of how our day is going to go, chill kid, it's just a car seat!

Zoo day, hooray!  Realized while we were at the zoo, that we haven't been to the one in OKC since Kees's 1st birthday.  We took Kora to the zoo in Chiang Mai for her first birthday, but she enjoyed it so much more this time, I think she's at a great age for the zoo!  Doug's dad, Grandpa Boo took all of us. We met him there at 8:30 and he had donuts waiting to eat out of the back of his car. Some people have genius ideas, not sure if I should thank him or Ginny for this one, but THANKS! 

I love this photo for so many reasons: #1 Grandpa Boo is wearing the Duck Dynasty hat we got him. #2 Kora is in the middle of being handed off. #3 Grandpa Boo's face of sheer glee is priceless. #4 Donuts, donuts, donuts!

Kora approves!

Grandpa even brought his red wagon to haul the kids in. Kora rode in it for approximately 3 minutes before she wanted to get out so she could walk wherever she chose.  She was in and out the rest of the day, but her cousin Madeline who is turning 15 (in like 40 minutes...Aug 14...from when I'm writing this...), anyway, Madeline loved carrying her and walking with her, so I would have been free and clear to walk like a regular person had it not been for Kees's insistence that I hold his hand.  He's still just not too sure about things and needs plenty of time to warm up. We were at the zoo for 3 hours total and I think after about 2 hours, he walked all by himself and even ran off a little ways to play with his cousin Jacob...just takes time.

Buying the tickets to go into the zoo, I was so excited, I love the zoo, and finally spending some time with my awesome family after over a year of being apart.

Okay, so not gonna lie, the zoo trip was LAST Monday and the details are fuzzy already, so read the captions on the pictures because they are going to have to refresh my memory on what all happened that day...

Notice Kora is already out of the wagon, when you're a diva princess you must insist allegiance and test your subjects loyalties by being fickle and demanding.

Kora made it back into the wagon, probably because the bathroom break was over and it was moving again.

Recycling is good, Dr. Pepper is amazing, it's a marriage made in heaven.

Looking at birds

One of my favorite pictures from the day, love Claire's headband!

I'm walking next to the wagon so that Kees has extra safeguards.

Madeline is turning 15, when I met everyone in Doug's family she was 5, how is this even possible?

Checking out the seals. They were playing with toys in the water.

Kora knows how to talk to the animals.

I have critical things to say about my hair, but I'm choosing to move on...

Cousins!

Look, over there!

Why does it look like Kora is the director of this crew?

Prairie dogs, you can see one between their heads if you look closely.

Check out Claire's leg over there, almost everything Kora does, Claire has done, they are two peas in a pod.

Kora loves ducks, she found some in the water.

On the ferris wheel, I sent Kora to ride a regular up and down animal, but Kees chose the bench seat that only moves around and not up and down.

Kora didn't like that idea.

So Kora and Madeline joined us.

Music at the playground, makes my teacher heart happy.

Kora loved this.

Claire decided she'd pull the wagon, at this point Kees was still insisting I stay close and hold his hand.

Yep...there it is.

This was a strange, strange bird. It's called a Frogmouth, it's Australian and doesn't fly.

Some other bird, I didn't take a picture of the sign next to it, so I can't sound smart with my description.  It's got a blue head.

Sticking together.

Getting on the tram.

Jacob should be 2 or maybe 4, they tell me he's like 8 now, well almost 8.

Sticking with Momma, that's just what he does!

She was in all 3 rows before this ride was over, just look at that face, she's already planning her moves.

Kora got 2 drinks!

Back with Daddy, eating some goldfish crackers.

The animals get her.

Playing with her Momma's hair, I really like this one too, so sweet.

This was a weird moment for me.  Elephants are a THAI thing, it's weird to see them here and this type of elephant is so different from the ones we've seen all over Thailand.  My heart was sad, and I was homesick.

Jacob, Kees, and Claire are getting wet at one of those drizzly thingys, notice Kees is walking on his own and playing with cousins...SUCCESS!

Jacob and Kees looking like they are walking out of this photo was too funny not to post.

Yep, that's our crew.

Why does Kees look like a kid, like a real live big kid? Claire too? It's nuts and Kora should be a newborn. 

He loves his sister, and I bet she is only going to get more and more annoyed by how protective and watchful he is over her, but it makes me feel good to know that he cares so much about her.

I love their expressions, Kora's expression is curious, surprised, and wondering. Kees's expression is caution, like what's around that corner.  Totally fits their personalities.  Just love them so much.

She liked this building, we let her run around, and she loves being free.

This turtle kind of creeped me out, sorry Kristee.

Kees ran ahead of the group, and I had to follow after him to keep up. Whoa! See, it just took some time.

Okay, I forgot to tell y'all a little story called "America charges too much for a darned bottle of water". So here goes: Back in the day, before Thailand, I always brought a giant bag of snacks, six bottles of cold water, and a stroller.  I got out of the habit in Thailand because you can buy drinks crazy cheap anywhere you go, so it's not saving you money to bring it from home, it's just making you waste hours of your life planning and your energy hauling that junk around.  So I lost my touch, almost died at the zoo and finally broke down and decided to buy a bottle of water.  I refused to use the bills I had.  For some reason paying $2 for a bottle of WATER seems less ridiculous if I use all coins, I know it makes no difference, but it eases my conscience for some odd reason.  So I used like 6 quarters (plus other coins obviously) and tried 2 different vending machines that were both out of water. Then I went to the concession stand and almost did a happy dance because the water was only $1.85 at the concession stand. While I was waiting in line I re-counted my money to get exactly $1.85...which turned out to be $2 once you added tax, nicely played America, nicely played.  P.S. NO TAX IN THAILAND In the meantime, everyone totally ditched us and I missed one of my "spots" that I was wanting to take a picture at.  Also, America now has these weird (environmentally friendly no doubt) straws that are cardboard.  My brain cannot assimilate all this new information.  And to top it off, we couldn't flatten pennies because none of us had quarters and I had wasted all of mine on a bottle of water. The machine in the picture flattens pennies, but you have to feed it 2 quarters.

This is what I wished I was doing after my near mental meltdown about oddities of American culture that I had forgotten.

One of them was picking its nose, I'm so excited we got to see it, I needed a laugh.

Okay, my sister, who moonlights as Nancy Drew will be wondering, WHERE'S the wagon? We had to drop it off when we got on the tram. Then we got off the tram back before that drizzly watery thingy and now we are making our way back out of the zoo and to pick the wagon back up. So there ya go.

It was a great day!

1 minute after we strapped her in.  I love carseats.

Braum's for lunch did not disappoint! 

Yum!

Claire shared with Grandpa Boo

Kora did us a favor by eating some ice cream. She hopes we appreciate the gesture.

She fell back asleep, she's holding a tiny baby doll....

...and Kees is holding the canteen he got with his kid's meal.

 Alright, so while we were at Braum's, we decided to go to Doug's sister's place to hang out after lunch.  We got in the car, and I went into a weird tired/jet lag/mental fatigue mode.  I've had panic attacks before, and it was sort of like I felt like I needed to take a nap. It's kind of a culture shock thing too.  You know how newborns sleep all the time, and their little brains are trying to process all these new things. It's kind of like that, it's like last week I was in Thailand, and now I'm in America, but it's not the same as when I left it and I'm not the same, how can I fit into this world again? It's not like this all the time, but sometimes is just hits you like that.  I told Doug I might need about 30 minutes before we headed over, to just kind of stare at a wall. Because Doug is awesome, he suggested I just go home (to Doug's mom's place we were watching) and take a nap. He said he'd take the kids over to his sisters and let them play and I could just have some time to decompress.  While I was napping, the kids were...

Doug took these pictures,  he's a keeper.

Claire and Kora bonding time

 At this point, it was a full day, plenty of blog material, lots of quirky facts and fun photos. But when I woke up I decided to pack up and take the kids to Texas to visit two newborn babies. I have two cousins (that are siblings) who added new little ones within a few days of each other.  I had just gotten news about the second one, and since I had napped, and the kids had only cat napped, I figured they'd sleep in the car.  Doug and I had already been discussing when we'd visit Texas and he thought he'd rather hold off on seeing extended family until we'd had a little more time to adjust to being back.  My family is boisterous aka LOUD aka overwhelming, so that was probably a good call, but babies are only born once. So I decided I'd just take the kids and give Doug a little introvert/brother bonding time.  He memorized Revelations or something like that.  I'm teasing, but he did a lot of reading and research.  Last week, he read all of Nehemiah and wrote a "report" about it that I found on our "notebook" that syncs between our Apple devices.  I'm not sure when he finds the time to do all that, but I guess he tunes Kora out better than I do.  Anyway, moving on.

Before we left, Daddy filled the gas tank, Kora played a little ipad.

A lot of people close to me had strong responses to me "flippantly" deciding to drive to Texas late at night with no cell phone or GPS with two small kids.  I thought it was a perfectly fine choice, lots of places are open 24 hours, everyone else has cell phones and I have other people's numbers saved in my ipod. Plus anywhere I stop all the signs are in English and I can understand what everyone is saying (even quite a bit of Spanish, actually).  So, yeah.  The 3 hour drive was UNEVENTFUL.  I prayed, sang, it was so relaxing and enjoyable. The kids slept the WHOLE time.  I pulled in to my cousin's neighborhood around midnight, no problem.  She lives on Canary street.  I spent 45 minutes and saw every bird name in the history of the world and could not find Canary.  The kids were still asleep, but I finally decided I'd better go to a gas station and call for actually turn by turn directions because apparently relying on my memory of how to get there wasn't quite good enough. I stopped at a well lit gas station, pulled both kids out of the car seats, wobbled up to the doors and they were locked. Guess you could only do pay at the pump. A very frightened elderly lady, okay, not that elderly, like late 50s early 60s, opened this little hatch, and basically said she could help me and I'd have to drive further up to a different gas station. Driving further up the main road, I passed my Aunt and Grandma's street (mom's sister and mom), and figured if it was my niece or (future not yet existent) granddaughter I'd be miffed if they passed my place to go to yet another questionable gas station for help.  I knocked on their door a couple times, but no one answered. Then I pulled my ipod out and was able to use someone's unprotected wifi signal and got a message to my cousin who met me over there. I followed her back to her place and survived the whole thing. They only time I was upset was when the lady at the gas station wasn't friendly. As we walked away, I cried a little and muttered under my breath, "I hate America!". Okay, I don't actually hate America, but in Thailand people are so friendly and I know it's gonna sound weird, but I actually felt a lot safer there than I do in urban areas in the states.  People are always looking out for one another in Thailand and they always go above and beyond. As I'm thinking back about it, how sad is it, that the lady looked like she was scared of ME as I was walking up and even when I was talking to her.  I had two little kids, maybe she thought it was some type of elaborate scam or something.  Weird.  More on the Texas trip in the next post...yay!

On our way, it's blurry, but I was driving, so I wasn't going for clarity in this picture.

 Random aside, when I was in college I picked up quite a few hitch hikers, also something my mother wasn't too pleased about. But I always used my drive time as prayer time, when I saw a hitch hiker, I usually could easily stop and pick them up or something would prevent me from being able to slow down in time or whatever.  I never had a negative experience doing this.  I'm not endorsing it, by any means, and I'd probably kill Kora if she tried it, but I shared the gospel with every single one of those hitch hikers and it strengthened my faith, random, but for some reason I remembered it and if and when my kids are reading this some day I want them to know about how stupid their mother was or brave...I'll go with brave. ;)