Bonus Birthday Post!

I'm skipping today for now, because I need to re-visit yesterday SLASH overwhelm you with the cuteness of my offspring.

Yesterday was little man's birthday.  He's officially 4.  So hard to believe.  What can I say about Kees? He's amazing.  He's kept me going so many times.  Being a parent has challenged me in so many ways.  I'm often left thinking, I'm trying to teach him all these things, and I'm still learning them myself.  I hope I don't mess this up.  I pray I don't mess this up.  Both my babies are so wonderful, and I can't help but think if they have any flaws...it's all my fault. Which completely disregards our sin nature, but I'll get to that can of worms another day.  So, my boy, Kees Daron, is sweet, snuggly, cautious, sensitive, shy, intelligent, silly, and caring.  I could literally write a novel about each of my kiddos.  They're great, but I'm sure all of us parents think that about our kids, and why wouldn't we. :)

Kees doesn't like new things, new people, or surprises.  I'm sure he'll outgrow a lot of these things, but for now,  he doesn't like chaos, he doesn't like noise, and he enjoys being around familiarity.  So, we asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday and who he wanted to bring.  He chose to go to Nic's (a playground/restaurant here in Chiang Mai...it's pretty new) and he only wanted to bring Pi Tone, his best friend...who, by the way is also growing way too fast.  I asked him several times over the past few weeks and this is what he wanted.  I love birthdays, and in some ways, a small affair at a quiet playground, seems boring, not BIG enough, but I had to remind myself that it's HIS birthday, I want HIM to enjoy it.  My instincts paid off, in a big way. It was so relaxing and fun for all of us, it was just our family, Pi Tone, and my friend Alicia...who by the way took some amazing photos of our day. ( There are tons of photos I'll be posting here that are decent, but if you want to check out the "professional" ones Alicia took, you can find them here.)

Okay, so Kees woke up early, and wanted to open presents right away.  He was with us when we bought all the stuff, and actually picked it all out.  We used birthday money from Grandpa Boo and Ginny.  He chose two play dough sets and an orange dinosaur.  The ice cream making playdough set was a HUGE success, he loves it so much.  Momma loves it too, but I think it's going to be relegated to the school room and used under close adult supervision from now on.  Pretty sure it's gonna take me a year to clean up all the little play dough bits around our house.  After opening presents, I showed him his birthday cake, he acted unimpressed, but that's typical for him in "pressure" situations when he knows we are looking for a response.  I've learned to not get my feelings hurt over it...well most of the time. ;)

This is his "Dino Volcano" play dough set.

Kora thinks it's her birthday, but I'm pretty sure she thinks that every day.

Doug was putting batteries in his orange dinosaur. Kora was excited!

Hurry up Daddy! I want to eat its head.

Kees showing us the scary eyes.

Whoa, it moves too!

Underwhelmed.

She was kind of scared of it at first, but then she just picked it up.

Kruu Jeab came for Doug's language session, I didn't have one because my ADD would never allow me to switch out of party mode.  Doug's a trooper for attempting to get his full time in even on birthdays when it'd be easy not to.  He always somehow manages to get all his time, and is doing so great with language, wish he could just put it all on a thumb drive and transfer it over to my brain. :)  It's fun having Kruu Jeab here, she's been here for the past three birthdays, so she's in the background of all our pictures, it's a tradition.  My mom was always talking about "traditions" growing up, and now I do my best to find or make traditions for our little family too.

Would you like some blue ice cream Kruu Jeab?

This reminds me of "A tiskit a tasket, a flower making basket..."

After Kruu Jeab left, we finished getting ready and finally got to go back to Nic's.  I feel now is as good a time as any to share one of my BIG parenting fail moments.  It happened at Nic's.  I had been there one time before with my ladies bible study group and I knew my kids would love it. I felt guilty the whole time I was there enjoying my food, looking at their fabulous playground.  So I annoyed Doug for about 3 weeks to take us back.  My expectations were as big as Texas and so were Kees's, the only problem was that he was expecting the playground we usually go to, the bright colorful plastic one, not this bamboo boat thingy.  He turned into and F5 tornado, much like the one that happened on May 3rd, 10 years before Kees was born.  Coincidence? I think not.  First it was high pitched loud screaming and a lot of staring from the foreigners eating there.  Then it was Mommy taking Kees to the bathroom to discuss the situation and re-group, which led to him crying...even louder, scratching the bathroom door, and banging his head against the door (cautiously).  Okay, before everybody starts gasping and recommending therapy (believe me I thought long and hard about it), let me just say that he was 3 at the time and that behavior was not typical. Which is probably why I handled it so poorly.  I have never in my life wanted to tunnel under a place to get out and never see it again, more than I did that day.  So I sort of banned myself from going back, even though Kees did LOVE the place once he adjusted to the idea.  Oh and there was a mishap when I paid that time too, once again, idiot foreigner, some days I LOVE bein' me (sarcasm MUCH intended here).

This is what Nic's looks like.

My friend Alicia came over to meet us at our place and gave Kees a present!

Kees is opening his present from Auntie Lish, Kora is "helping". This picture reminds me of when my brother in law Tim got a fortune cookie that said, "You will crush the souls of many nations"

Kora, for real, it's not your birthday, but you can dance...you're cute enough to get away with it.

Daddy is helping. It's a POOL!

On our way! I gave Kees a small package to open on the way.

Dinosaurs! They glow in the dark.

She played for a good 10 minutes with the packaging! I guess I know what to get her for her birthday.

Right before we got to Nic's. Pretending it's your birthday is very tiring.

So here are the million pictures from Nic's, I'll describe them underneath, so be sure and read the captions or you'll miss something awesome.

Sand underneath the boat.

Helping drink Mommy's smoothie.

Kees and Daddy checking out the monster burger.

MMM...ketchup!

I walked over and he said, "It's just so nice watching those little plants grow."

Not too excited, eh?

I think he looks like an angry model in the picture on the left, and I love it.

Cake, notice Kora making her escape, this is the beauty of Nic's, she's just wandering off to a playground.

This is how Kees responded to the birthday song, "too much attention, please look somewhere else, anywhere else!" From what I understand, Doug is famous for hiding under the bed at his birthday parties when the birthday song got sprung on him

I put Kora in the basket, she didn't like it, so no smiley pics.

Both my kids are missing one shoe...

She's lovely, even with a tiny bit of ketchup on her forehead.

Please, someone pick me up, I'm so tired!

Ooooo, look what I found.

My mom sets no boundaries, she totally just put me in a sink.

After Nic's we came home and tried out our new pool from Auntie Lish (my friend Alicia).  Kees was excited to show Pi Tone his ice cream making stuff, so we set them up by the pool.  Doug, Kora, and I "swam", and Kees got in for a few minutes, but then went back to his ice cream shop.

Ice cream anyone?

It really is MY birthday!!

We ordered cheap and amazing Thai food for dinner and then we watched the Land Before Time.

Mmmm, stir fried veggies, garlic chicken, fried rice, and Kees got a special blue soda.

Classic!

Spoiler alert, the mom dies...who remembers that?!?

So sad!

So, after watching the movie, I remembered this...

Spike puppet from Pizza Hut

Remembering this, reminded me of this...

Book it!

When I said, I think I got my puppet because we went to Pizza Hut for "Book It".  Doug had no idea what "Book It" is and didn't have a clue what I was saying. Thankfully Alicia understood, but I'm still baffled about how Doug missed this MAJOR phenomenon in his childhood.  I guess he is like 100 years older than me, but still, his little sister, is my big sister's age, and SHE did "Book It".

One more tidbit, a few months ago there was another strange thing Doug got confused about: Amelia Bedelia!  Seriously?!?  I'm starting to wonder about his parents! Just kidding, love you both!

This is Amelia Bedelia, if you don't recognize her, I suggest you educate yourself.

And finally, to wrap the day up, Kees gave me a present! His movie was over and he crawled over to me and asked, "Do you want to snuggle me, yes or no?"  Um, I said, "yes", then he fell asleep in about 5 minutes flat. One of the best days I've ever had. Being a mom ROCKS!

Love.

Kees is 4 on 40!

Day 40:

It's day 40 of me posting blogs! Kees turns 4 today, how cool is that. I have so much I could say and want to say, but our birthday celebrations wore me out, so for now, here's a pic...if you need me I'm sleeping!

Birthday Boy!!!

That awkward moment when the number of pictures you post is more than the hours in the day...

Day 39:

Last night, I went to bed knowing I had tons to do today to get ready for Kees's birthday.  I gave my round cake pans to the church earlier this month when I taught the big fat failure brownie lesson, so I couldn't even make the cake right away.  I've been toying with the idea of getting up earlier. Here's the thing: I CAN get up early, but it's near impossible for me to go to bed early.  Which poses a problem...called lack of sleep. Anyway, last night, I purposed in my heart to get up early, so of course I woke up at 4 am, thinking it was 6 am.  Then settled for getting up at 5:30, about 10 minutes later Kora woke up, defeating the purpose of being up early. But at least I tried, after putting her back to sleep, I went back to sleep, then got back up at 7:45.

We made malt balls, cause we're out and then I made fondant, showered the kiddos, and we went to the school room. My language session is at 10. Today I did step by step procedure for applying make up. It was fun or funny, maybe both.  Lots of the words are similar to English, but with Thai tone and accent.  Those are always the hardest. We laughed, a lot, at my expense...but it was a price I was very much willing to pay!

Making malt balls! (Doug if you're reading this, Kora was insane, please move my table back! :)

Yeah, we moved to the counter after Kora got a little crazy. Excuse our bed heads and yesterday's clothes, it was a late night last night, after our church friends left, we crashed!

Fun times with Kruu Jeab

After Kruu Jeab left I felt a little bit like a kid on the last day of school! Yahoo! I'm just a stay at home momma in birthday party mode! My friend Alicia, stopped by with new cake pans for me because she is AWESOME.  So we went about the business of making cake and frosting.  Kees found some sprinkles on the spice shelf and really wanted to add them. I initially thought they might mess up the texture of the frosting and it's supposed to be a smooth base for the fondant, but then I figured, when it's my birthday, I'll do what I want. THIS is Kees's day, so we poured in sprinkles. Then, we sampled some frosting with our Fudge Brownie Graham Goldfish, mmmm...amazing!

I have a love/hate relationship with my Kitchen Aid. It shocks me on a regular basis, and most days I'd rather not die.  Also, for some things I'm not convinced it does a better job, but I'm guessing user error is involved.  However, it did a MEAN job on my fondant this morning, so I'll keep her. This is the butter cream frosting we made!

We had a fun time sticking all the fish in the "pool" of frosting.

I had just finished all the parts to the cake: fondant, 2 cakes (I had to bake them separately because they wouldn't both fit in my ginormo toaster oven that is now missing the front handle), and butter cream frosting (plus sprinkles!), when Pi Tone stopped by to tell us there was some type of celebration happening at the "Skills Center" in our neighborhood.  We've met the German owner, he has a few horses and hires Thai workers, then trains them in how to care for the horses and provides them with a certificate so they can get further employment.  We had tried to go a couple times before and thought they were closed, but when Pi Tone took us today, we realized we'd been going to the wrong place.  No wonder they looked closed!  Kees was deathly afraid of the horses and all the people.  Kora was fearless, trying to give me a heart attack. She kept trying to run up and down this ramp that had a deep ravine she could fall into.  Pi Tone asked if he could hold Kora, and ended up following the three trainers and horses.  We stayed behind, not really sure where they were going. After they were gone a while we tried to follow and saw quite a few interesting things.  When we finally met up with Pi Tone he told us that Kora LOVED riding the horse.  We didn't know she'd want to get on a horse!  He took pictures, but I don't have those. Later I had her get back on, so I could see her ride.  Pi Tone said she was squealing and waving her arms the first time. So sad I missed it, I was dealing with Kees's anxiety or believe me I would have been there!

She had just woken up from a nap, but she was happy to see Pi Tone. She loves him so much, he makes her laugh and laugh.

Hey mom, look what I found! I think Kees left this on the table for me!

Oh the sass she exudes!  Love her!

Kees says, "No thank you, I'll just hang out here"

Kora says, "Horsey, can I grab your face and bite it?"

Not sure if you've noticed her various hair dos through out these pictures, but she kept pulling them out and I had to chase her down to get them back in or in this case just the one.

By this point Kora had gone off on her horse riding adventure with out us and we were looking for her.  I teased Kees and told him these black pod thingys were poop.  He played along, guess maybe his potty humor isn't completely out of nowhere.

Saw this spirit house on our walk...

And this tractor.  And you better believe I was trying to figure out a way to take one of those bathtubs home with me.  Please, stop what you are doing and go enjoy a nice long bath for me, with bubbles, and a good book.

Love just doesn't do it justice.

We were very pleased to find these "poop pods" had been set into the concrete!

Walking over to ride the horse again.

She's so brave!

After Kora's second horse ride, they let us play on the trampoline, all the other riders went back to the corral (is that what you call it, I have country family members who are going to die when they read this post...sorry Aunt Nette.).  The trampoline was also scary for Kees, it took him about 10 minutes to break away from me, but once he did, he loved it and didn't want to go home.  We left because it looked like rain.

She wasn't sure what to think about this trampoline, but I'm pretty sure her motto is:"I'll try anything 5 times!"

I had to get on the trampoline with Kees.  I secretly love that I have a built in excuse to participate. Thankfully no one yelled, "You big fat foreigner get off before you break that!"

Catch me

Love her expressions

Now he's getting the hang of it.

Okay, bottom left, doesn't she look like a mean model with a weird model pose. "I am too cool for all of you"

After we got home, both our kids fell asleep!  I guess our little adventure wore them out.  We weren't even gone that long, but it was pretty exciting!  With both babies asleep, I was able to decorate the cake for tomorrow. It was peaceful and fun to do a project without helpers. Don't get me wrong, I love me some short people helpin' in the kitchen, but every now and then it's nice to be "in the zone".

I don't care if you don't like it, cause Kees picked out every detail and I know he'll love it.  Big reveal in the morning, can't wait, I hope I get SOME sleep. Ah well, that's what coffee is for and Doug makes a mean coffee!

And there you have it, another day in the books!  I really struggled this morning to study Thai, it just feels wrong to break up my morning with my kiddos. Doug and I discussed it this evening and we are looking to change up our routine a little so I can do my session earlier and be on about my day.  I'm excited about the change, but I'm sure it will be tricky at first.  Prayers for us would be very much appreciated.  Being a stay at home, work at home, home-school, wife, and mom is so messy sometimes! (If you think it's a lot of pictures, just wait, it's birthday pictures tomorrow!!!)

Every good day begins and ends with food

Day 38:

Yes, I admit, I love food, seriously LOVE food!  Our morning usually starts out with a healthy breakfast, but not today, today we were out of malt balls (oatmeal powerballs), and I made pancakes.  And I can't make plain pancakes because that would be too easy and make too much sense. So we had chocolate chip pancakes for the kids, and pecan chocolate chip for the big people (that's me and Doug...just to clarify).  But for Doug's second pancake, I decided I should out-do myself.  Let me back track, last night we made chocolate chip cookies when we had friends over for dinner.  We had half of the dough left over, but when they left I just put the bowl in the fridge.  So, while I was making the pancakes I set the cookie dough out to soften so I could put it in an air-tight container.  Which led to pecan-chocolate-chip-cookie-dough pancakes.   Because I'm awesome.  Doug loves ice cream, like maybe more than me, and cookie dough is one of his favorites, but it's only available in Haagen Daas here and costs way too much, so it made my heart happy to make him these pancakes.  I'm not sure if they made his tummy happy, but I'm sure he appreciated the gesture. (If you have questions about my method of getting the cookie dough into the batter, feel free to message me and ask).

These are business on top and party on the bottom.

Today is a Thai holiday, labor day.  So we decided we'd go to a movie, but every one and their mom was at the mall, so they were sold out.  We did get quite a few of our errands checked off the list though.  And I found a great deal on baby goldfish crackers and some novelty flavors I've never seen.

They had fudge brownie and vanilla cupcake...what?!?

When it was time to check out, the employee only rang up half our stuff.  Then couldn't quite figure out how to correct the problem. In the meantime, I had already given Kees candy that the guy had swiped, but his manager came over and took us to the service desk and wanted to re-swipe everything.  Problem: I already ruined the barcode on the candy, so I ran back and found another one like it, so they could swipe it.  I started to tell Doug to explain it to the guy, but decided I would do it myself because I need to practice my Thai, which believe me is not fun sometimes, like when you humiliate yourself.  But, no matter, I am brave, I am stubborn, so I explained that my son had already eaten the candy.  The lady thought we had purchased 2 candies and so she rang it up twice, I understood what she was doing, but figured we'd just buy the second one since we were about 15 minutes into this check out ordeal and Kora was acting like a bat out of you know where. They finished ringing us up, but still couldn't let us leave because the totals didn't match, so then Doug re-explained that we only wanted one candy and we just brought that one over to be scanned, NOT purchased.  Whew, that's 20 minutes of my life I will never get back. In the moment, let me tell you, I was stressed, hot, embarassed, and anxious. But as I think about it now, I can laugh and appreciate that God allowed that craziness and it was a great opportunity for me to practice language. So, I'll take it, and I DID get some crazy good deals: Apple Straws, fakey cheese sauce (80% off), goldfish crackers, cream cheese....ahhhh life's little luxuries!

If only they'd keep her while I'm shopping.

We made it home, after about 3 too many stops for Doug's liking.  I prepped food for our small group, we had dinner, hosted cell group, and now I'm blogging.  Tomorrow begins birthday extravaganza!  Kees turns 4 on Friday...insanity.  This year he has requested an orange dinasaur cake.  I kind of got the hang of cars and now he's switchin it up.  We had money from Grandpa Boo and Ginny to spend when we were shopping today and Kees picked out an orange dinosaur, and two playdough sets, one that makes food and one that makes dinosaurs. So prayers appreciated as I attempt to make fondant in the crazy heat we live in.

Doug and Kees set the school room all up for our guests, then played hide and go seek while they waited for them to come.

We left our duckie at church Sunday, and they brought it back for us! :)

She loves guitars.

Playing

Reading

Hanging out after.

He's too big!

Doug forgot to set out my cheese ball, I had taken Kora over to the house to put her to sleep and when I came back they were almost done eating, I force fed them cheese ball, it included my special hoarded pecans from Oklahoma....thanks DAD!