Things are moving along...

So much has been going on the last few weeks. We've been really busy with trips out of town and trying to start packing up. I mentioned we went to New Orleans two weeks ago. This past weekend we went over to Tyler, TX for a night. My brother is a counselor at Pine Cove all summer and we went to pick up my dad's car. We have so much in storage that we need to move and it's so nice to have an SUV to help us. Otherwise, we'd have to take all of the car seats out of our car every time we wanted to move something.

We purchased a car in Chiang Mai! This is a huge blessing. It's very difficult to find a car there. Not only are they expensive, but anything bigger than a car (that seats more than 5) is very rare. It can often take months to buy one and we didn't want to be stuck in a city with no transportation. In March Damien's boss in Thailand told us about some classifieds to keep our eye on. There is pretty much only one kind of car we could buy that would work for us called a Toyota Avanza. They are only sold in SE Asia so I've never even seen one. It's a small (actually very small) van that seats 7. I noticed one for sale a few weeks ago. It was the first one that had come up since we've been looking in the past three months. I emailed Damien's boss right away who asked someone to go take a look at it. Thankfully they called the seller right away. Because by the time the person went down there (only a few hours after the add came out) the seller had gotten another 5 calls about it! It's so neat how it worked out because the people that went to look at it actually go to church with the sellers. They trust them which gives us a little peace that we're not buying a complete lemon. So now we own a car 10,000 miles away! I'm so thankful that as soon as we get there we'll have transportation. Let's just hope we can quickly learn how to drive on the opposite side of the road!

A lot of people have asked about the political situation in Thailand. I think that things have settled down some. I'm sure it will flare up again at some point before the elections in November. These events happen every once in a while so I don't think what was going on a couple of weeks ago is that unusual. I know in Chiang Mai schools were closed for one day but since then things are back to normal. It won't effect our moving there if things do flare up again.

Sora is completely off the bottle! I'm so happy. The boys never used bottles (which was very deliberate on my part) and I definitely made the right choice. They were such a pain. After a month or so I decided to just go down to two bottles instead of using a bunch during the day and I think it worked better. I'd rather wash a bottle every time she finished it than wait until the end of the day and wash 5! We had gone down from 3 to 2 bottles right before New Orleans. Things were so crazy busy while we were there we ended up missing lots of naps and going to bed so late that we would forgo the bottle. By the end of the week there we just decided not to give her one anymore and she didn't seem concerned about it. I'm so thankful because when she first came she was SOOOOO attached to it. I wondered if we would ever get her off of it. Now she has a Nalgene cup that is her favorite but I just let her use it all day and then we don't need anything before bed. Yay!


Sora got her molars. All of them! When we were driving to New Orleans were in the car and she was crying. I guess I don't look at her mouth open really wide very often and I noticed that she had three molars! She is such a good baby. I mean, I guess I can think back a few weeks to her not being as happy to go to bed (which just meant she fussed a few minutes rather than going right to sleep) but other than that I had no idea. I did notice she had her hands in her mouth often about 3 weeks ago but I kept checking her gums in front and there was nothing. I never thought to check the molars. I totally forgot babies get 1 year molars. She cut the last one a few days ago so I'm so glad to have them behind us. And now she can eat even more food!

A few weeks ago we went to take pictures at JC Penny. Oh, my it was so frustrating! First of all, the photographer was awful. We had her a year ago when we took pictures and I swore I'd never go back. I guess I forgot. I wanted pictures of the three kids together. So we get there and she sits them all down and says, "Ok, smile." Seriously? You tell a 3 and 1 year old to smile. Maybe other kids do that on cue, but mine don't. You got to do something silly. She also totally missed out on a few great pictures because she would wait 2 or 3 seconds after everyone smiled together and then it was over. I don't think we ever got a good one with all three looking. Then we took individual pictures which was just as bad. The boys did really good smiling (although they were fake since she didn't try to make them laugh or anything). But Sora was a disaster. The child won't sit for a second. We'd sit her down and she immediately gets up and runs around. The lady didn't handle that well. Of course, neither did I. I was so frustrated. She probably thought was a really mean mommy. Most of the frustration was at the photographer, but I know I took it out on the kids. I found my self counting to ten quite a few times. I think we'll skip the family pictures for a while.

I look around the house and there is so much to do. Donate stuff. Sell stuff. Bring stuff to Thailand. Store stuff. I've been working on it the past week and I'm making progress. But it still seems like there is so much to do. We're getting rid of a lot. But I still hope we're not keeping too much. I have SO many photo albums...3 big Rubbermaid bins of them. Plus, I have another 3 big bins of my keepsakes from growing up. Damien also has one. Is this crazy? Am I the only person who kept a lot from their childhood? I just can't seem to part with my little awards, report cards, favorite doll, etc...

Orin has been asking so many Theological questions. And some are so hard to answer. He was reading his Children's Bible to me the other day. In the story about Pharaoh and Moses it said that "God hurt Pharaoh and hurt his people. Then he was afraid and let his people go." So Orin asks, "I thought that Jesus never hurt anyone and tells us not to hurt people. And Jesus is God so how did God hurt Pharaoh." How do I answer these questions? Obviously the choice of words in the Bible wasn't the best. But still, these are questions adults struggle with. Orin asks questions like this often. He certainly keeps me on my toes.

The summer reading program at the library is in full swing. They've changed things this year. The boys only have to read (or be read to) 3 hours each weeks. That's nothing. We often do an hour a day. I'm excited to get free tickets to a rangers game the circus and some other fun things that we probably wouldn't do otherwise.