Elephants, distracted walking, WhoDat, spots and other random pictures

Orin has recently discovered Comics and he thinks they are the funniest, greatest things ever. We only have a few (Snoopy, BC, and Calvin & Hobbs) but he's been reading them constantly. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find these kids of books (in English) here so he's read the same 4 books over and over. I love that he "gets" them (mostly) and it's such fun to hear him crack up. But reading them while walking down a busy street in town probably isn't the best idea.

I guess another Saints fan visited CM! I never thought I'd see something like that at a restaurant here.

We've had many talks with the kids about NOT touching wires of any kind. Luckily they don't seem to even notice them.

We found a restaurant that serves western type food and even has these fun "peanuts". They are actually a little different than peanuts but similar enough that it makes us feel a little like we're at Texas Roadhouse. Oh, and notice the glass coke bottle? Most drinks are in glass bottles and there is no such thing as Styrofoam cups for children. The kids have broken quite a few of these around town!

A while back Orin woke up one morning with this crazy rash - everywhere! It was so strange. We went to one Doctor who said it was Measles, but Orin had had two vaccinations so we couldn't believe that was it. After seeing two more Docs, one finally said, "I don't know what it is but I don't think it's dangerous." So, we just waited and after about a week it went away. But it was so strange.

My first attempt at a French Braid on Sora. She's pretty wiggly and it came out OK. She looked cute though!

For some reason I don't think this guy selling dried fish at the night market is also a University of Arizona Alumni. But I guess you never know!

The family of some of our good friends here came to visit from America. We went to an Elephant Camp one day and they were so nice to treat us to a ride on the Elephants. The kids (except Sora) LOVED it. Unfortunately all of these were taken with my phone so they aren't the best quality.

Everyone ready to watch the Elephant show!

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Fun in the Rain

There is a little resort nearby that has a bunch of fun things to do. We had gone there with Mimie in February and the kids had been begging to go back. On Sundays if you pay for the buffet lunch you get into the park for free. So a few weeks ago we went. The food wasn't that great (and we think that might be where Damien got sick) but we had a fun time on the grounds.

It started to rain after lunch so we just sat around a waited for about 30 minutes. The boys had fun telling stories...Damien made up some elaborate story about all of the huge plants they have around that are in the shape of animals. The boys were loving it.

When the rain slowed down we went into the Labyrinth. But it started pouring 10 minutes later. We found a place to stand, but we were already pretty wet. So Orin decided it was more fun to just start running around in the rain.

Then Sora joined the fun.

Micaiah, my only sensible child, was happy to just sit and laugh and enjoy their fun from afar. They must have played in the rain for at least 30 minutes. At one point Micaiah went out, splashed in one puddle and then came back and sat down. I guess it just wasn't for him. :-)

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Not your typical soccer mom vehicle

For the last 10 months having only one car as worked great. But now that Damien's working I've wasted an hour or more a day dropping him off/picking him up from work. Since I have to go to Thai 3 days per week I needed some sort of transportation. Very few people have a second car because cars are really expensive here...and gas is also over $5.00/gallon. On the other hand, scooters are REALLY cheap and filling up the tank is less than $3. I've been looking for almost two months for one...we wanted something pretty cheap but I also wanted a scooter rather than a motorbike; and an automatic. I really enjoying riding it. So I can get to Thai on it and if I need the car to take the kids somewhere then Damien can take it to work once he learns how to ride. We're really thankful for it!

The kids love it and are always begging me to take them to ride around the neighborhood.

The kids were so excited when I suggested we should wash it.

They were VERY thorough and would have washed all day if I didn't cut them off after a while.

Even Sora got in on the action.

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Orin's first note to me

Every Thursday night we have a babysitter. She comes while we go to Bible Study (or a date night if we don't have Bible Study that week). When we came back tonight she told me Orin had written me a note.

Translation: Dear Mom, It's no fair that Sora gets to play with Ms. Rachel because she gets to play with Sora longer then I get to watch TV. Orin

Is he such a six year old or what?!?! It totally made me smile. And why is it just to "Mom." What about dad? Not the sweetest first note he could have given me but we can work on it.

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Do you say you're dyeing Easter eggs if you do it in August?

I've had two cute little egg dyeing kids (Car's and Star Wars, of course) that I bought two years ago but we never used. The kids have been begging me but it never seemed like we had the free time and enough eggs at the same time. :-)

The kids were so excited. I'm pretty sure we've never dyed eggs before. It was so cute because they were so surprised as we set everything up. It was a little different dying brown eggs, and the yellow didn't work, but I think the colors came out pretty.

I think this was the only egg Micaiah did.

He did the one egg and then passed out. He has strep throat/tonsillitis (one or the other because the doctor didn't do any tests (surprise, surprise) but his tonsil was almost as big as a golf ball) and has had a fever for the past 5 days and not eaten anything for two days. No wonder the little guy is exhausted!

Orin kept on truckin' and thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I love this because it was such a good attempt at a smile when I asked him to.

And then he was OUT.

I carried him to the couch and Orin was so sweet and went upstairs and got his blanket and two of his stuffed animals.

...and tucked them in right next to Micaiah.


This morning I brought him to a clinic that someone had recommended. Poor guy was so sick that the Tylenol wasn't keeping his fever down anymore. I actually set my alarm to wake up in the middle of the night to check on him...I've NEVER done that before. It takes a lot to get me worried enough to miss sleep. :-) I saw the clinic on list of doctor recommendations - it's a little far away but the doctor was actually great. She spoke English so well and did an actual exam. Micaiah has been saying for DAYs that his stomach hurts. With the vomiting and diarrhea he had I thought for sure it was what Damien had...a bacterial intestinal infection. But as soon as she looked in his throat she knew what it was. She asked him three times and he would NOT say that his throat hurt when he swallowed. He didn't even realize that he couldn't eat for two days because of the throat pain, not his stomach and that his stomach was in such pain because he hadn't eaten. Even though he was keeping water down she said he was pretty dehydrated. I was just thankful I found a doctor who has regular office hours that we can see if our other pediatrician doesn't have his evening clinic that day.

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Getting Well

We've been a little out of sorts this past week. Tuesday night Damien started with a fever and stomach "thing." We thought it would just be one of those 24 hour viruses but Thursday morning he still had it. I already had a an audiology appointment for Sora and was bummed that Damien couldn't come. Then, Friday morning he was STILL sick. I think he had about had it so by Friday afternoon we decided to go to the doctor. I'm still figuring out the whole Doctor thing here. It's not as easy as just making an appointment with your family doctor. Other than a few clinics around the city (many in the evening) almost everything happens at the hospital. Most clinics are only certain days per week. If you happen to be sick you either hope it lands on the day/time your doctor is around you go to one of the hospitals in town and they just sort of hand you off to a doctor. The hospital is sort of like an all day walk-in clinic. So we pulled Damien out of bed and dragged him in. Between trips to the bathroom the Doctor diagnosed him with a bacterial infection. This is where I think it gets funny. They tell him they are going to give him the first dose of antibiotics as a shot. We are sent to the cashier where we pay for everything. The doctor visit, medication, etc... Then they hand me a big Ziploc bag with everything. Two vials of medication, a syringe, saline, lots of bags of pills, cotton balls, etc.. Then we are sent to another room and give all of the stuff to a nurse. The boys go in because they want to watch daddy be brave while he gets his shot. After a few minutes they come running out saying, "Daddy got an IV, daddy got an IV!" So we waited for about 15 minutes as it all went in.

The doctor said it was pretty strong stuff and that Damien should be feeling much better within 24 hours. Boy was he right! Damien woke up the next morning with no fever and not having gotten up 20 times in the middle of the night. In fact, it was probably way more antibiotic than he needed. It's actually usually only used when other antibiotics haven't worked. And has lots more possible side effects. This is where the language barrier can be so frustrating. Usually we would ask so many more questions about the medication before taking it. But we're thankful it worked and that we have daddy back!

A couple of other observations:

- When you to go to the bathroom at a hospital and there isn't any soap to wash your hands it doesn't give you much confidence in the cleanliness of the place.

- Damien's entire bill, without insurance was 1,300 Bhat. That's about $43.

- We're starting to get pretty comfortable at the hospitals around here. Between Orin's stitches, Micaiah's crazy bug bite/rash, Orin's rash (which I don't think I posted about), Sora's audiology and ENT appointments, we've been to almost all of the hospitals in town. Still, I feel like we've been healthy overall...at least healthier than we thought we'd be. :-)

- "Right to privacy" is not something that seems to be of concern here.

- We get stared at even more than usual when we're at the hospital.

- Doctors here don't necessarily tell you anything about what they think you have or the medication they are giving you...and I think most people don't ask many questions.

- The sink in the hospital room for the doctors has cloth towels for them to dry their hands.

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A day at Huay Tung Tao

About 15 minuts away from our house there is this really cool man-made lake. Many local people go there for the day and especially on holidays. We've been wanting to go for a while and finally got the chance. Here is a fun little video on youtube about it. Much better than my terrible pictures!

There are something like 16 little restaurants all around the lake. The restaurants have a bunch of individual huts - some right by the water and some over the water! You can sit in them (on the floor with a little table) and order food. Some of the huts are in the swimming section of the lake. This is where we sat and the boys just jumped in and swam after we ate.

Orin got fried shrimp. It was actually a bunch of itty bitty shrimp all fried together. It tastes ok - I just hate that you can see all of their little black eyes.

There was a really pretty rainbow that the boys were so excited about.

I think this was the first time they actually swam in a lake. They enjoyed discovering that you can pour mud all over each other.

It's basically in the mountains...or at least it's really close. Pictures don't do it justice.

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