We're Back!!

We arrived back home on Saturday a.m. So far the jetlag thing is going pretty well...it always seems easier coming this way. We started our teacher's meeting yesterday, going from 9-4, which will continue today and then Thursday and Friday are work days getting ready for classes to begin on Tuesday, August 12th. It's hard to believe our summer is already over! Waaa!!

I am hoping to get back to regular updates now that I am home and able to post some pictures etc. However, the next few days are going to be busy so it might be a while before I can get back into the routine. If I can find a chunk of time here and there I will try to get started on the "summer news", posting it in several updates if I have to. In the meantime it's good to be back and I look forward to catching up soon! :-)

I'll leave you with our annual good-bye photo of grandma and grandpa with the kids. Have a great day!

Finally an update!!

Just a quick note to say we are currently in the States visiting family and friends. It's hard to believe it's already July 1st! I tried to post a quick note about our departure the day we left (June 6th) but I lost my post and didn't have time to redo it since I was too busy packing and getting ready to go (plus I was having a lot of internet problems at the time).

Our big news of the summer is that we bought a "new" van...off ebay! It's a 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan and Greg and KB used FF miles to go to Alabama last week to drive it home. According to Greg it was a LONG drive...one that he's not sure he would do again. The highlight for them was being able to spend some time with some of our good friends (and former Dalat colleagues) in the Atlanta area before heading home. They were also able to spend one night in SD at my mom's as well. It's fun having a new van, but it doesn't yet seem like it is mine...not sure how long that will take. Here is a photo that I was able to take off ebay so you all can see it. So far we are really enjoying it!

KB celebrated his 15th birthday last week (June 26) while on his way back from Alabama...so we had a belated family celebration last night here with grandma and grandpa. It's hard to believe he's 15! He has started studying for his learner's permit, which he was hoping to take yesterday. Unfortunately we don't have his birth certificate in hand since it's with his passport which is in the process of being renewed so he will have to wait until we get it back in the mail with his new passport before he can take the test. He was quite bummed and disappointed that he won't be driving soon as we was really looking forward to it.

We have very much been enjoying some downtime at my in-laws and are now hoping to head to MN to visit Greg's brother and his family for the 4th of July weekend. From there we are planning to spend a week with my mom and sister in SD where Greg will be reroofing my mom's house. Following that we plan to spend another week with my younger brother and his family, where we will also be seeing my older brother and his family, my grandma, cousin and her family as well as other family members and friends. We will be back here in Cody for one final week before heading back home on July 31st. Just writing it all out makes the time see like it's already gone! I'm sorry for the lack of pictures, but I have no way of getting them from my camera to this computer so they will have to wait for now. If I do get it figured out I will be sure and post some of them here...otherwise they will have to wait until we get back home.

I guess that's all for now....if anyone is still checking in hope you have a great 4th of July holiday!!

Meme game...

Sorry I have been absent from blogland lately. I could say that I have been busy (which I have) but the truth is I just haven't been motivated enough to update recently. I could have found the time if I had really wanted to. But since I was "tagged" to play this game by an online friend (and fellow adoptive mom who is adopting a boy from the same O KJ came from) I thought I would check in and post my responses. Maybe I can find time/motivation to do a separate update afterwards... So here goes:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. 2. Each player answers the questions about themselves. 3. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read the player’s blog. 4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What were you doing 5 years ago? I was doing about the same thing I am doing now...in the middle of finishing up the school year here at Dalat and getting ready to go home to the US for the summer (we leave next Friday night-June 6th- Yeah!!).

What are 5 things (that were) on your to-do list for today? Go to the waterpark with the elementary students, grade my Spanish I projects, finish my report card comments, read my email and update this blog.

What are 5 snacks you enjoy? chocolate (the good kind, not the immitation, yucky stuff-my most favorite are the candy-coated Hershey's chocolate eggs you can only buy at Easter), white corn chips with salsa or bean dips, good (chocolate) ice cream (not the palm oil stuff we have here), fruit (mainly watermelon, mangosteens, mangoes, strawberries) and vanilla yogurt (which you can't really get here).

What 5 things would you do if you were a billionaire? Hmm..adopt another child so KJ is not alone in our family, definitely travel more, spend time volunteering in Africa somewhere or Haiti while donating money to the organization I am volunteering with, helping family members with whatever they need, and help worthy organizations who are doing work in Haiti.

What are 5 of your bad habits? Living in mediocrity in many areas of my life, procrastinating way too much, being impatient with my kids, spending too much time on the computer, eating too many sweets.

What are 5 places you have lived? 1. Hulett, WY 2. Powell, WY 3. Cody, WY 4. Missoula, MT 5. Malaysia

What are 5 jobs you have had? KOA kitchen worker, waitress, gift shop worker, baby sitter, Spanish teacher

What 5 people do you want to tag? I honestly don't know who to tag. Although I read a number of blogs, many of them have already been tagged. And the ones who haven't I'm just not comfortable tagging...so IF you are reading this and have a blog consider yourself "tagged". Let me know if you respond so I can read your answers as well. Thanks.

Well, it got late and I don't have time to do my other update...maybe tomorrow! LOL! Have a great day/night!

King of the Jungle

Whew....the end of another busy week around here! KB is gone again this weekend on his 8th grade trip. They traveled to the Genting Highlands (where we went for our mini-sneak which I posted about previously) on Thursday a.m. and will be returning tomorrow late afternoon. He has called a few times and it sounds like they are having a great time. The weather has been good (remember how foggy it was for us?) and they got to ride a lot of the rides today.

Greg spent the evening out with the varsity bball guys and the other coaches. First they went for dinner at Chili's and then to Net City to play some online computer games. Sounds like they had a great time.

KR and her best friend had three (combined) birthday parties to attend this afternoon. The moms picked up the kids after school, but then Jacki and I went to the mall (where the party was being held) and picked up the girls afterwards and did some shopping. The younger boys went with a couple of friends and a dad to Net City to play some computer games as well...so we all had busy evenings around here!

Last night was the elementary spring musical. This year the kids performed "King of the Jungle". It was very cute and the faces that were painted on the kids were very creative! I don't have much to say about it other than I enjoyed it a lot and the message was good. Here are a few pictures for you to enjoy.

KR getting her face painted...

KL and his friend...KL is a bear and his friend is a wildebeest. Aren't they cute?

Beautiful butterflies.

KL and another good friend.

Doing the "Bull Frogs and Butterflies" song...it was very cute!

The whole crew. (You can click on both of these last ones to make them bigger. The quality isn't the best, but you can see them a bit better anyway.)


Tomorrow is another busy day around here. KD has a ten-mile hike for Boy Scouts from 7 a.m.-1 p.m. and an end-of-the-year party from 3:30-7:30. The pastor of our international church and his family are leaving us so we have a farewell dinner for them tomorrow evening. The candidate to take over his position is here now and will be preaching on Sunday. We don't want to miss that either.

Finally, here are a couple pictures of KJ taken this week by her teacher. They were studying the letter S and so went to the beach to collect some sea shells and some sand...looks like they had a great time!

I sure don't know what is up with the font the last couple of postings. I have done nothing different than before, but for some reason the font is more "squished" in some paragraphs. I tried messing around with it to fix it, but can't figure it out. I'm sorry if it's a little hard to read in some places! ugh!

My Mother's Day

My Mother's Day this year was about the best one ever and I feel so blessed to be the mom of my five wonderful children (and wife to my wonderful husband). My day started off with my usual Sunday walk (run this week though). When I arrived back home I was greeted at the door by KJ with a cold glass of water and the sweet words "Happy Mother's Day, Mommy". Greg and the rest of the kids had made me breakfast, which was waiting for me on the table along with a card KR had made for me at school last week. While I was enjoying my lovely breakfast I was presented with a couple of gifts (besides the hard drive I had gotten the day before). One was chocolate covered espresso beans and the other was a digital scrapbooking magazine. Both were very thoughtful and much appreciated!

(notice the cute flowers KJ made in her pre-school class on Friday)


After breakfast we got ready for church. Because I was so sweaty after my run, I didn't want to take a picture at breakfast with my kids until I had had the chance to take a shower first. So, quickly, before leaving for church, I had Greg snap a photo of me with the kids.

At church, the children sang some special numbers. Even though they weren't specifically for mothers, it was nice that they did some special songs on Mother's Day. KJ had to get in on the action even though her Sunday school group did not practice the songs. For not knowing any of the songs or the actions she did remarkably well, and her daddy and I were quite proud of her. (KR is in the blue almost all the way to the right)

During the service itself the speaker talked about the mother heart of God and some of the characteristics of this. We also had a time of prayer for mother's and future mothers. It was very nice, I thought.

For lunch I got to choose where we would eat so I picked a local Indian restaurant. The food was very yummy (as usual) and we had a great time as a family. During lunch Greg had all the kids go around and say one thing they appreciate about me. Those are always fun to hear (some are funnier than others!).

After we got home, I then got to lay down and take a nap! What could be better than that! I did end up taking the twists out of KJ's hair later in the afternoon and on into the evening (it only took me about three hours! yikes!), so I didn't even end up cooking supper last night! Yes, it was definitely a wonderful and blessed day to be a mother!!

I hope all the mothers reading this had a great day as well!!

Busy Week continues...

As I mentioned before, this time of year is a busy time for us at the school. This week has been no exception. It started with KL's piano recital on Monday afternoon. Then on Thursday a.m. his class put on the elementary chapel for the week. They did an Amazing Race video which talked about persevering (The teams played rock, paper, scissors to determine who was going to win the race and KL's team won so they got to win the race...which was fun for them and for his parents :-). At the end of the time they also remembered the moms for Mother's Day by singing a cute song and presenting all the the moms with flowers. It was very sweet. Today Greg and I headed to Carrefour on the mainland (large Wal-Mart type store in case you haven't heard of it before). You can often get things a fair amount cheaper there, so it's worth the trip on occasion to drive there and shop. We were mainly interested in getting stocked up on pet food to last us for the summer while we are in the US. On our way home we swung by another mall to pick up my new glasses (which I had ordered on Wednesday) and Greg bought me an external hard drive as my Mother's Day gift. I know it's not all that exciting, but it's what I wanted. With all the digital scrapbooking I have been doing, it's taking up a lot of room on my regular hard drive. I decided I wanted to get as much of that kind of thing off as I can to help the computer run better, plus I can take it with me places if I want/need to.

Here I am sporting my new glasses...opinions???

On Thursday night we had our annual Staff Farewell banquet. This year we only have to say good-bye to six of our colleagues. Many years it has been double or triple that. We had a nice dinner and then spent the next hour or so "tributing" those who are leaving us. It's always a great evening of fellowship with a many laughs and a few tears mixed in. As many years as we have been here, and as many people as we have seen come and go, it still is hard to say good-bye to those we have come to love and appreciate over the years.
With my good friend, Missy, who is leaving us.

KB left yesterday (Friday) at noon to travel to KL for a basketball tournament. It is his first such trip and he seemed to be excited about going. The boys were being hosted by families from the international school who was hosting the tournament. He called us last evening and said he and another boy, were staying with a single lady who is the middle school counselor at the school. He said she was very nice and had taken them out to Chili's for dinner. We asked him if he was remembering his manners and he assured us he was. :-) He just called me on the phone a few minutes ago and they are just heading back home. It's about a 5 hour drive so he should be here before very late this evening. All in all, it sounds like a very fun time.

Also, yesterday afternoon/evening the school held it's annual Food and Fun Fair. Our group sold banana splits and I was one of the "scoopers" for the evening. It had rained a bit earlier in the afternoon so we weren't sure how things were going to go during the evening, but it turned out to be beautiful weather...overcast and cooler but no rain! Yay! There was a great variety of food sold, including many ethnic and local dishes. There seemed to be a great turnout and I think a good time was had by all. At the end of the evening the Junior class held their Junior for Hire, which they do to raise money for their senior trip and activities next year. I think that proved to be very successful for them, thankfully. We, along with our good friends, hired a boy...not sure yet what we will use him for, but he's the son of some of our other good friends and Kalaiah just adores him...so we might have to use him for babysitting! lol!

KJ trying to win a fish at the Fair.

This is the boy we hired that KJ loves so much.

Tonight I'm attending a church lady's event. It sounds like a great time of food and fellowship so am looking forward to just spending some time with the ladies. I need to get off here and get something prepared to take, however.

Finally, I thought you might enjoy this pictures of Greg and Karl on their birthday...don't you just love Greg in that hat! lol!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Piano recital, science fair, and sunsets

It's that time of year again...time for piano recitals (and musicals and band concerts etc). We currently only have one of our kids taking piano lessons (KL) and he asks us to let him quit at least once a month. So far we have managed to stand firm in our decision to make him continue through at least next year. We both hate for him to quit because, with a little practice, he could probably be a good piano player. He brought it up again today on the way to the recital. I had to give him the mom speech about how nothing comes easy and free, but that if you work hard for it someday all your hardwork pays off and you can appreciate the journey to get there (as well as the end result). Over all he took it pretty well and let the subject drop. I'm sure he will be bringing it up again next soon. Here is his performance from this afternoon.


Last week we had the annual science fair at our school. It was incredibly hot and very crowded in our small chapel (I think they need a different venue next year). It didn't help any that it was pouring rain outside so no one wanted to go home until it let up. It was hard to get around the room to see all the projects, but most of the ones I did see were very interesting and were well done (I thought). This year all of the projects had to have an interactive component, which was a very neat idea. I think it made the fair more enjoyable for everyone. KD and his group of boys made a homemade seismograph. In the end, I don't think it worked quite as well as they had hoped, but they did put quite a bit of work into it (at least a couple of them did anyway). Here are KD and a couple of the boys from his group posing beside the machine.

Finally, the weekend before last we were blessed by this gorgeous sunset. There are some pretty ones here, but ones like this don't come around everyday.
Have a great week!!