Post-worthy Pictures

Watching my photo screen saver, Grace saw a photo of her taking a sink bath as a baby. Later, I discovered her trying it out to see what it was like...

She concluded it didn't work so well being nearly 5!


Again prompted by the photo screen saver... a photo of their costumes for the finale presentation of Kid's Brain produced a sudden strong need/desire to have a deer and a dog costume...With no spare cloth to work with, we used what we had: lots of scrap paper. At least the coloring occupied them for a while :o)
The end result didn't survive long, but it was fun while it lasted.

Easter week in pictures:

Palm Sunday

After discovering that Palm Sunday is basically unmarked by protestant churches here, we decided to make it special at home...

Thursday evening Seder meal with colleagues:

The idea began on Monday with a simple, off hand "Why don't we invite...?" for someone we knew who was alone for Easter, and we ended up hosting 10!

Grace asking the age old questions - and lots more as well!

Unfortunately, by the time they had waited excitedly all day and made it part of the way through, they were too sleepy to really take it all in. They surprised us all (Grace especially) by asking to go to bed - which they did on their own while everyone was still eating!

Friday evening we had a family Tenebrae service.

It was short, and heavily adapted, but effective - we hope! Grace had so many questions, it was hard to feel the solemnness of the candles going out and the readings of the events of Good Friday.

Sunday:

After a wonderfully celebratory service, we were surprised to discover that the malls were open, but took advantage of it to go out for dinner to make Easter a little more celebratory for us. We found backgrounds set up for picture taking.

Jasmin before we ate...

...and after...She's so different when full of food :o)

When we got home, the much awaited Easter egg hunt took place.

Counting to make sure we found them all...
Rediscovering what is in each one (they helped fill them on Saturday!)...Remembering what each thing symbolizes from the Easter story.

They did a fantastic job of knowing what each thing in the eggs represented! The only one they didn't get was a piece of tape for the seal on the tomb - and since there were 18 (!) eggs, there were a few not-so-easy ones!

We recently spent 10 days in Bangkok, exploring schools, churches, and houses. Yes, we're moving to Bangkok probably in June!

The first church we attended, the girls weren't sure we were at church! First, it was in a house-like building. Then, we ate breakfast together in the back "yard". After that, church commenced - with people sitting around on couches, the floor, and on the stairs.

Jasmin with breakfast at church

We enjoyed exploring eating from the street, but by the end we were quite done with chicken and rice (the safest thing for Jasmin to eat), and Mommy was relieved to not be trying to keep rice from spreading all over the guesthouse room every meal time.

There were plenty of times we stayed in the guesthouse and the girls got to play with other kid guests in the playroom and small yard. They slept extra well with all the walking and playing.

But still they are the best of friends to each other - even in sleep!

Our trip home was a bit of an endurance test for sleepy attitudes. We left Bangkok at 9 pm, landed in Singapore just after midnight, found the hotel, slept for 6 hours, then had to get up for our 9am flight...

The girls did really well with all the disturbed sleep, but the amount of walking required in the Singapore airport was just too much. So we improvised with a luggage cart... again...soon they'll be too big to do this!
2008

More about the move later.