Police at every bus stop.

Last week two bombs exploded at a bus stop. In a city about n hour flight from us. This week at every bus stop there are guards with electric bikes to watch over the stops. Put that into perspective of how many bus stops that is in a city of 10 million. My office is 3/4 of a mile from the house and there are 5 stops between them. That is a lot of new people to hire and mobilize. China is never at a loss for workers.

Cheap way to make calls

I found a cool service recently for calling around the world. The cost is a little over 2 cents a minute with the service then I have to call Beijing or SH which is long distance for me but only costs 4 cents a minute using 17951 in front of the number. Also it gives me a number in other countries. So right now I have a special number to call my mom and my sisters. I also have a special number for them to call me on. it rings directly to my cellphone so it is easy. I also have it setup with my friend Erik in Singapore, so he has a Singaporean number to call locally and it rings me in china. I have a china number I call and it rings him in Singapore. Pretty cool. I called my mom and she said it was clearer than Skype (costs a little more) if you want to sign up you can click this link and it gives me some credit. There is also a way to make it so that it is free but it sounded too complicated for me to try unless you had a really really long phone conversation going on.

Visit http://www.rebtel.com/?inviteid=%friend.inviteid%&utm_source=tell-friend-web&utm_medium=email

Great trip home

We had a great trip back from Thailand. We sat in the airport with about 50 friends and the girls just ran around having fun. It was nice leaving at 2pm since it gave us the morning to pack up and say bye to friends. The planes worked out well. We were a little late leaving Thailand but we had a three hour layover in Kunming so it worked out well. We only had to wait for an hour in Kunming. Wai Wong, a friend, came and picked us up in our van from the airport and then help us carry our 220lbs of luggage up the 4 flights of stairs. The girls played with their toys and we ate Peter's Tex mex at 10:30 at night as a family. Sonya and I stayed up until 2am playing on the computer and getting things organized after a month away. This morning it was great to drink coffee from my coffee pot and also to take a nice shower.

 

 

Closing of a fun summer

This was us dressed up last night as we went to a dinner. Last night we finished up our School of Leadership in Thailand. We went to a nice hotel and had a great dinner. Sonya stayed with the main group and they had some singing, prayed and some people sharing about the summer. I took around 20 kids into a kids room and played with them (I mainly watched the movie Cars and yelled at kids to put that chair down or put that table down). We are sad for our time to be up here. It was a fun summer of watching our kids play with other kids and being able to just hang out and talk with so many people.

The Third Child

Since Sydney was born I've tried to be very intentional about taking her picture, writing in her baby book, etc. I always think it is really funny that the 1^st child has so many pictures and with each child the photos decrease exponentially. Well, I must admit we have about half as many pictures of Sydney as we do Madison, but I thought I'd share a few with you. She is 11 months old today…I can hardly believe it! She started out as a pretty high maintenance baby (and stayed that way for months), but over the past 4-6 weeks she has turned a big corner…she is so fun! She laughs all the time, and gets so excited if she hasn't seen us for awhile (like after a nap or when Travis gets home from work). So here are a few pictures of her.

We may be lacking in Sydney pictures…but, trust me, she is not lacking in love or attention from her big sissies!

Sick Kids

Since we have been in Thailand all 3 of our girls have been sick at some point. You hate for your kids to be sick, but they can be so sweet and cuddly when they are. I didn't take any pictures of Hailey when she was sick, but here are the other girls.

Fancy Girls

We took the girls out one Sunday afternoon for a fancy lunch at a local hotel here in Chiang Mai and then let them get their nails done at the mall. Here are our girls with their friend, Emma, who lives in Beijing.

The lady also painted little flowers on their nails...they thought they were so big!

Tiger Kingdom in Chiangmai

Our family went to a Tiger park and played with some baby tigers and some big tigers. It was fun playing with them. Madison and Hailey had fun with the tigers but I think they enjoyed feeling the fish more.

I'm trying!

I really want to be good at this blogging thing. I'm trying...I promise! We are in a small town in northern Thailand right now. Travis is the administrator of a leadership training we are having for our local leaders. We are enjoying being with friends who live in other places in Asia. The girls are having a blast swimming everyday. Hailey has started swimming, Madison has become an amazing swimmer, and Sydney is enjoying floating around the pool. The pool is the easiest form of enterntainment for the girls...so I love it too. I also get to hang with the other moms who are there. I'll try to post some pictures of them swimming...it would help if I actually took some pictures, or, better yet, took the camera with me.