Lots of Pictures

 

Go here to see them…

Big Mouse

Three Stories

These three right here. I had originally bought these books for my Thai study because they have both the Thai and English. But Jube has discovered them. So I'm reading them over and over. We have 9 of the 15 of them but I want to get them all and I hope there are more than that yet. They follow the Bible very closely and the I love the illustrations. Published by the Thailand Bible Society.

Anyway, Jube loves them and I read them over and over. And tonight something dawned on me. God loves to forgive! It's not that He's
obligated to. Forgiveness was his idea. Look at the last page of each one of the above stories:




This is the Prodigal Son. Only it's his older brother and his Dad talking about the party in the house.

This is Zacheaus and what Jesus had to say to him at the end of the story.

And this is Jesus taking to Peter about the story He just told about the unforgiving servant. This is the story about when Peter asked if seven times was enough to forgive. (Peter is always bald in these stories, I shall forever now think of him as bald, perhaps.) It seems his reply was a lot for Peter to swallow.

Anyway, that was my inspiration for the day.

Our Morning Tea

Catching Up…

These aren’t the best of our pictures from the last two months, I’m still missing the zoo pictures, the coffee shop pictures, and the KFC pictures—plus a few more. But here’s a start. The next installment will come when I get around to getting the other pictures off of Dru’s computer and on to mine.

Can you believe it? All I can seem to grow is this rose bush.

This is my sweet, cheesy, nice man.

Sniffing a flower takes a lot of effort.

Nong Dew brings him junk food all the time. This time it was ice cream.

Dru solicited Nong Dew’s help for some Thai project or other.

This was not my idea.

This must be an old picture. I can tell because we were out on the motor bike after dark and we’re not bundled way up. It’s cold out there this time of year after dark.

The rest of these pics are also old—most of them. Taken in November maybe.

       

Directing Traffic?

 

No, I don’t know why he’s prancing around in the middle of the road. His father took these pictures.

He loves pancakes.

Helping Daddy fix the toilet.

The idea of Jube on the seesaw with Titan gives me the willies. I think Titan views Jube as a threat to his kingdom. Jube is oblivious to this as of yet.

It turns out that these beasts were as curious about us as we were of them. Their owners were quite flattered that Dru wanted to take their picture.

I found this outside my door the other day.

This is Jube’s favorite book. I am SOO tired of it! We read this book and the little Thai/English Bible story books over and over and over. I don’t mind the Bible story books but I am getting tired of this book. At first all he wanted to see was the horses. We’d spend FOREVER on the horses. Then it was the pigs. And he’s fascinated by the rooster…

More pictures to come later.

Oh, btw, I am feeling a lot better. Dru told me last Sunday that I was 19 weeks along. I’m not really very fat yet. But she’s a kicker so I know she’s in there, safe and sound. I don’t think that this pregnancy is as healthy as the last—but I’m okay and keeping up. I was still nursing Jube fairly heavily when I got pregnant this time, so that might have set me back. However, he’s finished with me and has turned his affections to the bottle. Overall, he’s a very happy little boy.

He loves doing dishes, helping me bake, playing outside, reading his Farm book, visiting his Thai Grandmother, and playing with telephones. (Right now we’re at Mae Wahn’s and she’s just letting him play with her phone.) Oh, and he loves music. He loves to dance to it.

Dru’s busy this past month or so with a TESOL course. This week and next he’s gone every weekday evening. But I feel like we made it through quite gracefully in spite of my worries of missing him like crazy. I did miss him but I kept busy so that helped.

And now I’m off. See ya later!

Some Rambles.

Somewhere in the neighborhood a monk is chanting. I can hear the neighbors next door visiting. The breeze is blowing through the trees in my yard. My men are mowing the lawn.

Last night we had company…like twelve of them or so, and we ate pizza, ice cream, and very flat cookies. Dru mixed them up and I told him to not put that last half cup of flour in. When I do, they have too much flour. Of course, if he makes them, they’re flat. But nobody complained. He even sent the rest of them home with the boys.

I made a fallish center piece with what I had on hand. I think I must have  pitched the fall leaves that Dru’s Dad sent three (wow, three!) years ago. Duh. Anyway, I did okay with some red apples, my doily from Grandma Ruth, and some tall grass that was growing in my yard, and cloth napkins. Oh, and I got out one of my big candles that I bought in the states. Lovely.

We were going to go to Criag’s for Thanksgiving but now it will have to be the day after or so. Dru double booked, not that he had any say in actually. It just so happens that one of the English camps he’s in charge of lands on Thanksgiving Day. I could almost became discouraged about Thanksgiving Day in Thailand. People just don’t have that holiday here—and it’s very near and dear to my heart. Thankfully, we have Craig’s. Even if we have to go a day late.

I’m kind of leaving my bean bag some. I have this dream that the morning sickness is going away already, but I’m quite sure it will return once I decide that it’s gone. So I’m not holding my breath.

I’m supposed to bake some sort of cookies or bars for church tomorrow. Like one hundred fifty of them. Brownies, cookies, something. I really don’t mind, but I wish my oven had more than one rack in it. It’s a slow hot process with my little not-insulated oven.

Jube is climbing and falling a lot these days. Up the green stool in the middle of the kitchen and off on his back. Out of the crib. Down the stairs. Over his own feet. We  like him a lot and think he’s really cute. It’s funny because I thought that I was going to be the “disciplinarian” in the family. I’m the softy actually. It’s Dru who lays down the law much more consistently. He gets by with it though. Jube thinks Daddy is just the best. He doesn’t like when Dru leaves without him and he’s up and running as soon as the gate opens when he gets back. He’s also taking to calling him in a loud voice. “Da-da? Daaaaaaaaaaa? DA! DA!” Or something like that. And Dru obligingly answers from where ever he is in the house. Dru’s a softy too, in his own way.

Ok, I’m going to go get at it. This is all rambley anyway. How long will it take to bake 150 of something?

Dreams from the Bean Bag

So, I’ve been reading home decorating blogs. Lots of pretty whites…I love whites, and antique sort of things that I like as well. The sorts of things that you go to thrift stores to buy. Cheap. Then you “make it over” how ever you like it. I’d love to do that stuff.

It occurred to me just now that I don’t have one single corner in my home that I truly am happy with. None that I glory in. I would be truly happy for inspiration for my kitchen. Right now it is purely utilitarian. Not even overly utilitarian sometimes. Dru says it this way, “What do you do when you want to use the stove top and you have the clean dishes stacked on it?” And for the life of him he can not figure out where I keep some things. It should get easy for him though—he’s been doing a lot of dishes lately.

My bedroom is greatly saddening for me right now. It’s all one color. When we were buying paint we were kind of on a budget so most of the house is painted in a warm cream color. But in the bedroom it looks very close to yellow, and the curtains, which are a brownish gold color, are way to close to that same color. But why does it matter? I can’t even keep my bed fixed anymore.

I have some projects in mind: Decorate kitchen. Make curtains for bedroom. Make curtains for both bathrooms. Recover hideous high chair. Recover cushions on the dreadful heavy wooden furniture. Do something in Jube’s bedroom. I’d also like to paint my dining room furniture white…but I think the land lady would kick us out. Oh, curtains for the dining room too. All the curtains are the same color in this house.

Anyway, I do a lot of dreaming. Not only about my house, but what I’d like to do when I get big. Someday I want to have a little hobby farm and grow my own veggies and animals. A pig or two, a cow or two, chickens, make my own butter, grow my own Thanksgiving Turkey, smoke my own ham…that sort of thing. But alas, my little tiny flower bed STILL isn’t planted. And I wanted flowers by Christmas.

Someday, I will be super woman. Right now the laundry that my husband hung on the line needs to be taken down. He hung it there yesterday. I said one night on the line was enough. I guess having both of my Thai classes this week is about as super as I’m going to get—for a while.

So I guess I’ll lay here on this under-stuffed, green bean bag for the next couple of months and dream. I might not even get my scrapbooking done. Or my comforters pieced. Or the high chair recovered…etc. I’ll just lay here and be miserable. The baby will be here June-ish or so. I might leave the bean bag before that once or twice—to use the bathroom or something. Until then, I will be here in my nausea, just dreaming. Miserable. But over all, happy. I really am happy.