Family
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101 Guppies
My dad has many jobs at Zoe International. At the beginning, one of them was designing a water filtration system for fish and frogs (for the kids to eat). One day, when he looked into one of the pools that they were going to put frogs in, he saw a couple dozen guppies in there. To this day we have no idea how they got there. Maybe some eggs were in the water and maybe a bird dropped some in there, but there were a ton of guppies in there. My dad got a small net and a movie popcorn box and filled it with water. Then, he caught about thirty and put them in the bucket.
They were in there for about two weeks before Dad got a fish tank for them.
We put in our living room and my dad filled it with aquatic plants. We wanted an all-natural tank so we selected a few of the fish to stay and dumped the others in the canal behind our house. Since then, the fish have given birth and so have the snails that got in because of the plants. (I am not a very good photographer but if you look closely at these pictures you should see tons of little babies.
We aren’t done yet. We added some algae eaters to the hundreds of creatures in our tank. We added an ugly Suckermouth Catfish named Argus Filch and two pretty Siamese cleaner fish named Bobby and Kreacher. We also added several shrimp but they’re impossibly good at hiding considering that they are bright yellow and blue.
The guppies are not the first pet fish we have had in Thailand. Only a few weeks after we got here we stopped by a fish market and bought a beta fish we named Malfoy. We didn’t want to be late for some baptisms at Zoe that day, so Malfoy swam contentedly in a coffee cup in our car while during the baptisms. When we got home, we put him in a small vase with a floating plant on our kitchen table. Sadly, the beautiful Malfoy died one morning for an unknown reason and the dining room table was empty for a few months. Fortunately, when my dad went to the market for the cleaner fish he also got Bellatrix Lestrange, a small dark blue beta fish who only cost one baht ($0.03 !!!!!!!!!)
Still, while Malfoy was our first indoor pet fish, he wasn’t our first fish in Thailand. Week one we noticed that there were big fish in our canal. We have a big canal that goes through our neighborhood and right behind our house. In it there are giant, bright orange koi fish and numerous other fish we cannot identify. Almost every morning at around 6:30 our neighbor dumps a bunch of fish food off her patio and watches as a mass of wiggling fins goes crazy right under the surface of the water.
P.S. I do not have pictures of the koi fish in the canal because they are very camera shy.
P.P.S. We have had several pet fish in America and we know what we are doing (for the most part).
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Joni & Friends International Special Needs Retreat
A few weeks ago we went to this family retreat and I was chosen to tell you about it. We heard about it from our friends and they told us it’s the highlight of their year. The camp is for families with kids with disabilities or special needs. This one was specifically designed to support Missionary families. We got to go since Tallulah has Down Syndrome. Four other kids at the camp also had Down Syndrome. There were fifteen families there from all over the world (South Africa, Taiwan, Cambodia, and all over Thailand) and all of them had kids with disabilities.
The retreat was Tuesday evening until Saturday afternoon. It was at a resort on a mountain and it was really nice. We shared a duplex cabin with another family but we had the bigger side. As soon as we looked around we found out we would be sharing the cabin with tree frogs and hundreds of ants but that isn’t very different from our house in Doi Saket (trade the frogs for countless geckos) so we didn’t care too much after we took the tree frog off the wall of Mom and Dad’s room. Although the frogs outside the windows every night were extremely loud. During the day, the frogs sounded like small dogs yapping from inside a house.
The camp is designed to give the parents a break, so every kid had an assigned buddy to spend the week with. Right when we got there we met our buddies.
As you can see, Tallulah loved her buddy Leighanna.
My buddy Andrei was was sixteen and liked reading and playing games. He did not enjoy dancing and that was completely fine with me. We watched the dance party together.
Jeremiah had a lot of fun with Nathan and Selah loved Brenna.
We were with our buddies at every meal, devotions, and during afternoon activities. After breakfast each morning, we would go to the meeting room and worship. After the parents left for their morning sessions, the teens would go into the neighboring building. There we would play games, watch videos, and make silly reenactments to bible stories. After morning activities we went back to the main building for lunch. Then from 1:00 to 4:00 we had free time to do what ever we wanted with our buddies: swimming, hike up to the cafe, play games, or just talk. Then the buddies would have time off for an hour to shower or change before dinner.
After dinner, we would go and do a group activity. One night we had a huge Minute to Win It competition. Tallulah had a ton of fun playing the Hungry Hungry Hippos game. Having people cheer her on while she mopped up the floor with her shirt was sure Tallulah’s idea of a good time. Jeremiah’s very flexible nose was put to good use in the cookie face challenge. Selah played a good toilet paper mummy, and dad finally put his skill of balloon blowing to good use.
The next night, there was a formal dinner for the parents while the kids had dinner and a dance party.
The last night was a talent show. There was everything from singing to reciting things from memory (like basketball players, car models, or pi) to magic to comedy skits! Selah and Tallulah did a clogging dance. There was also a Dad Joke Contest….and my dad won.
Overall it was a ton of fun and we will definitely go next year.
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Get Used To Different
It has been over a month since my last post and a quick scroll down the homepage would say it is my “turn”. But words are coming hard for me. Everything is. Life just feels hard right now, but it is difficult for me to explain just how or why, beyond anecdotal examples of the small daily frustrations I encounter here and there. I think it is because everything is different. Not all bad. Not all good. But very different.
As a homeschooling mother, my main job right now is to re-establish the routine of the homeplace: basically doing the same things I’ve always done in a new place. But it is hard to do the same thing when everything is different. Knocked out of my rhythm, I feel a bit off-balance and even small daily tasks require too much attention and decision. Right now I struggle to think of a single thing I do each day that is the same as it has always been. EVERYTHING is different.
The sounds are different: different birds, different bugs…bigger. Different words and voices and songs.
The smells are different. I hear the rain and open the windows: but can’t find the smell I always knew. A smell I fail to even remember well enough to describe: help me friends…was it grass? soil? With something sweet? I don’t really know how to describe it here either, just different.
The flavors are different. We might find butter, chocolate, avocados: but in your mouth they aren’t familiar. There is a subtle nuance in flavors such that basic comfort foods fail to deliver. I am working to adapt to new staple ingredients, but new ingredients mean new recipes, new utensils, new pans, new methods. For some that might sound fun. For this cook and grocery shopper, I admit it is mostly daunting. Probably because the food is different, my body feels different, too. It is exhausting to have no respite from all that is unfamiliar, even inside myself.
I sit here at my desk a stack of papers and notes next to me. It is printer paper, but a different shape (My PDFs run off the page on the long side and also leave a huge margin on one side along the short side…an annoyance to this recovering perfectionist and her like-minded children doing school on lopsided worksheets). Also, the pens have smaller ballpoints, so my handwriting looks a bit like someone else’s. That is supposed to mean something. Am even I so very different?
I brought the most important pieces of the life we left behind with me: they are different, too. Rod has more confidence and purpose than I have ever seen in him and that changes my role in his life. We moved here with three “littles” and one very tall eighth grader. Now I am the mother of mostly high school and middle schoolers. Even our youngest will be hitting double-digits this month. All these new life phases are bombarding me each day without my permission. So much that is so different.
The kids and I are working on putting together our own synoptic gospel as we study all four gospels together during our school day. As a part of that process we are re-watching The Chosen. If you’ve been following with this amazing show, you might recognize the bumper sticker phrases #LookUp or #ComeAndSee. During Season One, it was #GetUsedToDifferent. That is the part of the story we are in right now. And so I am. We are. We are all getting used to different.
I fear my tone is–once again–desolate, sad, even whiney. That isn’t how I feel.
Sometimes a fog sits heavy around me, yes. Sometimes I feel I’m just spinning my wheels trying to do the same things I’ve always done (cooking, cleaning, and working to develop and find meaningful outlets for my children’s amazingness)…even though that same thing I’ve always done is different here, harder.
Still we plug away and find new blessings when we look for them. I’m certainly not doing it perfectly, but God loves me anyway. When I can see clearly, I am overwhelmed with gratitude.
God is too good,
his world too wonderful,
his work too astounding
to stay in the fog when the sun is shining.
Here are a few things that have me feeling blessed beyond measure recently:
#1) Have you ever heard a seashell orchestra in real life? The way the waves catch the shells and then send them clinking together on the way back out is such a uniquely beautiful sound. I’d never heard it before, and it took my breath away. The whole earth sings praise. (The video doesn’t do it justice, but we tried…)
#2) Baht are PERFECT for illustrating borrowing. Such a fun blessing as we wrapped up 3rd grade math and reviewed all the sticking points!
#3) I caught these two spending quality time making music together. I was able to sneak the phone around the corner just in time to catch this. They are both shy to share these talents, but I pray they do this together more and more!
#4) Isn’t this symbiosis of life so pretty?
#5) These two American girls brought up the rear in the three legged sack race.
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Making Lemonade:)
When we first moved, the other missionary families took us out to their favorite restaurants. There are coffee shops everywhere with fun and fancy drinks to try. It is way cheaper to buy drinks here than it is in America. But even though you can buy a drink for about 50 baht (that’s like $1.50) my mom says it is still too expensive for all of us to have fun drinks like that all the time and that it wasn’t in the budget. That made me sad because I loved having pink drinks and smoothies and fruit shakes. Then Mom thought maybe we could learn how to make some of our favorite drinks at home and see if it would cost less that way.
At first I wasn’t very “in” to the idea, but I thought that I would give it a go. So I made a menu, watched tutorials, and adjusted measurements. Now I make fancy drinks for my family almost every day. My mom says that I am taking lemons and making lemonade. But actually I don’t make lemonade; here are some of the things I do make:
#1
The first thing that I made was sodas. I took some carbonated water and added some simple syrup and flavoring to make a delicious fizzy drink! But the picture down below is not of a soda this picture is of a drink I call a Refresher.
Tallulah loved sodas, but let’s just say they made her gassy; when she burped in our faces it was pleasant for no one. So we thought: How can we make a drink for Tallulah that isn’t fizzy but still delicious? Instead of using bitter soda water, I tried using coconut water. And that is how the Refresher came along! And the funny thing is, no one even gets sodas any more. The Refreshers are soooo good everyone likes them better! The flavor I’m showing here is raspberry because it is Tallulah’s favorite flavor. ( I couldn’t even get the photo before she took a BIG sip!)
#2
This next drink is one of my favorites. We call it a Pink Drink. The name and flavor was inspired by the Starbuck’s Pink Drink. If you’ve ever had a Starbucks Pink Drink you would already know that this drink is delicious! (By the way, all of the drinks I have mentioned so far can be made with different flavors such as strawberry, raspberry, blue paradise, and melon. Josiah’s favorite is peach.)
#3
This next drink is Mom’s favorite! Its a Creamy Cold Brew Coffee and it is just sooo good. What I like to do is ring the bell and then pour my homemade Cold Foam so that my “customer” can see their coffee while it’s beautiful!
#4
Almost every drink that I listed you can order blended, which makes it a Frappuccino! These are super good and look beautiful!
I am so glad that I gave this a try because I love it! When grow up I want to be a barista!! If you ever come to visit us you can get a snack from Jeremiah’s Snack Shack and a drink from my Keim Cafe!
If you came to Keim Cafe, what drink would you get?!
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The Snack Shack
Our kitchen has the coolest window. It slides open and it slides shut. On one side of the window, it is the kitchen and on the other side, it is the dining room. I came up with the coolest idea: what if I served snacks from the kitchen to people in the dining room?
From there, it became “The Snack Shack.” First my sister, Selah, bought a cash register. Then my dad put shelves in so that we could pass things out from there. Now I sell candy, and Oreos, and Beng Bengs (which are candy bars that are like rice krispies with chocolate on them). And now I am partnered in association with a business called “Keim Café.” Selah can tell you about that.
For a couple of days, during math time for school, mom and I figured out how much everything should cost. We took the total price for a box, counted how many things were in the box, and then divided up the price. In my head I could estimate how much each thing cost. We have 5 baht treats and 10 baht treats. That way people could pay for it with the money we get each week for snacks.
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Celebrating Tallulah
4 years ago, we met our Tallulah. When she first saw us, she ran away. When it was time to take her home, she kicked and screamed. When we got “home” to the little apartment we had rented, she was determined to keep her jacket and backpack on, ready to go at a moments notice. When it was time to go to bed, I laid beside her and watched huge crocodile tears roll down her face. When I laid my hand on her in an attempt to comfort her, she lifted it off and set it down on the bed beside her. She could not yet feel our love. She was so big and brave, and yet so tiny and broken.
I think they quit shaving her hair at the orphanage when they knew she had a family coming for her, but–even though she was dressed in pink–other adoptive families asked if this was our “little guy.” So I was determined that our beautiful girl should have long hair, and kept at it for years even when we had to adjust our plans to accommodate Tallulah’s DIY haircuts.
Last week, we celebrated Tallulah’s 14th Birthday, and our teenager got a new grown-up “do.” The gentleman who cut her hair was wonderful, and made her feel so so pretty!
When we returned home, she was eager to show off her new hair and was excited by the surprises and celebration dad and her siblings had prepared while we were gone.
But it’s this video that takes the cake…wait for the moment when she knows, for sure, that this song is all about her!
Love sure looks good on her!
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Sticky Falls
Yesterday, we discovered one of my favorite places in the whole entire world! We went to Sticky Falls, which is a place where you can climb up waterfalls. But think of it more like hiking. It wasn’t like you would normally picture a waterfall, it was more like a mountain of rocks with water flowing down them.
It also was not slippery like you would think that it would be, for the most part at least. It wasn’t hard to climb because it really was sticky. But not gooey sticky or gluey sticky, it was grippy sticky. Your foot wouldn’t slide, it would sort of grab on. Maybe imagine being a gecko climbing up a wall: the wall isn’t sticky and the gecko isn’t sticky, but it still sticks like a suction cup.
Sticky Falls was sooooo beautiful, and unlike anything I have ever seen or experienced before.
STICKY FALLS IS AWESOME!! If you ever come to visit me in Thailand, this is a place I will definitely want to take you to! I would go back there any day.
