Weekend with the Flaglers

So, Friday night was Matt's birthday. We had him and Tricia over for pizza from our favorite place (Kylie calls it Neetza Pizza, but it's really Pinocchio's) - 2 Pizza Salami (pepporoni), 2 Pizza Margharita (regular cheese) and 1 Greek Salad (pronounced sah-lad). Very yummy and pretty much down to a science on what we eat. Tricia had Que Pasa make a cake for Mr. Matt - which was really 2 gigantic chocolate chip cookies sandwhiched together with sweet, sweet icing and then coated in icing all around it and topped with the Happy Brithday Matt. That's right, I said, Happy BRITHDAY. Did you notice? It was awesome and make you want to puke it was so sweet...but we managed not just 1 but 2 slices throughout the night. :) We topped it off with Cities and Knights of Catan, where Matt won 2x's...and on the 2nd game, I put our laptop on the table and played The All-Time Great Movie Mix that A and I made sophomore year at final's time when we should have been studying. So fun.

And, as if that was not enough time with our family for the weekend, we all went to the Samut Prakan Croc Farm on Saturday! Matt and Tricia just bought a new camera and are great photographers, so we had them use their camera all day and it was almost like having professional photographers with us! So nice to have pics of our whole family together! Thank you guys! They took 500+ pictures that day!

The Croc Farm was awesome. Matt and Tricia had their pictures taken with baby tigers, Dan and Jack had their picture taken with a HUGE live crocodile (while other crocs were swimming around), we "fished" for crocodiles, fed hippos, Matt ate crocodile meat (in kabob form and as a hamburger), Matt had his picture taken with a Chimpanzee, we bought a picture painted by an elephant, fed more crocs, walked a ton, drank at least 10 bottles of water and 8 sodas (somehow 6 for lunch and then 2 for Dan and I on the ride home), the kids got their picture taken holding baby tigers and a baby cheetah and we had a blast!

Kylie posing with "it's just pretend" crocodile

Matt and Tricia feeding baby Tiger cubs


Daddy and Bugga


Momma and Bugga


Jack in front of the monkey


Daddy and Jack walking out to get their picture taken with a HUGE live croc...
Actual picture taken by the Croc Farm


Our view of Dan and Jack when they went down to get their picture taken


Matt with the Chimpanzee


"Fishing" with chicken rib cages for Crocs

Daddy and the Tweedlers


Me fishing for Crocs


A Croc jumping for the chicken rib cages


Thankfully, Moo and Jack posing with a stone statue


A goat on the loose! We saw a couple of goats that had gotten out of their pens and no one seemed to notice. I told Tricia that Dan loves goats and has tried to talk me in to letting him have some...but that I would have to milk them everyday. He didn't hear me say that, but about 2 seconds later said, "Man, I love goats!"


Our wonderful family

A line-up of us feeding 3 hippos


Momma Hippo, Baby Hippo and Big Daddy Hippo


Megan posing bravely with an elephant


Touching the elephant!

A random monitor lizard on the run! I think it is a wild one, but they have ones in a confined space at the zoo, too!


Go Cougars!!!


The Family

The 2 couples taken by Megan

Walking under the elephant

The 3 kids feeding a baby tiger...

then Kylie is given a baby cheetah to hold. If you know Jack, the stuffed animal he sleeps with every night is the same size and is, in fact, a Cheetah. We got him at Jungle Larry's in Naples. You can see Jack eying Cheetah. He wanted to hold the baby Cheetah and Kylie wanted nothing to do with it...

Feeding the tiger...

The real photo taken by the Croc Farm

Dan is holding a picture we bought (for 50B or $1.44USD) painted by an elephant! We'll frame it and put it up in the kitchen - perfect for Valentine's Day!

About 2 minutes after we left the Croc Farm from a great, great Day! Thanks Matt and Tricia for coming with us! We had a blast!!!

Grandad and Charlie Wilson's War

Okay, so Dan and I started this movie last night - and are only 30 minutes into it. Aside from the sketchiness in the beginning, the guy played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman looks exactly like my Dad. It had Dan and I cracking up last night and laughing so hard that we had to call my parents to see if they had seen it. Grandad had, Grammy hadn't. I told my Dad that the guy looked exactly like him. My Dad's reply? "No he didn't....he has darker glasses than me." Seriously? That's the only thing you can come up with that makes you guys different? So anyway, what do you think? And Mark, Brian, Heather or Sarah...have you seen it and did it crack you up, too?

P.S. 2 things: I don't think Phillip Seymour Hoffman looks like my Dad normally...just as this character. And, when we showed the movie cover to the kids and asked them who it was, they all shouted, "GRANDAD!!!" in unison!

Today's Friday

...and I've written nothing since Monday and still don't have anything too exciting to report. Dan got home last night from a trip, so we are all thrilled to have Daddy home again! He worked Sunday-Thursday work week this week, so didn't have to go in Friday (today)! We got Khun Som to watch Kylie for 2 hours this morning and had a Starbucks date (cheap date, expensive coffee) and then went grocery shopping without kids! So fun, got stuff done and had good time to talk!

Dan's off at school with Jack (he plays on the playground with them at recess, eats lunch, reads a couple of books to the class and then does centers with them) and Kylie and I went out searching for pineapple from a fruit stand and the shawarma stand happened to be right next to it, so I bought my first beef shawarma! So yummy.

Jack has a birthday pool party this afternoon, then we will have Matt and Tricia over tonight to celebrate Matt's 24th Birthday!!! And play settlers!

That's it for us...Kylie's off for naps :)

Moopert at School

Here's some cute pics of Moo off her teacher's website :)

I love this one of Moo running the 40 yard dash! It was from their "Elementary School Games" Day. We used to have one at the end of the school year in June. We can't have it in June here because it is the "hot season". So they had in December when it was a cooler 94 degrees. They had big water coolers for the kids to drink and plates of fresh pineapple, watermelon and dragon fruit for the kids to snack on in between! (I think she was looking at Bugga and I who were cheering her on from the side.)

Doing an obstacle course


Doing an outside obstacle course with her cool hat on that all kids are required to wear on the playground or outside :)

Her class showing off their muscles.
(thanks, A for the correction)


Moo balancing on 1 foot for 100 seconds on the 100th day of school, with her 100 hat on!

Playing 100 bingo!

Packages

We got a couple of great packages in the mail this last week (and today)! A package from Grammy and Grandad - which had valentine's for the the kids and boxes of valentine's for the kids to send their classmates, an outfit for miss thing (see above), sunglasses for the kids, a grinder of sea salt and scissors for me, a box of little debbie snack cakes and other fun stuff! Thanks for the great packages!

Dan was recently in another country and it is really cheap to shop the american stores there and send food here (like $1.32USD for a large box of cereal and $3USD to ship the whole package) :) We got things that are really expensive here, like Fruit Loops, Stove Top stuffing, dessert treats, m&m's and various Pringle flavors. Now if we could just figure out a way to have people ship us cheese (oh, we miss you so) and ham and various pork products (that do not taste like preservatives)! Seriously, when we come home this summer to visit, anyone we see had better be prepared to help us eat cheese in all it's forms and sandwich ham (although I won't pout at a nice hamsteak or oven baked ham, either). Oh, and hummus from Costco. And Anita's. And Taco Bell. And Boston Market. Alright, now I'm hungry.

Incidentally, here is bit of our room. Not finished, but at least my nice mirror/frames are up and our fun star over our bed. Our bed is one of 5 pieces of furniture we brought with us. 1)the bed and bedframe, 2)art/paper cabinet in living room, 3)kids table and chairs, 4)toy chest Dan's Grandpop made, 5)bookshelf in Moo's room.