Like Ashburn on Crack

Have I written about this before? Dan and I call the neighborhood we live in, Nichada Thani, "Ashburn on Crack". It's amazing and beautiful and we will probably never ever live in a place like it again. It's freaky. Seriously, put these things into perspective:

Almost every house in Nichada has school-aged children of some sort that attend ISB.
(which means everyone you know goes to the same school - PreK-12)
The big companies that english speaking families work for are: Chevron, the US Embassy, the UN and then other companies.
The majority of families have a maid.
Lots of families have a driver with a leased car from their company.
Some families have a #1 and a #2 (a cook and then a nanny/maid).
Gardeners take care of all our grounds, including the yards (i.e. no maintenence, no mowing the lawn, no watering flowers).
During school holidays, the majority of families go on vacation to other parts of Thailand and/or other countries.
During the summer families FLEE to go on R&R's back to their home countries or other vacations (almost everyone I know will leave either Thursday, Friday or Saturday of this week).
Most of those families are gone ALL SUMMER.
We will be gone for 4 weeks and it's considered "only a couple of weeks".
At no other job would it be normal for Dan to take off 4 weeks at a time.
Lots of Moms fly either back home or returning to Thailand by themselves with their kids, because the Dad's have to be in Thailand. (Yay for Dan being with us both ways because I think I might would cry if I had to have 3 kids by myself for 24 hours of flying!)

We live in a neighborhood where:

This is outside our neighborhood.

This is inside our neighborhood.

People mostly walk, ride their bikes or drive golf carts everywhere in the neighborhood.

We have beautiful flowering bushes/flowers/plants that are tended to everyday by a horde of gardeners. Our yard is mowed weekly and watered by gardeners daily. The cones are set up for kids to walk/ride bikes to school.


This is our fabulous Starbucks!


With a wood plank walkway.

The Baristas at our Starbucks. There are 3 who work there, that when I come in, say, "Tall Caramel Frappucino?" Sad, but true. They know what I order.

We belong to a "country club" and have use of the swimming pool, gyms and back gate to enter the neighborhood from. (and this area is where there is outside seating at Starbucks - lots of adults swim in the mornings and then get Starbucks and chat afterwards).

Beautiful frangipani's flower on a regular basis and you can smell their fragrence everywhere.


Fun trees.

The pool in our little neighborhood that we swim in all the time.

Life is kind of unreal.

Jack's thoughts on his Wife

Seriously, at lunch on Friday, Jack started discussing whom he might marry when he gets older. (He stayed home for 3 days due to the same yucky cough Megan had last week). He said he probably doesn't know her now, but he will later and listed some things that she should be like (completely uncoerced by me, just so you know):

-love God and Jesus like Mommy
-like to do some stuff like Mommy
-be really nice
-give money to poor people
-even take poor people to the store to buy them things

Then he said that Dan and I should be at his wedding, but that it will be a long time before he's a Daddy. Except when he says that, I think he means a long time until he's a grown-up (not necessarily when he has children). I just thought I would share this because I want to remember it and how sweet he is.

Also today he told me that sometimes when he goes to bed or takes naps, he talks to God and Jesus. I asked him what he says and he said that today at naptime he told God and Jesus that They (do you capitalize "They") could sleep on the floor or on his bed. And he introduced God and Jesus to Cheetah, his favorite stuffed animal. Too cute and he doesn't really differentiate between God and Jesus, it's just sort of a "package deal" with him. Oh, God and Jesus chose the bed. (No hard floors for the Creator of the Universe, apparently).

"Settlers" Game with Matt and Tiff

No we are not back in Va yet, but we played Matt in Tiff in a game of settlers tonight...how is that possible you say? There's an online game Matt discovered called Explorers that mimics it very closely and is free. So the four of us logged into that and were able to play a quick game that way. It was a blast, here is a shot of the "board" at the end:


Fun stuff, have a great weekend everybody!!!!

Pics of Megan from School

Today was Megan's portfolio review and her Celebration of Learning! Dan and I went in to her class for about a half hour and she showed us her portfolio of work throughout the year, as well as an e-portfolio on the computer. So fun and here are some pictures her teacher sent out from the last couple of months!

Isn't this shot beautiful of Megan? Dan went up to help with a science day.

From Megan's birthday - all 3 of us went in to bring her cupcakes and got to celebrate with her!

A writing workshop day where Megan got to show us writing samples she had done and read us some works.


Moo and Kylie eating cupcakes on her birthday.

Her science group :)

Megan's class had Kindergartners come up and read with them - she got to read with her good friend Maggie!

So Fun!!!

Okay, so we had so much fun! The reason for the evening is that my friend, Nicole, is moving back to the states in 2 weeks. She wanted to go out dancing - and brought along 7 of her friends. I had asked her a couple of weeks back that if they/when they move back overseas if we could be somewhere with them, because she is so much fun! It earned me a spot out tonight with the ladies :)

We met up at Nicole's house and hung out for a while eating snacks and drinking strawberry margaritas and rum and koolaid. A little crazy, but great. Then, headed downtown. Nicole had her heart set on going to a certain club, but when we got there, we found out that it was closed. So, we relied on one of the drivers to recommend another club - at the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel, which is one of the nicest hotels in Bangkok.

Smallish dance floor, live band and lots of Thai's, then later lots of Russians. An interesting mix and a lot of fun. Flaming drinks and Poker Face by Lady GaGa - not too shabby :) I'll post pictures when I have them sent.

Oh, and between the 7 ladies there who had children, including me? A combined 20 children. And I think I was the 2nd youngest in our group :) So, so fun...and I'll be sore tomorrow! It's 1:49am - I'm off to bed!

Tweeter is Going Clubbing!!!

So Kristen was way overdue for a girl's night out and is finally getting to go out with some ladies from church tonight. They are going to a dance club downtown so should have quite a night. A couple of the ladies drivers will take the group down, gotta love Thailand!!!


Kylie: Mommy is so nice and I love her outfit!

Meggie: She looks such like a high schooler!

Jack: Mommy you look like you're a high school girl and you look like you are 20!

Go Tweeter! Looking fine for some dancing time :)

Snapshots

Here's the latest in snapshots of our life. Nothing too interesting. Playdates, a sick (but now better) Megan, a Tweeter who's HOME and other shenanigans.

Kylie and Allie have a playdate - as Cheetah and Mena the elephant

This is what Dan looks like when we skype each other!

She was sick for the last half of last week. I bought her a dragonfruit to cheer her up. It worked - kind of.

Remember how she was so sick? Well, this is Megan sound asleep on the couch before bedtime.

Daddy's home! Which means PRESENTS!!!

Dan shows off his talent with a bullroarer!


Boomerangs for the kiddos (incidentally, Kylie's name means "Boomerang" in Aborigine!)

Gummy snakes anyone?

The Tweeters!