Christmas

We had a fun and busy Christmas this year. Gabe didn't get up early on Christmas morning. We figure this is the last year he'll sleep in. He very much enjoyed opening the gifts that you all sent to him. Thanks very much. We had church on Christmas morning as well. It was a very small casual service. People sang songs and told stories. It felt more intimate than our church ever has. On our way to church we dropped off one of the teachers from Grace at the hospital. This teacher has had a recurrence of cancer recently and I've been going with her to her appointments. The teacher had made Christmas plans but felt ill on Christmas morning. After church we picked her up from the hospital again and she was well enough to join us for Christmas lunch which was just leftovers from our Christmas Eve dinner. I don't know what tastes better. The original meal or the leftovers. During the afternoon we prepared the gifts for the kids at Baan Burt Faa orphanage. Since this is the second year we've done it I guess it's now our Christmas tradition. You can see from the picture why Gabe loves going there so much. He's like a little celebrity there. They follow him like a king, give him whatever he wants, do whatever he wants and he just soaks up the attention. Anyway, thanks so much for all the money you sent for their Christmas. We bought sports equipment and art equipment for the kids in addition to some food and the usual school supplies. We spent more than we had intended so the money you gave helped out a lot. Pradip (the orphanage father) tells me that they have enjoyed the gifts a lot.

The day after Christmas we went down to Bangkok for a little break. It's been ages since we had a vacation by ourselves. This entry is already too long so I'm writing more and putting more pictures on my own blog. The picture above is a sign that we ran across in Bangkok.

By the way, it's good to hear from you all again.

Thoughts on Today

Each pregnancy so far has come with very few cravings, but each has brought an insatiable desire for chicken noodle soup. I'm not picky; Spartan or meager brand condensed style with two measly chicken bits floating in plenty of MSG-laden broth with a few skinny, soaked noodles does just fine. I'm ashamed to tell you how many cans I have already been through. Anyway, today I decided to make a bunch from scratch. So I now have two Dutch ovens full of the heart-warming stuff! Yippee!

Sam has been playing with Solomon today (age 6 and four-quarters, as reported by him...I suppose he's mostly correct, as he will be 7 mid-January.) Solomon lives kitty-corner in back of us and he is Sam's idea of a "big boy." He gets all of Solomon's hand-me-downs and Sam usually wants to incorporate them into his wardrobe immediately, though they are 2-3 sizes to big. Anyway, it has been fun to watch them interact as Sam grows. They play really well together one minute, then are quarrelling like brothers the next. I think that's why Solomon likes to play with him, because he is hoping for a little brother. Anyway, they are both so strong willed and rough and wimpy at the same time. One of them is usually bossing the other around, starting a sword fight, or whimpering from a sword fight wound. His first neighborhood friend! "Mom, can I go to Solomon's house?" It does make me feel a bit old. Oh well, lots of things do that, lately. Maybe because each day that is more true.

The Season

Christmas this year was definitely different for Kevin and I. Everything in my mind seemed to revolve around when Elinore needed to eat and sleep. Christmas at Mom and Dad's was very relaxed this year. Sam amazed us all with the amount of patience he displayed while he waited for all of the slowpoke grown-ups to hurry up. It was nice to have the day to spend together laughing and lazing around.

Christmas Day, I had decided to cook a turkey. Kevin and I wanted to have lots of leftovers, so we had a 19lb turkey in our freezer. This year unveiled my procrastinating character. All I had decided up until Christmas morning was that I was going to cook the turkey. I did not think about how I wanted to cook it, how long it would take, what I would cook with it, whether it would fit in my roasting pan,... Needless to say, other members of my family were a bit frustrated with me (Kevin). I was frustrated with myself. The middle was still a bit frozen, too. Everything ended up being just fine. We made a glaze out of maple syrup and coated the top of the turkey with bacon. At the last minute we called Mom and Dad to see if they wanted to come over and help us eat it (which they did).

Yesterday afternoon/evening was spent at Ken and Karen's oohing and aahing over the deer blind (with elevator) that Ken and Joel built. It really was pretty cool. We saw the deer come out at dusk and enjoyed a yummy ham dinner.

All we have left this year is to spend this coming weekend with my family, which I am rather excited about.

The only thing that I feel bummed about this season is that I didn't get a good dose of Christmas carols. I don't know what happened. It seemed like the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas went so fast, and I guess I just forgot to play them. I found myself on Christmas eve wishing I had a piano so that I could play and sing all the ones I missed this year. Not that I can really play the piano, but in my head I could. Next year I'll have to be more intentional about that.

Here are a couple photos from Christmas with the Wolthuises. Sorry this post got so long!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was a busy day starting early in the morning. Eric went to a party for the kids of the GamPeangNgaam Slum. This was the place that Eric went to teach English this past summer. Though he’s been unable to teach regularly he has substituted for other teachers on occasion and stayed somewhat involved in that program.
We spent the evening having Christmas dinner with friends who live in our neighborhood. One of their daughters is Laura who has been pictured on our blog before. We had the traditional Christmas dinner then the kids put on a program for us. We were very impressed with how organized the older kids were, but Gabe & Laura were rather indifferent as Mary & Joseph. As soon as the shepherds came to see baby Jesus they tried to trade their baby for the sheep since the sheep made real baa-ing noises. None of the kids ate enough turkey. While the adults were all yawning after an OD of tryptophan the kids were doing a lot of yelling and screaming. However, after dessert they all settled down to read. Gabe was very cute as he tried to read to Laura and teach her all sorts of things from their books. He seems to have the teaching disposition. Fortunately, Laura adores everything Gabe does and put up admirably with his pedantic speeches.
Winter truly feels like it finally here. We are wearing sweatshirts and sweaters almost the whole day. Apparently, it gets into the mid-80’s every day, but it doesn’t really feel like it to me. We must be used to it being hotter and more humid. I think it’s only in the 80’s for a couple of hours every day.

More Christmas parties

The Christmas parties continue this year. Most are smaller now that many people have gone for the holidays. Eric had a party for his 7th grade class and we had a party at Gabe's little preschool co-op. One of the other mothers organized a Christmas pageant for the party. Gabe, of course, played the angel Gabriel. I think he may be typecast in that role for the rest of his childhood.
Last night we and two other families sponsored a sort of block party. It was more of an intersection party as we invited the families around our intersection. On our block there is a mix of Thai, farang and Koreans. Even though all of us came from very different backgrounds and have different Christmas traditions (or none at all), we really had a great time. Toward the end of the party one of our neighbors, a Korean-American sixth-grader suggested that we Christmas carol around the neighborhood. I brought my guitar and we started making a round of the neighborhood. While we were walking on of my Korean neighbors told me that Koreans love to carol at Christmas time. She told me that in Korea when someone comes to your door to sing, you must provide them with a gift, usually food.
We made an interesting group. We were singing in three different languages, so it sometimes sounded a little strange. However it was really a lot of fun. We sang at any house that had lights on, but most of the time, Thai people wouldn't come out when we sang. Farangs usually came out to thank us for singing or to join us in singing. Koreans were definitely the most enthuiastic. They made their whole families come out to hear us and always gave us some gifts. One brought out a bunch of fruit, including whole pineapples and gave us each one. One gave me 300B for playing the guitar. Some joined us in our rounds around the neighborhood.
I was very thankful for the way the party brought us together with our neighbors. So often, people here tend to make friends from the same ethnic background, but I felt that at our party we truly enjoyed each others company in spite of the differences. I now know some neighbors that I'd never spoken with before.

Our cute boy

Here's a photo we had taken of Gabey the other day. It's not one we chose to get prints of, but still cute. This represents one thing I love about Thailand. Not only was the photo sitting extremely cheap, but they aren't at all concerned about photo copyrights and burned me a CD of the whole sitting so that I'm now free to share the bad pics along with the good (not that this is a bad pic).

In other Wolthuis family news, there's not much to report. We are sweating through a week-end of Christmas parties. This is a 3-day week-end and the most popular one for Christmas parties. School is out this week, so people usually feel they need to squeeze the parties all in before people go off for Christmas holidays. All in all, we have 5 parties this week-end, so we'd be eating ourselves silly except that I got food poisoning this week-end. Oh well, it's probably for the best.

The temperature still hasn't dropped much and the humidity is still high so it looks like we're in for a short winter. Maybe 10 days or 2 weeks. It wouldn't bother me so much except that with such weather the mosquitoes won't go away. Last year we had one heavenly month where I could confidently sit in the living room with bare feet knowing that I wouldn't be bitten all over my toes. As I sit here, I'm swatting them with our electrocution tennis racket and unbelievably, one has managed to bite me on the toughest part of my foot. But I guess I still prefer it to the cold, though I wouldn't mind a little cold to spend some time with all of you.

Early

Good Morning! I have frequently been waking in the night wide awake. This morning I told God if I didn't fall back asleep by 5:15 he must want me up. Well, I haven't made it to the Bible, yet, as the computer was still on from last night and I wanted to check this herbal remedy to promote sleep. I don't feel anxious...I'm not thinking about anything in particular...just wide awake at ungodly times. :)

So I thought I'd blab about last night. Brian met this sem student named Jeff through George Hunsburger and it seems a nice friendship has begun. He and his lovely wife invited us to dinner last night with two of their friends to share our story and current thoughts on church. They live just two blocks away. It was actually fun! (I usually dred these conversations because usually these pastor-types speak on this theoretical level and I'm like, "So what does that mean for a mother of two and a handyman??!!) What a delight to discover they, too, were practical and so curious. They just let us talk about our journey, asked really thoughtful questions, and listened. How fun to tell our story again...it has been a while. We walked home with our hearts full of praise for all God has brought us through. I left with a renewed love and respect for Brian, hearing him articulate so well what God has taught us and being reminded of our continuing adventure together. Most days it seems so normal: putting new windows in the back building, deciding what we are doing as a community on Sunday night, letting a neighbor share our tools or garage stall...but it is all part of a deep and purposeful vision to infuse everything our life touches with God's goodness. Yea!!

Have a God-filled day!

Who Knew Your Life Could Change So Fast

I just took Elinore in for her 2 week checkup. Her weight was 9#3, so she's back up to her birthweight. Everything looks great, and the doctor answered all of my questions, most of them with a "that's normal." She is definitely keeping us on our toes. We've had good nights and bad nights, good days and bad days. Mostly we just love her immensely and think she is just amazing. Anyway, just wanted to give you all a little update.

Christmas of 1971

I posted a pic of me & Gabe by our Christmas tree, but I found a similar picture in my files from 34 years ago...

Your Christmas is Most Like: A Christmas Story

Loving, fun, and totally crazy. Don't shoot your eye out!

What Movie Is Your Christmas Most Like?