The Parents' Thailand Adventure!

Maeser sees The Puppy for the first time.  He was totally enamored at first, but is feeling irritated now since The Puppy gets into his stuff.

Their Primary program on Sunday was AMAZING.  Mary, Abe and Elie recited their parts perfectly. This is what you do with the play dough you get in Primary.

This is what you do when your mom is having a baby and your sister is at school --skinny dip with your cousin!

There are few things in life more exciting than meeting your new baby brother.  Elie was much more excited than this photo shows.  Violet was curious--a few gentle pokes and some cautious smiles.

Two days later Grandpa arrived and met Winston in the hospital.  

That night we celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary.  This is the view of sunrise from the hotel window--Stewart's favorite time of day in Bangkok.

Eliot is such a good big sister.  She is very kind to Violet and Violet adores her.

 Mary danced with her class, and Abe and Mary dressed in Thai clothes for the school program celebrating Loy Krathong. Violet is wearing her Thai clothes, too. 

 It was so crowded at the performance I didn't get to see Abe, but here he is arriving at school in his Thai/Burmese clothes.  So handsome!

Even Maeser is stylin' in his new Burmese outfit.

I tried to get a shot of this family pulling out in front of us as we drove to Dan&Amy's for Sunday dinner.  The guy in the middle is a poodle!

Eliot made this Loy Krathong floating flower candle on banana wood surrounded with banana leaves.  Sunday dinner went so late that she ended up floating it in the bathtub instead of the park.  And it survived as a bath toy for a few days afterward.

 This is one of the crazier things I've done in my life.  In order not to be late for a bakery breakfast in Rocky&Sarah's playground, Stewart and I took a 5-minute motorcycle taxi ride through downtown Sukhumvit.  So scary--I thought for sure I was going to die as we sped between two vans with less  than an inch between me and the moving vehicles.  

On Winston's first outing outing to the mall Sarah discovered why he didn't go to sleep on the car ride . 

On the last night we had another family dinner at Dan&Amy's house.  Stewart took photos of all the children (except sleeping Maeser) for me.  So sad to leave them all!

 

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, ENGLAND

In May I traveled with Stewart to the home I lived in as a teenager in England.  It's the first place I ever lived that had a name instead of a house number.  Our address was:
"Beechwood"
Tyler's Green
Penn
Buckinghamshire
England

The house, which is several hundred years old, is still standing

although it looks a little run down and the back yard is now part of a housing complex built where our neighbors, the Busby's, had their nursery.

The ground level first floor window was our dining room and I think the upstairs bay window was Ralph and Willard's room.

This end of the house was the bedroom I shared with Connie.  It had a windows then.

We returned on Sunday to attend the High Wycombe Ward about a mile down the street.  My dad and brother, Ralph, did a lot of work building the chapel the year we lived there.  Connie, Willard and I were marginally helpful and we had a lot of great experiences there.  I was so excited to see the people I knew forty years ago.

Unfortunately, everyone I knew was either too old and sick to attend church or dead.  I was surprised that the bishop had the same last name of one of my sketchy 18-year-old friends, Ian.  And I was more surprised when I found the bishop is his son!  (He's standing with the blue tie.)

You just can't return to the past.  But I appreciated being able to try.

We stayed in nearby Marlowe and walked to the locks.  Good memories of an overnight boat trip our family took down the Thames in 1973.