2010-A Year in Review

I look back on 2010 with many amazing memories.  Most of our year was spent at this wonderful place of service...

Bangalore, India.  

My life will forever be changed because of this place.  It was a hard place yet the Father showed himself in a new way during our time here.

We started 2010 with our Little Lady turning 9.  She had the most wonderful birthday with lots of friends.  She is a beautiful girl, inside and out! (I'm a little biased)

We learned to accept so many of the different cultural norms to "fit" in.  When the nationals saw us dressing as they did, speaking as they did or at least attempting to, so many doors were opened.  Below is a church we really enjoyed attending.  It was very traditional as the women were required to cover our heads.  Some days I didn't mind except when it was over a 100 degrees and the electricity had gone out and the fans were off.  Can you believe that I even had thoughts like...these men should try covering their heads and then they could understand how stinkin hot is really is?  In church I had these thoughts.  :)  We met some of our most wonderful national believing friends in this church. 

2010 brought many opportunities of service.  Our language skills had far to go but we were able to talk about normal everyday things with the nationals. 

We spent a couple of afternoons with the young ladies below.  We did crafts with them.  What fun times!

Little Lady and Little Man both had a wonderful school year.  On the last day of school we went to celebrate at our new Taco Bell!  Yummy!

In June we had the chance to return to one of the most amazing places in the world...Darjeeling.  Hubby and I took a trip there in 2006 without the kids.  We never thought we would go back.  The Father blessed us with an unexpected trip back to this amazing place!  

Below is Little Man and Hubby crossing over from Nepal into India.

In August Hubby and I celebrated 13 years of glorious marriage.  Ok, maybe not always glorious, but it has been a wonderful time!  :) We celebrated by going out on the town to one of our most favorite restaurants.

Little Man celebrated his 8th birthday in September and was able to even find a camel to ride that month!  We now know he is allergic to camels.  Ha!

In September we made another move to Thailand.  These little travelers are pros now!

In October we add a new little member to our family...Mittens!

These last few months of 2010 we have spent much time adjusting to life in a new culture.  Getting our home set up, learning language, starting back up with home school, and Hubby starting a new job.  We live in a beautiful part of the world and have made a little time to enjoy it.  Below are two of my most favorite of the kids from this year...

We miss India but love our new culture.  We have so much to learn.  

I pray this year will be one of building deep relationships with the nationals here

and finding our places of services.

Goodbye 2010...hello to 2011~ 

Sharing My Week in Pictures

 This week I tried to keep my camera in my purse and take "snaps" as the week went along.  Here is our week in snaps.  (snaps is what they call pictures here)

Below is my Hubby and Little Man leading the way to church.  We have been attending an international church here and boy is it international.  All different languages, colors, and backgrounds gather to worship our Savior!  Just a taste of what Heaven will be like. :)

 

 

We went out on Monday to do a little shopping for Little Man's birthday.  We went to a HUGE toy store on the other side of town that we had never been to.  Boy was it big and boy was it ever so expensive!  Everything was double to triple what the prices in the states are.  We found this cool little remote control car. Hubby had the store people take it out of the package and test it to make sure it worked.  You have to inspect everything you buy here or when you get home half of it is missing.  Even after going through the trouble of having it tested and checked we got home and the antennae was broken!! 

One day we had a ton of errands to run, so we did some of our school in the car.  Little man loves school, can't you tell!  I guess we called this car schooling!

On Thursday after finishing school, we went with daddy to the old part of the city to the market.  He wanted to get a few electronic items here.  Again we spent a lot of time testing everything out in the stores to make sure they worked.  I like to think of this place as Best Buy on steroids!

Little man is so quickly turning into a big man.  Friday he had a couple of boys over for a sleepover.  Here the kids are helping me mix the icing with colors for the cake.  Pictures of the party and cake to come later.  :)

Saturday, Sept 4 was officially Little Man's birthday...what better surprise than to get a letter from Grandma on his this exact day!  It was a treat to get love in an envelope.

Around the Neighborhood

Our Week in Pictures

We spent the majority of this week doing school! I am totally in love with teaching my kids. It is not easy and very time consuming but I love it! I now know why I went to college to be a teacher. :)

Here is our week in review...

Little Man got a Lego kit from some friends who returned after a stay in the States. He has played and played with that thing. We have a few Lego kits here but they are double and sometimes triple the cost so needless to say this was his first. I hope to be able to order some online and have a team bring them for his birthday in a few weeks.

Is this sad that I let them do this just to get a picture? :)

My beautiful girl! How I love her!

Daddy got in on a little of the home school fun this week. Man is he a mean teacher. Don't the students look just terrified?

Here is what is really going on....laughing, learning, playing!

We threw in a little home economics this week too!

Little Man getting in on the Home Economics' fun!

All in all it was a good week. We even threw in a field trip to the Science Museum with friends too. Another post on that coming soon! Tonight we are hosting another family, who just arrived a few days ago, for dinner. They have a two year old and practically a newborn! Yea, I will get to cuddle a little one tonight!

I am also going to attempt to make my first batch of gumbo! The family has been asking for it. Funny we have only had it once and it was about a year ago but they are craving it. I wonder how it will taste without onions?? I may have to figure out how to hide the onions. :)

Oh, I forgot...while I am talking food...I made three batches of homemade cinnamon rolls! They were so yummy. I did not get to eat all three batches but shared two of them a new family and another one coming in from the States. I am totally weak when it comes to cinnamon rolls...I love them! I have forbid myself from making them for at least another week.

You can find this yummy, ever so easy recipe at a friend's blog here...Journeys of a Grateful Mom.

Coming Soon...a picture blog by my very own Hubby! He is trying to convince me that he needs a new lense for his camera. I told him he had to do something with the picture and not just let them set in a folder on our computers. :) I still am not completely convinced he needs it. HA!

Safari

We had one day this week where we decided we wanted to take a field trip. There is a zoo/safari about an hour away from our house. This is the kind of place we knew that we wouldn't see the best of animals but thought of it would be fun anyways. We went with very low expectations. In fact we had to give Little Man a pep talk to get him to want to go. He has been here a little too long!

I took this picture just a tad too late...Hubby had just elbowed his way to the window. You see South Asian are never taught to stand in a line. It is every man or woman for himself! You should ask me about my airline security story sometime...it is quite amusing. Anyways, we have learned to nicely and assertively get into a line buy what we need.



Little Lady and Little Man waiting for their daddy to buy their tickets.



We took a safari ride through out the zoo. I have to admit that it was fun. The weather was nice and cool and even raining a little, so the animals were playful with one another. The bus we rode it looked like a prison bus. They let the white people sit in the front seat.



These are the animals we saw on the safari. We arrived into the bear cage right at feeding time. They were feeding them watermelon. I am guessing all the animals are probably on a veg diet. Most looking awfull skinny.




The elephants were cool.



They has a playground and I think the kids enjoyed this the most. As did the nationals watching our kids play.
















Gotta love the English signs here!



Fun Times!