Sitting at dinner on Tuesday night in Siem Reap Cambodia with seven children between two families, Chris said it best. It's a pretty short list of people you can call up and ask to meet you in Cambodia in a couple weeks over Christmas break. It's true. Everyone has friends, but not everyone has friends like that. We love the Patches!
The Patches are some fantastic friends we still keep in touch with from our days in Fairfax. We both moved into the ward there on the same day, along with eight or nine other couples. When we went around the room introducing ourselves during the womens meeting that Sunday I tried to pick out who might be living nearby and be my new friends and neighbors. Turns out eveyone was my neighbor, they were all trailing spouses of pest control sales people or capitol hill interns. A whole bundle of short timers and when I announced we were there one to two years I actually got a round of applause. Then there was Gretel. She was sort term, probably. They were a new Foreign Service here (DC/Virginia) for quick training, then their assignment would ultimately decide how long they would need to stay to do any language trainng, etc. They lived walking distance from our apartment on "the Wegmans side of the ward." It didn't take long to become close friends. She had a daughter, Bronte, just a few months younger then my 12 month old Ben and a cute son, Ravi, about 3 1/2 years old.
Somehow we started doing things together and she was just what I needed to help me through the transition of the move. Soon we added Cara Glassett, pregnant with her first, to our group and we would sit and let the kids play while we made Family Home Evening kits full of cute and colorful ready to go visual aids and googled stories and scripture verses and put together laminated lesson plans to use to teach our kids about Jesus, the church and scriptures.
I couldn't even guess at how many hours we spent together. Anytime I needed someone to watch Ben, Gretel was there. Whenever she had something to do, Bronte and Ravi were at our house. They even kept Ben for five days so I could meet Brian after a business trip and explore London together. When we came to pick him up, he was completely not interested and clung to Chris's neck for fear we were really going to take him away from his new, happy family. I kept their cute kids while then spent time in NYC. Our kids were the best of friends.
I remember the day Gretel went with Chris to the big reveal meeting. Everyone was so excited, I waiting at home with the kids to see exactly where in this big wide world their first assignment would be. When she finally made it home, she told me, "We're going to Djibouti!" "Wow! Congratulations! That's awesome! What continent is that on?" was about my response. So it was off to do some major Costco shopping and then a short six months later they were off to a tiny, tiny, hot, hot, hot country in Africa that earned them a plethera of hardship points.
We only spent a short nine months together but they left their mark on our family. We kept in email contact and when blogs came about, I followed. After two years in Djibouti they had a quick stop in DC for Chris while the kids and Gretel stayed with her family about an hour from Brian's parents in St. George, Utah so we got to see everyone again before they were off to Sydney for two more years. Then back to DC for a year of language training. This time we left first. In January we moved to Singapore and they joined us in Asia in July when they moved to Nepal.
About a week before Thanksgiving I got a message from Chris asking if we'd be around Singapore for them to drop in and visit the first week of January. Of course we would! I sent them our US phone number and we talked about his plans that morning. They had a big one month plan for their State Department R&R to tour about all of South East Asia while the kids were on Christmas break. They were heading to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia and Singapore.
Feeling bold, I asked if they would mind if our family joined them for one of the country stops. Making our best estimate with his tentative flight schedule, my kids school schedule, Brian's vacation days left for this year and wanting to be home on Christmas Day for Santa we selected Cambodia and waited to hear when he got final flight details.
In the end I sacrificed Christmas Day because all flights were totally sold out for a Christmas Eve return but we're all happy about it. I think the Patches took the last six seats out on the 24th so we'll be here Christmas morning. I've found a church to attend though so it will make our experience all the more rich. Hopefully the program will have lots of familiar Christmas tunes since we won't understand a word of the speaking.
Santa made his delivery as we were leaving while dad locked up the house and I walked the kids to the neighbors to deliver thank you cards and we had called a taxi to go to the airport. Brian said he was RUNNING the entire twelve minutes we gave him. Good thing I had everything sorted, bagged and organized for a dump and run variety spreading of the loot. One treasure each and a stocking stuffed should be awaiting our late night Christmas Day return for the kids to disover if they aren't already asleep in the taxi ride home from the airport.
We are so excited that we could meet up with the Patches again! Our kids are having a delightful time and Maddie (5) has found her new best friend in Bronte (7). They are inseperable. Ravi (9) has a fantastic imagination that keeps the kids busy in games of good and bad teams, princess and robbers so Ben (7) loves playing with Yared (4) and Jacob (3) and Addie (2) just love to trail along all the adventures and be included.
I'm grateful for "the short list" of friends.
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