Temperature's Rising

A friend is in need of a baby bed rail so we moved Ashlyn's bed against the wall and took one of hers off to give away. It's white so of course it's grungy from years of dirty hands. We took it outside to scrub it with some soapy water and it didn't take me long to realize it was HOT in the blazing sun. Ash had gone out barefoot and declared she needed shoes because it was too hot for her feet. We got her shoes then moved to the shade to finish the job. We don't expect it to take long to dry so we can deliver it to its new home.

Cucumbers

At dinner. 

Mom: "Jacob will you take some salad and pass it to Ashlyn please?"

Ashlyn: "I don't want any salad."

Mom: "I know but you have to some cucumber."

Mom heard: "I don't want a que number."

Ashlyn meant to say: "I don't want a cucumber."

I will miss little kid speak in a few years from now. 

Remember the Time?

I remember a day my sister Kristie was with me and Brian driving home from Lake Powell together. She was driving and I was co-captain manning the tunes. The Mask of Zorro was kinda sorta a recent movie and it had a great song "I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You" and Brian had the soundtrack from his birthday. I put it on and hit "repeat" because it was such a good song and chatted with Kristie while she drove along those vacant desert roads. I was absorbed in the compelling conversation. I guess she wasn't. About 30 minutes later she finally asked me exactly how long the song was because it wasn't changing.

I did it again tonight and I can't stop giggling because it reminds me of all the fun times we have had together over the years. I found a song called "See You Again" and the music was nice so I clicked a version on YouTube to listen to while I surfed Facebook. After 14 minutes I asked Brian if it had switched yet because it seemed to still be the same song. He checked. It was the same some set to run for over an hour.

I love it when random things remind me of my family. 

Home School Stinks

It's only 6:53 am. Madison is in tears because I asked her to bring over the weather chart she's been keeping for a week so we could plot the temps on a graph. She had written that four of the last six days were foggy. It's been clear as it could be with visibility for miles all week. She's sobbing now because I tried to discuss what fog was with her.

Just a typical home school day at our house. Though it's rarely her that's crying. More often it's the boys.

For the Record Books

As this expat season of ours comes to an end we got a little curious and wondered where we had the good fortune to travel. I was amazed my the number of places we had been in this beautiful world. We will sure miss the chance to travel!

Here is where we have been as of 2015 with most of the travel occurring between 2011 and 2013. 

Lived in USA, Singapore and Saudi Arabia

Ben age 11

Madison age 8

Jacob age 6

Lived in Singapore and Saudi Arabia

Ashlyn age 3 

Visited by all six of us:

Nepal

India

Vietnam

Indonesia

Cambodia

Thailand

Singapore

Malaysia

United Arab Emitates

Switzerland

France

Angie, Brian, Ben and Madison visited:

Hong Kong

China

Angie, Brian, Ben, Madison and Jacob visited:

Australia

Canada

Ashlyn visited:

USA (haha)

Angie and Brian visited:

England

Mexico

Brian visited:

Italy

Netherlands

Japan

Belgium

Layovers:

Japan

Turkey

Qatar

It's been a wild ride and we honestly hope to do it all again real soon. 

Medicines Out the Wazoo

This is what the back of my counter looked like two months ago.

This is what it looks like today. 

And the pain med and itch cream aren't even in the picture because they are upstairs in my bathroom. Needless to say I'm not feeling my best these days. The main troubles are my knees and then more recently shingles. I had no idea what shingles were but I sure do now. Random, perpetual pain shooting up my torso or side all day long and intense itching. This is horrible! One week down. One to five more remaining. The first set of scabs is nearly healed but the foreshadowing pain has migrated to my back and I'm scared for how much worse this is going to get.

Now that I know what it is, I accidentally exposed a bunch of people to it and thus the chicken pox. So I had to tell everyone. I feel really bad. And kinda stupid. But now that everyone knows a bunch of ladies have organized dinners for me every other day. For a week. Today it was so nice to stop moving and stay still on the couch while I corrected the home school papers and worksheets. Every movement I make seems to make it itchy. The less I move the better I feel.

And I hired a teacher to do writing with Jacob. He positively won't do it for me. And I'm done fighting. It's time to outsource which is odd because he isn't one I would have thought would do that for me. I thought he'd want to please me but I was unequivocally wrong on that assumption.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Six year old Jacob had been making up unbelievable story after unbelievable story explaining how the ear piece on his glasses frame got snapped in half during the night. None made sense. This went on for three days. Then we were reading scripture as a family and it happened to be about a story where God condemned liars in one way or another in Mosiah. We didn't say a thing to him at all but after family prayer he says, "Reading that scripture made me VERY uncomfortable tonight." Brian and I burst out laughing. Yep. It oughta make him squirm!