Lots of words no pictures...

Today started much as our previous days have started with Max…very early, 6:20am, anyone who knows me knows I am not an early riser…I think the early mornings are stretching me more than the food! Actually, the food has been quite good, aside from the slimy noodles the first day. Now that we are with Ms. Oh everything is great, her driver Joe took us to lunch the first day as Ms. Oh was returning from Hong Kong. BTW anyone adopting from Thailand would do themselves a great favor by hiring her, she is great with Max, understands adoption, has friends at the U.S. embassy, knows the DSDW social workers and many of the workers in the orphanages. She is with us every day and we have her cell phone in case we have a problem, she takes care of everything imaginable! She has taken us to a lot of interesting places and is sure to let us know what is going on around us. She has made arrangements for our laundry and makes sure we know how to get around in the evenings when she ventures to leave us on our own. She is amazing and one of the most interesting people I have ever met!

Max has had a great day, he is talking up a storm and once we get past the language barrier I think he’ll be even more interesting! He is working on potty training, it seems he prefers using the potty over the other option, thank goodness! He is understanding some English and trying to say English words like “up high” when Veldon throws him in the pool, he is counting to 3, saying “I love you”, “Hayden”, “Allison” and “Katie”. He loves boats and we now know the word for boat although we have no hope of ever being able to say it as it seems most of the word happens in the back of the throat…it’s a strange sounding word for sure! We went to an Elephant and Crocodile park today. He was terrified! He hated the elephants and refused to feed them, the crocodile’s scared him to death and he pretty much insisted on being carried the entire time, but it was still super cool and he did finally relax and watched the elephant show mostly without complaining.

Tomorrow we are going to a Buddhist temple. We had thought we wouldn’t go but having been here and seeing how much Buddhism has affected the Thai culture we both want to see a temple. It makes me very sad to think that the very nice people that we are meeting are all spiritually dead and worshipping a false god. They need a Savior but if we refuse to engage them where they are how would we ever be able to explain the truth to them? I’m so grateful that we are taking Max out of this culture, and that he will be raised knowing the truth.

After our day out we took the ferry across the river to the Marriot, walked down the street several blocks and went to a shopping center with a few Western restaurants. We chose to eat at Black Canyon Coffee, and all 3 of us had Thai food. Whoever decided it was a good idea to cook with cashews was brilliant; my stir-fried chicken with cashews was yummy! Max had noodles…of course, and Veldon had some sort of yellowish rice with curry. We then went to Swensen’s Ice Cream…yes that’s right Jill Swensen’s! You can hardly find them in the U.S. anymore but they are everywhere in Thailand! I had strawberries, bananas and cream, Veldon had some sort of brownie thing (of course) and Max had a tiny little chocolate sundae. It was very yummy.

Wednesday morning is our board meeting. We are the first family at 9:00 in the morning. We are excited to cross this bridge. Of course, after this bridge there are still more to cross before the process is complete but that’s all right, we’ll just stay the course. We are going to the embassy after the board meeting to see if they will grant us an interview on Wednesday, this is another time when prayer is greatly needed. We really want to be able to fly home on Friday, but if we have to wait until Thursday afternoon for the interview we will not get the Visa until Friday, maybe even Monday or Tuesday. We are very much enjoying Bangkok but we miss our other 3 kids too and we are ready to come home as soon as possible!

Thanks for all the comments. I love reading messages from our friends and family, we feel very far from home, because we are of course, and it is so nice to connect with everyone on the other side of the world!!

I cannot express how wonderful it is to see the sweet boy from 2 ½ years of pictures in his daddy’s arms with his head on his shoulder because he’s so tired he can hardly keep his eyes open. I can’t put into words how thrilled we are to wake up every morning with this little hot box between us, how sweet it is to hear his little voice talking away, or how precious it is when he throws his arms around our necks and squeezes as hard as he can! We are making quite a scene around Bangkok with our brown boy, but it seems that Max is fine with "forangs" (what Thais call westerners) who have come to take him away!