Laundry Day

On Wednesday, we had a little downtime. I've been keeping the kids pretty busy so far, but they needed a break to reflect on what they've done so far, write some postcards, and do some laundry. So we had an easy and relaxing day. The oldre boys walked over to my parents' house to do some laundry (my Mom's been drafting all the kids into making button-bookmarks and surprisingly even the boys have gotten in on the act). I made Tong stay in bed because he's been feeling sick, so while he napped upstairs, I had the girls for their first orientation class. I find it's easier to get the kids attention if they separate into two groups. Otherwise the boys just compete to see who can annoy the girls the most :-P. I talked with the girls about their trip so far and answered their questions about their schools and host families.

After that we walked down to Christel's Piggly Wiggly to do some shopping. I wanted to give them a chance to buy any "girl stuff" they might need without the boys around, but instead they just bought ice cream sandwiches, ...girls.

While we were at the Piggly Wiggly, I ran into my brother's eldest son, Jason. I didn't even recognize him! Last time I saw him he was a 13 year old kid, and now he's a 20 year old man! Wow, that made me feel old! After, Christel's, we walked over to the post office to get some stamps for their postcards. It costs 98 cents to mail a postcard now!! Wow! That's so expensive!

We ate lunch at The Diner, a small restaurant just down the street from the parsonage. Gird and Sky have been taking photos of nearly everything they eat, so they got some lovely pictures of a hotdog and a hamburger. They also showed me their diaries that they've been writing. Sky has been writing quite a lot and she has pages filled already. Gird has been drawing very creative and funny cartoons in her journal. In one comic, she tells about her dismay at the prices over here. She bought a small bag of pretzls from Auntie Annie's in the mall and it cost her $3.50, so in the comic she drew her eyes bugging-out and then crying because the bag was so small and she was not full after eating the pretzls. What a great way to document their trip! Of course, Gird split water all over her journal too, so I'm not sure if it'll survive the trip. In Thailand there is a saying that a "clumsy girl is a beautiful girl". If that's the case, then Gird must be the most beautiful girl in Thailand because she is certainly the clumsiest! So far she's dropped her notebook and her phone, and she spills just about everything. James was joking with me earlier that after this trip, Gird is going to have to buy everything new again! Haha!

Most of the boys had lunch over at my parents' house although a few boys mistakenly thought that my Mom was their maid and that she would make all their sandwiches for them. Nope, this is America boys, so get used to doing things on your own. If she lays out food for you in the kitchen, then you're just going to have to get off the sofa, walk in there, and make it yourself. Most of the boys got themselves lunch, but the ones who didn't learned a valuable lesson.

After the boys returned from my parents' house with fresh laundry, the girls took their turn and I sat down to talk with the boys. The thing I want to accomplish most with these orientation classes is to talk about potential problems and then give the kids the tools to solve those problems. So, for example, we talked about homesickness and how to deal with it. We also talked about problems they might encounter at school and what to do in those situations.

Around 4:00pm my brother stopped by with his two younger sons, Bryce and Cole. They'd been looking forward to playing some basketball with the boys since Monday, and so they immediately started up a game. They played for almost two hours! Sea, Tong, and both Jameses also played some Bocce ball in the yard. James (Jetnipit) is surprisingly good and he won most of the games. At least, until I started playing, hahah!

My Mom has been having way too much fun cooking and baking for these kids. I've tried to convince her that I have enough food already and that I'm quite capable of cooking for all the kids, but she makes food anyway. She's baked some banana bread and corn bread for them, and last night she brought over a big pot of spaghetti. The kids really enjoyed it. Gird and Sky also made some brownies in my Mom's kitchen, and they were very proud of their accomplishment. The brownies were delicious too, thanks girls!

So it was a pretty uneventful day, and yet we still managed to do a lot. It's about 6:00am right now on Thursday morning. I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to upload this blog, but hopefully I'll be able to post it this morning. Tonight we're going over to the church to make lefse, which should be a lot of fun. Lefse is very delicious so I'm sure the kids will enjoy making it.