Baby Panda Feeding

I tried to post this video with the previous post, but wasn't able to. Here is a video from our trip out to the panda research center. They had quite a few baby pandas there when we went. It was funny because we found out that they feed the pandas the same brand of baby formula that Noah drank when he was a baby.

Happy New Years!

Happy Chinese New Years!! As I am sitting here writing this, the sound of fireworks are going off all around us...I have never seen so many fireworks in all my life. Time is flying by and sorry that we haven't updated the blog in two months. In these two months we have celebrated Christ's birth as well as celebrated Noah's birthday. That's right he is now almost 13 months old!

Noah is getting so big! I can't believe that he turned one this month. Time is flying by especially with this year having so many changes for us. It has been a wonderful year and we feel so blessed to be where we are and to have such wonderful kids. Noah is getting more fun every day and loves to laugh and 'walk' around the house.

He kept wanting to check out Ronald!







Noah loved opening his presents on Christmas day even though he didn't always stay on task.

Eliana and Angela making Christmas cookies for our friends and neighbors. We really had some amazing opportunities this Christmas to share about the Lord and even was able to have two Thai girls over and have an amazing time with them.

Santa and his yak

Traditional artwork

The Birthday Boy's cake

The first time Noah had cake...he loved it!

Angela's dad and sister were just out here for two weeks visiting. We had a great time with them and were sad to see them leave. Two weeks really flew by!

Crowds anyone?

We went out to see the pandas one day while Angela's dad and sister were here. There are 62 giant pandas at the research park that we went to as well as red pandas.



Red Panda

Clay, Eliana and Ty. Clay and Ty are our teammates Jim and Francine's sons. Jim and the boys went out with us to see the pandas.

Pictures Around Town

Friday last week was such a beautiful day, which can be a rarity where we live, so I decided to go down our street to the local tourist area and take some pictures. Our apartment is about a 15 minute walk from a big tourist area called Jinli street. This street has some cool traditional buildings selling modern souvenirs as well as a temple next door that is a pretty popular stop for local tourists. We take the kids down to this area pretty often to feed the fish in one of the ponds. Here are some pictures.

Crossing the street...you gotta watch out for bikes and crazy taxi drivers, even if the light is red.

The entrance to Jinli street

Traditional buildings

Can you guess what this is...

Did you get it, or do you need to brush up on your characters? Starbucks is all over the place here. I am amazed that we don't really see that many westerners at Starbucks when we go. It seemed like in Thailand there was always tons of westerners with very few Thai people. Maybe because there are so many really good coffee places in Thailand that are 1/4 the price of Starbucks!

Eliana loves to feed the fish. She hasn't really figured out the art of making the fish food last for a long time. She loves for Daddy to open the bag and then she dumps the whole thing into the pond at once:)

It is getting colder here...we have been stocking up on winter clothes lately since this will be our first winter in 5 years. The cold seasons in Thailand didn't really count as winters.

Some pictures from inside the temple...

This One's for Tim

Thanks for the friendly reminder to update the blog Tim! We love you guys and miss you!! Language study has been the order of the day for the past two months. It has been going great so far and we have been really encouraged by the progress we have made. It was great to be able to take a taxi today on our family outing and be able to say, "Please stop in front of McDonalds":) Here is a picture of all of our notecards so far...maybe 1,500 words. We'll keep you updated on the growth of the pile.





Which one is the monkey? Noah is getting so big and is lots of fun! He loves to pull himself up to standing on the furniture and loves to go up (and sometimes down) our three steps that we have in our apartment. As you can tell in the video he loves to laugh!


He also loves to get into Eliana's stuff as often as he has a chance.


So peaceful when they are asleep. Noah is a champion sleeper now even sleeping through his big sister's ruckus when see goes to bed. They are sharing a room now and have been doing really well together. Noah usually goes to bed around 7 and then Eliana goes down around 8.


This is the first time in Asia that we have had a bathtub and Eliana is loving it! We never have to fight to get her into the bathtub, she loves to sit in there and play by herself.







Here is a picture of the apartment complex that we live in. You actually can't see our building in this picture because it is blocked by the building in the middle. We live on the 11th floor which is great except when the elevator breaks down like it did yesterday afternoon and this morning. Carrying two kids and a stroller up 11 floors is a good workout:)


A couple weeks ago I got to go to a high school to watch one our friends teach English and check out the possibility of teaching there once a week. The students were really fun and our friend did a great job teaching.

Random Pictures

About a week ago we had a few really big thunderstorms in the middle of night. During one of them I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep so I decided to take some pictures from our back balcony. There was so much lightning flashing all around and it was even more spectacular being on the 11th floor looking out over the city. Here are a couple pictures from that night.


A few weeks ago we decided to go downtown and have some family time. In the center of the city there is a huge square with lots of water-fountains. In the next couple of years this is going to be the main subway interchange for the city, but right now it is a nice place to go walking around and just hang out. We also made a quick stop by McDonalds for lunch which was really nice.

Go West

We have been traveling out 'west' for the past week with our teammates Ben and Eli. We had a great time and really enjoyed being out of the city and in the mountains. We didn't have the best weather as it was raining and cold most of the time (We actually woke up one morning and there was snow on the tops of the mountains in August!) But it was really good being out West and being more with our people group. Eliana and Ben and Eli's daughter Ava have become really good friends and had a great time together this trip. It was neat for us because over two years ago we took a vision trip out to this same area. We have come so far since then and it is kind of unbelievable that we are actually living here now and not just visiting for a few weeks. University starts up on Monday and we are excited to finally start language study. We know it will be hard, but we are really looking forward to it and feel like our time studying Thai will benefit us as we start out with another language. Thanks for 'thinking' about us the past month! It has been a whirlwind but things are settling down now and we are loving it here in the big city. It is great being able to walk almost everywhere we need to go and having a couple nice parks within walking distance. We have never lived in a big city so this is a new experience for both of us, but we are loving it. It is amazing how much construction is going on here. As I am writing this I can see 7-8 construction cranes out our window.


Ava and Eliana




All saddled up and ready to go!

The city where we stayed for our time out West.

You can see the snow on the tops of the mountains. When we first got here there wasn't any. We woke up one morning and voila!


Noah and Eliana love the attention they get from all the people.

A View of the City

Below is a view of our new city from the balcony of our apartment. We live on the 11th floor of a 17 story building. We have really enjoyed living here so far and are looking forward to exploring around town more. With 11 million people there has to be lots of exciting stuff to see. Our teammates said that they lived here for 4 years before ever getting to see the mountains off in the distance from their apartment. It was awesome to be able to see them after having only been here for a week.



We went out to a park last weekend with some of our teammates and had a great time. There was a huge closed-in area where you could feed the birds and also some amusement rides for the kids.