Eliana and Her Pet Alligator

Eliana has a pet Alligator that she loves to play with and eat. She is so funny when she tries to talk to it and makes all kinds of funny sounds.

Morning Pictures

Eliana says thanks for the outfit Becky. She really likes it although she never figured out why we were taking pictures of her so early in the morning. She just had a confused look on her face most of the time.

Sumo

So, it has been a while since we have posted some pictures of Eliana. She is getting really big now. Our house-help calls her 'Little Pig' in Thai because she is getting so chubby. Daddy likes to jokingly call her 'Sumo'. She is so much fun. She loves to laugh, go on walks with mommy and daddy, sleep alot, and smile at her mobile for hours in her crib.

King Rama IX 60th Year

Queen Sirkit and King Bhumibol

The official flag celebrating the 60th year of the king's reign.

The King and Queen on the day of the their coronation.

Tomorrow marks the 60th anniversary of the reign of King Bhumibol Adulyadej the Great also called King Rama IX. He is the longest reigning monarch/head of state in the world and has been king since the 9th of June 1946. Interestingly I was reading an article that said the king was given the title "the Great" in a nationwide vote in 1986 where more than 40 million people voted to give the king that title. This year is so important to Thais because Thai people celebrate cycles of 12. Where we in the US would celebrate the 10th or 25th anniversary, Thai people celebrate the 12th and 24th, etc... Tomorrow is the beginning of a week long celebration for the king, and all over the country they will be having celebrations and religious festivals. Driving around Chiang Mai they have been setting up for this celebration for the past week. Hopefully we can post some pictures in the next few days of what is going on. Also, an interesting piece of fact is that the king was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts while both his parents were studying to get their medical degrees.

The Thai Motorbike Experience - Video

So, for all you guys who have never been to asia and have never experienced the city motorbike ride, here it is. I strapped our video camera on to the front of our motorbike and drove around town for a while this afternoon. This is a two minute clip of some of the action in 2x speed. I hope you enjoy and don't get sick watching this. And yes, I did drive up on the sidewalk to cut around traffic near the end...it's the Thai thing to do:)

Click here to view the video

Airplane

Heavy Burden

This young boy along with his grandmother walk around the city for hours travelling from house to house selling rice. They came to our house a while back and we bought some rice from them and talked with them for a few minutes.

Air Force One Budget Issues??

We came across Air Force One the other day, but there was no sign of the President. I guess the government ran into some budget problems and had to find a new way for the President to get around. The secret service really needs to keep on top of keeping Air Force 1 clean. If you see the President let him know that Air Force One is safe and secure.

Where we live

This is a map of downtown Chiang Mai. The old part of the city is surrounded by a moat. We live on the east side of the city where the red and yellow circle is. It is a really great place to live because we are close by to the main part of the city and also close by to work. Chiang Mai meaning (New City) was founded in 1296 as the capital of the Northern Thai kingdom. During this time Northern Thailand (Lanna) was a separate kingdom from Central Thailand. This is part of the reason why most people in Northern Thailand today speak Lanna, more closely related to Lao than Thai. Today everyone also speaks Central Thai, but the market language in Northern Thailand is Lanna. Map is from chiangmai1.com.

Parking Space?

About a year ago, when we lived in Mae Sai, we went on vacation with Angela's parents for a week. We needed somewhere safe to keep our car and we figured we can't go wrong parking it inside of our house. Yes, our car is parked in our living room in this picture. Our house conveniently didn't have a door on the front of our house. Convenient for parking your car inside of your house and convenient for the billions of mosquitos that thought our house was a nice breeding ground. Don't worry we weren't the crazy Americans. Thai people do this all the time to keep their cars safe. We actually lived in a really safe area of town and probably nothing would have happened to our car for that week, but it was nice to know that it was definitely not going anywhere. We can't do this in our new house in Chiang Mai, but at least we have screens on all of our windows.

The Joys of Parenthood

Look at how much fun the early weeks of parenthood can be...You wouldn't know by the video, but she is actually happy most of the time:)

http://archive.org/download/elianacry/satisfaction.wmv