Chiang Mai Road Trip

Last week was Thai New Year's so we decided to take our days off and drive up to Chiang Mai. The ride up was pretty uneventful and we made it in a little over 7 hours. Both Max (drugged with Dramamine) and Daniel slept a good portion of the trip. Then things started going downhill. Daniel got his first cold. Of course it came when we were away from home and I didn't have any of my nifty tools people gave me at the baby shower like a heavy duty nasal aspirator and a rectal thermometer :) Then Max got attacked over and over again by the ants. Although he is potty trained in Bangkok he wouldn't go in the grass in Chiang Mai anymore because of the ants. So, he had multiple accidents on Beverley's beautiful floors. Chris and I didn't get much sleep with a sick baby in bed with us and a howling Max outside our window. But, all that aside we had a fun and enjoyable trip. Daniel was dedicated at Beulah church by Pastor Pichai. We celebrated Beverley's birthday with a massive pizza party in which Chris order so many pizzas there was enough for each family to take one home at the end of the night. And we got to spend lots of time with friends, family and mission staff. Here are some of the highlights of the trip:

Daniel being dedicated at Beulah Church.

Atsi and grandson at birthday dinner

Daniel being loved on by Salika and the kiddos at Beverley's birthday party.

Playing Superman with Paeng.

Max sleeping under the oven

Max is probably looking for somewhere to pee on the floor.

Chris attempting to multi-task... working while babysitting.

The picture doesn't show it so well, but this is Chris getting spit up on while multi-tasking :)

Bath time

Meeting Ado's newest addition Tittapon (3 days old)

Mom and baby

Handome boy

Rawang feet

Daniel meeting the Akha tribal people

Hopefully not dinner

Akha Easter eggs

Daniel, Beverley and the some of the Akha workers at the land.

Where we were married a little over a year ago

Family photo. Daniel is still not cooperating in any of these.

The trip back to Bangkok was a little tougher. Max's dramamine didn't work and Daniel was awake for 9 1/2 out of the 10 1/2 hour drive back. But, we made it safely and are now back on track in Bangkok.

The boys recovering from the drive.

The Adventures of Max

Max has brought a lot of smiles to our already happy household (especially now that he's potty- trained). Even Chris likes him which is surprising if you know Chris. Here's some pictures of his fun this past month.

Tom helping Daniel ride Max like a horse.

This is not Max looking in a mirror. We were hoping Max and Lily would be boyfriend and girlfriend but she was too cool for him. He chased her around all night like a hormonal teenage boy and she was clearly not interested. We ended up having to separate them because Lily was so annoyed with Max. Poor guy.

Attach a stick to him and we have ourselves a mop.

Max caught red-handed with a train of bathroom toilet paper.

Cousin Jacob meeting Max. Max kept trying to eat those gorgeous locks of his.

There is a nice girl in our neighborhood who comes over and plays with Max everyday after school. He gets played with, tossed around and loved on. This is what happens every time she leaves... :) He's one pooped puppy.

Taking a stab at blogging

I'm creating this mostly so my family can follow Daniel's progress since I don't get to update them regularly enough. Unfortunately I've never been consistent about journaling so we'll see how long I can keep it up.

There's too much to write about since Daniel was born so I'm just going to start with this past weekend. We took our second family vacation in two weeks. This time we went to Pattaya with our friends Tom and Diane. While the boys were out golfing, Diane and I took Daniel to the pool. Diane gave him his second dunking and he did much better than last week!

On Sunday Chris took him dunking again. The water was a little cold but Daniel still seemed to be ok with it. He wasn't smiling but he never does unless its gas- induced so we think he likes it (or tolerates it at least).

He was quite exhausted after the whole ordeal.

We went for a Sunday morning stroll around Pattaya beach. This is one of few decent family photos we have so far. We can't get Daniel to look at the camera or smile but at least he was awake in this one.

After two months of photos with everyone else and Daniel we finally snapped one of Daniel and me!

That's all the updates from this weekend. I'll try and post as regularly as I can so you can see Daniel (and Max) grow. XOXO