Can you believe we’ve been here almost 30 days?! It doesn’t seem possible that four weeks have already come and gone. If the trip ended today, we would go home with so many life long lessons and memories. It’s been wonderful to stay in one place for this long. I feel like we’ve begun to find an internal rhythm with living in the jungle.

The first couple weeks, we all woke up so early–the crack of dawn. Every noise, the smallest breaking twig, had us sitting up in our beds. The last week or so, we’ve all been sleeping in until 9am! The morning music of the jungle has become more soothing than startling. I know we will miss the morning sounds a lot when we go home.

Homeschool is going AWESOME! It has been the anchoring feature of our time. Without having the homeschool routine, the kids would be “Can we do this? Will you buy me that? Can you play this with me? etc. etc”…ALL day long. But with homeschool in the morning, it works their little brains so they earn going to the beach. And I think it tires their brains out b/c they ask for a lot less.

This morning we did science experiments with the kids on humidity. No problem finding that here! 🙂 A few days ago we read about plant life in tropical rain forests. Then we collected leaves and flowers and did fun sketches in our notebooks. We had a friendly snake outside our bedroom the other day. And then one of the staff members found a snake skin and saved it for the kids. But we had to promise to give it back so the pregnant woman on staff could bathe with the snake skin–something Thai people take very seriously.

Brian finished reading the kids a Wrinkle in Time. And Pascaline…well Pascaline tries her best, EVERY DAY, not to let the monkeys acrobatics distract her from math. As you can see, she’s making good progress on staying focused. 🙂

Once homeschool is done in the morning, we kayak to our favorite beach and buy bbq’d corn on the cob, chicken skewers and fresh watermelon shakes for lunch. It’s like $1.80 per person. Best deal here!

There are some days when it feels to hot to be outside with temperatures reaching 102 degrees. On these blistering afternoons, the kids create games to play inside where the ceiling fan brings a little relief. The kids haven’t mentioned movies or cartoons ONCE since we’ve been here! Isn’t that amazing!

Most of our laundry is done by our housekeeper, but an everyday ritual is washing out the swimsuits and hanging them to dry.

Yep Sue Christianson! That’s one view of the bathroom! 🙂 But here is our FAVORITE part of the bathroom!

The tall blue clay jar holds fresh water from the underground spring. The dragon’s head above the jar fills it up when we start to run out. The silver bowl on top is so we can scoop the water out of the jar and dump it over ourselves, and I can say honesty is one of the best bathroom renovations I have seen. You can see why this is everyone’s favorite place in the house! A handful of times I’ve caught Blaze dumping water over himself in the middle of the day, trying to cool down. He’s never bathed this much in his life!

Is it bliss here?

It’s 99.2 percent bliss. Aside from the intense bug control, bats, rascally monkeys, and being that we have young children with us, we don’t completely escape certain things. For instance, we don’t escape the fussiness of kids in the late afternoon. Isn’t that funny? Kids must get fussy all over the world in the late afternoon. It’s to late to eat a snack b/c it will ruin their dinner, but it’s to early for dinner. Errrr! Brian even caught me disciplining Pascaline for her crummy attitude. This image just cracks me up b/c we are on this beautiful white sandy beach, our kayaks next to us, clear waters surrounding us, and kids are still kids–moms are still moms. (I especially love where Blaze is at–smart guy to stay back.)

I love Brian’s attitude. Before we came to Thailand, I asked him, “Do you think the kids are going to be fussy or get super bored?” And without even thinking he said, “Of course they are going to be fussy and get bored. They’ll be like that no matter where we go. Their kids! The question is would you rather be disciplining them in Seattle where it rains almost every day or on a remote beach in Thailand?”

Um yeah, that’s all he needed to say.

p.s. We are going to do an AWESOME contest for two people to receive matching grants for HALF of the Discovery Workshop tuition! A workshop attendee has offered this opportunity, and we are SO EXCITED!! Click on the words, Discovery Workshop, below to learn more about this upcoming workshop. Contest details coming soon!!

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

WIN A SONY CAMERA!! It’s a NATIONWIDE CONTEST that Woman’s World and Sony are sponsoring with us! For details, CLICK HERE !

Register for our Upcoming Discovery Workshop ! Ladies Only! CLICK HERE to get your spot!

For fun photo exercises, check out our popular Instructional DVDs Refuse to Say Cheese and Beyond the Green Box (They are BACK IN STOCK!! Yeah!!), our 101 Kits for starting or expanding a business in photography , click on the words of your choice!