Picture post.

On Saturday March 28, we took a trip out to the Country. It was great to get out of the City and see some wide open spaces. I realized how much I missed the Great Alberta Prairies. Not saying that I don't enjoy the city life here. But some days all the busy, noisy, clutter of the city gets to you.
 

Old bridge, we did not drive across.

Typical country Khmer house.

Inside a Khmer house, they don't have much.. And live very simply.

Ox cart hauling something.

Moving the cattle either home or out for water or food.

This little boy was behind herding the cattle , see his stick?

                                   

The Contraption they use to pull there loads around. You usually only see this in
Country. I have only ever saw one of these in the city, and I have no Idea how they would get
through the traffic here.

A really nice bridge, I do believe it was recently built.
 as it seemed the road was quite new here too.

A young little girl about 4 or 5 heading home from school.

We took balloons along to give to children.
We just stopped randomly where there were young children.

This little girl was very shy,
Also she had the saddest little eyes that broke my heart.

A beautiful Khmer girl.

My most favorite picture of our whole day.
These little ones were hiding behind a canoe, so we stopped and made balloon animals for them as they peered at us over the top of the canoe. Rachelle went behind and said they had the biggest grins  on there sweet little faces.

Finally a blog post...

If you come here looking for a new post. You will be happily surprised this time.
Sorry about all the other times you came and found nothing new. I just have not spent much time blogging  or on the computer much. Hopefully the end of April Jasmyne will be finished Kindergarten. Any of you mothers who homeschool will know how much time teaching takes. I have enjoyed teaching my children, It is will a bit of sadness that I will turn the responsibilities over to our Nanny for the following school year. But I know this will be best and I am looking forward to being able to put more time into learning the Khmer language.

In other news both of the kids had Birthdays since I last updated this blog.

Mr. B turned 4 January 28.

Chase Cake from Paw patrol.
He talked of his cake for weeks.

 

                   

A gift send all the way from America. 

Mr.B shares his Birthday with our sweet neighbor friend.

                                                    Miss JC turned 6 years old on March 18 

                                                         Flowers from her favorite boys,

                 

                                          The princess cake,,,,,, She LOVES purple.

   

  

The silly princess herself. 

I also had the privilage of going out to a province with a friend. It was great to get out and I really enjoyed my time with her little ministry. I presented a short Bible talk, No i did not speak Khmer, There was a translator. My friend taught the children on the importance of hydrating their bodies. 

A few of us ladies took our Motos out one saturday afternoon.

I will close with a few random photos, 

The kids with Alyssa,

At a Market one day.

We also celebrated our 9th Wedding anniversary. February 25.   

  

My daily life..... Cambodia.

Many of you ask what a day is like for me in Cambodia. I will try to give you a glimps of it here.
7:00 am alarm goes off. I will not tell you if I get up right away or not. But none the less the day begins. 8 am finds me drinking coffee and going over the children's school lessons for the day. After the children are done eating breakfast, we try to begin school at 8:30. Between teaching, switching out laundry, washing up breakfast dishes, ect.  We try to finish up school by 11:00 am.  We normally eat Lunch at 11:30 of leftovers from the night befores dinner or a cold meat sandwich and some fresh fruit.  Clean up lunch and finish school if we didn't quite finish it yet. Usually just flash cards need to be practiced. Or spelling words finished. Then it's time to think of what to make for dinner. And send John to the grocery store for anything we might need for dinner.  And do some house work of cleaning, baking or putting away laundry. If I have time I may do my homework, but that usually don't get done. My tutor comes at 2:00 and I'm in class till around 4:00 and then John is in class from 4-6:00. While he is in class I do house work that needs to be done and make dinner and take care of the children. After dinner there is often something going on, such as team meetings and If not then, we go to get our main groceries we need. Or we spend the evening as a family. By 9:00 the children are crawling into bed and this is where I get a few moments of time with John or just to myself. But all you mothers know how that really goes. You pickup the toys that were left out, and put the dishes away, sweep up the crumbs from under the table, finish putting away the laundry, think about answering emails or Facebook messages, and think about looking at the childrens lesson for the next day, think about doing my language study homework, think about going to bed and see it's nearly 11:00 pm and decied that the later thought is the best choice. So I fall exhausted into bed and repeat it all again the next day.
Note: throw in a few other things through out the days such as the neighbor kids coming up to play, or the next door lady stopping in to chat. Or someone from the team stopping in to visit and encourage me. Or just to bring me a coffee. Or one of my own children feeling neglected from our busy life.
All in all, yes, my life is crazy busy! But I do know I can not do any of this on my own strength, it all comes from God. So thank you each and everyone of you who pray and encourage me throughout my days. Your prayers and encouraging words mean more then you even know.
I also must say I love my family, I love Cambodia, but I can't  truethfully say I love the challenges that come with it, but I do know that I want to be, a better person, a person who is stronger and rutted deeper in the Lord so I will embrace life and take it as God brings it to me. 

 

Kep Vacation 2015

Have you ever been so overly busy with life, that you didn't realize you needed a vacation from that life? And then you have a big change of plans and you feel God telling you to just take that time and to refocus and rejuvenate.
This past week I was to be in Kampot at a medical clinic, But my medical certificate did not qualify for what the clinic was looking for. And I did not have total peace about going away for 4 nights without my family. But I really wanted to practice what I learned last March at Equip international. And to be able to work along other experienced Medical personal.  But that was not to happen, And since our Language instructor is a translator/ pharmacist at the medical clinic, our Khmer classes were canceled all week. So we used this time to take a family vacation.  After 7 months of  busy life in  a city of millions of people we left it for the peace and quiet of the countryside off the gulf of Thailand. Even in this poverty stricken country there is a lot of beauty. Beauty in the brown dried out grass, beauty in the brown dead leaves from the banana trees, beauty in the dirty water that the wind blows onto the sandy beach, beauty in the colorful shacks the Khmer people call home, beauty in the cool morning breeze.

We really enjoyed every single minute of our vacation to Kep. The children thrived off all the attention they received from us as parents. Now if only their love tanks would stay full for  a while.
 The children would live forever in the water like little fish if they had the chance.

There is  a frog on the tree

 Kep is a quiet little town that is known for its yummy crab and other sea food. It is the perfect place to go if you need a break from the noisy, crazy, busy life of a big city.


The children had coffee nearly every morning. Something they normally don't get when we are at home.  But whats wrong with spoiling them every once in a while. It's fun to see there eyes sparkle as they say for real we get to drink coffee. So worth the over energized children that comes out of it all!

                                

   JC makes friends where ever she goes, there was a big group from Malaysia that was on the beach our first day at Kep, and she made friends with the girls almost immediately. And bonus for her they could speak english very well!

Christmas 2014

      MERRY CHRISTMAS................

   It really don't feel like Christmas to us. With no snow and temps in the high 20 low 30.(Celsius)

 But we are enjoying not having to bundle up when we run out. We decorated our house a little for Christmas the Kids had a great time helping and adding their touches. Today we decorated Christmas cookies with some others, was fun to do something different to help make the season feel more real.

We visited and orphanage just
out of the city a little ways.

As soon as Jasmyne heard
we were going to the Orphanage
She asked to take some of
her clothes to give to the children.
Here this little girl is wearing à pair of pjs.

This little girl was abandoned
at the Hospital. She is 8 months
and has no strength
in her legs to hold herself up.

Braxton loved the Baby, He thought of
 sharing his bed with her. :)

This young lady stole my heart from the moment we arrived.
She is 8 and (we are told) has no parents
she just recently came to the orphanage.

The children Eating lunch plain white rice.

It gets dusty at times.

3 Boys With 2 wonderful ladies enjoying the ride.

Also this month we had the wonderful privilege of taking a short vacation one weekend to visit the beautiful gulf of Thailand off the coast of Cambodia. I am amazed over and over again the beauty of Gods creation.  We had a long drive in a van before we arrived. we seen and experienced a lot on the very busy hiway for  the 4 plus hours of traveling.

The road to the Beach.

                                               
 Some times you go a little stir crazy traveling so far after pretty much never traveling in a car for 6 months. The passengers are not required to wear seat belts as long as your in the back of the vehicle. No kids car seats either, in someways its nice in other ways its not so nice.

 

                 Some of the homes out in the country.

The sunset on the beach shortly after we arrived. Breath taking beauty.

     

Its Dinner time.....

                                                     

Yummy lobster. 

           

beach pedi, for a sweet little 5 year old princess.

The kids both cried tears the days after we came home.
they really wanted to just live at the beach.