Fingers Crossed for a World Record

Saturday night was the most magical.  The 8 children all on their own decided to try and break the world record for largest marshmallow roasting stick.  They did not even tell us that they looked up the current one and the rules to break it.  They all worked as a team to find the largest one and brainstormed ways to accurately measure the length of the stick, and find away to get it over the fire.  It was truly brilliant.  There was little arguing, an immense amount of collaborating and then a lot of celebrating.  I have done my best to submit everything so have to watch this space!

A Little Italy in Khao Yai

On Friday other families arrived and the real fun began, we had a lovely day at the site on Friday and then Saturday we headed over to Little Italy.  Khao Yai is wonderfully bizarre, it has various sections that are made to look like places in Europe.  We see places modeled after France, Italy, Sweden, the UK and probably many more I have not come across.  It is surreal real as some places get it pretty spot.  I had never been to Toscana before, and we all decided to check it out for lunch on Saturday.  I am not sure I would stay in the area but it was so nice to see and indeed it felt like we were in Italy.

Long Weekend at LaLa Muhka

LaLa Muhka is probably one of my top spots in Thailand.  I host the Olympics there every year and the children just love it.  They get to be so independent and have so much fun being outside the entire time.  Luis was off to Vietnam to see his friend so he missed this trip but I did tell him that I really only saw Sebastian at bed time and if he was hungry or thirsty.  We arrived Thursday night and some play and then headed to bed waking up crazy early to a beautiful day.

LIS Kendall

On Wednesday we were lucky enough to welcome another special visitor, Kendall from our time at LIS in The Bahamas.  She is now working in KL, Malaysia and came to Bangkok for their half term.  We were so happy to see her and remember all our times together at LIS as she started the same year we did.  She had two other friends that joined and Nadia came as well.  It was also great to see Nadia as I I have seen her only twice seen we have been back.  And she lives one street over! Things just get so busy.  But we all had a nice night telling stories over some of our favourite Thai food.

Aloni, Lorelei and Morgan

Yesterday Aloni and family flew in from hazy Singapore for a mini break.  We have met up with them several times over the last four years but everyone was too young to clearly remember each other.  Lorelei is 3 days older than Sebastian and the two of them spent most days together in Phuket before we left. They took a few minutes to warm up to each other but then had a great evening of swimming and dancing around the living room.  I am super thankful that he is able to keep these connections going and hopeful he is old enough to remember this particular time together.

EMS Thailand Post Run

I am not sure what I was thinking signing up for a 5am run the morning after we got back from Phuket.  It was pretty hard to get motivated to go especially after I woke up at 3:30am to pouring rain.  But somehow I dragged myself there.  And it was such a hard race.  It was actually 11.3km's which was annoying.  I did not know it until I hit the 10km mark and there was no end in sight.  Mentally that is hard to overcome.  I thought I had a terrible result but turned out I was 6th, so overall I was okay with that.  My time was not my best but was proud I got up and did it.

Hotel Crashing Days

The Ross's moved to quite a posh resort near us for the final two nights of their holiday.  Lyndsey won it in a stair race last year.  We took full advantage of knowing them and spent the final days of our holiday crashing their holiday.  The kids loved the waterslide, the boat ride around the lakes, and, most of all, just being together.  The adults again enjoyed the ease of just being, without constantly having to entertain the children.  It was great that both families ended up in Phuket.  We both lived here before, but we had different 'Phuket lives'; we showed them a bit of our life when we were there (Elephant place, Smigo's Khao Yao Noi), and they introduced us to cheap posh hotel day passes!  It has been a great week with the most amazing weather.  Phuket is crazy cheap in October, as it usually rains all day, every day.  It was a risk coming here, but it paid off, and we saw very little rain and a lot of blue skies.  We also got to catch up with some great friends; in between the last two days at the resort, we managed to have a lovely catch-up with Nina and Pete as well.

A last morning at our place.  We spent so little time in this great pool. In fact, I am not sure I even went in.