On The Flip Side: July 2007

24 July 2007

Maria's Real B Day

By her desk with new, special layered hair-dew!

Singing around the banana cream pie!

Maria and her hot air!

Tonight we enjoyed the company of some friends and celebrating Maria's real birthday. Maria even got her hair cut for this special day.

22 July 2007

Maria's 14th Birthday Party

Maria and Friends

With Meesha

Singing and Cutting the Cake.
We sang..."How do you solve a problem like Maria...!

An Indian tradition we keep with vigor!

21 July 2007

This last week we welcomed our new colleagues, Mark and Aimee from Oklahoma! They got their feet wet in riding rickshaws and eating spicy foods. It’s great to have them here. It’s fun to see them experience the very same things with similar reactions we had all those years ago when we first arrived. The start of a new adventure....

Our kids seem to be extremely busy in extra-curricular fun with their friends. There's ballet for Maria and Danielle, guitar and cricket for Joseph - even the laborers in the construction site enjoyed his game. (see pictures). It’s NOT raining heavily every day now, so it’s great to have this cooler weather…in the upper 70’s most days. Danielle’s school teacher has been sick most of this last week, so she’s not accomplished that much this week. I know she doesn’t mind.

Maria turns 14 on Tuesday (24^th). This Sunday night we’ll have a party after our house church meeting.

15 July 2007

Back Home in Pune

We made it back to Pune all in once piece, even with an overweight piece of exercise equipment! We didn't know if it'd make it onto the plane nor through customs here but it did. Merrilea and I are already using it! We'll let you know how the weight loss/exercise regiment is going. When electricity is out and no water is available (as water is not available right now...nor was it most of the day for that matter) it makes regular exercise a challenge. It just adds to the list of excuses. Now, we have no excuse for not exercising! We just met with our church tonight and my accountability partner is among our house church membership so we agreed to a fixed schedule...if we don't work out 3x per week minimum of 30 minutes each time, we'd owe each other 500 Rupees (roughly $15) each time we miss.

Sounds like a good plan!

Regarding the water problems, apparently the water pump to our apartment complex is out so for the last week we've had random water cuts. I'm grateful for buckets! The weather is cooler...it's been in the upper 70's now. It's been very comfortable even with the daily rains.

More as the week unfolds.
Bill for the family

10 July 2007

Photos in Thailand

With the Youth

Covered in Shaving Cream!

Note: Danielle's chipped upper tooth! While at a waterfall on a family outing, Danielle fell on rocks...ouch!

Within a day the dentists here had it fixed so you couldn't tell the difference!!!