After our Minnesota summer-o-fun, it was time to get back into our Thai life routine.

We were relieved to find that all the temples and elephants were still here.

Thai food was still here too.

First item on the to-do list was move Nick’s school to it’s new location!

He has a huge, beautiful new space that he no longer has to share, eliminating the need for daily breakdown of his classroom!

Then the girls turned TEN!

Nora had decided months before that for her 10th birthday she wanted to get her ears pierced. Bryn was a hard no.

After witnessing her sister not perish from ear-piercing pain, Bryn made a last minute decision to hop in the chair.

After Bryn was done, we watched the color slowly drain from Nora’s face. The piercing ladies jumped into action, laying her down on the floor of the tiny shop and fanning her down.

The experience ended up being great content for Nora’s 4th grade personal narrative a few months later.

The girls chose the same farm-cafe as last year for their birthday party, and as usual, we celebrated the quadruple birthdays of Nora, Bryn, Kueanoon and Ben!

Then it was time for school to start! Year 4 in Thailand for these kids!

The girls were STOKED this year to have our friend Jordan as their teacher.

They’ve enjoyed every. single. day.

The girls even tried the ol’ twin switcheroo a couple days. They haven’t been much into “twinning” the last few years, so it was pretty funny.

Ms. Jordan says they even choose each other as partners in class sometimes. *cue mama’s heart melting*

I (selfishly) decided to set up a reading buddies program between my class and Ms. Jordan’s class. Nora and Bryn are such great little teachers, and their kindergarten reading buddies cannot WAIT for their visit every week.

Brecken had all his friends in his class this year, they got to go on an awesome field trip, and even got some trips to the school’s science lab like his sisters!

When it was time for elementary student council elections, the girls weren’t really interested, but Ms. Jordan convinced them to run. They ended up getting really into their campaigns, making posters and working on their speeches.

The votes were tallied and…. they are both now elected officials! Part of their duties includes occasional guest appearances on the morning announcements to highlight upcoming events.

Kindercamp is now in it’s second year of existence, but with some big changes. We are now The Nest International!

Kindercamp started out as a short-term, camp-style program last year. Many kids came for a month or 2 at a time when their schools would go online. Other than about 3 full time students, it was kind of a revolving door of kids. Nick did an amazing job rolling with the constant stream of new kids, but it kept the admissions, marketing and finance departments (aka me) extremely busy. This year is our first year as a year-round program, with all kids signing up for a full semester at a time. This has made the registrar’s job (also me) much more manageable…you know…since I also have another full time job! It’s all been worth it so far. Nick LOVES his job, has amazing kids, and they get to do the MOST FUN STUFF everyday.

Mr. Nick and his buddy Jeshua have had another big project in the works.

They’ve been adding educational videos to the interweb, one shamelessly choreographed routine at a time. If you’ve missed it on social media, here you go! As the kids say these days, “Like and subscribe!”

I’m finally starting to not feel like Mr. Nick’s long-term sub teacher over in my kindergarten classroom. I’ve kept some of the Mr. Nick classics (like Pirate Day), but am slowly finding my own flavor. For reasons still unknown, I’ve started a zucchini garden with my class in the school’s greenhouse. If you know anything about the color of my thumbs, you know that I have no business doing this, but these sweet little babies have no idea, and assume we’re going to be making dozens of loaves of zucchini bread in a couple of months. I give it a 50% chance that I end up buying full grown zucchinis at the local wet market and “planting” them in the greenhouse under the cover of night.

Hey teacher friends–have you ever asked parents to come in to read to the class and they arrive with a choreographed dance prepared to tell the story instead? No? Me neither…until this year!

Check out this kindergarten field trip to the local fire station. Add this to the list of things that would never happen in the States!

20 kids, unrestrained, rollin’ around Chiang Mai old city in a Thai fire truck!

Even though we were still fully masked for the first 3 months of school, the kids still managed to pick up some crud. Triple-demic is alive and well on our side of the globe too.

Pre-pandemic I signed up for the Spartan race in Thailand. They kept all our money, postponed it for 2 years, then said, “Surprise! It’s in 3 weeks. No refunds. Hope you’re ready!” By this time, our gym had closed due to covid and all my training buddies had dispersed. But we all showed up, got muddy (and a bit bloody), and crossed the firey finish line together.

My funny friend Erik didn’t think the fire I jumped over looked badass enough, so he worked his photoshop skillz. It’s fixed now.

For our October break we headed to Khao Lak, a beach town about an hour north of Phuket. As a rule, Nick and the kids are always first in line at the baggage claim.

The girls continue to be total bookworms, and oftentimes couldn’t be bothered with the beauty of southern Thailand. Nora also had her first Thai massage! She now wants to join me for all my Thai massages, which I’ve tried to explain, takes about 50% out of the enjoyment of Thai massages, but I will allow it on occasion.

We also went bamboo rafting in Khao Lak and it was AWESOME. Our guides pointed out all the snakes perched precariously in tree branches just above us, horrifying me, and delighting the kids. The water was clear and freezing (a treat!) and no bamboo rafts were snapped by the rapids.

When we returned, it was time for the second annual Thaischitl Meat Raffle. Nick’s goal is to midwestern-ize all of Chiang Mai, so eventually it’s just Rochester, MN in a different time zone and a tropical latitude. Pull tabs and shake-a-day are next.

Halloween was in full swing again at our schools and in our hood! Nora made her own spider costume, and Brecken continued his inflatable costume tradition.

Bryn decided to go as Ms. Jordan this year. I think she nailed it.

Rainy season seemed to hang around longer this year, and by Halloween we were still getting lots of monsoons. Parts of Chiang Mai had historic flooding, and lots of businesses and homes near the river (thankfully, not us) were greatly affected. The biggest inconvenience we dealt with at school was having to walk across bench bridges to get on campus!

After a long hiatus due to The Unmetionable, extracurricular activities are back! Almost everything the kids participate in is through the school, which is awesome, because we’re all home together by 4:30pm everyday! After a season of basketball, Brecken discovered the joy (and medal-accumulating potential) of individual sports. After being recruited from PE swim class to join the swim team for a meet, and winning a medal with a relay team, he was sold. Track and field was up next, and he promptly started beating everyone in all his events, raking in the hardware. Nora and Bryn brought home a couple medals each, too, contributing to the team’s first conference championship! Bryn’s gold medal was in DISCUS, which she had never done until the day of the meet. We watched some YouTube videos the night before, which clearly gave her an edge over the field. I keep trying to tell the kids that kicking ass and taking names in track and field is a gene inherited from their badass mom, but they don’t believe me when I tell them about my hurdling career, as junior track and field in Thailand has no hurdles events. Guess it’s time to move!

Nick and Brecken are trying to make an extracurricular activity out of this new shrimp-fishing deal at a local bar. You can watch soccer on tv while you fish for shrimp, sometimes win prizes for catching the shrimp, and you then get to take home your shrimp. Brecken insists that we then eat the shrimp for breakfast. I’m not into the shrimp-for-breakfast deal, but I’m always game for Nick’s bloody marys! After 3 years in Thailand, he has perfected his Zing Zang copycat recipe using all local ingredients!

Our favorite Thai holiday, Loy Krathong, was also back in full swing this year! The girls worked at the student council game booth at the school’s Lanna market. They held tight to their oath of office, and refused Brecken’s pleas for insider information about where to find the winning eggs in the pool. The Yee Peng (lantern) festival was also back on this year, and we got to participate in our first mass lantern release!

The Thai department at school put on an amazing show!

Even though we’ve been hanging out with Jordan for years, it’s now kind of funny because she’s the girls’ teacher. In class on Mondays when they have their weekend share, they have a deal with Ms. Jordan to choose OTHER things about their weekend to share instead of “I swam in Ms. Jordan’s pool” or “I got my nails done at Ms. Jordan’s house.”

We all got some nature getaways recently. Nick and the guys rented a (very) rustic cabin on Doi Inthanon. Lots of meat and beer were consumed, and we’re all still wondering who the big spoons were and who the little spoons were in their sleeping situation.

I had my annual girls camping trip to Doi Pui. Much less meat was consumed than the boys, and our beverage choices were much more delicious than Thai beer.

The kids also got to go camping! It was a kids-only camp outside of town, so we dropped them at a meeting point. They nervously threw their stuff on top of a songthaew, climbed in with a bunch of strangers, and then proceeded to have the best 48 hours of their life.

Haircuts continue to be an adventure; Nora loving them, Bryn tolerating them, and Nick never knowing what he’s going to get.

Brecken wants to grow his hair down to his knees, so makes us bribe him with ice cream to get his hair cut. Aunt Cathy recently venmo’d the kids money earmarked for ice cream. Brecken did the USD to THB conversion immediately so he knew what he was working with, and now Aunt Cathy is his favorite person, because she has no idea how much Thai ice cream American dollars can buy.

Our papaya tree recently succumbed to the weight of its papayas.  Brecken witnessed the fall, so suited up and headed outside for the early harvest.

Thanksgiving started as usual around here, with Funcle Taylor picking up our cornhole boards on his motor bike to prep for the Friendsgiving party.

You CAN get a frozen, imported Butterball here, but we can’t afford them on our teacher salaries, so we continue with our cheaper chicken tradition, courtesy of Jona.

Friendsgiving 2019-2022!

I decided to organize a Friendsgiving event in ECC at my school this year. Each of the 5 classes had to make a dish to share. My class went with turkey sandwiches (with no turkey actually on them). Pinterest on the left, ours on the right.We’re ready for the next episode of Nailed It!

Nick and I continue to enjoy fairly frequent date nights, thanks to cheap Thai babysitting rates (well…cheap Thai everything). We usually start out with a foot massage. In case you needed a reason to move to Thailand:

4 hours of babysitting…..$23

One-hour foot massage for 2…$17

Dinner and drinks for 2……….$25

Roundtrip Grab (Thai Uber)….$7

We’ve all embraced the massage culture here, and it may end up being the lone reason we never return to the U.S. I mean, can’t you just FEEL the scalp massage that made my hair look like that?? Heaven.

I continue to trudge along with Thai lessons (Nick has jumped ship for now). This right here is why the tones may be the death of me.

As I type this, we’re waiting anxiously for our first set of U.S. holiday visitors to arrive in Chiang Mai! They’re currently stuck in Seoul after missing their connecting flight due to the stupid snow in Minneapolis, so we’re all super bummed, but know they’ll be here soonish. We miss our people so much around the holidays, so know that we’ll be channeling all your love through them!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Cheers,

Sara