We were SO PUMPED this year to have 2 sets of friends coming from the U.S. to visit us during our winter break! Our last visitors were my parents in winter 2019, so the anticipation was intense! We started planning for their visits months in advance. As winter break grew closer, it was all we could do to focus on school and work.

My kindergartners and I busied ourself in our zucchini garden, which was going gangbusters despite my very black thumbs.

We had enough to make a giant batch of zucchini bread, which we then shared with all of the ECC kids, providing a farm-to-table experience at snacktime.

The long awaited iPads that I had pushed for and eventually procured finally arrived!

The girls’ class sang at a PTSA meeting.

The elementary overnight trips came back this year! Grade 4 headed to a camp where they got to do lots of fun team building and adventure activities, and also participate in an agricultural service project.

They were pretty spent afterwards.

Grades 1 and 2 went on an actual TENT CAMPING trip (God bless their teachers). There were scavenger hunts, campfires, washing of their own dishes, and elephants.

Then it was time to get our house ready!

Christmas celebrations abounded at school, too!

Our kids just love giving gifts to all of their teachers, and I’m always so touched by the sweet notes the girls write.

The annual Winter Carnival was also back this year! It’s literally The Best Event of the whole school year. The ECC classes provide the majority of the entertainment, which means all the ECC teachers put on our (completely amateur) choreographer hats and start practicing with our kids the minute Halloween is over.

I went with a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer number, because how cute are 18 kids in reindeer suits? They were pretty, ahem, sweaty reindeer however, as I might have forgotten the fact that it is still 85 degrees at Christmas here when I was ordering costumes. Sorry, kids!

While I was wrangling reindeer, Mr. Nick was also hard at work. The winter carnival is also a market, where teachers and parents can sign up for a booth and sell whatever they want. Mr. Nick’s booth was definitely the only one selling pickles and salsa. He sweat through 2 shirts slinging bowls of chips and salsa to the masses, and was sold out by the end of the carnival. His profits supported his craft beer hobby for a month or so after, so he was pretty pleased with himself.

Here we are, headed to our annual Christmas party at the Dunnings’ house. Brecken swapped his santa suit for just a beard and swim trunks this year. It’s hot here, people.

We stopped at 7-11 on our way home to grab some milk and pay our annual company taxes for Nick’s school. Yep, you can do that at 7-11.

With school behind us for the semester, we put together a wall-sized calendar of our exciting month of visitor activities!

The Rausches BARELY made it out of Minneapolis before a record-breaking snowstorm. They did, however, miss their connection in Korea and had to stay overnight in Seoul.

They made it eventually, and surprisingly, so did all their contraband they packed for us! Merry Christmas to NICK!

About an hour before they arrived, we found out we all had COVID.

We collectively decided to power through with our plans. Too much planning and anticipation had gone into this trip for all parties involved, and none of us wanted to give any of it up! We masked up, kept all the windows and doors open, moved our dining room table outside, and took separate cars everywhere. Magically, none of the Rausches got it!

Late night Christmas gift assembly is much more fun with a friend and a beer than it is with your wife. Thank you, Calvin, for saving me from having to put this together with Nick at 10pm on Christmas Eve. Now we can continue to raise future Timberwolves and Lynx players while living in Thailand.

The kids were THRILLED to share Christmas with an AMERICAN FRIEND! Nelena and the kids were inseparable the whole time.

Then it was time for street markets and elephants!

I guess our kids have had enough of elephants in Thailand, as they were much more interested in the puppies running around the elephant sanctuary.

We got to make our own noodle soup for lunch. The kids had several bowls each!

We also took them to another one of our favorite spots–Huay Tung Tao lake! The sculptures are made with the leftover straw from the rice harvest.

We love having lunch on the lake, but the menus are all in Thai, so Nick and I always order in what we think is GREAT Thai, feel really proud of ourselves, and cross our fingers and see what arrives.

The next day we had a songthaew pick us all up at our house (because, ventilation) and take us to the Doi Suthep trailhead, where we hiked up to Wat Pa Lat (buddhist temple halfway up the mountain).

Then the songthaew drove us the the rest of the way up to the famous golden temple at the top–Wat Phra That. The kids love counting the steps to the top.

Next up was my favorite–the treehouses!

Calvin gifted the owner of the treehouses a Minnesota license plate from his collection, which she proudly put on display.

A trip to the treehouses always means a stop at Bua Tong sticky waterfalls!

Rausches stayed with us for a few days, then moved to this awesome little resort about a half mile from our house.

We managed to squeeze in a date night sans kids! Yes, we can all fit into a tuk tuk (barely).

Is it even a date night if you don’t get foot massages first?

These guys… with their insane tshirt collections. Two peas in a pod.

We even had time to take them to our favorite Chinese hot pot restaurant before they took off for their trip to the islands in southern Thailand!

We put Rausches on a plane, then swung over to arrivals to grab our next visitors–the Dunbars!

We wasted no time embarking on all kinds of culinary adventures with them, beginning with the kids making them a welcome drink with butterfly pea flowers from our neighborhood (with the magic lime juice trick that makes it change color)!

The kids were also THRILLED with the American “culinary” treats Michele and Kirk hauled over for them.

The Dunbars asked us to take a Thai cooking class with them. In the 4 years that we’ve been here, we’ve never really been interested in LEARNING how to cook Thai food, because we’re literally surrounded by it, it’s insanely cheap, and so much better than we could ever make ourselves. But we said sure– what the hell!

It was really fun, and while I can’t say I’m going to start making my own Thai food anytime soon… check out how beautiful my khao soi and mango sticky rice were!

We also dragged the jetlagged Dunbars to a family-friendly New Years party with all our expat friends. They were really good sports.

This seems safe.

Lucky me got to go BACK to the treehouses again, this time sans kids! Michele and Kirk got the best of the 10 treehouses (can you say LUGGAGE PULLEY??), which Brecken is still SO JEALOUS about.

Not sure how I didn’t get more pictures of this, but I got my OWN TREEHOUSE that I didn’t have to share with any small (or large) humans. After a campfire and smores with my amazing treehouse trip companions, I took the short walk back to my OWN TREEHOUSE, and did snow angels in my treehouse bed while listening to the creek run under me. Heaven.

Our next adventure was up to Mon Jam, a little mountain village about an hour outside Chiang Mai, where we stayed in the worm tents overlooking the valley!

We’d been before and remembered it being pretty chilly up there… but this time was next level. Dunbars laughed at how weak we’ve become. We’ve truly lost our Minnesota grit.

We also took them on the hilariously-rickety mountain go carts, where they haul you up the hill in the back of a pickup with all the carts attached to the back with a rope. Then you jump in your flinstone-esque cart that has tire treads NAILED to the (kind-of-round) wheels, and go hurdling down the very bumpy road with only a stick as a brake. In hindsight, it’s probably not the kind of risk you want your visitors traveling from America to take, and Michele was a REALLY good sport when she went end-o in her car and got some mountain road rash as a souvenir. SORRY AGAIN MICHELE!!

More waterfalls on the way home!

We also stopped for lunch at this little roadside/creekside spot, where we ate more great food and even got to see some elephants walking on a nearby trail!

We managed to squeeze in lots of grown-ups-only time with these amazing people. So good for our souls.

We had to fight for it though, as the kids fell in LOVE with all the attention Michele and Kirk showered on them, and did NOT want to share them with us! Michele and Kirk’s own kids are grown, but they showed so much genuine interest in our kids and listened intently to all of their stories, played endless games with them, and patiently let the kids drag them on a tour of their school campus (including an impromptu gallery tour all of their art projects).

And of course I couldn’t just send them off to get foot massages on their own. You need a tour guide for these things. I was happy to volunteer.

We then sent them down to the islands, too. They understood the assignment.

The goodbyes were really hard, but the countdown is ON for our visit home again this summer!

Well… have we convinced you to come visit yet? We’re now taking reservations for October 2023 and December/January 2023/2024. Full (amateur) travel agent services provided, for the meager price of a piece of checked luggage full of beer and American cereal. And I promise to accompany you to and participate in all Thai massages. It’s just an extra service I like to provide our visitors.

Cheers!

Sara