The Blakes on a Mission: We're BAAACCK!!!

We arrived EARLY this morning at DFW and were ready to drop! Whew...the last plane...plane 3 of 3...was about 13 hours long...it felt like the flight that would never end!!! But it did and we survived...the kids did wonderful really. They were real champs about it all.

Although, it was very tough on Josiah the day we left - he cried more than I did. He just kept saying "I don't wanna leave Thailand". It broke my heart!!! The Hat Yai Team gave us a wonderful goodbye and I didn't weep profusely as I thought I would...I was able to control my crying and prevent a snot fest.

Our Thailand Family

Curry and Dawn (John's parents) picked us up from the airport - it was so wonderful to see them. It's a strange feeling to just be back. We've come back 2 times over the past 4 years and each time it was with the expectancy that we're going straight back in 3 months or a bit more...but this time we have no idea when we'll go back. We're just here.

We're not JUST here...I don't mean that negatively at all. So...what food did we have first? Welp, since we were in the states 6 months ago it wasn't that big of a deal to eat American food again. Although, John was extremely glad to be able to eat his meal without having to pick through it first and bite cautiously. Something happened during this last time of being back with me...I didn't crave American foods...I wanted Thai food. It wasn't that big of a deal to find a bag of doritos or macaroni and cheese at one of the nice import stores like it used to be...it used to be like finding treasure.

And a really funny thing I noticed tonight...I was walking around Wal-Mart at 2:30AM - UH HUH...A.M.!!! The boys slept all day by accident - I layed down at 2:30ish and they were already asleep expecting that John would wake us up at 4...but we didn't get woken up until 6:40pm and the boys wouldn't wake up! I've never seen them that way before. Normally jetlag isn't a big deal for my boys. So...when everyone else was crashing - the boys were WIDE AWAKe and ready to romp.

So at about 1am I was about to go out of my mind trying to keep them quiet and in one room and OFF THE FURNITURE!! So I loaded them all up into Dawn's car and off to wal-mart we went. We walked that whole place and it was so fun. Everything in America is so well made - it's so nice because everywhere I looked there was good quality stuff. Everything was so clean and I could speak to the night workers in English. It feels so good just to smile at someone and say hi and have small talk in english right now.

About what I was saying - the POINT of this little tale...is that while I was looking over a baby item (neat little bottle contraption that you can feed your baby...baby food out of) and considering it...I had to convert in my head how much it would cost into Thai baht to see if I would be willing to spend that much money on it. My worth calculator has been reset to Thai baht!!! After I did it and discovered that it was worth buying and not too expensive - I just laughed to myself...realizing that more parts of me had changed and adjusted to living in Thailand that I had known.

It's 7:32am and the boys and Joss are just now falling asleep. I plan to let them sleep a few more hours and then keep them awake with promises of ChuckECheese as long as I can hold out and then when my last card is drawn...We'll pray for lots of patience and take our exhausted boys to ChuckECheese and let them go WILD...bring them home and let them crash at 7:30pm and I think we will be good.

Ah...it's a good plan...but we'll see how well it works in practice. I'm off to spend some time with Jesus and then catch a few hours myself...here are some pictures...enjoy!