Shabu Shabu

Davis is hanging with his friends before everyone leaves for the summer. Tonight we celebrate with a movie and some Mini Shabu Shabu - a Japanese soup that you boil yourself at your own table. The boys had a great time and all were experts in their respective fields of vege and meat boiling...

You can see that each place has it's own boiling pot built into the table. Each person also has control of the temperature of his/her own pot of water...

Ian, Tom and Davis posing...

Despididas

Despidida time - so sad. For those of you who are wondering, "what is a despidida?", this is a goodbye party. Many of you may also think the life of an expat wife is a priveledged life and that may be true in some senses, but it does come at a price. We make friends quickly and lose them just as quickly. In this case we are saying goodbye to three of the ladies at the table. One is returning to Texas, one is moving on to China and another is heading back to her home in the USA. One more was unable to attend because the moving situation was in complete craziness and she is not even sure where she will be living when the kids enter school in the fall. And so, we all LOOK happy here, but its really a time when we wonder how we can possibly say goodbye again and is it really worth making more friends if they are just going to leave...The great expat dilemma...

Concordia Children's Home

Our most recent visit to the Concordia Children's Home (Thursday's for Others group) was to see their new site. Unfortunately, they were evicted from their last home which they had been using for over 20 years. This was all a result of a fueding church and they were caught in the middle. Fortunately, however, they were able to find a new facility - not quite as big as the old one, but adequate. Here are some shots of that...

Jessica wants to know the feeling of having twins...

Cecily shows the kids the pictures she has just taken of them! This is a source of endless fascination for most of the children we visit...

Vea is successful at lulling a baby to sleep!

Helen attempts to give a baby a drink while others chat in the background...

Playing in the yard...

Little Miguel is so busy! He even has plans for his food!

Shiprah Birthing Center & The Little Children's Home

We (the ladies from Thursday's for Others) visited the Little Children's Home today, started by a couple in our church many years ago. Today in particular was different because Dennis Gunderson, the husband, had just passed away the night before. We were really hoping to be of help by holding babies, etc., but we weren't able to do much. It was nice to see the home though. This couple has really made an impact in their neighborhood.

Ethel holding baby...

Lunchtime!...Yummy food!

Meticulously folding the clean diapers...

Shiprah Birthing home - old posters advocating breastfeeding and prenatal precautions - something severely lacking in the country...

Fourth Grade Talent Show

Shin Wan, Jaron and Nadine, almost ready for their performance in the 4th grade talent show...

Here they go...

Ta da! They did great!

Women's Retreat

Today, I went to the Union Church of Manila Women's mini-retreat - just up to Tagaytay (the volcano with a lake in it with a volcano in it and lots of resorts and vacation homes by it). While some of the women took a boat to the active part of the volcano, others of us picked mangos off of loaded mango trees, swam and sat around bonding. Here's some pics of the mango picking. This is Norman, up the tree. He's one of the church drivers, who incidentally managed to lose me (I was following him) on the way up, get lost himself (while I didn't) and get a ticket for swerving (a very common excuse for giving tickets in the Philippines). He did redeem himself at this point by climbing the trees and throwing down Mangos. Go Norman!

Charity waiting for her next mango...Charity is actually Davis and Jaron's music teacher at school.

Charity, ??? (sorry I forgot her name) and Margot bagging their loot...

Ants on mango...

Nature up close and understated...

Some great excitement at our house on May 19...Davis and friend, Tom decide it's a good idea to run around the house, slamming doors and chasing each other. As you can see, this did not end well for our lanai glass sliding door, and as you may not be able to see, for Tom, who ran smack into the glass door after our son had closed it. Tom promptly was taken to the emergency room for stitches in his arm and is missing about 25% of one of his top front teeth. Do you think we should put some stickers up?

HAPPY 15TH ANNIVERSARY!!!!

This year marks 15 full years of marital bliss (right) for Barry and I and so Barry thought it fitting to try and surprise me for once in our marital life! He almost suceeded, until he gave it away in a little blunder...

That said, it was a nice almost surprise...we flew on May 3 to Brisbane, Australia (via Sydney, but we didn't go out of the airport) and travelled about an hour south in our rented Toyota Prius to Hope Island, the home of the Pat Cash Tennis Academy. It probably doesn't sound that exciting to many of you, but we both are really enjoying our tennis and this was a terrific week of completely killing ourselves with tennis morning, noon and night! It was over way too soon and I've decided in my next life, I'm coming back as a tennis pro! I honestly didn't know who Pat Cash was until I went to this academy, but that's only because I didn't know anything about tennis until the last year and a half, so no offense to Pat himself.

Anyway, Monday through Friday was grueling (and wonderful) 4-6 hours of tennis a day and the weekends surrounding it left a little time for some sightseeing. So follow along in your internet blogs. You'll know when it is time to turn the page when you can't see anymore pictures, because there are actually close to an infinite number on our blog by now - sorry for those of you with slow computers!

Here's the view from the plane and hour or 2 before landing. It was a 9 hour flight in total, connecting in Sydney.

Australian coins!

Our first full day in Australia we headed back up to the Brisbane area (about 45 minutes north of where we were staying) to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. There we met all kinds of creatures that one would only see in Australia - the Kangaroo, Wallaby, Dingo and the Koala...afterwards we headed into Brisbane for some shopping, dining and to pay a lot of money to see Spiderman 3 - Barry just couldn't wait to get back to Manila and pay P140 (less than $3.00 US to see it).