Mimi and Papajack visit

So obviously, it's been ages since I posted... so I'll be doing two back to back big posts. This one will be from my parents visit- Nov 23-Dec 14. It was wonderful to be with them and to see them with the boys as always, but our visit was plagued with illnesses. My dad was in bed for 8 days and my mom for the next 7. The rest of us were sick off and on too. Oh well. I was talking to my dad tonight and he said he just started antibiotics for bronchitis yesterday... it's been hanging on for over a month!

Here are some pics from our time together:

Meeting my parents at the airport

Several all-star dad pics


Thanksgiving 2011




Sporting their new Morocco tees

This year was the first annual hot balloon festival- it was such a fun event- performances, street fair, and a light show with the balloons too


Decorating the tree
Story time with Papajack
Here are pics of Sam's school uniforms. He started at a Thai preschool in October and he's the only foreign kid there. His listening comprehension in Thai is really improving. This uniform below (sans the helmet which is just for his motorbike ride to school) is his sports day uniform for Wednesdays.

This is Sam's Friday uniform- Lanna uniform (traditional northern Thai). I love this pic btw- it's my desktop background right now.
This is Sam's M,Tues,Thurs uniform

I love this outfit on Sam- looks like a mini-John




We went up to Chiang Dao for a night- I'm so glad we did... it had been nearly a year and I really love it up there- so beautiful and peaceful and cool and I adore the food at Chiang Dao Nest
We had an early Christmas celebration with my parents- they gave us these Littleton Tigers t-shirts and our birth years are our numbers. GO TEAM!
Sam and Jeff both got into the spirit of receiving presents...

We go to the night safari during the day all the time, but we'd never done the tram loops before. It was definitely worth it- my favorite animals were the joeys but feeding the giraffes and zebras was really fun too.

Out on a little hike


We ended up our visit with a trip down to Hua Hin- a beach town south of Bangkok. Sadly my mom was sick the whole time, but we still had a good time. The house we rented had a pool and Sam spent tons of time in it. Here he is with some of the water balloons from our epic battles


I found the beach to be really lovely- a bit more Pacific Ocean feeling than Indian ocean if you know what I mean (I realize that virtually no one knows what I'm talking about... but basically I find the Indian Ocean to be more tropical)
The moon was doing fabulous things during our visit- it rose during sunset....
\And then we saw the lunar eclipse
On our last day, my dad and I went out to the market and to tea and it was a highlight for me- he was finally well enough and we had such a nice time together.