Celebrations

In case you are wondering why you haven't heard from us for a while, we have been busy celebrating! Austin and I took a trip to Bangkok for a week, to celebrate our 10th anniversary. The boys stayed with Grandpa Millers and had a great time. They made numerous trips to the soccer field where they watched Grandpa's games and did some kicking around of their own. They had some Bangla classes in the mornings, while Grandpas were at language school, and seemed to really enjoy it. I was surprised to come home and hear Riley counting in Bangla! While they were having lots of fun in Dhaka, we were exploring Bangkok. I have never seen so many shopping areas in one place; you could say we shopped till we dropped and then we stopped for coffee and shopped some more. It was nice to be in huge air conditioned buildings where no one stared at us or desperately tried to get us to buy something. We bought a scooter for Pruitt for his birthday and huge water soakers for each of the boys. The first 3 days was the Thai New Years Festival called Songkran, which largely consisted of rubbing white powder on people and throwing lots of water on each other. The first night we bravely ventured and were dripping before we reached the end of the street. The next couple of days we ventured out early and found back alleys to sneak through and mangaged to stay pretty dry. That suited me quite well. The last night, however, Ausitn wanted to live it up a little more so he went out and bought ice cold bottles of water so he could reciprocate the fun! Things quieted down the last few days of our stay there. We went out when we felt like it, drank freshly squeezed orange juice, bought fresh watermelon and pineapple from the fruit vendors, tried some spicy papaya salad and lots of other good street food. Other times it was Big Macs and soft serve ice cream or blizzards or soft pretzels. We pretty much lived it up and enjoyed things we can't get here. It was such a good week for us but we were ready to get back to our boys again. We got back in time to celebrate Pruitt's birthday. It was a hot day and the power was off for several hours, so Austin took them up on Marland's roof and let them cool each other off with their new water soakers. I think Austin would like to have Songkran every day! Pruitt wanted pizza so we went to Pizza Hut ( I still can hardly believe there is a real Pizza Hut in Dhaka and it is quite good). When they found out it was his birthday, they had him stand on a chair and the waiters all stood around him and did this quirky birthday rap for him. He just giggled and giggled! We went home for cake and ice cream and then packed our bags to come home to Mymensingh the next morning. So now we are home and back to reality. It's over 90 degrees in the house and we are pretty much sticky all the time but it was sure nice to have a break!