My view of my sister's wedding....

Many of you know that my sister got married at the beginning of Oct. I will just leave it at the "beginning of Oct" because according to me she got married the 7th but to her and the rest of my family it was the 6th :)

She was nice enough to have an evening wedding so that I could attend in the morning and not in middle of the night-I got up at 5:40am and biked to my friend Gina's house, so that I could watch the wedding with someone! We hooked up my computer to her TV and sat back on beanbags to watch the wedding! I bet none of you have ever sat on a beanbag during a wedding...

Unfortunately they couldn't hear me too well (actually they might have thought that was a good thing), but I could see and hear them just fine! I also could hear my family in MN. The wedding took place in Guatemala, so they had two computers- one to skype with Thailand and one to skype with Minnesota. 

2 continents, 

3 time zones,

 2 hemispheres, 

3 countries, 

2 languages 

(even though I was in Thailand I spoke English to them). 

Getting ready to watch the wedding....

Ok so this isn't "my view" but here we are with the
 bride and groom on the other side of the world!

My sister and I...while waiting for the pastor....

The TV, computer and me :)

They missed the memo to look at the camera!

Praying- Thai style

See us in the corner?!?!

So happy....

Some of my favorite parts were listening to my dad pray for Fernando and Erica and my nephews singing "Here comes the Bride" at the top of their lungs. To think that they were in MN and I was skyping with someone in Guatemala is pretty cool. Oh technology :)

Package from America....

Yeah for Jenni! She wins the prize for the first package from the states this school year:) 

hmmm guess I need to find a prize!

Jenni is in the middle...Heather is pretty cool too....

It is extra impressive cause it is seasonal and it arrived before the season was over!!!
Actually it arrived at the perfect time...

It kind of looked like a rat started eating the twizzlers...but the bag was completed sealed...
so I guess something heavy just fell on top of it....they tasted just fine :)

There was a happy note in the package from Kristel....

Thanks friends!

Elementary Staff Retreat-Kayaking!

Kayaking is such fun....

 Why not stand up and kayak?!?

Yes- it was fun!

Elementary/SND Staff Retreat Take 1

At the beginning of September we had an elementary and special needs staff retreat (aka work retreat!). Even though we were in meetings most of the time we still managed to have lots of fun! It was fun to get to know each other better, etc.

The cute pig towel on my bed....

The gluten free girls had table full of gluten free food!

Getting in birthday order without talking...

More games...

My roommate loves me:)

Cup stacking at it's finest!

This was actually taken during our Social Studies Standards meeting!
We really did work hard...maybe a little too hard!

Sharing action steps for helping a student

Worshiping God together

SND and Elementary Staff

Elementary Staff 

1st quarter is already finished and parent-teacher conferences are this week!

Ice Cream Reading Party

Last spring I gave the K-5th grade students a reading challenge for the summer. It was similar to what public libraries do in the states, with the students keeping track of the time they had read for, etc. I also gave the older students (2nd-5th) an extra challenge of reading 8 different genres. I think I had about 30 students complete the reading challenge and 8 completed the genre challenge.

To celebrate we had an after school Ice Cream Party in the library. The students that completed the extra genre challenge got bag of different little gifts as well.

I asked a mom to come and be our guest reader for the party and she came up with a theme- Rainy Day. We don't have fall, but we are in the rainy season! I had fun coming up with different ideas to go along with the book theme!

The kids loved their mini umbrellas and actually didn't totally overdo it with the toppings:)

This student said her ice cream was like the parting of the Red Sea (strawberry sauce on either side)!

Serving the ice cream in my rain poncho...boy did it get hot!

What to put on the ice cream? Too many choices!

Reading The Umbrella  by Jan Brett

Making umbrellas

Our finished bulletin board! The umbrellas all have raindrops hanging from them with the students' favorite books/authors/series written on them.

Some students were already talking about next year as they left!

Keep reading :)

Signs

In Brasil we didn't have signs in English. Portuguese is a little easier to learn how to read, so it wasn't as hard after you learned alittle Portuguese.

 Here in Thailand many signs are in both Thai and English, of course sometimes you wonder who did the translating :) I can laugh about it because I probably sound just as confusing when I try to speak Thai! 

Enjoy just a few of  the signs around my neighborhood...

Hmm.... very interesting and a great way to actually make people STOP at the stop sign...just to look at the sign :) Usually people don't really stop at stop signs....

The poor neighborhood guards must have gotten tired of people laughing, taking pictures, and talking about the sign, because not more then two days later they had covered up the English part of the sign. Then a day later we got this new sign as seen above...

Well, Chiangmai eyebrow beautiful House, sounds very interesting... we have yet to go there, but I really want to see what it is like! I also love how they capitalize house! 

I will be on the look out for more fun signs...