Jin Family

Well, actually they're gibbons, which is a type of ape. Although our main purpose in Thailand was to rest and enjoy the sun, I did convince our group to do one small hike

Well, so far we have succeeded at having E's birthday in a different country every year! Although we needed to leave the country anyway for our visas, the ostensible reason was to celebrate

Okay, so I realize that by titling this post "the perfect vacation," I'm giving myself some pressure here. But really, it was amazing. First of all, I think our experience would've

We leave for our vacation in just a few days! We have been loving the time off, and the kids have been doing lots of English work, violin practice and M's new choice:

We just made a quick trip to a nearby city to visit one of our local friends who is from there. It was a blast! This was our first time to travel to

We're all officially on summer break! The downside of having such a long winter break is that we have a pretty short summer break. Which is fine, but it always feels like a

The one day we went out with my parents was to the top of South Mountain for a picnic and to play at the playground. We've been there lots of times, but it's

We just enjoyed a week with my parents! The kids were beside themselves waiting for Honey and Pops to arrive. And since this was their third time here, we've already done all the

Lately I've realized that I need to be better about pacing myself so that I'm not so tired all the time. So, I've been trying to find ways to relax and not work

As promised, pictures of the father-daughter dance! M was beside herself with excitement when we told her we had bought tickets to the Father-Daughter Dance. She still remembers doing one when she was

Usually we do a lot for Mother's Day, but not very much for Father's Day. Well, this year, we finally changed that! Since we've been eating less sugar, H has been talking about

We're almost done with Ramadan (life goes back to normal here) and almost done with the semester! In the meantime, we've just been enjoying normal life: going to school, having our regular family

Anyone ever heard of Children's Day? Apparently it's an international holiday observed by many countries around the world on June 1. Including this one. And oh boy, M's teacher went all out. Beforehand,

Well, summer isn't here yet. But it's most of what we're thinking about! We are pretty pumped about our upcoming summer plans: visitors and even a trip outside of the country. But for

After all that craziness, we are very relieved to be back home! Even though we had nothing going on last week, I was still only able to study language for half the hours

After that week of only being home for three days between trips, I hope we're done travelling for now. But it was really fun! We went with some expat friends to a nearby

Although we've been living outside of the US for nearly two years now, we just made our first visit to a US Consulate. It was really surreal, because the Consulate felt exactly like

Is this the calm before the storm? We've had a pretty "normal" couple of weeks, which has been nice, because we're about to have a crazy couple of weeks. I mean,

We've just been getting into the swing of things around here lately, nothing terribly exciting. Except that E had her first haircut ever. Yeah, ever. She's three and a half. I guess she

We've now spent our second Easter overseas! It's actually not so bad to be here for this holiday, since in the States Easter is not so commercialized as Christmas so there's not as

Right after we got back, a good local friend of mine invited us to go strawberry picking with her! It was a great way to start off the semester. I was always a

Well, we're back home now and back to "normal" life, whatever that is. E's new favorite food We got back on a Friday around midnight, had the weekend to recover, and

E at Big Bend If I were to boil it down to two things, it would be seeing people and playing outside. Let's talk about playing outside first. When we left our house

Apparently, it used to be more grande. The other side of that river is Mexico The other big thing we did in Big Bend National Park is cross the Rio Grande and go

We climbed the highest peak in the park! It was a little crazy, but we did it! The three of us that made it the last 50 feet up. Can you tell I'm