We're Back!

We made our re-entry to the mainland on July 19th. We flew from Tokyo to Seattle before landing in San Diego to stay with Kelly (Kim's sister) and family. When looking out of the airplane window on our descent, Nicholas shouted, "wow, this is a really big island!" He continues to think we are traveling from the "island of Kansas City" to the "island of Nashville".
Our return has been pretty uneventful. Our house was in great shape, thankfully. We spent the month of August settling back in and getting Nicholas started in kindergarten. The kids have adapted really well. I think Nicholas was excited to be back. We have enjoyed seeing all of our friends and being back at church. Of course, we miss Saipan. The pace...our jobs...the people...the beaches...the VIEW! But, we are moving forward and we started back to work this week. We had a great weekend in St. Louis at Ryan's family reunion over Labor Day.

Pics: Driving my mom's RV from K.C. to Nashville, my birthday, Nicholas starts kindergarten, Morgan returns to preschool.

more from Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai

Bangkok

Last Hurrah

We are leaving today for a three week to Thailand and Japan. Two backpacks and two children will be our only accompaniments. We decided we better take advantage of being in this part of the world, even if it does mean travelling with two toddlers! Nicholas decided to pack scotch tape and shims, Morgan packed her silky blanket, Ryan his camera, and me...my sleeping mask and earplugs. We will spend 10 days in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Northern Thai mountains (we are skipping the beaches since we live in Saipan) then to Japan for 10 days. We will be in Tokyo, Mt. Fuji, Nagoya and Kyoto.
We are planning to return to the States later this summer, making it to Nashville by the beginning of August after stopping in San Diego and Kansas City.
It will be difficult to leave the Saipan lifestyle, but We are looking forward to seeing all of our loved ones. Hopefully we can put some updates along the way.
love, Kim

Happy Mothers' Day

We decided a few weeks ago that we would take a year off of our annual Mothers' Day party. That gave me the opportunity (maybe the last chance) to surprise Kim with a Mothers' Day party. Nicholas almost kept the secret.
We had a lot of fun with several of our friends. The food was from Herman's Modern Bakery (established on Saipan in 1945 during WWII), and the music was provided by an Hawaiian trio of two electric ukuleles and a bass. They joined us for a swim and entertained us with songs like "Coconut girl in a high-fashion world" and "Long before there was Clark Kent, there was a Hawaiian superman", as well as versions of "Black Magic Woman" and "Big Yellow Taxi".
Happy Mothers' Day, and see you at the 5th annual party in Nashville!