school’s out for summer. and to that statement my kids would add finally.

in a11′s class they had a farewell party and for c14 there was an extended homeroom and reports on all the field trips taken during high school activity week. and in third grade they proved that “it ain’t over ’til it’s over”. because they had native american day, today, on the last day of school. and they went all out. they had a tee pee in the class – one that they had made. they decorated vests and made headbands.

they performed a short play.

and a choreographed song.

they taught us how to play traditional, authentic indian games.

and then – as you do at all true indian pow-wows – we ate. genuine indian chow. really. last friday s8 came home with a note requesting all the parents to bring a dish with them for this shindig. preferably something using corn, squash or beans. and that’s just what we all did.

as you can see, many of us were smitten with the ingredient corn. specifically pop corn. of the traditional native american indian microwave variety. and, yes, i’m included in that us. but i did make mine extra special and got the recipe off a true blue native american indian recipe website. the recipe called for maple syrup (they don’t have maple trees here in thailand, so it’s imported from canada. and for what i paid i expected to find a gold nugget in the teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy maple leaf bottle – which i didn’t.) and because it calls for maple syrup i will never, ever make it again. at least not until i’m closer to some maple trees.

and then mark champion appeared from no where and asked, “now that schools out what are you going to do now?” and we answered, “we’re going to disney world burger king.”

which is exactly what we did.

at lunch the kids were talking about the families who wouldn’t be returning next year. some are furloughing home for the year and some are returning home for good and some are moving on to other mission fields. it was interesting. past experience has been that when friends leave the school my kids have attended it’s to move to another city or another state. but all of these kids are moving to another country. norway, denmark, germany, france, england, spain, australia, the philippines, america, canada, etc… and some of the seniors are heading to these countries without family to attend college. this is a very different experience for us and the kids are starting to see that this experience really will lead to them having friends all over the world

and really cool vacations. cuz this summer we’re going to penang. since we’ve had kids we’ve only ever taken vacations that included extended family at the destination. there’s a whole big world out there and we’re gonna get to see a bit of it.