Some new pictures

 They are pretty much just of Emma! She's just here more than the boys are! But I managed to squeeze Noah into the top one.

 I got her a new bath seat (it was free with my swagbucks!). This was her first time in it and she wasn't quite sure, but now she loves it.

Her first bite of rice cereal. This was the best shot I could get since I was the feeder and the photographer!
Love you goof! I will get pics of the boys on here soon!

Where elephants dare to tread...

Boy's, This is the best day that I have had during the long time that I have been away from you guy's.  We went to Khao yai National Park in the middle of Thailand, about 2 hours away from where I am staying.  We had a blast!  This picture is of live elephants who are right next to the road, we watched them eat their dinner?  I took a good video of them, but will have to show you when I get home.  If you have seen some of these pictures already, make sure that you show them and explain them to Emma cause I don't know if she remembers who I am or knows where I am or what I am doing...

 We saw monkeys as well, these guys are right along the road, they are sitting on the guard rail watching the cars whiz by.

 Jungle scenery, you will see lots of this on this blog…I liked it so I took lots of pictures.

 We road in the back of the pickup truck through the National Park, we were all sweaty from the hike, but we were all dry after that ride.

 That is Mr. Newman on the left and Mr. McManigle on the right…cool waterfall in the back.

 You can see Mr. McManigle on the right of the waterfall, it will help you realize how large the waterfall is…he isn't even close to the waterfall, so he would be even smaller if he was standing right next to it.

 This is the viewing platform for the waterfall, you aren't supposed to leave the viewing platform cause it is too steep…but we had to see the different views that they had away from the waterfall.

More cool jungle scenery…loooove this shot cause it shows how steep the canyons are!

 More waterfall, have you seen enough???

 The last picture was looking up at the waterfall, this one is looking down at the bottom of the waterfall, it was huge!  We are really high up above the bottom of the waterfall, it gave me goosebumps just looking over the cliff.

 If you pretend you are water, this is what you would see just before you took a really far fall into the pool below and then fell another couple of hundred feet…I think it would be fun to be water for the ride down…then it might get a little boring in the lake, but the waterfall would be cool!

 You can see Mr. McManigle and Mr. Newman in this picture…they are soooo small compared to this huge valley that we are in.

 I like this picture cause you can see the sky and the bottom of the waterfall, it shows you how tall it is.

 This one was fun to take cause I had only 10 seconds to make it from pushing the button on the camera across a couple of boulders and sit before the camera went off.  I don't think I made it on the first try...

 Tired of waterfalls yet?

 This is the signs telling you what you can and cannot do while at the waterfall…what do you think the pictures mean?  I want to hear your interpretations of the signs cause I know what I think they mean, but want to hear your idea's.  For instance, the sign on the top right means, "dogs and cats can't live together!"

Is this part of a tree or a chain?

 Here is a water monitor sitting by the side of the road…we barely saw him cause we were driving and not paying attention.  His name is Igor, I asked him.

 "Ling noi ting tong!!"  Doesn't it look like he is reading a book and being studious?  I think that is hilarious!

 This is from the mouth of another waterfall that we saw while we were in the National Park.  I love the trees and the jungle…I couldn't stop singing songs from the Jungle Book while we were out hiking…"look for the bear necessities, those simple bear necessities, forget about your worries and your strife…"

 We went spleunking in Thailand as well.  This cave is only about 2 feet tall and the water runs over the top of us into the waterfall to my right.

 this is the quiet stream in the middle of the jungle that is really peaceful until a huge snake drops out of the tree branch above your head or a crocodile jumps out of the water snapping his jaws at you or a tiger jumps out from the under-brush and charges at you or…you get the picture…I was all by myself for this part of the walk and loved every minute of it.

 Who knows what is living under the trees further down the river…or right behind me!

 Remember seeing these mushrooms on the Planet Earth dvd's that you don't like to watch but I love to watch?  This is a live real one that I got to see, thought you might remember it.

 Me next to another waterfall…boring!

 I think the distance from the top to the bottom of this one is about 30 feet, would be fun to jump off if you were allowed to go swimming at this watering hole.

 This is the scenery from the top of the mountains…it started to rain when we got there and just made for a more enjoyable day cause the clouds blocked the sun and kept us wet for a while.

 That is Mr. Warman (you go to his house a lot these day's) in front of a Thai "Alpha Jet"…it is a bomb dropper…and goes pretty slow.

 This is me standing next to a UH-1Z Huey, Dedo used to fly these helicopters when I was your age, but back then they only had 2 rotor blades and one engine and were quite lighter.

 Here I am next to a L-39, most of these were made in the Czech Republic where I used to live before I met your gorgeous mother and got married.

Well, that is the end of my adventures for the saturday…I will hopefully have some more pictures of stuff that we have done since we have been here, but i have to track down other people and get the pictures from them so it  might be a while.  I love you boy's…I couldn't stop thinking while I was out in the jungle how much fun it would be if you all were with me and we could go exploring together with the tigers and snakes!!!  Love you and take good care of Mom and Emma for me!

Thailand is a zoo!

All right kids (and Stace), here is Thailand in a nutshell…we live in Bungalo's and have huge tree's out in our front yard. We live on a military base so we don't have a lot of people living around us.  There are dogs and cats all over the place, some living together, others laying on the road…it is really weird here regarding pets and animals.

the people around here like all kinds of food, and they like to cook it really hot in order to kill all the bad germs, that way they don't have to be careful about how many germs get on or in the food before they prepare it.  it is also really really spicy…but I think you would get used to it if you lived here for a couple of days.

  These fish are laying out in the air with no refrigeration like we have in America, and they both cost less than 3 dollars for a meal.  Not bad.

this is all chicken, you can imagine the amount of salmanila that is present there.  But, you can get any part of the chicken for your dinner.  I almost fried rice and chicken gut last night, but just opted for regular chicken.  My buddy ate chicken feet at a restaurant…chewy I guess!

 I don't know what this stuff is…but there is lots of it!

 This is, you guessed it, a pigs head.  I think they took all the meat out of the pig, but there is his head if you wanted to cook it, hang it on your wall at home or do whatever you wanted with a pigs head.  Any idea's?  what would you boys do with a pigs head?

 "Fresh" vegetables are everywhere, but you have to look closely at how long that has been out in the market in the open air just sitting there and how close it is to the uncooked chicken.

 All this food is found in this huge "outdoor" market, that is just one view of it the building…it went that far on the other directions as well.

 The final product, should you choose to partake, comes to you in a bowl with rice or noodles like that and is YUUMMMY!  If you like stuff like that.

 In the same market place I found a bowl of eel's…they are basically snakes that live in water…there must be 350 of them in this little bucket…I'm not sure what you would do with the eel's once you buy them, but that is up to the buyer, I guess.

 So, I bought a bird…he's in the paper bag that I am holding.  I named him Rachata…I think he is Thai.  I took a video of him when he was flying away, it is at the bottom of the blog, hopefully you can watch it.  I have a couple of still pictures of the bird, but I will save them for later.  Late at night, after he was free, I heard him singing cause he was a free bird!

 Not only can you buy birds for 65 cents, but you can also ride on the roofs of buildings that are being transported by vehicles.  Not the safest way of getting around, but the reason the guy was up there was to  move the wires between the telephone poles (on his right) above the highest part of the building so that they wouldn't snag the building and pull it off the truck.  In the end, nobody got hurt.

 I also found a bunny rabbit farm that had a bunch of bunny's for sale for $3 dollars…and they were all wearing clothes like they were going out for dinner that evening.  I almost bought one, but decided not too cause I wasn't sure if I would be able to get them back to the house in a good amount of time…and bunnies don't like shopping or walking around.  At least they were dressed nicely!

 While we were eating that evening, an elephant walked up to our table and stuck his trunk out to say "hello".  He play's the harmonica and will give you an elephant ride for $3 dollars if you want him too.  He's just a little guy, so I didn't go for a ride yet, maybe next week when I go to the jungle!

 there's me eating dinner with the elephant behind me.  You can't see in this picture, but the elephant is wearing a flashing red light on his tail so that cars know that there is an elephant in the road.  Watch out, elephant in the road!

 These are the gate guards back at the base where I live.  The two on the outsides are carrying M-16A2s and the one in the middle with me is carrying an Uzzi.  They are nice Thai's and speak a little english…about as much as I speak Thai.

We also went out to some ruins of a castle. It is called PhiMai or something like that.  It reminded me of Jungle Book while I was there so I sang the King Louis song for the guys that I was with as we were walking around it.

 More pictures of the place…seems rather rustic, doesn't it?

Here's another picture of me near the ruins…I am sitting on a tree root.

That is me, Mr. Aaron, Mr. Kevin, Mr. Chase and Mr. Justin, we all went together.

 There wasn't enough room in the truck for all of us so I rode in the back of the pickup truck for about 2 hours to get to the ruins and back.  It was a lot of fun and saved money, only problem was that we got a little sun-burnt doing that.  That is Mr. Max, the dad with the three little girls that are the same age, with me in the back of the truck.

Here's the video of me letting "Rachata" back out into the wild.  Actually, it wasn't into the wild cause we were in the middle of town, so he just made his home in a tree near the square.  At least he is free!

This is the way that people get around here in Thailand, they ride these vehicles called "Tuck-tucks" that are basically motorcycles with truck beds in the back.  It is fun to ride in them but they are crazy drivers as you can tell from this video.

I love and miss you crazies, look forward to seeing you on Skype this morning before you go to church!  Love ya, Dad!