Jetty Jumping

Malaysia Week 2012

Again, Doug had another spectacular Malaysia Week trip.  Returning to the same place as previous years, Doug got the chance to go to Lang Tengah.  What a great group of kids and what a super site!

Here are all of the photos!

Here are a couple fun pictures.

Grade 4 Campout

After the camping trip for the grade 4 was washed out by thunderstorms and heavy rains, a few boys decided to recreate the magic by staying home from school and learning some wilderness survival skills.

Cooking over an open fire, preparing their food, sleeping in a tent, and - of course - not being able to use the indoor restrooms - were all part of the Ross family wilderness survival course.  Big smiles, but tired kids returned on Friday afternoon after a fun 24 hours together. 

Birthday Boy(s)

How fun to discover that one of Reeve's best friends also has his birthday on the same day!  The two of them celebrated together a fun informal birthday.  Reeve got some new games to try out, and how crazy is it that we now have a boy who is one decade old!

Easter!

He is Risen!  At church, the kids had an Easter egg hunt, and then another one at home (Reeve helped hide the eggs so the girls could find them.)

Interesting Factoid:  The next time that Easter will fall on April 8 is not until 2091.

Fullerton Invasion

We were quite lucky to have Cheryl and her kids come and visit!  My goodness, were our kids excited to have the Fullertons in town for a couple of days.  

You think they might have had some fun?  

Early Birthday & Early Easter

We had an early birthday and early Easter celebration on Thursday night.  Reeve and Rania got some presents from grandpa and grandma and we had the great Easter dinner, complete with grandma's famous bunny cake.

Bible Study Finale

With Doug's dad returning to Oregon, we had our Bible Study Finale.  We went out to dinner on a half-price coupon at the Mandarin Oriental.  With the second annual end of Bible Study dinner, it may become a bit of a tradition - at last for one more year.  Nice to get a delicious meal.  The Roasted Duck was a highlight.

Snake Encounter

After a wonderful Spring Break (see below), we arrived home with some news that Juvy needed to share.  Two nights earlier, she had been awoken in the night when a (relatively small) snake had crawled over her in her bed.  She cleared out her room, but could not figure out where the snake had gone.  Subsequently, she had Chocolate sleeping in her room.

That night, Chocolate was sniffing and playing around at the back porch.  We couldn't figure out what she was doing, but then started poking under a storage shelf, and felt something, relatively soft.  We then started pulling things off the cabinet to try to move it.  Only after getting a few things off the cabinet, did we discover that the stick that we had been poking under the shelf had blood on the ends.

Unfortunately, we had also had a rat in our house the previous week.  I thought that it seemed too soft to be a snake, that it might be a rat, but that did not explain why it was not running away.  When we finally got the shelf away, we discovered a small python wrapped around a very dead rat.  The python had yet to eat the rat, but was certainly not eager to let go of his prey.

Deciding the snake in our house was not a good mix, we took the obvious route:  Doug kept an eye on the snake while the kids ran to get the guard and a stick.  A few minutes later, the snake was pinned and then dead.

Hooray for the snake getting rid of the rat!  And how did we repay the snake? With death.  A sad life.

The postscript the next morning was that the girls came running over saying the guard had killed another snake in the night.  Another python was near the guard house and this, much bigger snake (about 8 - 10 ft), also met its demise.  A bit sad considering the snake should be allowed to live freely in nature.

Footnote:  the Washington Post had an interesting take on pythons destroying the ecosystem in the Everglades.  So maybe I don't feel so bad anymore.