Lots of birthday cheer

Summer time means... birthdays for everyone!!

At least in our little family of 4. :)

Marek started us off by turning 1 on May 15th!  Seeing as Grandma & Grandpa Esau were set to visit at the beginning of June, we put off having a party until they got here.  By then, it was time to celebrate Jon's 31st birthday (June 10th) so we turned it into one big celebration.  Grandpa E also had his birthday on the 6th so it became a 3 generation Esau men's birthday party! :)

Marek turning 1 was definitely the biggest "deal," so the cake was more for him than anyone.  He LOVES the movie "Despicable Me" so it only seemed right to have our extremely talented teammate, Jason (cake maker extraordinaire), make a minion cake.  

It looked AMAZING!!

And tasted great too!  

Marek double-fisted that cake down in less than a minute flat!  

(I have video footage to prove it :) )

Lots of awesome presents...

Even Jon got spoiled by our teammates!

Next up was Callie turning 4 on June 30th!

We were able to have a little party for her at her school the Friday before her birthday.  

I took cupcakes, icing and sprinkles and the kids had a blast decorating their own little cupcake.

Callie was pretty excited about celebrating her birthday with her friends. :)

Callie with some of her preschool friends... hard at work.

Patty, the little girl to her left is one of her "best friends."

Class picture with her amazing teachers, Jessica & Pam.

Our dear friends, the Nikkels, came to visit us from Singapore on the weekend of Callie's birthday so we held another big party with them and our teammates.  Callie got absolutely spoiled!  

Thanks again everyone for lavishing her with your love and lots of fun gifts!!

And once again, Jason amazed us with his cake-making talents!

Callie and her long-dreamed-about Cinderella castle cake...

And last weekend, I had my 29th birthday (July 21st).  We weren't able to celebrate as it was the annual Thai MB Church Family Camp but I DID get baby-powdered and everyone sang 'Happy Birthday' to me on the beach (which was very sweet)! :)

And that's it for another year of birthdays!  

Thanks to everyone who sent each of us emails, cards & messages of happy wishes.  

We truly appreciate your thoughts and prayers!

Our neighbourhood...

I've had a couple of requests for pictures of our neighbourhood, so without further ado, here is our street in our muubaan (community). 

We live on Soi (lane) 15...

Our house is where the short white fence is on the left.  

This is facing our street from the 4 way intersection of Soi 15. As you can see, the neighbours across the street from us looooove yellow and green.

Here's Callie walking up to our house...

The neighbours to the left have the corner lot, so we're the next house in on the left.

And behold, the "work of art" we look at every time we step out our front door :)

The neighbours to our right aren't too much better.  Thai people love bright colours when it comes to homes.  There's never a shortage of blue, green, peach and even pink houses in any given neighbourhood.  The sky is the limit!

And lastly, one of the front of our house.  I love the frangipani trees that grow in the front "yard."  They're in full bloom right now... one is bright fuschia and the other white (as you can see in the picture above).  

Its probably good for me to post this so that I can remember this house, our first home in Chonburi.  We're actually currently on the hunt for another house to rent.  We like the house but this location has proven to be a bit too "out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere" for us and we find that we do a lot of driving into Chonburi city (about 20-25 min. away) and would like to try to rent a house somewhere between Chonburi city and the community we're trying to plant a church in, Tha Rua Phlii.  

So, if you think of it, we'd definitely appreciate your prayers for a new home!  Its incredibly tough to find rentals down here in Chonburi province so we'll take all the help we can get! :)