End of Year Update from the Kensels
Below are pieces of some recent email that the Kensels have sent to family (Deb is my sister). Deb also included some pictures. Here is the family:
For those who don't know the Kensels - from left to right they are: Deb (holding) Sarah, Steven, Dan, James, Spot (the dog) and John
Please read on . . .
:: Begin Letter ::
Dear Mark and Christa and all,
Merry Christmas! How are things at your end? We came down yesterday to celebrate Christmas today and James' birthday tomorrow.
[...]
We have finally received some notification from the satellite company so we are sure we are in line to get our internet that way, but who knows in how many more months that will be. Our friends who got the connection about two years ago had a very long wait (several months) before they were up and running.
I am now pasting the letter we sent Dad on the end here:
Dear Dad,
Hi. Hope you are well. We are all fine. The beautiful weather has continued here though it got a little too cold at night a few times. Too cold is in the low 50's.
Sarah is doing very well. Still fat and happy. She is sleeping better at night, though still not quite as long a sleeper as I could hope. She is sleeping for about 9 hours, but she starts before I can get into bed. She is turning over and rolling from both her front and her back. She sits for a while unaided and then starts falling ever so slowly over. She really likes her bath which I have only been giving her every other day in the colder weather, and then I do it in the early afternoon when the sun is still high and it is as warm as it is going to get. Our water pressure is too low for the shower so we have to heat water on the stove and then put dipperfuls of water over her. She gets cold sometimes but doesn't seem to mind.
Steven is doing well on his kidnergarden. He is best at math at this point with the counting and shapes but we have put up the entire alphabet on the wall and he sings to himself as he points to them. He got to the end and wanted to know where z was. I pointed to it and he said no that was n. You know ...t,u,v. w,x,y,n(and) z. He read his first words yesterday: fat, bat, mat and rat. He spend some time this morning drawing pictures of people with dialogue bubbles saying "fat, bat, mat, rat" He got bored with that and asked me how to spell "a bird" He made two pictures with people saying that.
James and John are working on American History together. We didn't get too far with the text books last year so I have been spending a lot of time reading to them from these and completing the questions together or having them write them down. John's favorite president is George Washington so Steven decided his was George W. Bush. I think James has a favorite too, I think it is Abraham Lincoln, though I don't think he knows what he did yet. We covered the Aztecs, Incans and Mayans and all the exploration and colonization through one text and I am going back through another text that focuses more on the colonies that became the states. Then we will push on through the forming of the constitution etc.
About a week ago, a little more, I let the boys read an extra book to earn a day off from school. This was so they could go with Dan down to town. The plan was that they would leave Thurs afternoon and return Sat morning. They ended up returning on Monday. All the boys went so it was just me and Sarah here at the house. This let me get out to visit some and then do a lot of house cleaning. I thought we would be having a big group of company on Mon, but they couldn't come because of sickness.
The day before Dan left on the trip with the boys there was a big pow! one afternoon. It seemed to be close by, but not a gunshot type of sound. Dan left to see what was up and found out two teens had been making gunpowder while one of them was smoking. They were putting the finished gunpowder into a bottle into which a bit of ash from the cigarette fell causing the explosion and quite a bit of damage to two surprised young men. The smoker got off the lightest with some shrapnel in his shins but his buddy won't be sitting down for a long time.
We have been doing some bird watching with John's binoculars. It is bird season, you hear them chirping all day long, in rainy season you barely ever here them or even see them. James found a turtle bug when he went out in the field with Dan, he knew what it was right off - I didn't even know there was such a thing. He wrote a poem about it in school. John's poem was about Sarah.
We'll send this when we go down in three or four nights. We hope to be able to call too during our time down. We will just be a few nights in town to celebrate Christmas and James' birthday and then come right back up so Dan can be there for a meeting. In January we will be going out east to visit a family for a while and then have a meeting in Kanchanaburi before we will be up for another long stretch.
Love you,
Dan and Deb, John, James, Steven, and Sarah
:: End Letter ::
For those who don't know the Kensels - from left to right they are: Deb (holding) Sarah, Steven, Dan, James, Spot (the dog) and John
Please read on . . .
:: Begin Letter ::
Dear Mark and Christa and all,
Merry Christmas! How are things at your end? We came down yesterday to celebrate Christmas today and James' birthday tomorrow.
[...]
We have finally received some notification from the satellite company so we are sure we are in line to get our internet that way, but who knows in how many more months that will be. Our friends who got the connection about two years ago had a very long wait (several months) before they were up and running.
I am now pasting the letter we sent Dad on the end here:
Dear Dad,
Hi. Hope you are well. We are all fine. The beautiful weather has continued here though it got a little too cold at night a few times. Too cold is in the low 50's.
Sarah is doing very well. Still fat and happy. She is sleeping better at night, though still not quite as long a sleeper as I could hope. She is sleeping for about 9 hours, but she starts before I can get into bed. She is turning over and rolling from both her front and her back. She sits for a while unaided and then starts falling ever so slowly over. She really likes her bath which I have only been giving her every other day in the colder weather, and then I do it in the early afternoon when the sun is still high and it is as warm as it is going to get. Our water pressure is too low for the shower so we have to heat water on the stove and then put dipperfuls of water over her. She gets cold sometimes but doesn't seem to mind.
Steven is doing well on his kidnergarden. He is best at math at this point with the counting and shapes but we have put up the entire alphabet on the wall and he sings to himself as he points to them. He got to the end and wanted to know where z was. I pointed to it and he said no that was n. You know ...t,u,v. w,x,y,n(and) z. He read his first words yesterday: fat, bat, mat and rat. He spend some time this morning drawing pictures of people with dialogue bubbles saying "fat, bat, mat, rat" He got bored with that and asked me how to spell "a bird" He made two pictures with people saying that.
James and John are working on American History together. We didn't get too far with the text books last year so I have been spending a lot of time reading to them from these and completing the questions together or having them write them down. John's favorite president is George Washington so Steven decided his was George W. Bush. I think James has a favorite too, I think it is Abraham Lincoln, though I don't think he knows what he did yet. We covered the Aztecs, Incans and Mayans and all the exploration and colonization through one text and I am going back through another text that focuses more on the colonies that became the states. Then we will push on through the forming of the constitution etc.
About a week ago, a little more, I let the boys read an extra book to earn a day off from school. This was so they could go with Dan down to town. The plan was that they would leave Thurs afternoon and return Sat morning. They ended up returning on Monday. All the boys went so it was just me and Sarah here at the house. This let me get out to visit some and then do a lot of house cleaning. I thought we would be having a big group of company on Mon, but they couldn't come because of sickness.
The day before Dan left on the trip with the boys there was a big pow! one afternoon. It seemed to be close by, but not a gunshot type of sound. Dan left to see what was up and found out two teens had been making gunpowder while one of them was smoking. They were putting the finished gunpowder into a bottle into which a bit of ash from the cigarette fell causing the explosion and quite a bit of damage to two surprised young men. The smoker got off the lightest with some shrapnel in his shins but his buddy won't be sitting down for a long time.
We have been doing some bird watching with John's binoculars. It is bird season, you hear them chirping all day long, in rainy season you barely ever here them or even see them. James found a turtle bug when he went out in the field with Dan, he knew what it was right off - I didn't even know there was such a thing. He wrote a poem about it in school. John's poem was about Sarah.
We'll send this when we go down in three or four nights. We hope to be able to call too during our time down. We will just be a few nights in town to celebrate Christmas and James' birthday and then come right back up so Dan can be there for a meeting. In January we will be going out east to visit a family for a while and then have a meeting in Kanchanaburi before we will be up for another long stretch.
Love you,
Dan and Deb, John, James, Steven, and Sarah
:: End Letter ::
posted by Park Valley Answers at 10:59 AM
0 comments
