The Bridge to Terabithia

Our family watched The Bridge To Terabithia last night. While a bit weird at times, it was overall a good movie. It's an especially good choice for parents to watch with their 8-12 year olds, as there are many opportunities to discuss how a Christian should respond to situations in life, especially to those who mistreat them. Watch this movie and speak the Gospel to your children.

Jacen's post on Fort Fisher

Jacen had to write a paragraph about Fort Fisher for school. Here's his work:

Fort Fisher was a Confederate fort built in the year 1861. It was constructed near Wilmington, North Carolina. Its sole purpose was to protect Wilmington from Union fleets, because Wilmington supplied Confederate General Lee with essential supplies like clothes and blankets. Its protection was 20-40 sand hills, a wooden palisade, a large connection of bunkers, 3 mortars, 5 siege cannons, and 47 other cannons. The fort was destroyed in the year 1865 by an amphibious assault. The remains of the fort were later used as an anti-aircraft training facility. Many of the sand hill remains were destroyed so that a runway could be built for the emergency landing of targets. Today, Fort Fisher is a historical site that tourists at Wilmington can visit.

The marsh near Fort Fisher

Between the fort and the Cape Fear River was this beautiful marsh:

A palisade at Fort Fisher

There were two amphibious assaults made upon Fort Fisher in Jan 1865. The second succeeded in part by the luck of the uncoordinated timing. The main assault was by sea, which drew all the attention of the Confederate defenders. But the secondary assault, which come from the back side of the fort via the Cape Fear River, was late, thus it found the sally port relatively undefended and broke through, which eventually led to the taking of the fort.

Here is a replica of the palisade near the sally port, looking onto the Cape Fear River:

A cannon at Fort Fisher

Here’s one of the cannons used to defend Fort Fisher from the attack of the Federal armies during the Civil War.

Test

This is a test. I’m posting this to my Blogger blog from Mac Journal.

After dorking around for a bit, I judge Mac Journal to be a total failure regarding Blogger. You can’t preview posts, nor can you insert HTML snippets for things like pictures on Flickr. Useless.

An anchor at Fort Fisher

Fort Fisher was a sand fort built by the confederates during the Civil War to protect Wilmington, NC, which provided supplies to General Lee's army. In 1865 it was the site of the largest naval bombardment--58 federal warships participated--in history until WWI. Here's Emmy sitting on one of the anchors at the fort.

Our Dog is Thai

Our Yorkie, Jezzy, is a Thai dog, even though we've taken her to America. To help her remember her roots, Ann bought her a couple of traditional Thai outfits.





Given how much colder it is here in Raleigh, she's gonna need them!

Our Helper (And Friend)

For the last many months, Phii Maat has been coming to our house once a week to help Ann cook and clean. She's been a wonderful blessing to us. Not only is she a hard worker, she's also been kind and friendly, loving on the kids, and even trying to make friends with our dog (though not with much success). We said a tearful goodbye last week and took a few pictures to remember her.

Playing in the 'hood

The evenings are fun times in the neighborhood. The kids come out for an hour of play time. Here's Jacen and Emmy playing frisbee and riding a bike.

A grilled pork restaurant

There's a particular style of restaurant that is very popular with Thais. It's called muu ga-thawt, which literally means grilled pork. The basic idea is that you grill your own meal at the table. This style originally only served pork, but now has beef, chicken, fish, vegetables, or whatever. A new one opened not far from our house--all you can eat for 99 baht ($3)!--so we went and tried it out. The kids loved being able to grill their own meat and boil their own cabbage and noodles.

When you first sit down, a guy brings a bowl of coals and puts it on your table:



Then he puts the metal grill on top and pours water around the edge (for boiling):



While that heats up, we go to the buffet, ignoring the flies, and select some meat. Then we grill it, using only chopsticks:



Here's Jacen and Emmy happily grilling away:

Now that's a knife

My father wanted a hand-made bowie knife, so this is the one we got for him. It was made at Piak Bowie Knife, which is located just east of Chiang Mai. It's bigger than it looks in the picture; the blade is 8.75 inches long.

More Music at the Sunday Night Market

As I have mentioned before, the Sunday Night Market can be a musical place. Here's a couple pictures of contrasting musicians, one an elegant lady (part of a 4 person band) and the other an overly made up young girl (going solo):

Food from the Sunday Night Market

As we prepare to leave, we are revisiting some of our favorite spots. One is the Sunday Night Market here in Chiang Mai, a great place to buy food.

Here's a new item: Hot dogs in waffles. Regrettably, it's almost impossible to find American-style hot dogs here, so I'm pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy this.



Grilled sticky rice:

Goodbye Futon

I don't think Jezzy wanted us to sell our futon. It was the one soft spot in the house that she was allowed to nap on.