Recent events

Things have been pretty quiet here recently. Jen is currently in Laos with some friends, and I've been home all week on my own with them. For the first part of the week we really tested my sanity since it was Khmer New Year, and having our staff work would be like forcing you all to work on Christmas. It just isn't done. So the three of us spent four days with no help, and managed with only a few minor bruises (this is of course literal - Ben still can't get over hitting, head bonking, and biting his Daddy and sister).

Prior to that we had a good run of health in the family, suffering only from a cold or two, when Ben managed to slam his thumb in the big metal door on our stairs. This was of course a traumatic experience for him, but it may have been worse for Jen and me. There was a fairly significant amount of blood spurting out, and we rushed him to the clinic for an after-hours fixup. We were fortunate that our friend, a British doctor there, happened to stop by, and when she saw who it was decided to take care of him personally. I'll spare you all the details, but no stitches were needed under the nail, but the nail will fall off any day now. It still hurts him a bit, but it is slowly but surely getting better.

That's about all our news. I continue to write for Dark Reading, only now they are paying me for it, which is a good thing I think. Work for Jen is a always challenging and constantly changing, most recently with the bust of a major drug production facility near Phnom Penh. Tons (literally) of chemicals for making meth were found, and as the point person for drug issues here, she's been doing a bunch of work on that.

That's about all for now. I'm sure Jen will have some great photos of her trip to put up soon, so keep checking in!

Long overdue photos

I just noticed that we haven't blogged for a month. Certainly there isn't much news, but we do have some photos from Grandma Beth's and Grandpa Dick's February visit. They were here in February, spending a few weeks with us around Ben's second birthday.
Here we have the balloon man preparing for Ben's party with friends, with Grandpa Dick providing some nice ballast (that's a rubber duckie) so his balloon doesn't float away.

We had a few of his friends come over, including Lucca and Lucy, who have their backs to the camera, and Thomas (whose face is actually visible), who is being held by his dad the Ambassador.

Here Grandma Beth helps the kids open up presents, which included the basketball hoop and several books and games, including one book that is also a game.
We took a trip to the water park, which is not nearly as bad as you might expect a water park in Cambodia to be, and Ben spent almost the entire time playing with Grandma Beth.
And of course no visit would be complete without a grumpy child sitting with Grandpa Dick being silly.