The House Collective

the music run.

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Sickness and chaos sort of won the past week or so…it happens.

Keeping The Breakfast Club, Flour & Flowers, the Reinforcers and Playhouse going through a regular week is a challenge anyway, and we’re trying to get The Summer Program started next Monday…

And then there was sickness. And there’s a few other projects we haven’t even had time to write about yet: the ladies making jewelry two days a week; the Bible school we’re working with to make reusable bags; the new migrant insurance program we’re partnering with; the Thai lessons that Mwei Mwei started; the photography lessons Stephen is teaching; the surprise iMac we were gift last week that Stephen’s setting up for the community.

Hence the radio silence.

But, we went to Bangkok last weekend! Stephen ran a 5k and I {attempted} a 10k…It was much sloppier and harder than I anticipated, but I had a fever the following three days, so 🤷🏼‍♀️

It was a Music Run, so they had speakers lining the whole path–hundreds of them. It was incredible. They played music through all the races. (We took this photo on our way to check-in. Can you see the speakers lining the whole way?)

We arrived to get our packs at 2:30pm, so we had a few hours to burn. And since it’s Bangkok and it takes a few hours to go anywhere, we just sat at the park and read our books.

We checked our bag at the check-in, but kept our books out to read until the start. Later when Stephen brought them back by the lady recognized him (probably the white guy with his book out at a race?) and said, “Ready to put your book in your bag?” 😂

We were clearly the coolest people there.

While my race was not spectacular, Stephen did pretty awesome. He finished in 31 minutes, and had two surprise obstacle courses in the middle!  He wasn’t super-thrilled about those 😂

And then we ended at a concert!

We also rounded out the weekend meeting with our caseworker, putting our best foot forward in our attempts at real adult clothes.

Here’s to hoping next year we can run with baby bunny in a jogging stroller! 😊

the book club.

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Stephen got me the best Christmas gift.

He gave me a Book Club–just for me! I got one book for Christmas, and then he picks out a new book for each month. I get to open it on the first of every month!

I don’t have to choose it; I don’t have to buy it. I don’t even have to order it and track it down.

And since I don’t like decisions, I don’t like spending money, and I don’t like finding English books and getting them here: #thebestgift.

And he’s the BEST picker.

When I opened this one, he said: “An autobiography, a refugee, politics, the first woman to be Secretary of State. It just seemed to fit you perfectly.” 😍

My next one (when I finish this 600 pager!) is a oral history of migrant workers in California. The two before that were by the newest to my favorite-author-list, Fredrik Backman.

Such a great gift! And the best book club for an introvert 😊

oh, baby.

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It was weeks ago now when the drama started to unfold.

Let me first introduce Mu Mu Aye, a sweet friend of ours. She’s shy, and hesitant to ask for help. But she has two little boys, nearly 4 and nearly 2; and thus her hands full. In the wake of new laws and needing papers, it’s been a hard year for their family.

She found out she was pregnant with their third little boy in September of last year. Honestly, everyone was chatting about it: she’s pregnant again? Oh, dear. Can they handle that? What about money? Three little kids? All boys! 

We wanted to encourage her to keep the baby, and assure her that we’d help in anyway we could. We bought her a few maternity dresses in the market; provided a few random bags of rice. We kept track of all her appointments and took her each time. In the middle of her pregnancy, they moved about three kilometers away. Difficult to get to, but possible; an area where they are out-of-view of police.

We kept up with her. We met her neighbor there and continued to pick her up for every clinic visit. We helped her kids get caught up on their vaccines when we learned they were behind.

Fast-forward to two weeks ago, when I took her to her usual appointment and picked her up. She said she needed to come back the following week to have the baby. It was scheduled because it needed to be a Cesarean section;  the baby was breech.

Honestly, this was the first time I looked at her file. I usually don’t want to be too invasive, and she was telling me when each appointment was and that things were fine. I guess we just have different interpretations of that. Now that I opened her book, I learned the baby had been breech from the beginning.

Either way, she had an appointment, and the clinic seemed to be taking care of it.

_______________

The following week we picked her up and took her to the clinic for delivery. Or so we thought.

She called just a few hours later–much too quick for a C-section!–and said she needed to be picked up. We were pretty confused: Did you already have the baby? The surgery is over? And now you’re…going home? What?

Turns out the clinic doesn’t provide C-sections or referrals anymore, and hadn’t helped her to come up with another plan. Because I don’t want to use this to take a stance {on issues that are highly controversial in this little town and altogether irrelevant to the rest of the world}–I’ll just say that I was disappointed at how it was handled. She was given a pamphlet on a new insurance program offered in town, and told to call them.

And since you and I know a bit about insurance–she did not–we understand that you can’t call an insurance company the day you need emergency surgery and expect to be covered.

I’ll just say that day involved calling my teacher to help translate, because I wasn’t sure how emergent this was nor how to discuss insurance in Burmese. It included a meeting with the insurance company, where we learned that, sure enough!–they don’t cover emergency surgeries when you’re on the way to the ER.

Because the medical system is a bit of a mess for the paperless in our town, I’ll summarize: we had the choice of taking her to the ER and paying for the surgery outright; we could drop her at the ER and have her walk out on the bill, leaving it in her name and with potential future problems (but if I’m honest, probably more problems for our consciences than her life practically). Or we could call a friend.

We called a friend. {I blatantly used my privilege, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. It worked.}

She works at a clinic outside of town that has excellent ob-gyn care. They said they’d see her that afternoon and could assess how emergent she was. They also can deliver breech babies naturally quite often, and have a number of midwives on staff. And if they can’t, they can refer to the hospital, and the mother is sent with a representative, translator, and advocate.

They saw her that afternoon–no earlier than 4:30pm, so incredibly kind of them–and admitted her. They watched her for four days, when they decided it wasn’t quite time and she could go home and wait for natural labor. Either way, they’d do their best to encourage natural delivery, with the agreement that she had a sponsor–you and I!–if she needed to be admitted, as they didn’t have the funds. We took her back for two more check ups last week and had another one scheduled for this morning.

_______________

I was supposed to pick up one of her friends at 8:30am, who would be going along to stay with her and help. (The father was staying back with the two older kids.) I left for a run about 6:30am.

I had made it just over a kilometer from home when they called: she was in labor and couldn’t wait to 8:30. We needed to go now.

The challenge was: I was a distance from home, on foot. I needed the car. I also needed the friend, who lives out in a field. And the pregnant mother, who lives 3km from our house down tiny little streets that have to be backed out of. And I needed to get her to the clinic an hour away.

And Burmese people have a tendency to wait to the last minute to tell you they need to go. We’ve had many mothers deliver within the hour of us arriving at the hospital, and that’s a closer hospital!  I was scared.

I ran home as fast as I could. (So, not that fast.) I ran through Breakfast Club and explained to Thida that Mu Mu Aye was in labor now and I had to go; I grabbed my bag and hopped in the car.  I went to find the friend: I parked on the road and ran through the fields to get to their house and woke them up. They were confused: isn’t it 8:30? Yes, but she’s in labor NOW. Hurry! We drove to Mu Mu Aye’s house and headed out to the clinic, while I prayed the whole way that please, oh please, could she not have this breech baby in our car, as we’re driving further away from a hospital? Please, oh please…this baby we so encouraged her to keep–please let them both be okay.

Probably the most stressful day before 8am I’ve ever had.

_______________

We made it to the clinic in time. She was admitted, and they tried natural. She was transferred to a local hospital and had a Cesarean, delivering a healthy little 2.8-kilogram boy.

Stephen and I have done our share of driving for this little boy. We–all of the House Collective family–spent quite a bit of money already, and we’ll be reimbursing a C-section now.  She’s keeping a third baby that she seems a bit unsure about, while we wait on a seemingly endless waiting list to adopt a baby. I thought I might be holding a baby of ours by now, and instead I’ll be holding hers.

I’m struck by the surprises life holds. The surprises of pregnancies, the surprises of breech babies, the surprises of finances. The surprises of friendship, the surprises of who you love and who you give your time and life for. The surprises of what you hold and what you don’t. The surprises of a God who gives and takes away, and you don’t always know which a day might hold.

another home.

by Filed Under: housewares, kelli, photos, stephen 1 Comment

You never really know how the cookie will crumble, and we have the privilege of being reminded of that daily.

We’ve been discussing a trip to Burma: we wanted to see the towns and villages many of our neighbors come from. We have the knowledge that as soon as we are placed for our adoption, we’ll be “stuck” in Thailand for at least six months; and we learned just recently that we also have another visa run we need to make in May…it’s a long story. But visas often crumble a different way than you think 😉

It was mid-February when we realized the easiest time for us to go to these towns and villages was on our current visa, which needed on February 22. That gave us a four-day window between a Reinforcers gig and our visa expiring.

So we applied for our visas to Burma, and they fell into place. So we went.

Some friends wanted to go that week, too, so we explained we could all go together, but we just couldn’t shift our dates at all because of visas. They seemed game, so we all crossed the border after church on Sunday and grabbed a car to take us to their village. It was Stephen & I, our bread baker Nyein Nyein and her husband Kyaw Htet, and their two-year-old Sai Bo Bo.

It’s kind of an event to go to Burma to see family, so Sai Bo Bo was all jazzed up in his best clothes.

In short, many of our neighbors and closest friends–maybe 75%?–are from this one particular town and surrounding areas. And one village just outside is where one bread lady is from, the flower lady and one Reinforcer, Thida–as you can see, a lot of families came from this little fishing village.

That evening we just stopped by, but we did get to see Nyein Nyein’s family. They used to live in Mae Sot and moved back about three years ago, so we knew them all. It was so fun to see the girls grown!

Unfortunately we can’t stay with friends in Burma: we have to stay at foreigner-registered hotels. Their village didn’t even have a store, so no hotels there. We went about thirty minutes further into Thaton, where there is one foreigner-registered hotel, and stayed there. We spent the next two days exploring Thaton while Nyein Nyein spent time with her family.

We spent the majority of our time biking around the city, our favorite way to see a place. It’s just fast enough to see a lot of it, but slow enough to actually see it. And you get exercise while you go! We biked just over 42 kilometers in two days and got to see so much of the city. We actually went about 5 kilometers out of the city in all directions, so…it’s a small town 😊

And it’s a beautiful town.

Our favorite building.

I think I will always love Burmese markets in particular.

We also climbed the local mountain, which is also a temple. Most of Burma & Thailand, at least from our experience, loves to build a temple on top of every mountain. And they love to make concrete steps that go all the way to the top. As a Westerner that prefers sloping, swerving hikes on real dirt and rocks, it isn’t my favorite. But it’s growing on me. I’m learning to love the views out rather than the feel beneath my feet.

So we climbed 903 steps.

My favorite part was near the top, when I was sitting to have a snack and water. A little boy came up to where he could see me over the steps and immediately turned around and shouted, in Burmese, at the top of his lungs, “Brother! Sister! There’s a white woman up here eating a snack!” I smiled and said hi, and asked why he wasn’t at school today. Instead of answering, he turned back around and shouted, “And she speaks Burmese!” 😂

By far the most fun part of the trip was just how natural it felt. We knew the language to get around, to get directions, to order. It was so simple compared to Mae Sot, where we are constantly switching languages or smashing them together.

We also knew the culture in a way we don’t usually. Mae Sot is such an extreme melting pot, and while we’ve learned the culture of this town specifically, we often feel at a loss when we are in a large Thai city or even meeting with our adoption caseworker. But the culture we know best–right in the neighborhood around us–just exploded into this town, and it felt oddly familiar. Yet another home.

On Wednesday, we went back through Thaton and visited Nyein Nyein’s family again before heading back to Mae Sot.

Nyein Nyein’s little brother and two little sisters spent so much time at our house growing up. Now they are attending school in Burma, and it was so lovely to see them.

Part of the village many of our friends are from. It’s right on the river, and they say every family has a boat. Fishing and shrimping (?) are the two primary livelihoods.

And they took us to the temple. It’s kind of the only thing to do in most towns, but especially villages of this size. They also fed us shrimp, because that’s the village!

Really, we loved the whole trip. We continue to be amazed as God shows us the pieces of the stories we know: learning more about each family, their history, their path to Mae Sot; the path of us becoming friends in the most unlikely ways. And also just how he keeps redeeming each individual relationship.

And somehow, how he’s made another home for us around the world.

on having children.

by Filed Under: kelli, playhouse 2 Comments

For many months now, we’ve been waiting for our adoption process to go through here in Thailand. We pulled together our paperwork in record time according to our caseworker, and then we waited.

We waited for the home study.
We waited for the required class to be offered once a year with limited spots.
We waited on the waiting list.

We’re still waiting on the waiting list, which at times feels both infinite and imaginary.

And while waiting, we’ve had our share of setbacks, namely in that we are on our fifth caseworker in the process. There are only six or seven in Thailand, for the whole country to allow for adoption to both locals and expatriates, so…the task is daunting. The turn over is high.

Meanwhile, we wait.

________________

“’Do you have any children yourself?’
He shakes his head. Looks out the window as you do if you don’t have any children, yet in spite of it all have a whole village full of children.”

I read this quote recently in Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman. It captures my life so well.

I can’t even begin to guess how many times we’ve been asked if we have children and why not. I couldn’t even count in how many languages this has been asked!

I know, there is a general path, and we’ve stepped off it. I know that in that sense, it’s a reasonable question to be asked regularly.

In other ways, I do the looking out the window so often. I am so often at a loss of how to answer a question so common.

I have a whole village of children, and yet none. The story is so long, and yet not even begun.

________________

Last week during Playhouse, Stephen and I were on the porch with Thida, and two other moms who bake bread, while the kids played in and around the house. One of the little girls was trying on other kids’ shoes—a favorite activity for her!—and I was teasing her, Are those your shoes?

I used a more polite version of “you,” the one I commonly use with our neighbor friends to show respect to them, but a too formal for a little girl. I corrected myself with a more colloquial form, and then asked the mothers if that was correct.

They said no, I should call her daughter, and we should call all the kids daughter & son. I have been told this before—it’s quite common to use daughter, son, younger sister, younger brother, older brother, older sister, auntie, and uncle to call others according to their age in relation to yours. This is complicated for a few reasons: a) you are judging others age in relation to yours, in Asia, and I never know to guess high or low or if I’m accurate; and people can get offended if you call them older or younger than they are; b) this means that people’s names change depending on who is calling them, and that can just be very, very confusing for a second language learner trying to remember complicated names by the hundreds; c) lastly, it feels personal to a Western mind. It feels so personal; it feels invasive. Particularly with the kids, if we are the ones the kids come play with, we feed them breakfast, we give them gifts at Christmas, we know them in a very personal way for the culture; if the parents are offering them to us as own on a regular basis—we don’t want to step on toes. Calling them son or daughter, in cases where we don’t want to overstep our bounds, seems too close.

With all that background: back to Playhouse. I explained this to these ladies, all of whom we love and know so well, She isn’t my daughter—she’s yours! He isn’t my son—he’s your son! I feel shy to call them that. 

To which one of the mom’s said, “But I am Sai Bo Bo’s first mother. I’m Mother 1. You are Mother 2! [My husband] is Father 1; Stephen is Father 2! For Win Mo, Pwe Pyu Hey Mother 1, and you are Mother 2. Yint Twe is Father 1, and Stephen is Father 2!”
Thida agreed, repeating the grammar lesson, “Yes! You should call all the children son and daughter. You are Mother 2 and Father 2 to all of them!” Then she looked into the house, to kids scattered everywhere over activities and games, “…Oh, mother and father to so many.”

________________

Do we have any children ourselves?

No, not yet.

And yes: a house full, our hands full, and hearts fuller.

all in a week.

by Filed Under: house calls, house church, housewares, kelli, onehouse, photos, playhouse, stephen 1 Comment

Whoa, what a week.

We took this crew to church on Sunday, including the marijuana hat. And snail hat was left behind.

The left hat caused me to write down this note to myself (hat@church), which I later came back to wondering why I was reminding myself to hate church. 😂

Sunday ended in a large community fight, involving a beer bottle being thrown at one woman’s head and a sword being drawn. We went to the hospital for emergencies twice on Monday night, and the teenage girl who came with us to help was locked out of her hut, because I mistakenly said I’d bring her back in the morning for school when I tried to assure her dad she wouldn’t stay at the hospital but be able to go to school in the morning. She ended up watching some Avengers with us over popcorn and sleeping at our house.

Stephen is teaching The Reinforcers to type in Burmese, and they are working on typing up all our songs for church so they can run them on the projector in coming months. I’m super impressed with all of them, but particularly the husband who can teach them how to type their language and provide them with so many new opportunities.

Wednesday we did a special Valentine’s Flour & Flowers delivery!

And had a flat tire.

And made little gifties for the kids: red off-brand Pocky sticks and pink strawberry yogurt drink. (Do you guys even have on-brand Pocky sticks?) I know you’re jealous.

This was confiscated from an eight-year-old, six-year-old and three-year-old playing with it at our house.

Girls are becoming teenagers and spent their week whispering about boys and things behind curtains. It’s adorable.

Stephen sent this to our little friend in Bangkok, who writes us on Facebook all day every day, and we mostly send photos, emojis, and stickers back and forth. My husband is awesome.

This girl can multiply! After bribes and weeks of practice, she’s got it, and I’m beyond proud. We’re moving on to division!

Stephen made a trip to the border to pick up our Burmese teacher’s wife returning from Burma. And he took this great picture with a great friend.

We did our Friday laundry load of towels and rugs, which is my favorite load of the week. I love what it represents: the feet wiped on the rug on the way in, the bread loaves baked, the breakfasts served, the hands washed before playing computer. It represents a full, active community space that requires so many towels.

We got matching button-up shirts for The Reinforcers that will soon be logo-ed, and we made badges with their names. They’re official! We announced it to the Mae Sot community last week.

And they had two gigs this Saturday! They started at 7am, doing an amazing job at a celebration for a local non-profit. There were over 800 migrant students present at the local university stadium. In the evening they ran sound for a worship night for another local ministry.

Somewhere in there we also had two significant meetings this week, working on two new and very promising connections for the two ladies sewing in our home! We’ll share more info soon, but for now, we are so thankful to see prayers answered and God providing work for them.

We also applied for and received a visa for Burma, and we leave tomorrow afternoon with one of the bread ladies and her little family.

We’re never bored, friends. We are never bored. 😊

a dichotomy.

by Filed Under: house calls, kelli, on the house, photos, playhouse 1 Comment

While playing a game at Storytime on Tuesday, he was jumping up on me, asking me repeatedly to be held. I did, as long as I could, but he’s seven and lanky. Hardly someone I can hold for too long.

I held him through the story, working hard to keep him focused.

Wednesday found us struggling during Playhouse, as he asked me 101 times for a Superman coloring page. He was throwing things, breaking things, and fighting everyone. We reviewed our house rules.

And then Thursday, when Thida was nearly to tears recounting what he’d said that morning.

He said he likes it at our house because we love him, but his parents don’t love him. They only hit him.

__________________

I can’t speak to their feelings, nor can I imagine a mother not loving her own child, but it’s true that they hit him often. It’s true that they don’t love in an obvious way.

It’s also true that we do very much love him. I can speak to my own feelings, and he’s very close to my heart.

He’s seven, and quite a mess, as his life has been. He’s had significant adults in and out of his life, moving between prison sentences and questionable lines of work.

He only knows life with violence. We are reviewing, nearly every day right now, that when he’s at our house:

We play. Together.
We don’t fight.
We don’t bite.
We don’t kick.
We don’t hit. 
If we are angry, we use our words.

__________________

This week there was drama about why he isn’t in school–school our community fund paid for him to attend at the beginning of the year. Thida had provided her son’s old uniforms and we got him a bag; we even started sending breakfast extras for lunch. He was sent to Bangkok in the middle of the year and then returned, like something purchased from Target.

Meanwhile, his aunt is asking to join our literacy class–which we’d love for her to. But it’s also heartbreaking. She’s 19 now, and was taken out of school since we got here. We did everything we could to keep her in school, and it didn’t work. She was sent to Bangkok to work, and is now back, raising a baby on her own in the same broken environment as her nephew, and asking for literacy classes.

__________________

And then last night found us with his mom on our floor, in a panic attack, after her drunken family members created a brawl outside.

Stephen went back to the house to ask after their son, and they said he was sleeping. He was doubtful the child slept through all the shouting and fighting, and peeked in on him. He was wide awake.

“Do you want to come to our house? Are you scared?”
“Yes.”

We learned his mom is pregnant with another little baby, and now we’ll be taking her to clinic this week. We work hard to create a culture of celebrating pregnancy in the neighborhood, so I told her I was happy for her.

It was automatic; instantaneous as I feared she was considering abortion.

It was a lie.

__________________

It’s moved so quickly this week, from one mess to another.

It’s hard to reconcile it all in my mind. It’s hard to reconcile waiting on adoption, when we’re offered kids here that we already love. It’s hard to want to keep families together when they are so broken. It’s hard to send a child home into ugly chaos. It’s hard to see smiles as he fights through. It’s hard to know she’s bringing another little baby into this. It’s hard to fight for education when the brokenness is so much deeper. Its hard to hold a seven-year-old.

It’s hard to comprehend that his story, at age seven, involves drugs and trafficking and prison sentences and sexual encounters and drunkenness and stabbings and swords. But also a place across the street where he colors pictures of Superman, climbs on his auntie & uncle, plays with an iPad, and eats breakfast every morning.

Perhaps the dichotomy is overwhelming for him, too.

our biggest fan.

by Filed Under: house calls, housewares, kelli, photos 1 Comment

A few months ago, Thida found out she had a cyst in her uterus. I don’t know what the standard is stateside, but she was told to wait three months and come back for a followup. At that point they said it would either be smaller or have disappeared, and thus be nothing to worry about; or it would be larger and likely cancerous.

She was nervous, for obvious reasons.

Meanwhile, she’s one of my best friends here. We talk all the time, about so much these days. We’re often chatting about faith–what Stephen & I are praying for in the community, some of the challenges of living here, some of the challenges of working in the community. We’ve talked about the church giving money and how things like The Breakfast Club happen.

She told me recently that her nine-year-old son, Jor Gee, wants to be a pastor, just like our pastor Ah Tee, and he asked her if that would make her proud of him. She said yes, she’d love that. He’s one of the sweetest kids and is always looking out for the younger kids, the one who doesn’t have a snack, and anyone underprivileged. He’s always helping out.

Oh, and he’s always copying Stephen, because he’s his hero. Just recently Thida said he’s been praying for Stephen & I to have lots of money, and she asked him why (i.e. why pray for them to have money rather than our family?!). He said, “Stephen and Kelli give money away to all the Burmese people, so it’s better if they have a lot.” 😭

Thida and I have been talking through all these things–what the future holds for her kids; why we gave her daughter Mwei Mwei a job; why her oldest daughter hasn’t had kids yet.

She’ll teach me new recipes when I ask and helps me learn new words in the market. If anyone asks about me speaking Burmese (nearly every week) she uses it as a moment to brag on us. She tells random folks how great we are.

She’s probably our biggest fan around here, and we’re definitely hers. She’s one of our best gifts over the past year in particular.

So when she’s had this concern, I’ve been praying. And as we drove to the hospital on Wednesday, I asked her if I could pray with her. She seemed grateful, and said she was so scared. I prayed while I drove, and honestly, it was adorable how she folded up her hands so tight and placed them right in front of her face. It was like a Precious Moments kid. (Did anyone else’s grandma take them to the Precious Moments chapel as a kid? Anyone?)

And guys, when I saw her that afternoon at Playhouse, she was giddy. It’s gone, and she was just thrilled. She said thank you for praying. She said it was because we had been praying.

Honestly? I don’t know what God is doing in her; in that family. I have no idea how they view this faith thing.

Honestly? I don’t know why he answered that prayer so apparently, and not others. We’ve been praying for Aung Moe to have his vision back for years; or even just a plan for him. We’ve been praying for Daw Ma Oo for nearly a year, and while she’s improving, she’s back in Burma for another round of treatment and followup.

Honestly? We love that family so, so much. And I’m so thankful that God answered such a big prayer for her!

boxes.

by Filed Under: kelli, photos, playhouse Leave a Comment

After purchasing the sound system for The Reinforcers and getting to know some new arrivals to Mae Sot, we had gathered a selection of big boxes. You know the ones: full of potential, just asking to be made into a house or a car or a tunnel. We had them all.

So at Playhouse on Wednesday I set out to make a house with a tunnel attached. And a car, and another tunnel.

Honestly, the kids weren’t really sure why I needed to cut a door in it and draw a window on the side, since they meanwhile had created a boat out of the inside packing materials. And within fifteen minutes, I wondered why I had taken the time, too.

Whoa. Two days of total chaos.

This kid, too.

His older siblings made him Batman. 😂

treasures: part 2.

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This week’s jar of clay brought to you by Flour & Flowers.

Friday found us baking & delivering 25 loaves of bread, 105 tortillas, and 19 pans of cinnamon rolls. This started at 5:30am and included all of the following disasters.

We made three batches of bread with the incorrect amount of sugar, which had to be redone. The three batches were still baked in the end, and will contribute to our neighborhood watermelon & bread party this weekend. (Why do we have 60 watermelons? Check out our Instagram @thespurlocks.)

A training that began at 9:30am for our two seamstresses, in one of the rooms. Since one of our seamstresses usually watches the kids during baking and the other has a child herself, that left me with 4 kids under 2 and under while Stephen was at a Burmese lesson and got back with lunch.

Then we attempted to feed them all and get them sleep. It was a mixed bag. (If you were in a bag and shaken up with four toddlers. That kind of mixed bag.)

We then ran off to swim oh-so-quickly in the one hour break before deliveries.

At one house, Pyo Pyo’s two-year-old managed to lock all the doors and lock us out. Thankfully I’d left the back hatch up for flowers, but after trying to teach him to open it…well, I climbed through the back of our SUV over flowers and bread in my dress. It was probably not completely appropriate, but I was out of ideas.

Not too many houses after that, we returned to restart the car and found a dead car battery. Stephen and a friend with a car came to our rescue (because motorbikes aren’t great for recharging car batteries).

Just another friendly reminder that we are perplexed and struck down, but this Flour & Flowers thing is still a treasure! We made profit amidst the chaos 😊

And I’m thankful for the calm, chilly Saturday morning that followed.