Sunny Bangkok

Bangkok.

We find ourselves here, once more, waiting it out for another baby to be born into our family. Third time around, and yet each time has been so very different.
We've stayed in different places for each birth. The equivalent of a hotel for Eden's birth. A lonely secluded apartment for Caleb's birth. And this time, a guesthouse/apartment, where the kids have almost constant playmate companions. 

Waiting on a baby to be born when you're surrounded by tropical banana trees, friends, warm weather, play time at the pool, amazing food, and the hospital within walking distance...it really doesn't get any better. 

38 weeks pregnant with baby Benjamin. He seems content to be there for at least a little while longer. No signs of him coming too soon...not that we expected any different!

And like I said, we're in no rush to have him here as we've got plenty to entertain us with almost daily visits to the pool AND a backyard! No lie. Backyards are the best.thing.ever. God's gift to parents.

Today we took advantage of having a backyard, being in tropical temperatures, and a place where we wouldn't get gawked at for having shirtless children.

Hello beautiful brown eyes.

And this girl, who is about to be seriously outnumbered, is growing up way too fast. 

Slow down, sweet girl.

Caleb's watermelon was a bit of a bummer. But he was outside, shirtless, and eating fruit...so it didn't hold him back.

He might be enjoying this tropical nakey freedom a little too much...

Our amazing Father has blessed us so much with these three gifts. So honored to be adding another. And so thrilled we get to be here in sunny Thailand as we await his arrival!

Farewell Dinanuary

Dinanuary came to an early halt this year as we left on the 26th for sunny Thailand and began our wait for Benjamin's arrival. And really, I wasn't all that sad for the month of dinosaurs to come to an end. Turns out, my creative juices really stop flowing around the 8 month of pregnancy!!
So the dinos did a whole lot of simple stuff like puzzles, coloring pictures, rousing games of Candy Land, etc.

But I did find it within myself to make a mess of my kitchen just once more.

I was fully prepared to be scraping dried oatmeal off of my table the following morning, but it wasn't all that bad! Especially when Eden was so eager to help clean up after her dino pals!

Every evening Salem asked me what the dinos would be doing the next morning, to which Caleb (for 5 days in a row!) responded with, "Play mama's chonies!!" I'm not sure why he got it in his head that the dinosaurs would rummage through my underwear drawer, none the less, not to let the little guy down, that's what the dinosaurs were found doing one morning!
Lucky you, I'll spare you those pictures!!

The next day they did less exciting things like coloring pictures...

Once the suitcases got pulled out and we began packing, the dinos made an attempt to join us. 

Which truly bothered Salem, but not because he didn't want the dinosaurs to come. He became very paranoid about what the dinos were going to do while we were gone! He was convinced we needed to build some sort of cage so they couldn't escape and cause great havoc in our absence!

And then in our last night of Dinanuary escapades I decided to procrastinate in packing just a little longer and spend entirely too much time making tiny Thailand flags and preparing farewell signs from our Jurassic pals.

When the kids noticed the little flags and Eden commented on how patriotic they were, it did my mama heart proud.

So we said farewell to our dino friends 5 days early for Dinanuary and headed south, hoping that in our absence they'll keep watch, not cause too much trouble, and rest up for Dinanuary 2015!!

34 Weeks

Pregnancy is special all the same, no matter if it's your 4th or your 17th.

But lets just be real and say that when it's your 4th go around, sometimes those weekly belly pictures get lost between homeschool, potty training, cooking and cleaning, and bandaging scraped knees...(amongst a host of other things.)

So here I am 34 weeks into being pregnant with this precious little one and finally posting a growing belly picture here on the ole blog. I wish it was a fancy one. I wish it wasn't just taken with my cell phone. I wish I wasn't just wearing jeans and a t-shirt (but again...lets just be honest and admit that this go around that's ALL my winter maternity wardrobe has consisted of!)

And I wish I wasn't on my way home from the grocery store and in the middle of a mall decked out in red Chinese New Year lanterns.

But since we have an honesty theme here, this picture is true to my life. I literally thrust my coat and grocery sacks into Brandon's hands and said, "Since I'm not wearing yoga pants and have on makeup, lets document this pregnancy for once!"

Being pregnant in The Big Chicken definitely has it's perks. As mentioned, I'm literally rotating between three long sleeve shirts and 2 pairs of jeans. No need for fancy maternity clothes or Sunday bests. When the vast majority of the population sticks to wearing the same thing 3-4 days in a row, that means I can too.

It's not without it's "hardships" though. 

Besides cravings of Chick-Fil-A being unmet, there's also more serious things like being on your 4th pregnancy in a country with a one-child policy.

Things like being asked multiple times if we're going to keep this one.

People assuming their cultural norm is the same for us and that we're forking out $10,000 to the government per kid...making us wealthy beyond their imagination.

Being told that it's really selfish of me to have four children.

Or dear friends getting pregnant shortly after me and struggling with the decision to obey the government and abort their second child, or choose life for him/her, pay the equivalent of 10 years salary as a fine, and then their child grow up without an identity in the government's eyes. 

Yeah...those things aren't easy.

I've struggled with so many emotions during this pregnancy, most of which aren't brought on by hormones but simply by being pregnant in this country. The Lord has taught me a lot about contentment and trusting in His plan. 

I'm finding peace in Him among the many things that don't make sense about this whole scenario.

I could fill another blog post about it all.

But one thing is for certain, the Lord in his infinite grace, has decided to bless us with another sweet baby, and we're beyond thrilled about it!

Benjamin Mason will be joining our family soon. 

Making us even more of an oddity in this country. (and perhaps even America too!)

Causing us to answer even more questions about the way we do life.

But he's so worth it. And we can't wait to meet him!!

The First Ever Dinanuary

A lot has happened since my regular blogging days! 

Kids have had birthdays. 

Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went. 

Eden started homeschooling.

She decided to become our sister in Christ.

Caleb potty trained.

My belly has grown larger and larger with Benjamin's upcoming arrival.

We welcomed in the New Year of 2014 with an apartment fire two floors below us at 1 a.m.

We've definitely had no shortage of blog-worthy news going on around the Chancler house.

But instead of picture filled posts of all of these exciting events, lets jump straight to the point...

Dinosaurs have invaded our small space and are raising ruckus each night!!

Yes. It is true. We have told our children that for the month of January, their toy dinos come to life each night as they are snug and safe in their beds! The idea stems from Dinovember, something a friend stumbled upon and asked me to join her in. However, we couldn't sit around waiting for November to get here again before attempting this trickery, so January was decided upon! January can always use a bit of excitement around here anyway, even if Dinanuary isn't quite as easy to say as Dinovember.

Plus, I've really enjoyed seeing pics of people's Elf on the Shelf ideas all throughout December, but couldn't bring myself to attempt it. It's cute. It's fun. I love playing pranks on my kids. (yes I'm one of those moms.) But one more distraction from Jesus, the reason for the season, I just couldn't handle. So, Dinovember in January was THE answer!!

So for Christmas the kids unwrapped 12 new plastic dinos (costing a whopping $9 total...after all we live in the land of all things Made In China) and the fibbery began. They couldn't wait for January to get here to see what the dinosaurs might do.

And then there was the great apartment fire (that actually wasn't all too terrible) of 2014...displacing us for the first four days of January. Fortunately, one of those nights happened to be at our co-conspirators, so they got to experience what their family's dinos do during the night.

And then our first night back in our apartment, the dinosaurs decided Christmas decoration destruction must begin:

 Our usual tradition is that the kids get to take hammers after the gingerbread house and obliterate it to pieces. So I was a little nervous that they'd be upset that the dinosaurs got a head start on the demolition. But they were so excited about it, and thought it was pretty great seeing the dinosaurs all over the gingerbread house!

 The next night they were up to more mischief in the bathroom. Caleb was fairly distraught that his toothbrush was in the hands of the smallest carnivore.

So far, I'm convinced that bathroom dino messes are the way to go and the easiest to clean up!

We've had a few more tame nights of dinosaur puzzle assembly, reading books about themselves, legos, hide and seek, etc...
But we've had a few nights where my husband was convinced I've lost my mind...

But he's been pretty into it as well, lest you think he's all bah-hum-bug about Dinanuary. In my attempt to not make vacuuming the rug the following day too difficult, I was sparingly placing popcorn around the mini-dinos for their movie night. And then he decided dumping the entire bag and smashing some of it into the rug in true carnivore fashion was more convincing.

With our four day delay start, our co-conspirators just down the street with a plethora of ideas, and the kids themselves telling us all sorts of things they think the dinos might do the next night, (and of course, Pinterest) I'm not having any trouble coming up with shenanigans to fill the month of Dinanuary!

We leave here on the 26th to head to the sunny south for Benjamin's birth though, so I'm sure the night before the dinosaurs will be making an attempt to hop in our luggage to head south with us!

Join us for the rest of Dinanuary!! Or start your own Dinebruary...Februsaur? Dino-arch? Marchosaur?

Either way, playing with your kids and slightly destroying your house each night...what gets better than that?!

(ps...I promise one day I'll post pictures of my kids too. and not just their plastic carniverous counter-parts. One of my goals of 2014 is to rejoin the blogging world!!)