Happy to be here
that's the general feeling I have right now. In dealing with all the emotion and reality of our tsunami experience, I really am just happy to be here, with my family - my wonderful loving, caring and understanding husband and my beautiful, happy, sweet little girls. I am so blessed to have such a family and to all be here, safe and sound. My youngest, Liz, is playing in our sandbox on our deck right now and it feels so good. It's a gorgeous sunny day out, bright blue skies, around 70 degrees, slight breeze on my face. The sand reminds me of the beach, which reminds me of our trip and the tsunami, the dirty sandy water that surrounded our resort. I'm not as anxious thinking of it right now as I was weeks ago. I just feel a profound loss and sadness, not for me or my family, but for everyone living in the affected areas. I can sit here at our house, on our deck, enjoying a beautiful day, knowing that others are cleaning up, grieving, starting over, trying to come to terms with losing loved ones, friends. I pray for them all, hoping that they can find some peace and joy again. I've been reading websites, checking for updates of the areas affected, looking at pictures of the cleanup, the rebuilding. The tourists are starting to go back, which is good, it's a beautiful country (Thailand), that relies on the tourism industry. Although I don't think we'll go back anytime soon, I do still highly recommend Thailand as a place to go visit. The people are amazingly friendly and the place is beautiful. Many resorts were untouched or relatively untouched and will be back in operation quite soon. I've seen pictures of our resort, Merlin Beach, being cleaned up. It's pretty amazing - where you weren't able to view the resort from the beach due to trees and bushes, well, it's a clear view now. Just amazing. http://www.phuket-photos.com/frameme.php?page=phuket-tidal-wave-thursday6.htm (there are pics of Merlin Beach Resort on this page).
Elizabeth's 18 month appointment went well. She's back to normal on her growth chart and is doing great on her development. A little on the slow side for speech, although our doctor said that is quite normal with her hearing two different languages and having an older sibling who speaks for her and gets her what she wants (and a mom who lets her get away with pointing and saying UH, UH). She's getting so big and is very fond of dogs and babies. We've visited with a few friends with babies and Liz is just mesmorized by them (the babies, that is). She's got a cold right now, so her nose is quite nasty and raw, but she's still in good spirits the majority of the time.
Ashley is doing great. I keep trying to talk to her about our trip, about the tsunami, to see how she's feeling and what she's thinking. She seems to be dealing with it very well and I've talked with my therapist on ways to talk with her about it. She tends to talk about how she ran - too fast that her daddy had to pick her up. She's also still startled by unexpected or different noises and a bit clingy at times, but that is completely understandable. One of my friends commented how hard it is to see her startled response to things and it is hard, it breaks my heart, but she's such a trooper.
We're eating out a lot, at most of our favorite restaurants, trying to get to them all before we have to leave. Mexican food is number one, of course, along with real burgers, good fast food and yummy ice cream. We've had Italian a few times too - notably The Olive Garden and Macaroni Grill. Plus, the Outback - mmm, their basic ranch salad is my all time favorite side salad and Victoria's filet is so good (guess you can tell I'm definitely no vegetarian).
We're attempting to get our passports renewed also, but found out today that we had to have the girls birth certificates, so had to go get new ones of those. We've been meaning to get them renewed since we got here, but we're such procrastinators - although I was glad to learn today that even if we'd renewed them the day we got here, we'd still have to pay for expedited processing, since it takes 6-8 weeks for regular processing. Hopefully we'll get them ordered in the next day or two though and that will be one more to do off our list.
Our photo website - the album of the after tsunami photos - has been viewed almost 50,000 times. I find that utterly amazing. Thanks to everyone who has forwarded on our blog and our photo site to others.
Elizabeth's 18 month appointment went well. She's back to normal on her growth chart and is doing great on her development. A little on the slow side for speech, although our doctor said that is quite normal with her hearing two different languages and having an older sibling who speaks for her and gets her what she wants (and a mom who lets her get away with pointing and saying UH, UH). She's getting so big and is very fond of dogs and babies. We've visited with a few friends with babies and Liz is just mesmorized by them (the babies, that is). She's got a cold right now, so her nose is quite nasty and raw, but she's still in good spirits the majority of the time.
Ashley is doing great. I keep trying to talk to her about our trip, about the tsunami, to see how she's feeling and what she's thinking. She seems to be dealing with it very well and I've talked with my therapist on ways to talk with her about it. She tends to talk about how she ran - too fast that her daddy had to pick her up. She's also still startled by unexpected or different noises and a bit clingy at times, but that is completely understandable. One of my friends commented how hard it is to see her startled response to things and it is hard, it breaks my heart, but she's such a trooper.
We're eating out a lot, at most of our favorite restaurants, trying to get to them all before we have to leave. Mexican food is number one, of course, along with real burgers, good fast food and yummy ice cream. We've had Italian a few times too - notably The Olive Garden and Macaroni Grill. Plus, the Outback - mmm, their basic ranch salad is my all time favorite side salad and Victoria's filet is so good (guess you can tell I'm definitely no vegetarian).
We're attempting to get our passports renewed also, but found out today that we had to have the girls birth certificates, so had to go get new ones of those. We've been meaning to get them renewed since we got here, but we're such procrastinators - although I was glad to learn today that even if we'd renewed them the day we got here, we'd still have to pay for expedited processing, since it takes 6-8 weeks for regular processing. Hopefully we'll get them ordered in the next day or two though and that will be one more to do off our list.
Our photo website - the album of the after tsunami photos - has been viewed almost 50,000 times. I find that utterly amazing. Thanks to everyone who has forwarded on our blog and our photo site to others.
posted by The Armstrongs at
1/27/2005
