For over a year I’ve wanted to blog about our loose daily routines, so our family and friends have an idea of a typical day, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. (Besides the fact that our daily routine seems to change every three months or so!) This week I’ll give it a go, before everything changes again with the coming of Jensen #6.

Each morning Josh and I pray together before starting our day (ok – I cheat and get ready and start breakfast before we pray – Josh does his Bible reading while I’m doing that). I’m so glad we started this is a tradition early in marriage. It now includes our kids; sometimes sitting with us, sometimes interrupting with questions, and sometimes but very rarely sleeping through it. Around 7, I dish up the oatmeal and peel the boiled eggs. Ideally, everyone is done with breakfast by 8, but this fluctuates.

Some mornings the older kids choose to go to the market with Chanthu. If not, we head straight upstairs to learn together. Currently I’m using very little curriculum with the kids; my hope is to instill in them a love of learning, before we get bogged down with all the material. This year we’ve begun starting our learning time with Becca reading a Bible verse, which we then discuss, before praying together. (I recently read Noel Piper’s book Treasuring God in Our Traditions. In it she talks about establishing, even before our children can read, a daily time for them to have their devos. It was a great encouragement to me.) Afterwards we work on Becca’s reading and then do some other learning activity, depending on what the current need is. I’m finding that if we don’t start our learning right after breakfast, our kids struggle with being motivated and our learning time usually turns out to be a flop.

Josh tries to leave the house by 7:45 so he can study his vocabulary before he leaves to meet with his tutor at 9. His whole morning is usually filled with studying with Om Lim, so before leaving for Lim’s house, he tries to get some extra time to go through his Khmer vocabulary flashcards. When Josh returns we have lunch and put the younger kids down for naps…and snatch some time to chat. In the afternoons when I study with my tutor, Josh studies Khmer or works on his Kachok project, then he takes some time to make popcorn and read with the kids. Once I’m done studying, Josh heads back to the office to continue his work until supper. On weeks the Kachok men are with us, Josh works with them the whole day, except for lunch and the 1-hour rest time they take in the afternoons.

Our evenings are short. We usually try to go upstairs to get ready for bed by 8:30. We’re tired and have found that our spirits suffer if we don’t regularly get in bed early. One thing I really appreciate about Josh is that on nights he/we don’t have evening commitments, he typically stops his work around 8, makes popcorn and sits on the couch with me before we go to bed. It’s a precious time where we can talk without the kids or anyone else, and it allows us each to unwind (though sometimes I’m the one who does most the talking, because I need it).

There you go. There’s a little glimpse of what we try to do each day. Nothing that exciting. Things are always changing – sometimes Anna naps long and sometimes short,  people show up and have needs, my helper needs to talk about something – we adjust. It’s not that different from our friends in the States – we all have full lives. God gives all the grace we need to accomplish the tasks He’s given us as we faithfully do His work.

Note – I can’t seem to get a photo showing the true color of Anna’s hair. She has light brown hair, but the flash/sunlight always makes it looks like it’s blonde. She’s nowhere’s near what Isaiah used to look like.

Maybe you’ve wondered why we don’t post more photographs of the Cambodian and tribal peoples we interact with here. There are two reasons:

Moms with small children don’t have extra arms for carrying cameras. Between carrying water, diapers, toilet paper, etc., I don’t really have room to carry my camera. And if I did, I wouldn’t have time to pull out my camera and take pictures when out and about. Typically our children or others need all my attention when I’m out of our home.

Expats with cameras can arouse suspicion. Up in this province, and even in the country’s capital, there have been ministries that come in, do a little work, take a lot of pictures, and then send those pictures back to the States to obtain more funds. (Or at least, that’s the impression that the local Christians have.) For this reason even the Christians here can potentially be suspicious of missionaries who take a lot of pictures.

So if you’ve been wondering where all our native pictures are, now you know. It’s a mommy who can’t manage child #4 (i.e. the camera) and it’s a protection from arousing unnecessary suspicions. Someday when we’re established in a village and people know who we are, this won’t be such an issue. And by that time, our kids will be taking the pictures!

The music started Christmas Eve but stopped around 9PM. I was hoping it was just a simple party. However, 4:45 AM Christmas day the monks began testing the sound system to begin their 5 AM funeral chant. The sound system was working fine, and the volume inside our house was louder than anything we can play on our own speakers. By 5:15 AM both older kids were in our bed, as we listened to two monks chant very loudly. Merry Christmas.

We found out later that the elderly man who lived across the street from us had died four days before, and the two-day funeral process had begun. All Christmas day and the day afterwards we listened to monks chanting or gongs playing. Everything was blasted through a loud speaker. This made the Christmas atmosphere a little difficult. Apart from the soundtrack, however, everything else was perfect. Saturday morning the chanting resumed at 5AM. By 11AM I was going crazy, not so much because of the chanting and gongs, but because of its volume in our house. Saturday night Josh went to the cremation. The wealthy family paid to have a portable crematory constructed in their yard. When they began the cremation, they set off fireworks right outside our fence.

Sad to think that while we were celebrating the birth of Jesus who had come to save the world, our neighbors were spending large amounts of money for religious practices that would amount to nothing for the deceased man’s soul.

Besides our soundtrack, we had a lovely Christmas Day. While Josh and I had our morning prayer time, our kids happily played together with blocks they had received a few Christmas ago. They were so happy playing, they didn’t even ask about breakfast or presents. Our meals were: cinnamon rolls and quiche for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and a buffalo crock-pot roast for supper with Josh’s pumpkin pie. The kids also enjoyed eating their large gingerbread men.

After we acted out the Christmas story and sang carols we did some of the gifts. Our main focus with the gifts on Christmas day is the ones that the kids have picked out for other family members. It’s so fun to see how excited they get about giving gifts.

Around lunch time we visited one of our neighbors — who is also one of the pastors at our church — and took the family a whole chicken and some Christmas cookies. Later in the afternoon Becca did a Christmas play for us, and the kids opened the rest of their gifts. Their big gift to each other was bouncy reindeer. Everyone is delighted with theirs.

Josh gave me a cool gift, which he spent weeks working on. He had a local craftsman make an ancient Scandinavian chess game, called Cyning Tafl. We’ve enjoyed playing a few times and are looking forward to learning more strategies to beat each other.