October 29th was our 7th year to celebrate Cambodian Coronation Day. We had a fun day crowning our three queens and three kings. I was most impressed that Micah loved wearing his crown!

We had company for dinner – Uncle Jeremy – and he agreed to stay for our Jensen Family Performance Night and ice cream afterwards. The kids each gave a presentation on a different sea creature: Becca – Narwhal, Isaiah – Sea Snakes, Anna – Belugas, and Clara – Sea Lions. Becca had worked with Ezra on a Sea Turtle presentation, but he got stage fright.

I finally fell for a Facebook ad. It was a deal for a year’s subscription to Craftsy for less than $3, and I figured that even if we just took one class it would be worth it.

It’s been great! Most of the classes are geared for adults, but it’s been fine. So far, all the kids took a class on how to make comic books. Isaiah took a class about making pretzels, bagels, and bialys. Becca and Isaiah took a class called Illustrated Nature Journaling. We’re all taking a start-up class on watercolors. And the kids are taking a kids’ class on paper airplanes.

This past weekend Isaiah and Clara took a class on making doughnuts. Yummy! Anna worked on one of the class projects from the watercolors class.

Our littlest man is always on the move and I can’t get him to sit still for a clear picture! Two bottom teeth. Eating the same food as everyone else. Sleeping through the night. Walking everywhere. Almost always happy. Becoming a good playmate. (It’s a lot fun play to play with the two “little boys” together.) He’s a darling!

The rest of us are doing well with school. This is our 13th week and everyone seems to be enjoying our year!

Sunday, September 26, we had a baptism under our house for Isaiah, Anna, and Davi (our Khmer neighbor). Davi has been following Christ for almost two years now and a few months ago she said she wanted to be baptized. We made it really clear that baptism meant she was renouncing all the works of the Devil and turning 100% to Christ. This means no more participation in Buddhist ceremonies or having Buddhist charms in the home. It’s a big step to take. But Davi said she was ready. We were so excited. Due to Covid regulations and the fact that there is no Khmer church in our town, we held the baptism under our house. Davi’s sister, son, daughter, nieces, and nephew attended.

Isaiah and Anna were thrilled for the opportunity for be baptized. They’ve expressed a desire, but being baptized at Jarai church was very overwhelming for them. What a joy for us to see them baptized. This was Josh’s first time to conduct a baptism service. Later in the evening we had the Lord’s Supper. I’m so thankful for these lives! Thanks be to God!

September 17 we celebrated International Talk Like a Pirate Day! It’s our third year making a holiday of it. We spent the morning making clay turtles, pirate dancing, and practicing our Moby Dick play for our evening performance. Supper was hotdogs and beans.

After supper we had our Pirate Performance Night (youtube link below)! Each child recited a poem: Ezra – The Raccoon, Clara – The Goops, Anna – Mr. Nobody, Isaiah – The Blind Men and the Elephant, Becca – Adventures of Isabel.

We’ve been studying sea creatures in science and the kids had listened to Moby Dick (24 hours long). Afterwards we put together a short play for our performance night. The kids did great! Anna played Ishmael, Clara played Queequey, Isaiah played Captain Ahab, and Becca played the Innkeeper and Mate Starbuck. I tried to get Ezra to be the whale, but he wasn’t interested. The play was kept a secret from Josh. I was so proud of how the kids performed for him. A huge success! Pirate Day ended with ice cream and sleeping in the tent. Actually, it ended with me killing a rat in the bathroom with a broom after everyone else was in bed!

Tuesday morning I was teaching the “olders” on the front porch when two police vehicles and a moto pulled into our driveway. Six policeman got out and began walking toward our house. As I told the kids later – no matter what country, nobody wants to see police coming for an unexpected visit. Josh was away at the office all day, so I was hoping I could handle it without calling him away from his meeting.

My heart was racing. I told Becca to pray for me! At first I thought maybe it was a visit to tell us we had had contact with a Covid case and would need to test/quarantine, however it was the Immigration Police wanting pictures of all our passports and visas. And wouldn’t you know it, all our passports were in Phnom Penh. Thankfully, Josh keeps copies of everything on our computer filing system, and I was able to pull each person’s up so they could take pictures of the pages with their phones. It took quite awhile. Just a friendly, random visit to make sure we had all the proper documents. I insisted on a picture at the end, so I could show off to Josh! He said I can have a bonus. 🙂

Today Micah turns 10 months! His biggest news is that his two bottom teeth have started to cut through (hardly noticeable) and HE’S WALKING! He took his first steps on the 6th – 10 days before he turned 10 months. This makes him our earliest walker. Such an exciting time for us all!

Some people ski in snow….we ski in mud! (Until we slip and fall hard.)

I didn’t get around to posting pictures at Micah’s 8 month birthday. He continues to be a fast, fun-loving boy! He LOVES eating anything he can off the floor! The other day Ezra said, “Micah is a good helper. He eats all the paper off the floor.” In July, when we were in PP, I took pictures of Micah back in his “birthing room.”

Micah is now 9 months! He’s been outside with us as long as he was inside with me. He loves to eat, explore, and play. He loves wrestling. This past month Ezra has played with Micah a big more. It’s so cute to hear them laughing together. The other day Ezra was smashing up chalk with his rubber mallet and Micah was eating it. Double trouble! It’s so fun to have two boys close in age.

Our little man is now 3! Ezra celebrated his birthday on Friday, August 13. He started his celebrating 5 days before with his first-ever birthday countdown calendar. The night before his birthday we watched Finding Nemo. (Which worked great with our current science textbook.)

Ezra had fun making his birthday cake. This year he chose a chocolate rabbit cake after his Malone, and we had hotdogs, beans, and mac&cheese for dinner.

Lots of big changes in the past year for Ezra. Such growth between 2 and 3. His vocabulary has grown, and he expresses his thoughts in many unique ways. He loves listening to the Bible when he takes a nap and goes to bed. He tends to choose things from Samuel or Kings. He’s done great at memorizing our Bible verses. He’s completely potty trained. He loves playing with his siblings. And he also picks up all his sisters’ bad habits. Yikes!

Ezra loves playing with dirt and with play dough. He loves going outside to play. He loves making “soup” in the afternoons with a pot of water and some garlic cloves. He has lots of ideas that he’s confident about and willing to share. He keeps us laughing! We’re so thankful for our Ezra!

This month we studied Louis XIV and decided to have a masquerade ball. At first I thought we would just make masks, but by the morning of the ball we had decided to include a feast too. Becca made whole bakes apples, Isaiah made bialys, Anna & Clara made popcorn balls, Ezra made oranges, and I made Deviled Eggs. Everyone enjoyed the dancing and the feast afterwards – except Micah, who was very disturbed by our masks!

I celebrated my 39th birthday on July 20th. Isaiah carved a big “Happy Birthday Mommy” sign out in our front yard for me to see in the morning. Becca made cherry bars for dessert. Josh grilled chicken kabobs. We had a nice evening celebrating together!

At the beginning of July we planned a trip to Phnom Penh. Our two main purposes for going were to 1.) Obtain Micah’s visa, and 2.) Visit with some good friends who were preparing for a 7-month furlough. Traveling during the Covid season is complicated. We were told by our immigration officer that when we returned from Phnom Penh, we would have to home quarantine for 14 days. I spent the two weekends before we planned to leave stocking our freezer with enough meat from the market to last us 14 days. We also bought enough eggs to last us. The plan was to have our helper pick up produce when needed.

The two days before we planned to leave, we made pretzels, carrot cake, and sandwich rolls for our all-day drive to Phnom. We went to bed early Tuesday night (June 29th) with the hopes of leaving our house a little after 5:30am. We started out Wednesday great and had the car almost packed and were about ready to get the kids in the car when Isaiah came out of the bedroom and said he didn’t feel well. Turned out he had a fever. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but now that there are Covid check-points along the road – where they might take everyone’s temperature…you can’t travel if you have a fever! Who wants to have an unnecessary Covid test? So we unpacked the car and said we would try again tomorrow, hoping it was a one-day fever. The girls were very disappointed. Isaiah felt awful to be the cause of our delay (besides feeling crummy from a fever). And I was really hoping that the bread would stay good and that I wouldn’t have to remake all our food!

Unfortunately, Thursday morning Isaiah still had a fever and it turns out he had Chikungunya. It’s not a dangerous virus, but the fever usually last about three days. We kept waiting to see if we would leave the next day. I think we all felt like we were living in limbo – will we leave tomorrow? Will someone else get it? Will I have to make bread again?

Thankfully, by Friday night Isaiah was fever-free and fever-free Saturday morning when we got up to leave. We had a very good drive down to PP. We were only stopped at one checkpoint and only Josh had to get out. Since PP is where most of the Covid cases are coming from, it seems that the police don’t care if you’re headed to Covid-country.

We had some unexpected things come up while in PP with Covid cases limiting our access to certain areas in the guesthouse. It wasn’t exactly the week we had hoped for, but we had a good time and our kids enjoyed seeing their friends and spending lots of time with them. We even had a girls’ sleep-over. I enjoyed some great talking hours with my friends.

While in PP, we took Ezra and Micah to get their TDaP vaccinations. I also took Micah to an ENT at the recommendation of my pediatrician friend. I was visiting with my friend and asked her to look at Micah’s upper palate – which seemed unusually high to me. My friend thought that if we could fit a visit in to see the ENT, it would be good to have her check it out. I could see God’s hand in the timing of all this. If we had been on our original schedule, we would have been leaving the morning after I visited with my doctor friend. But because of our delay – we were still planning to be in PP a few more days and were able to see the ENT. The ENT confirmed that Micah’s upper palate is indeed unusually high, but she didn’t think it was a concern. She also recommended we continue to wait to see if he needs his tongue clipped. (He’s tongue-tied – but has no trouble nursing. We will reevaluate when he starts talking.)

Interestingly enough, Micah had a slight fever when we went to the ENT. They still allowed us to enter, when I explained he had just had a vaccination the day before. However, his fever continued for a few days, and I soon began to suspect it was not vaccination related. My doctor friend didn’t think it was Covid, and thought it was likely some sort of kid virus.

So once again, we were going to have to delay our travel plans because of a fever. We had been planning to leave Sunday, but since Micah still had a fever Saturday afternoon, we decided to wait until Monday. Then late Saturday night we found out that there was another positive Covid case in the guesthouse and this time it was someone who we had had contact with. Sunday morning we didn’t know what to do, as they announced that the guesthouse and property would be closing down for two weeks. We asked one of our leaders what we should do and she said get out of here. Basically, we could either leave right away or be stuck for two weeks. I still wasn’t comfortable leaving, with Micah’s fever, so I made a quick call to my doctor friend (who was now in the States visiting family). She picked up immediately and after listening to the situation, said that if it were her she would leave and go home. We made a mad dash and finished packing everything up and left. Thankfully, Josh had already packed the top of our car and I had already made sandwiches when we had initially thought we were leaving on Sunday anyway. I felt so frazzled by the time we pulled out – what an exit!

Turned out Micah was fever-free for most of the trip. I checked him a few hours before we got to our province, planning to give him some Tylenol if he had a fever – but he was still fever-free. And when they stopped us at the Ratanakiri border and made us all get our temperatures checked, they didn’t want to check the baby’s temperature!

So we made it back! What a trip! I still am shaking my head about the timing of the trip. We had a plan to go and then God stopped us. I prayed that He would continue to stop us if we shouldn’t go. Then when we were planning to return, He seemed to stop us again, only to have us tear out of there! God moves in mysterious ways and we can only trust Him to open and close doors. We get to walk the path He puts before us! It was sad that we didn’t get to say official goodbyes to our friends. That is in God’s hands as well.

The day after we returned home, Micah broke out in a rash very similar to his Chikungunya rash. After some research, I suspect that the vaccination somehow triggered a relapse in Micah’s Chikungunya from the month before. He was back to normal about a week later.

We served our home quarantine time. Josh worked from home. The kids could still play outside, so it wasn’t much different for them. After about 5 days, the neighbor kids started playing with them too. Our helper brought produce four times during the 14 days and the kids helped me with all the food prep. Thankfully it’s rainy season, so I only mopped once!

We had a successful trip to PP. We were able to obtain Micah’s visa and visit with our friends. It wasn’t as restful as I had hoped it would be, but it was the trip that God had for us. We are thankful we did not catch Covid and that we didn’t have any trouble on the road. Thanks be to God! (And I don’t want to travel again for a long time!)

July 26, 2021 we had our first day of school for the 2021-2022 school year! We’re excited about all the things we’re planning to learn this year! Let the fun begin!

We love this Daddy!!!

July 2, 2021 Clara lost her first tooth! She was very excited to have a loose tooth and had been working on it for days. It came out when she was eating an apple for a snack. So fun! Her adult tooth was already showing through.