On Thursday, our church's weekly kids meeting was held at our house.  Raquel was very excited and invited her friends from the neighborhood.  I was a little worried that we might not have enough room if word spread like it did for her birthday, but just about 5 came this time.

 They sang songs...

 and heard the story of 'Petro, Seekor Kelinci' (that's Peter Rabbit with an Asia-Pacific flair - at the end, Peter had to take malaria medicine while his brothers and sisters ate supper:).

Then we had treats.  Raquel had the idea of making smiley faces.  Can you tell which smiles she drew?

Group picture:)

When she hears the high pitched whistle of this traveling salesman, Raquel loves to run out and buy some 'putu bambu' - It consists of rice flour cooked with palm sugar, pandan leaf and desiccated coconut, steamed in bamboo pipes (I found that description online:)

 11 cents of yumminess in that package.

 She really was enjoying it although her expression looks somewhat pained.

 A rather large moth hanging outside our front door (that's Raquel's hand)

 Roman's 9 months old today!  What a sweet boy he is:)

 Raquel and Gideon eating krupuk (oh it's a kind of chip thingy that they have here- google it for more exact info:)

 Gideon watching Steve Green's Hide 'em in Your Heart.  Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!:)

 Here he was trying to ride on Raquel's back but kept falling off.  He kept saying 'keep trying, you make it' (from the song about encourage one another and build each other up:)

Bike and dog wash

SCHOOL!

Since there's no observation of Labor Day here:) we started school on Monday.  Raquel is in first grade and  I am homeschooling her.  This is her desk (or 'office' as she likes to call it). 

She was very excited to start.  We are now on the third day and some of that excitement has worn off a bit, but she is doing well.

 To help Raquel and I have a little time to ourselves, we decided to have Gideon attend a little preschool at our church.  It is just Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings for about an hour and a half.

 Dylan takes him there on the motorbike, which he loves.  He has to bring a snack and water bottle.  It's pretty cute.

 We thought it would be a hard transition for him to be left there by himself and were anticipating many tears at least for the first week or so.  However, he loves it.  I picked him up on Monday and he was so excited to tell me about what he had done.  His favorite part was playing with the toy cars, of course.  He was so excited that when a man came to pick up his daughter, Gideon screamed 'Daddy' and ran to the man (who, obviously looked nothing like Dylan) and threw his arms around him.  Once he stepped back and realized it wasn't Dylan, he still didn't care and just kept talking.  He ran around like crazy when he got home and then took a really good nap:)

Dylan took these pictures when he dropped him off today.  There was a dog just hanging out in the church for a little bit:)