Pictures of some of us

Kyrie with her hair up in a ballet bun.

Aidan with a big grin.

Abigail and Kayleigh like to pose.



I took all the pictures with the tripod. The one of me I set up using Kyrie as a stand in (she's nearly as tall as me) and then had her take the photo. I had to do some adjusting of color and contrast afterwards. No pictures of Tartan and Alex because they're away at the moment. Aimee is sleeping, otherwise I probably couldn't have taken these pics.

15 years old

Alex making a wish and getting ready to blow out his 15 candles.

Did he get them all?

How did he miss that one?

Ah, Mom snuck in a reigniting candle (not intentionally though).

Hong Kong Market

On Saturday, the Collier family all went into Houston and visited the Hong Kong Market. Tartan wanted to share mangosteens with us. They're a fruit from Thailand and their nickname is "monkeybrains." I don't have a picture yet, but I'll be sure to get one before we eat them all. Despite the name and how they look, they have a very pleasant, mildly sweet taste. We also saw, but fortunately didn't smell, durian. It's a huge fruit and the inside part apparently smells like rotting meat. Yummy, huh? We also saw jackfruit which is a large, spiky looking fruit. Tartan brought some dried jackfruit home to us. We bought finger bananas- basically miniature bananas. They taste the same as the big version.

The kids got pandan flavoured Swiss rolls. I can't tell you what that tastes like because the rolls are made from wheat, but they say it tastes good. We picked up pineapple wafers, too. We could have got them in guava flavour but decided against it. I could eat the Mochi choco balls because they're made with glutinous rice. The "glutinous" part of the name just refers to the fact that it's sticky rice and doesn't have anything to do with the gluten that I can't eat. They were okay.

No one found the fish market very appetising though I tried to keep the children from expressing their reactions out loud. A brief introduction to cultural sensitivity.

Pictures later!
>Naomi for the Colliers

Have laptop, will travel

Well, will travel out to the patio with Aimee in her pink bouncy seat. The picture on the left is of her the day before she turned 2 months old. On Saturday she'll be 10 weeks old. She's getting bigger all the time. I love the nice chubby cheeks. She also vocalises quite a bit: goos and ah-goos.

Right now it's a lovely 81F with a pleasant cool breeze. I can't spend too much time out here- pretty soon I'll have to go load the dryer and then make dinner. The rest of the kids are supposed to be tidying up upstairs. Apparently they've finished that and are now watching The Black Cauldron that we just rented from Blockbuster.

Abigail and Kayleigh have both had a bout of stomach bug. Kyrie felt ill Sunday late afternoon, but was feeling better later in the evening. No one else has succumbed so I'm cautiously optimistic.

Ugh, writer's block. I'm sure there's some cute story or important update that I could be relating but it's just not coming to me. So, enjoy the pictures and maybe the next post will have some kind of substance.

Trusting in Jesus because nothing else makes as much sense,
Naomi for the Colliers