The Cleggsters!: The Bakery Is Open!

Hurray! Announcing the Grand Opening of the official

Home & Life Coffee & Bakery!

One of the highlights of our trip to Thailand was the grand opening of the bakery that we have been helping with. The Home & Life Orphanage has been working toward this event for over a year and we got to be a small part of it at the end of the journey. We spent the last two weeks trying to help them get ready for their big day. I have to say that it was quite different than preparing to open a new Spring Creek Facility and I had to remind myself of that on several occasions, although in some ways--it felt like something familiar.

Let me tell you a small part of the story of Home & Life. Root and Rosa are the parents of 25 children. After the Tsunami hit, the area of Phuket was devastated. Root was an engineer and is quite educated. They decided to go down to Phuket and see what they could do to help. As I understand it, as they got there and tried to go to work to help--they found so many children that were displaced because of what had happened. They decided at that point to try to help these kids. What they have developed there is amazing! They have a thriving home culture where the children feel loved and are getting a wonderful home life, an education and are being taught life skills that will make a huge impact on the rest of their lives. It was our blessing to be there and experience just a small part of what they do.

They have created a bakery--where they are making baked goods and selling them for income for the orphanage. Bom and Bay are the bakers and they make awesome goodies for those to stop in. This also gives the children a chance to help work in the bakery. It was awesome! We loved to help in just a small way to help them this opening a success!

This is Root at the Grand Opening!

For the grand opening, the President of that providence prepared a special dish to be auctioned off to donate money to the bakery. Doug won the auction and was given the special dish. (Although it was too spicy to consume the whole thing!)

Fa is one of the older and spoke at the event. She spoke in English and was sooo nervous! But she did a great job and we were so excited for her! They also had some of the boys do a karate dance and some of the girls (including Olivia) did a Thailand cultural dance. My camera got ruined a couple of days before--so I did video it with another camera but am now realizing that I don't have any photos of that to include.

We showed up on the morning of the opening--dressed and ready to go to work to help finish the landscaping and do last minute cleaning. As we pulled up, it was unusually quiet. As we went up to the bakery, this is what we found. The monks were there and were offering a blessing on the bakery. We found out later that they are also the ones that picked the day of the opening. A couple of months before they thought they would be finishing-- Root went to the monks and asked when they should open. After consideration, the monks told Root that they should open on Feb. 27th--and so it was decided. They went to work and made that date happen.

Right before the party got going--Munchie lost his first tooth! We didn't even know that it was that loose! He was so excited. Did you know that the tooth fairy brings

Thai bahts instead of dollars when you lose a tooth in Thailand?

This is the sign on the bar in the bakery. The letters are made out of paper mache and then painted. The girls worked really hard on this!

This is the outside sign of the bakery!

We moved a lot of dirt and gravel. Everyone helped at some point.

This is Alexa. She is what we call our second adopted "Smegg!" We love her and she was so great to jump in with our families. She is from Australia and has gone home now. She is "just lovely!"

Jill and Sam are hard at it. The dirt is newly moved and is so soft that pushing a wheelbarrow through it proved to be exciting and required two sets of hands!

Nightime is a great time to work! We were pushing and trying to get the stairs done and the driveway.

I have a greater appreciation for landscaping contractors now! Doug is in heaven. Does it get much better than this?

Marcus likes to help and then goes to take a break with the orphans in the river.

He had to come and show me that he caught a little fish!

Ally is supposed to be touching up paint on the walls--not on Jocelynn's toenails!

This is the crew working on the bathrooms!

In came the first refridgerator!

One day the dust was so bad that Bom gave us masks to use. We couldn't help to pose for a picture before going to work!

Another day, we took a break for an hour or so and went to play in some waterfalls. It was a welcome relief from the heat and humidity!

Jocelynn and Root working on the paper mache! That was a tedious job--but the sign looked great!

Jill is thinking-----"I will shoot myself if I have to move this dirt one more time!" We would move it to one spot so that we could move it over farther! What we would have done for a little bobcat!

Deck complete! Ready for paint!

I got the job of scraping paint off from the window frames. Apparently, they don't tape things off here before painting.

More paper mache work! But that sign looked great!

You gotta love those stairs! First we dug them out for four feet wide stairs and then had to fill back in for three foot stairs. It was cutting into the drive approach too much! More dirt to move!