D-Day

Today is the first day of the rest of my vacation...or something like that. Only about 4 1/2 hours before we leave for the airport. Then begins the LONG travel. I am so excited that my stomach is a little gittery. I was debating whether or not to have coffee...but I'm sure that you can figure out what I decided there!
Anyway, the kids are so funny. Isabella keeps telling us that Grandma doesn't have (fill in the blank) in America. And Elijah keeps asking, "How many days til we go to Thailand?" And when I tell him we aren't going, he says," No, America Thailand." DUH! How could I be so stupid?!? And Lydia has no clue. Except last night she really enjoyed chewing the locks on our suit cases. And she tried to help me stitch up one of the suit cases.
But, nevertheless, the DAY has come. We are all packed up...save a few last minute things...and we have a plan for what to do in airports, and when we should make the kids sleep (I hope that'll work). We get to find out in just a few long hours if we have built America up to be "Disneyland." Or if the food really tastes as good as we remember. Or if a personal car is really as convenient as we remember. But we know that all of our family and friends are as wonderful as we remember them...we think. ;)
Love you all, and see you soon!!!

Coffee

As most of you know, saying that coffee is an addiction for me is a bit of an understatement. I drink coffee every morning. And most mornings, I feel like there isn't enough coffee in the world for me. I am usually drinking my coffee while I do school with Isabella. We do Bible, history, reading, hand writing, and copy work. Copy work, as opposed to handwriting, requires me to read a word of sentence out loud and Isabella sounds it out and spells it.

Ok, ok, all this sounds like meaningless drivel...I'm getting there, be patient! I've never told a story quickly in my life.

So...this morning, Isabella was working on math and science with Daddy, and Elijah and I were reading his preschool books (for which he has no attention span!) Anyway, when we finished reading, I went to get a little more coffee. Elijah said to me, "Oookaay, now I'm ready to do my coffee work!"

And I thought that was pretty cute!
Have a good day!

Warm Sunday

Ok, so here's something really vain that I miss about America: dressing up the kids. At home I used to put the kids in onesies or normal stuff throughout the week, but on Sundays, we all dressed up. And as every one knows, dresses and little suits are WAY cuter when they are teeny tiny! During the winter, I never dress the kids up. It's always just as much as I can put on them. But now, my vanity can be appeased. The weather has taken a pleasant turn for the warmer, and the cute little outfits have been pulled out. Don't worry, it's between 75 and 80, so I'm still getting nasty looks for dressing my children in too few clothes.

The funny thing about the things that I really miss about America is most of them are totally superfluous. Foods (ranging from baby carrots to crab legs), convenience items (Swiffer!), carpet, and personal cars are all things that we can live, and live well, without. It's amazing how growing up with things we become so attached. Sometimes, I don't understand why the Chinese think that Air conditioners and heaters are so unnecessary. I guess sometimes when you grow up living without something you become attached to not having it. Now, of course, missing family is the one thing that is completely necessary. I'm just glad that we are here in this day and age. 100 years ago people moved to other countries and no one ever expected to see them alive again. Things have really changed.

ANYWAY...below are pictures are the kids in pretty clothes!

All smiles (well, almost!)

Beautiful girls

Taking care of sister!

Crazies!

The Crazy Life!

Eight days a week

Ok, so if I base my weeks on the old Beatles song, I only have a week until we leave for the States. Excitement doesn't even begin to touch what's going on here. Isabella keeps up with the official countdown. Elijah argues that we are going today or tomorrow or "3 days" depending on his mood. One of his favorite things to say is "3 days." "When's the last time you went potty, Elijah?" --"3 days." Which of course we all know isn't true, but he says it with confidence. "Elijah, when's your birthday?" --"3 days" It's the staple answer to any time related question...the three-year-old equivalent of "two weeks." (Money Pit)
We can't imagine what it will be like to be in a restaurant where no one is smoking. Or use seatbelts again. And don't even get me started on the car seat issue...which in all honesty could be a big deal as Lydia has never really been in one. Our kids are used to climbing all over the back seat of taxi, how are we ever going to strap them down?!? What's it going to be like to wear flip flops out and not come back with black feet? Or not having to dodge hockers, well, anywhere (hospitals included)? And of course, a very question, once I'm in a place where I can buy clothes that fit...how much money will I spend? Old Navy, here I come!!! Well, these are just a few questions that we are looking forward to answering! Hope to see you all soon!

Baking in the East

One of my biggest stress relievers is cooking...more specifically baking! I usually like to bake cookies, brownies, cakes, or whatever sounds good at the moment. One of the blessings of living here is that since we don't have many bread products, I have been forced to bake for necessity not just pleasure. Out of this I have become better at making all kinds of things. Flour tortillas has become quite a regular for me. And lately we have added Naan (Indian flat bread) to our diet. We try to eat a lot of salads, and Naan adds a lot of variety in that we can wrap our salads! My latest conquest has been bagels. Yes, after living here for two years and wishing we had bagels, I finally broke down and started making them myself. One of the reasons I like to bake sweets over bread (besides the obvious "chocolate" answer) is that it doesn't take as much time. Bread is SO time consuming. And my previous experience with trying to make bagels had been painstakingly long. But this time I found a true Jewish (yes, folks, these are Kosher!) recipe and it is so easy. So we are now on our second batch...and it's pretty exciting and a lot of fun. As for the kids, they were tickled pink (or blue) when I made them blueberry bagels (thank you to whomever sent the dried blueberries!). After this, who knows what I'll add!
In other truly more exciting news...
Right now, Isabella is pretending to be a penguin. Thanks to the movie March of the Penguins (and they have only seen it is French) the kids have learned a lot about a penguin's life. So Isabella has a plastic ball (her egg) between her feet and is waddling around like a penguin. Pretty funny!
Elijah has finally conquered the "potty training" thing. It's been a long time since he wet his pants last. We are so proud. And another thing we are proud about is that the vegetable hater is finally coming around. He has eaten salad a couple of times now and asked for seconds on broccoli...these are major milestones in his life, I think! He's really a great kid!
Just the other day, Lydia started clapping. It's funny because she has been ahead of the curve in a lot of things (crawling, etc.), but never even tried to clap. She is also struggling to get those top two teeth down, should be any day now!

10 month old

Also in today's news, Lydia is officially 10 months old. I can't believe how fast she is growing. She can say "Dada" and "Mama," although never on command. She waves, even bows sometimes when the Thai ladies said hello to her in Thailand. Mostly she is curious and busy all day long. She has two new teeth that have almost broken through. She LOVES eating table food that's been cut up (don't worry, I didn't give her any of those fried green beans!).

She's a happy girl.

Sisters, sisters, there were never more devoted sisters...

More of the happy girls!

I love being a big brother. It's a serious, contemplative job.

But there's a time to play too!

The Three Amigos!

San ge Hao Pengyou!

Hope everyone has a great day!!!

French Fried Green Beans

Well, I had my first Chinese cooking lesson yesterday. Two ladies from our favorite restaurant came to teach 3-4 of us how to cook a few of our favorite dishes, only one of which we knew was fried. So yesterday's menu consisted of beer-battered corn, spicy green beans, and fish. The beer-battered corn turned out funny because as most of you know, we don't have any beer in the house! And I learned yesterday how to fry a fish skeleton (head and all!) and arrange it on a platter so that it is "pretty." Actually, I think it's a little scary--a smiling, fried, smashed-down fish head! But the meat and sauce was great! The lady who showed us how to cook it was concerned I think because none of us ate the fried bones or head. The only disconcerting thing was that even though the fish fillets were boiled, at the end she poured hot oil over it. The last dish the spicy green beans is one of my all time favorites. I used to feel good about myself when I went out to eat here because we always order a lot of vegetables. I no longer have that good feeling. I found out yesterday that they deep fry the green beans. Yes, not sauted in bit of oil. We are talking about a wok filled with oil and the green beans are just thrown in! I have never heard of this before! So if you want my advice, never learn REAL Chinese cooking...it will only depress you (and make you fat!).

Pictures

Isabella spots Daddy in the crowd during the concert!
Isabella wanted to know what Jonah must have felt like.
Is this all there is to life? I'm hot and bored!
Lydia's baby dedication
Elijah loves to sing!

Long time, no post!

As many of you have noticed, it's been awhile since I blogged last. We have been out of the home since the beginning of the month. Travel has been interesting--more so than usual! Our first hotel we were supposed to have two adjoining rooms. We had two rooms but they were five doors apart. Also, the hotel was supposed to have a crib for Lydia, but when we got there we were informed that they never have cribs...not really a good place to have a FAMILY education conference! This led to a lot of confusion and early nights for us. I think I went to bed at 9 or so a couple of times. But from there the trip looked up. We were blessed with relative health, only one small 24 hour virus and a couple of colds. The kids had a great time in the their classes. Even Lydia seemed to love playing with the other babies. We also had a great improvement in name recollection this year. Last year, all of the kids' teachers were simply called teacher and the other kids were just called girl and boy. Lydia was lovey with all of her teachers and has done better not "having" to have Mama all the time. Big plus for Mama!
But for us the best time was the middle week of our trip with the blessing of great worship time and preaching. One of the highlights that week was the day we Lydia dedicated. It was a great moment knowing that all of our friends were committing to pray for her and us as she grows up. After the baby dedication, the kids (including Isabella and Elijah) got up to give a little concert. They were so cute! Last year only Isabella was in the concert and she refused to sing. But this year both sang and sang with smiles and all the motions! Elijah likes to sing the song "I have a friend, his name is Jesus J-E-S-U-S." Well, his spelling skills are still developing, so he spells it "S-U-S-U-S." Isabella who started the week out only swimming with her floaty, now splashes around without it. (Yes, this is still just the kiddie pool, but we felt it was a big step!)
Once we finally finished all our meeting, we headed back to Bangkok. Tim and Elijah then flew back home and we girls stayed in Bangkok for Isabella to have her tonsils out. With that done, we just waited around for her last two appointments so we could finally get back home. We were suppose to fly all the back on March 8, but as some of you have heard it didn't quite work out that way. We arrived in Kunming only to find out that we had no flight to Nanning. I was really upset. To make a really long and confusing story short, they decided to bump the flight up from 8:20 to 5:30. Not very convenient for me considering I wasn't off the last plane at that point! Oh, well, it's all over with!
And we now have only 18 days until we climb on another plane to head back to the States. I'm a little overwhelmed considering we have not been on US soil in over 2 year. I am anxious to see how America has changed and how we have changed. I am also interested to see how our kids react. Isabella only remembers bits and pieces, and Elijah remembers nothing. Lydia of course has never been! We are really hoping that it will be a very relaxing time of rest and rejuvenation! See you all soon!