The Party was at our house!

Last night we invited a couple of girls over to our house. I had met one of the girls at a local noodle shop, and she said she spoke some English. As I left that day she gave me her card, so I called her a week or so later and we went to lunch. After lunch, I invited her and her older sister to come to our house for dinner one night. That was supposed to be Thursday, but as many of you know Thursday was the day I came back from Hong Kong. We rescheduled for last night as the girls came. I was only planning for two girls to come, so I was a little surprised to meet FOUR girls outside of our apartment building. I was happy that I had decided to make a large pan of chicken pot pie instead of a small pie dish. Happily, there was enough food, I think two of the girls didn't like it, and we all had a really good time. The kids warmed up to the girls after just a few minutes, all except Lydia who was the center of attention from the beginning! She also started something new last night: spinning in circles! We had never seen her do that before, but it was very amusing. Below are the pictures from last night.

Kindergarten graduate

Well, I am now finally posting this, although she has been finished for more than a week. Isabella has officially finished kindergarten! We are so excited for her and proud of her. She worked very hard to be ready to start first grade in the fall. She is excited to start first grade in the fall and has been looking at the new books with a lot of anticipation! Elijah also is looking forward to starting preschool. We think that he is definitely ready! The new semester will begin before we know it!

Congratulations!!!

The latest news from Hong Kong...

As some of you already know, I ended up with some symptoms that combined possibly could have been a very bad sign, but in the end (after two nights in the hospital and 5 days total in Hong Kong) everything is fine. During this time, I got to go to have a "real" prenatal check-up. In the interest of making sure everything was alright, she sent me to another clinic that pretty much only does ultra-sounds...very cool! We found out that this will be girl number 3. We are excited to know. Knowing the gender always makes it feel more "real," I guess. I resisted the urge to buy a bunch of beautiful, imported, French baby clothes though! This took so long to report because I was really hoping to be able to download the video we got of our sweet Elianna, but I have yet to figure that out. So, instead, it's just the news that is news!

Beach Bums

OK! Confession time...we live 2 1/2 hours from the beach and we have been twice in the last 2 1/2 years. Yesterday, we took the early bus down and the afternoon bus back and spent about 4 hours at the beach. Enough for me to get a little sunburned, and Tim, who refused to wear sunscreen, get quite a bit sunburned! Anyway, the following are the pictures of all of us having a good time...well, all but Lydia, who did not like the waves and cried almost everytime I took her out. Hope everyone is having a nice summer.