Correction

I realized from the comments made on the birthday cakes that there was a slight miss understanding. I appreciate all the encouraging comments about my "skills" as a cake decorator, BUT I cannot take credit for all the cakes that were pictured. I did make the Batman cake. But the girls cakes were made by a good friend, Robin Capps, while we were in the States. And she is a FABULOUS cake decorator. That girl has skill! Anyway, I didn't want to take credit for her beautiful work. October is Tim's birthday, and so I will be tackling a new cake. He really likes German chocolte, so I will be attempting one from scratch (including buying the coconut, cracking it open, and shredding it myself). It's a little intimidating, but I like trying new things...even though the carrot muffins didn't turn out so well :(.
Well, starting tomorrow is a national holiday here...which means the kids around town were in school Saturday and Sunday. In other exciting news, our small import store sold avocados this week. There is guacamole in our very near future!!! That should be a national holiday! Hope everyone has a great end of September!

Birthday Cakes

Well, the weeks are slowly ticking by. I don't have much to say, but we are celebrating the fact that I have only 12 weeks left (only 8 and a couple of days here) until the baby's here!!! But anyway, as we have just had Elijah's birthday cake, I thought I would go ahead and post pictures of all the birthday cakes from the year (since I forgot to do that).

Batman...

Princesses...

And butterflies!

Man of Steel

Elijah for his birthday got a Superman costume...wow! did he like that! He runs around the house now singing the Superman theme song. So here are the pictures (sorry, they're a little blurry) of him as the Man of Steel...move over Tom Welling!On top of all that cuteness, Isabella did the funniest thing tonight. Swimming season is almost over here. Tonight, we went to McD's to eat. When we got back to our complex, we went through the big gate which goes right past the swimming pool. As we passed, a man wearing a swim cap and a speedo came toward the pool. Isabella hollered out, so I looked down. She was covering her eyes and said, "I hate seeing people naked!"
Have a great weekend everyone!

School and skill

Well, the school year is in full swing. We are about to wrap up the 7th week already! The kids really are enjoying their studies. I am amazed at how quickly Isabella's reading is improving and how much she now wants to read outside of "school time." And Elijah begs me every morning to start his school. You would think it was chocolate cake the way he begs to get started. Anyway, the following are pictures of them at their work.

Here is Elijah asking for the "lion story." Right now he is about anything that growls! He is memorizing a verse every week, reading Bible stories, reading poetry and nursery rhymes, reading stories, and, of course, doing his work book. The work book is by far his favorite. I think he feels very grown up to be following directions and busy about his work!

Here is Isabella and Daddy working on her math. Since Dad likes math and science, he teaches these subjects with her. I think math may be her favorite subject alongside reading. Besides these subjects, she also has history, handwriting, spelling, Bible, and read-aloud (which is where I read books aloud to her).

And like most kids, ours love to do art. We keep a poster of their art work (sorry, it's a little fuzzy!) up so that the work is up for others to see. As you might be able to see from this picture and the one with Isabella doing her math, we have a little school corner in our dining room. We have a small table and chairs, world map, US map, number chart, and all of our school supplies in this area. We use a white board to separate the school corner from the other distractions in the house during "school time."

So I've told you about the school, and now for the skill. Lydia has learned something new...we're not thrilled with it, but it is funny to see. As we have been working on teaching her to point to her nose, mouth, eyes and ears, she has learned something for herself. She has found that her finger fits nicely INSIDE her nose. She isn't picking, just sticking! I was sitting on the living room floor last night, when she walked down into the living room and across the floor all the while her finger up her nose. I have to admit, it was pretty funny looking. She was proud of herself and her find!

Disneyland and the Birthday Boy!

Yesterday was Elijah's birthday and as some of you know, we came to Hong Kong to celebrate...namely to go to Disneyland in Hong Kong! The weather was perfect. It was overcast most of the day with about 15 minutes of rain during dinner time which cooled everything off for the rest of the evening. Everything was so nice. We met up with some other friends who live in a different city and we all went together. The kids played themselves out! We stayed from the time it opened to the time it closed. It was one of those really memorable family vacations. Anyway, Elijah enjoyed his birthday, although he was a little confused since we haven't yet had a cake for him. We took well over 150 pictures yesterday, so the following is simply a sampling. Hope you all enjoy!

Blogger's block

OK, so maybe it was more like the summer lazies! I know that I have had plenty to write about, but just sitting down to do it has been a little difficult to do. So here's all the news (from oldest to youngest) from the summer:

Isabella has hit a big milestone: she lost her first tooth. She also started 1st grade last month. She loves it and is doing well. She is really turning into a good reader. She tries to read anything with words on it! In less exciting news, she also got her first stitches. She fell and hit her head on a cabinet. But she was very brave and hardly cried once the shock of hitting passed. She was very brave when she got her stitches (once the doctor let Daddy come in with her).

Serious student takes a break!

This missing tooth! She's pretty proud.

Strike a pose!

Elijah has started preschool. He LOVES it! His favorite thing is his workbooks. Right now, he is a coloring machine too. He spends probably 2-3 hours a day coloring! He is also learning his numbers...a math teacher friend helped us with that the other day. He showed us a great trick that has really helped Elijah. In less exciting news for him, he got his first black eye...yeah, I know, this is starting to sound like child abuse, I PROMISE we did not inflict these things on our children. They really did fall. I was baking cookies and he ran into the kitchen to see if they were done. Instead he ran into the kitchen door frame...which is pretty sharp. It gave him a little cut on his eyebrow and a nasty looking black eye. It's almost healed now. And in 2 days he will turn 4 years old! I can't believe he is so grown up. We have a special birthday planned!

He's still working on smiling without closing his eyes.

The boy's got skill: winking is the new "trick!"

What a handsome boy!

Lydia is growing fast. Her eighth tooth is pushing through. She runs everywhere she goes. She answers to both English and Chinese. She will eat both American and Chinese foods (she loves broccoli!). She says several words, not very clearly sometimes, but we understand. Her favorite thing to say is "go go." We can't buy baby gates so we have to chase her out of rooms that we don't want her in. She also uses some sign language to tell us she wants more to eat or if she's all done. Her personality comes out more and more each day. One of the other funny things she does is that she shakes her head no to every question we ask her...I don't know that she understands, but she knows that it makes us laugh.

She loves having her picture taken.

Smiley girl!

"I promise not to sit still again like this for a week!"

So for Elijah's birthday, and a family vacation, to Hong Kong. How many kids can say "For my 4th birthday I went to Hong Kong!" And on his birthday, we are going to Disneyland in Hong Kong. The kids are really excited. I have to admit, I'm pretty excited too. I think that they are going to love it. So tonight we leave on a weekend of Mickey and Krispy Kreme doughnuts! We promise to take a bunch of pictures and post them when we get back.

This is our helper with the kids. She wanted to have her picture taken with them! Lydia, especially, LOVES her Ayi!

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.