Kate is 5!

Well, the fabulous Kate turned 5 years old, pictured here with the cake she personally decorated!  It was actually last Thursday but with getting Michael the day before I was a little off my game and didn’t get this posted right away!  So here she is – in all of her five-ness glory!  She has literally been counting down the days since September as to when she would turn 5.  I’m pretty certain she thought something magical was going to happen and she would all the sudden be big! (If she was hoping for tall, I’m afraid the poor thing is never going to be that – but at least she is big now!)  In fact, the last two days she keeps saying to me, “Mom, look at how long my arm is – last week when I was 4 it was only this long (showing me a place around her wrist) and now that I’m 5 look at how long it is!”  So apparently in her mind, arms grow when you turn 5!

So here they are, in no particular order – the 5 things I love about Kate!

1. Her smile – the real one!  She is just a beauty!
2. her determined spirit – an example, learning to ride a 2 wheel bike in literally about 1 minute because she was so determined to be like her sisters!
3. the way her mind is always thinking – she is just a thinker and often requires to know exactly what all is going on and why so she can wrap her brain around it.
4. having her run up to me, hug me and say I love you – unprompted by me.
5. that God has restored her joy.  To be honest, we have had difficult struggles with Kate that we never had with the other girls.  I think some of the issues were adoption related and others were related to her personality and the way she internalizes things and wants to be in control.  But what I know for sure is that I prayed over her so many times asking God to give her joy and happiness in her heart – to replace the anger and sadness inside her with the joy that comes so naturally to most children.  And this summer, we saw that prayer answered!  We finally saw Kate able to enjoy herself, to laugh, to enjoy being playfully tickled, to understand humor and laugh at it, and to just in general be happier!  Some would say that it just took time for her to grow and develop emotionally but I know in my heart that when I finally gave her over completely to God, and cried out through tears that, “nothing I am doing is helping her – God you have to take her completely and totally.  Take her heart and restore it and shape it into the heart you have meant for her”.  God said to me in my spirit, “finally you have realized that she is mine!”  Within the next few months we saw gradual changes and then this summer when we returned to Shanghai from the US John and I both just marveled at the happy, beautiful little girl she was developing into!  I praise God daily for the work He has done in her AND me!  He has shown me continually how faithful HE is and I’m so incredibly grateful that He is!
   

We love you, Kate!

A new little surprise for us...

We have been given the very special blessing of caring for a small 2 month old orphan boy for the next several weeks!  He is absolutely precious!  His name is Michael and he is just the sweetest, tiniest thing you have ever seen!  They think he is about 2-3 months old but he only weighs 7.5 pounds so we are doing our best to fatten him up!  He is actually in the care of a foundation here in Shanghai called Baobei that does really amazing beautiful work with orphans who are in need of surgeries!  Michael is waiting for his surgery which should take place in January so we will get to be his foster home until he goes in for his surgery!  The girls absolutely love having him here and are doing such a great job helping me take care of him!  Lauren, especially, is like a little mother to him carrying him everywhere, helping to bathe him, change his diaper, etc.   I’m thankful to have the help because boy, these little ones are a lot of work! :)  I have actually never had a 2 month old baby in my care because as you all know our girls came to us around 1 year old...to have such a tiny peanut is so different for me!  But he is the sweetest thing and I am so thrilled to be able to shower him with love and attention during this time!  I feel blessed to be able to do for him what someone else did for my sweet girls!  Every child is such a blessing and my heart literally breaks to think of all the small (and big) children who will spend this Christmas, once again, in the sterile halls of an orphanage with no family to call their own!  Even though Michael will not be staying with our family permanently, much to the girls chagrin, I am so happy to provide a loving place for him for this time!  God has certainly blessed us with him!  I cannot share actual pictures of his face on this blog because it is a public space but if you would love to see him I can email them privately to friends!  Just email me and let me know!

By the way, if you are at all inclined to help an orphan this year, please consider Baobei foundation and the life-changing work they are doing for Chinese children, including sweet Michael!  You can read all about them on their website at www.baobeifoundation.org.  Michael isn’t listed on their website but I am sure that they are raising funds for his surgery.  I know many of the women who give so much of their time and energy to run this foundation and know that it is worthy of your donations!

Blessings!

Happy Halloween...late!

Well, we had another fun Halloween this year.  We were back to a year of no princess’ in our midst which I still have to say seems odd to me, given how many Halloween’s we have had at least one princess!  This year Leah and Lauren dressed up like their American girl dolls and Kate went as Jessie from Toy Story!  My mom helped me make Jessie’s costume and it turned out great!  Thanks, Mom!  We had Kate’s preschool Halloween party and our homeschool Halloween party to attend and the girls had a ball at both of them.  

The girls loved going around the neighborhood to trick or treat and this time John went with them.  I was happy to sit at home and hand out candy while chatting with a friend who came over.  Once again the girls loot had some very funny things in them – still mostly hard candies!  I mean, really – we are teaching the Chinese a thing or two around here but giving out chocolate at Halloween is just not catching on – much to my girls chagrin!!  I think when we are back in the US for Halloween they are going to be blown away by the goodies they collect!  I mean the candy is so “lame” here that I’m not even tempted to steal any!  Now that says something!  The funniest candy we got was a gummy type candy shaped like a corn on the cob.  Kate thought it would be great because what could be better than combining two of her favorite things – corn and gummies.  Turns out, it’s not such a good combination.  One bite and she promptly said, “ah, mom, I wasted my one after dinner treat on this yucky corn thing!”  I am not the absolute meanest mother in the world so I did let her choose something different.

On a side note, I am so behind on this blog and I really have such good intentions of catching up soon – but somehow life just gets in the way of things on my to do list!  We went on an amazing 3 week vacation in September and October and I’ve got to tell you all about it before I forget most of the details!  It seems my brain, for some reason these days, doesn’t remember all it should.  So hopefully this weekend I will get a nice post out telling you all about our fantastic European whirlwind vacation!  It was truly amazing the things we saw and I can’t wait to share pictures with you to try to convince you all to go!  Now, I did say, hopefully this weekend – please don’t sit by the computer waiting for it because with my track record it just might not happen.

Hope you all are enjoying a beautiful fall!  Blessings!

Mom, what's for dinner?

Well, kids, I thought tonight I would pick up some delicious pig snout!! I
mean, really, even in Chinese would that ever sound good to someone??? I
had to take this picture because it was at my regular grocery store I go to.
This store would be the equivalent of Super Walmart. It's a very regular
store and sitting right next to the rotisserie chickens are the pig snouts!
I know I am being incredibly ethnocentric but I just can't believe someone
really thinks that would be good eats!

I showed Leo the photo and asked him if he ate this and he said, "what is
it?" so that made me feel a little better! :). I told him it was pig snout
and he said he doesn't eat it but a farmer would. This is Leo's way of
saying that Shanghai people wouldn't eat it but people who lived in the
country and just come to Shanghai to work would. There is a hierarchy here
in China and it seems most know their place in it.

For instance, the very poor migrant worker will eat his lunch on the side of
the road and then just throw his trash on the ground (even though the trash
can is not that far away). It is someone else's job to come by and clean up
the street...that would be below him. Or another example, when we moved in
and someone would come to put together something for us, if there was a
bunch of boxes or just a general mess from his work, he wouldn't clean it up
because that would be what an ayi's (maid) job would be. It's really
interesting. I think maybe it has more to do with the fact that everyone has
a job to do. In a country with so many people, it seems to me that they
break the jobs down into small parts so that there are enough jobs to go
around.

Of course, I don't know any of this to be fact - it's just my observations
and my ponderings. I am by no means an expert on Chinese culture but it is
really interesting to me. So, on that note, I'll just say, go out and get
yourself some pig snout...who knows, maybe it is delicious! Of course, if
it is you will have to let me know because I'm not going to try it! :) I'll
have to ask John if he has had it before - there isn't much he hasn't tried!

Now...go eat your dinner!

And by the way, I have no idea what those other two parts are on the sides!

Tragedy and triumph!

Don't get too worried - the tragedy is not a terrible tragedy in light of what most consider tragedies but for our girls it seemed like tragedy...the bunnies have run away!  Honest...I did not let them out!  One evening they discovered their God-given talent to dig and lo and behold they began digging while we were sleeping peacefully inside.  We came out to feed them only to find them GONE!  We located the hole where they dug under the fence but we weren't able to ever find them!  The girls were sad but I have to say, not as sad as I thought they would be.  I was all set for the tears and the drama (we have 3 girls, you know) but actually everyone was OK.  They were sad the bunnies were gone but really after a day or two it was just back to normal at our house.  John and I decided that God poured out his grace and mercy on us and forgave us for such a dumb, spur of the moment parenting decision.  :)  The bunnies actually were not difficult pets but they were still pets!  We still had to figure out what to do with them every time we were going to go out of town.  So we are back to being pet-less and that is fine with John and I!  The girls still talk of a pet dog when we move back to the US but John and I will try to be stronger next time! 

And now for the triumph...Kate can ride a 2 wheel bike all by herself.  The poor child is so short that she still really can't fully reach the ground with both feet to get on and off of it (even with a very short bike and the seat at the lowest level) but man can she ride!  It literally took me holding on to the back of the bike to steady her for about 30 seconds and she was off.  She still has a hard time starting off, mainly because her feet don't touch the ground and she hasn't exactly gotten the hang of stopping with brakes but we're getting there!  Don't you just love her helmet...I think it's actually a roller-blading helmet (it looks like roller-derby to me) but it was the one we could find that fits her little head! :)

I just love this one because Leah and Lauren were cheering her on!

We are now back in the full swing of school and tennis and ballet and everything else that goes along with a new school year starting up.  We are actually on week 7 of school now so it's nice to have a little cushion in our schedule!

Beautiful Thailand

I just wanted to send out a few photos from our great trip to Thailand.  We went to Phuket, Thailand and stayed on the beach in a great hotel.  Everything about the place was beautiful.  Our room was just a short walk to the pool and to the beach.  The beach was really wonderful and the waves were really big!  We actually weren't able to get into the water since from May to October they have some pretty bad currents and rip tides in the area but we still had fun building sand castles and splashing our feet in the water.  Kate was just fine with not getting in those big waves.  She wasn't even really sure if she wanted the water to lap up on her toes because the waves crashing on the beach was so loud!

The resort had a beautiful pool so after we would have our fill of the sand and ocean we would just head up to the pool and spend the rest of the day lazying around, swimming and eating popsicles!  It was really great and so nice to have some family time together!  John took the opportunity to take some photos of the girls on the beach so I just thought I would share them.

I am behind on this blog so there are going to be a couple of catch up posts in the next few days!  Hope you guys are enjoying your summer!

A Chinese pick-up truck

Just thought you all might like to see what a pick up looks like here in China. I'm kidding, of course but the funny thing is you don't ever see trucks like we have in the US. They either use this type of bike thing that they pull by hand or they have more of a moving van type truck. I'm always amazed at what all they can carry by hand on these things. Fortunately for this guy, these chairs aren't too heavy.

One other thing...about Expo!

I just had to add one thing to the post I just made about the Expo.  I told you all that the Expo place was big but I need to put that in a greater context.  Today at the Expo, they had 425,800 people visit!!!!  Can you even imagine that number of people in one place?  That is roughly 7.5 times more people than the entire population of the city in the US where we moved here from!!  And we think a football stadium that holds 100,000 people is amazing!  By the way, that is just ONE days worth of visitors!  So far the World Expo website says that they have had 30,831,900 people visit!  That’s right...almost 31 million people!  Does that not just floor you?  It does me.  The majority of the visitors are Chinese and coming from parts all over China.  You have never seen a herd of tour buses or people until you have seen the parking areas around the Expo.

John and I always laugh that the Chinese people, for the most part, don’t really have any concept of personal space – meaning that we get bumped into more here then any where we have ever lived or traveled.  Imagine Super Walmart the day before Christmas and you are just beginning to have a very small taste of what it is to live in this mega-city of Shanghai.  But we laugh because you know, in the US, if you bump into someone the polite thing to do is say, excuse me or pardon me or something.  But here, they literally bump into you and just keep on walking not thinking anything of it.  At first I got so annoyed by this – I mean, where are your manners, people???  But then I realized that when you live in a country with over a BILLION people, if you say excuse me every time you bumped into someone that might be all you are ever doing!  I’m exaggerating a bit on that but really, our sense of personal space in the US is so different especially when you consider that most of the people here in Shanghai live in tiny high-rise apartments not much bigger than 400-500 square feet with neighbors all around them.  The other funny thing they do at the grocery store if your basket is in their way is they just bump into it until you either move it or it moves out of the way on it’s own.  Again, it used to drive me crazy but now I find that I just go through the store bump, bump, bumping along not thinking anything of it.  And strangely, they don’t think I’m being rude a bit.  I can just imagine that I will move back to our small mid-western town and get quite the talking to when I’m in Walmart and bump someone’s cart not thinking of where I am and how, “oh yeah, that’s RUDE!” :)

Well, these are the things that we learn and grow and love about getting to experience a different culture so close-up.  And on that note, I just want to add one last thing that is fascinating to me.  It amazes me to really see first hand how deep our cultures are engrained into us – without us really even knowing it.  I can’t remember exactly what it was that Leo and I were talking about last week but I recall that we both ended the conversation just floored that the other person could not grasp what it was the other was talking about!  It had nothing to do with language barriers – it had everything to do with coming from two different cultures where things are just done so differently!  I could not wrap my brain around what he was saying as a feasible (and “good”) way of doing things nor could he understand why you would want to do it differently then his way!  It was funny and really just showed me that no matter what culture it is you are raised in, you have things inside you that are just purely cultural.  One really isn’t better than the other (although often times “we” think our cultural way is far better) it just has to do with differences.

Anyway, I just thought that you all might find some of those musings interesting!  Blessings!

Shanghai summers...

Summer is here!  It is hot and steaming and wonderful! You know, John and I have a rule that you can only complain about one season or else you are just always complaining – so I choose the winter – and no matter how hot and steamy it gets here, I just say, “ahhhh, so much better than the cold!” :)

The summers are funny here in Shanghai because literally most of the expat community leaves and goes back to their home country.  So it just leaves us here to fin for ourselves!  We have been having a nice summer, though, spending most of our time doing school in the mornings and swimming in the afternoons.  Since all the friends are gone we do school the month of July and then with 4 weeks of school already done we can take off weeks whenever we want during the year...the beauty of homeschooling!

One other fun thing we have done this summer - we went to the World Expo that is being held here in Shanghai.  On the 4th of July, the American pavilion asked American families living here who have children adopted from China if we would want to walk in the USA parade.  The girls were very excited to get to walk in the parade and wave to all the people.  For John and I, we thought everyone is ALWAYS staring at our family, we might as well go and be in a place where they are supposed to stare at us! :)  But, lo and behold, it rained on our parade, literally!  We got a very special tour of the inside of the US pavilion (without having to wait in line which was great) and then were getting ready for the parade when an imminent downpour of rain cancelled the parade.  The girls were disappointed but since we were already there we just went ahead and enjoyed the rest of the day at the Expo.  I have to say that I was a naysayer going into the day, thinking it wouldn’t be much fun and just tons of hot, sweaty people in long lines.  Well, that was true for a time but by about 7 o'clock most of those people were heading home so we stayed until almost 10pm and had a great time running into all the different country pavilions seeing what they had to offer.  We got to eat authentic Belgium waffles which were great and see lots of interesting pavilions, like Egypt, Chile, Brazil.  We plan to go back again and try to hit some of the pavilions of places we might never be able to go to in “real life” – like Cuba, Afghanistan and a whole bunch of those other “Stan” countries.  The Expo site is HUGE and has tons and tons of pavilions in it of countries from all over the world.  So we plan to go back again one of these weekends!  Anyway, the picture above is of the girls when we were getting ready to go for our parade day!

Hope you guys are all enjoying your summer!  I always love summer – I just love the feel of loosened schedules and that fun just seems to be in the air a bit more!

Happy Birthday, Mei Mei

Lauren turns 7!

I say it with every passing birthday but once again, I can’t believe that my little sweet Mei Mei has turned 7!  

And here in no particular order are the...
7 Things I Love Most about Lauren!

1. her amazing smile – it really does light up a room – and has since the day we adopted her!
2. her fun loving, “let’s play” attitude
3. her sense of adventure and willingness to try so many new things and new foods without complaint!
4. her sweet giggle that just goes all over her body
5. her willingness and joy to give you whatever it is she has...truly, it can be the last piece of her favorite candy and she will offer it up to you without any prompting or asking – and without feeling like she has to!  She loves to give gifts to others.
6. the way she will be off in the distance from me, playing with friends, and still turn around on occasion and give me a little wave just to say hello! :)  It always warms my heart!
7. To me, there is nothing better than watching Mei Mei when she is excited about something – she jumps up and down and squeals and you just can’t help but be excited about it too!
   

The list could go on and on but those will be for another year! And can I just add for all you moms of young kids that read this...there is hope – she FINALLY sleeps through the night without issue and has for a couple of years now!  I remember for years (literally) thinking that day would never come!  :)

Irony...

Well, here is a funny and ironic story about our lives...at least we think it’s ironic!  Before we moved to Shanghai, as most of y’all know, we lived in the middle of the US in a small little Midwestern town where we actually lived just on the edge of the city limits and yet we passed two farms on the way to get to our house! :)  While living in this great small town, we lived on a 1 acre lot with tons of green space everywhere to run and play on.  The girls always wanted to have a pet but with 3 kids, adding something else to take care of was not high on my list of priorities...at all!  So we never had a pet even though we were asked constantly.

Now, guess what happens, we decide to move to the 3rd largest city in the world where we are blessed to actually live in a house but it has a tiny garden in the back that is literally about 10 feet wide by about 40 feet long.  But, hey, we are thrilled to actually have a little bit of green space.  So anyway, one day our whole family is at a flower market getting petunias to spruce up said backyard when we come across cages and cages of very cute little bunnies.  Well, you can imagine what happened next and in a moment of either sheer stupidity or sheer “you are the best parents ever” we said yes to the purchase of  bunnies!  So on that day, we came home with 2 very cute Lionfaced Lop bunnies that the girls absolutely adore!    I, of course, came home and had to read up on what all bunnies eat and what you do with them and most importantly if they carry awful diseases that will kill us.  Much to everyone’s delight (especially mine!) they carry no serious diseases and are quite easy to care for.  And turns out they are actually a very fun little pet!

John spent the next weekend building a house for them in the backyard and we put up a lot of chicken wire type fencing around their house so they have some green space to enjoy which is quite funny really because we live in quite a nice neighborhood and I’m sure our Chinese neighbors behind us think we are crazy!   But, actually, I’m pretty sure they already thought that so no great new revelation for them!

So I’ve included a picture of our newest additions...by the way, their names are Clover and Flower!  And yes, they are two girls! :)

Mei Mei lost a tooth...

Well, two actually!  Lauren is 6 and 3/4 (as she will tell you) and she has been waiting not-so patiently for years to lose her first tooth!  Leah had a loose tooth on her 5th birthday so Lauren assumed on her 5th birthday she would have one too.  Well, the fifth birthday passed with no loose teeth and then the sixth birthday passed with no loose teeth.  She was getting a bit discouraged thinking she was going to have her baby teeth forever but finally last month, it happened and not one loose tooth but two!  The two bottom ones!  One came out on one day and then the very next day she lost the other one so two nights in a row the tooth fairy made the long journey to China to deliver fairy dust and some rmb! :)  It is amazing how the tooth fairy knows exactly what currency to deliver to little ones no matter what country they live in.  

So this is our exciting news that I thought I should share with everyone!  And really, have you ever seen a cuter smile???

I have seen it all now...

The other day I took Leah and Lauren to this really big flower market just to walk around for a little while and see what we could see. There were tons of stalls with beautiful flowers of all kinds, azaela bushes and beautiful plum blossom trees. As we were walking, Leo found us and started walking with us then we came upon the bird section of the market. There were tons of little pet birds of all varieties in little cages but nothing we hadn't really seen before - it's pretty normal to see these bird markets around China as birds are a fairly common pet for the Chinese. But then we rounded the corner to go see more birds when we came across these bigger black birds. In the background I could hear people talking in Chinese but didn't think much of it, I mean we are in Shanghai :), UNTIL I realized it was not people talking it was the BIRDS talking in Chinese! The girls and I got so tickled over this that we could hardly believe it. Leo thought we were so funny because we had never seen a bird speak Chinese. I informed him that all the birds we had ever known spoke English! Now I know in my head it makes perfect sense for a bird that has only been around Chinese people to speak Chinese just as babies do, but to actually hear it...was a riot! I tried to video it with my phone camera because I didn't have my big camera with me. So hopefully you can at least get a little blip to experience this with us. There were other birds that were talking lots but every time I went to film them, they just chirped like a regular bird! It cracked me up...it's like they new the crazy foreigner wanted to capture their Chinese on film! So anyway, here is at least a little bit for y'all! You have to listen closely - it's right at the end, the bird says "Ni hao" or hello! :) You can hear the ni hao and see his little beak move! Enjoy!

Babies, beautiful babies!

Ok, before you jump to the wrong conclusions...Leah does not have a new baby sister, although I'm certain she would have been thrilled to bring sweet Anna home!

For a while now, I have been wanting to get the girls going on some type of service project/volunteer work since we homeschool and have time to do it. John and I really want our girls to be full of head knowledge AND heart knowledge but it is not always easy to find things that I can do with a 8, 6 and 4 year old! Today we had the perfect opportunity...we got to go to the Shanghai Healing Home for orphans to hold and play with babies. These are babies from all over China that are here in Shanghai to have surgery done, mostly for cleft lip but there is one baby here for club foot surgery. I wasn't sure how the girls would do with the babies since they "look" different but they were just great, jumping right in to hold the babies and play with them. I just wanted to share some of the sweet pictures we took today.

On a personal note, it has been a long time since I held babies, and my "babies" were always around one year old so it was amazing to me how little a 2 month old baby is - and how light she is! The girls were smitten with the babies and if you notice in Kate's picture that she is rubbing both the baby's tummy and her head. I'm pretty certain she felt like she was petting a puppy and happy to do it! Fortunately, that was one tired baby and she slept right through it! I had planned to do this once a month but all the girls informed me that we should definitely do this once a week...so we'll see! It was such a blessing to us to be able to give these sweet babies a little one-on-one attention.

Happy Birthday to our sweet Leah...

The photos above...
One of our very first family photos – Leah just before she turned 1 years old while we were still in China adopting her!  And another one from our China adoption trip. And two from our recent trip to Bali...So there you can see for yourselves just how fast 7 years go by!

Leah turns 8 years old tomorrow.  I can’t even believe that she is 8 but I know I say that every year.  In honor of her 8th birthday, here are my 8 favorite things about Leah:

1. She has a quiet and calm spirit but can be goofy and funny and silly with the best of them.
2. She loves to dance and I love to see her pirouetting around the house.
3. I love watching her learn new things or seeing the light bulb go on in her little mind.
4. Watching her draw – she really is amazing at how well she draws and paints.
5. Snuggling on the couch and reading a book to her (she’s the only one that I know for sure is really listening :)!)
6. Seeing her little competitive side come out when we play Uno or Skipbo.
7. her beautiful face and that long thick amazing black hair!
8. seeing her love for Jesus and the tenacity in which she reads her Bible and the way she wants to understand it all.
   

We are so blessed to have Leah!  Happy, Happy Birthday to you, sweet Leah!

"Mom, when will we...

Have soft chicken again?”  This is the question that was posed to me at supper tonight from my beloved daughter, Lauren.  To which I responded, “Huh?”  Lauren then said, “you know, Mom, when are we going to have soft chicken again, not this chewy, rubbery chicken.”  And so this explains perfectly the kind of chicken we get here in China!  No matter how much I beat it with a tenderizer before baking or grilling it, it turns out, well...a little chewy.  I promised Lauren that when we get back to the US we will have perfectly soft chicken often!

Bali was beautiful and such a wonderful, relaxing time for our family.  I will try to post some photos of it soon.  

Where have we been?

Well, actually just China! But for some reason these last 2 months have slipped away! I seriously don't know where the days go - most days I don't even know where the hours go! And because it has been so long since I blogged I'm sure I have some very interesting anecdotes about living here in China to share with you. But, alas, it is almost midnight here and I can't think of one interesting anecdote to share so I'll just share some quick blips from our life.

Leah got glasses. She still is as beautiful as ever (I'm biased, I know) but now she can see. Turns out that is a good thing! She has to wear them all the time because without them everything is a blur! It has left Kate longing for glasses though - you know...no one likes to be the odd man out. She tells me almost daily how bad her eyes are and that she can't see anything. Funny, how her eye site deteriorated so quickly once Leah got glasses.

Big news, Shanghai now has a Krispy Kreme and a Carl's Jr. burger place! Life is so good when you can have big juicy hamburgers, all you can drink fountain cokes and sugary bliss for dessert! It's the little things that count!

Christmas was great. Christmas in China looks a little different but all in all we had a great time! Yes, that is Santa...don't you recognize him? And yes, those are Mickey Mouse ears on Kate...the child wears them all the time, every where...I've just given up on that one!

Mom & Dad were here so it was loads of fun to have them for Christmas. Santa found us and we had turkey and cornbread dressing with all the fixins...couldn't even really tell we were in China! Our driver, Leo, had Christmas dinner with us and he was so thrilled to be eating his first ever Christmas dinner. And by the end of the meal, his plate was empty so it must have been at least a little good to him!

The last month has been such a blur that I haven't even downloaded my Christmas pictures off the camera - that's how behind I am. Honestly, along time ago (say about 7 years ago) I was really with it and had all my ducks in a row. Now I have 3 extra ducks and can't seem to keep anything in a row!

And last but not least in just a few days it will be Chinese New Year and we are headed away from this big city life to soak up the sun on the beach in beautiful, tropical Bali! I know it's rough duty but someone has to do it. Actually, John is gone from Shanghai most every week from Monday to Thursday and our family is in some serious need of hanging out with Dad time! We all can't wait for it! I'll post some pictures of beautiful Bali soon...you know, like in May! :)

Blessings!