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!

Kate is 4 years old!

Well, today is a monumental day at our house because Kate turned.  It is monumental to her because 4 is BIG, of course, and it is monumental to me because there have been days this year when I didn’t think she would make it to see 4!  But I am so glad to see 4 as the 3’s are not my favorite age! :)  She is a beauty and can be tons of fun but boy does she ever have a strong opinion about the way things should be done (her way, of course!).  I know that God is using her to grow me in SO many areas...patience and consistency to name a few...but we are so blessed to have her!  I couldn’t love her anymore if I tried!

I have updated our www.onehappyhome.com website so you might want to check it out when you get time.  I made it on a mac and it seems like the homemade mac websites take forever to load, so you’ll have to let me know if it does and I’ll try to figure out a different way of posting stuff.  I wanted to do the website so I would have an easy way to share photo and video updates since blogger and youtube are always blocked and a hassle for me to get to sometimes.  So if you have a chance, you should check out the movies page for sure.  There is a video on it of Kate explaining to me today what it is to be 4!  It’s pretty cute!  Also, the other video is of the girls scootering through our house while singing a nice little Christmas jingle for your listening enjoyment!  Yes, that’s right...they have their scooters indoors and scooter all around our first floor – it is the one great thing about hard marble floors and it gets a lot of pent up energy out on cold days!

So you can see the videos on the movies page at:  http://www.onehappyhome.com/One_Happy_Home/Movies/Movies.html.  Hopefully it will work but let me know if it doesn’t.  

Have a great day.  And happy, happy birthday to our sweet baby Kate!  

PS:  Here are the direct links to Kate’s turning 4 video: http://www.onehappyhome.com/One_Happy_Home/Movies/Entries/2009/12/16_Kates_take_on_turning_4!.html

And the scootering video page:  http://www.onehappyhome.com/One_Happy_Home/Movies/Entries/2009/12/13_Mad_About_Greece.html  (which I just noticed is still named Mad about Greece...no, we haven’t moved to Greece – my computer skills are just not as good as I like to think they are.  Forgot to change that!)

My Little entrepreneurs

Yesterday was a fun day so I thought I would share a picture with y'all.  Once a month the girls and I go to our local homeschool meeting...a time when the different homeschool families from around Pudong come together.  The kids go have a PE class for the first hour and then the 2nd hour is spent with moms and kids together doing some sort of "theme".  Last month, it was book reports – this month it was Entrepreneur fair! 

The girls had to work on many different aspects of running their own business.  They had to think of a product (or in our case several), make them, then price them, get displays ready and be ready to sell them to the other homeschool kids and moms at the meeting today.  I was really proud of them because they did all the work themselves and made all the products, with only a little help from me to tie knots when needed.  Yesterday they were hard at work making the little Christmas tree to hang the ornaments on for a display and making signs for the table.

So, today was the big sale and they were thrilled because all of their items sold!  When the kids would come by to look at them, they had their little marketing talk to give (i.e. This candle holder makes a nice Christmas gift for moms!).  It was too funny!  Then they had to make change when needed and so on.  So there was lots of "educational" value to it but really they saw as just a great time!  They, of course, had just as much fun going around to all the other kids tables and buying up stuff, as well!

In the end, I'm pretty sure all of us Mom's just swapped our money around...but what a great reason to do it!  The kids all felt so successful and had a great time doing it!

Cristi

Happy Halloween!

I cannot believe it is already November 1st and it has been 2 months since I updated the blog...really where does the time go!  We have been busy with school and just life, I guess!  Nothing super note-worthy but wanted to share the pictures of our beauties last night at Halloween.  The compound where we live has a trick or treat each year and the girls had loads of fun!  It is funny though because our neighborhood is not strictly an expat compound so there are many Chinese families that live here as well and their version of “treats”...well, let’s just say it’s not quite the same as ours!  The girls got a lot of just little hard candies that you suck on.  We laughed because the ladies that I walked with said, “you know in the states there would be a public outcry from the kids if they received this many hard candies for treats!” :)  But one Chinese house was a HUGE treat because the man was sitting out on his front patio with a machine spinning cotton candy and each kid!  The girls were in heaven and so thrilled to get to have solid sugar spun into strings and wrapped on a stick!  Just an fyi for those that are curious, in Australia they call cotton candy, fairy floss!  I thought that was cute!

PS:  Leah was Queen Guinevere, Lauren – Cleopatra and Kate was Penny from the movie Bolt.  I thought it was funny that I commented last year that for the first time in 5 years I did not have a princess in my Halloween troupe so it was the end of an era...well, a new era has begun because the two big girls were all about being Queens this year.  I guess we have graduated from princesses to queens! :)  I know I’m biased but I do believe they were the most beautiful queens around last night!  Kate was, of course, happy to being saving the world from the Green-Eyed monster and doing it while looking so adorable! :)

Life in China

Lauren and I went out for a bike ride today to pick up a few things at the store and came across this man on the corner. This is so typical here in Shanghai but every time I see it, I'm still amazed. I think it might just be a new business opportunity for some of y'all in the US.


This particular gentleman had chickens, ducks, pigeons and Lauren said she saw baby chicks, but not sure about that one. The great thing is once you pay for it, he is even nice enough to slaughter it for you on the spot and then throw all the yucky stuff into the white bucket. What nice service! :) And, it should also be noted that this cage is attached to the back of his motorcycle so if business dries up in one area, he can just hop on and drive on down the road to sell to the next group of Chinese ladies that come out to greet him.

By the way, I'm not sure how he gets those chicken to stay so nicely on top of the cage. Every time (OK, the few times) I have been around chickens they scatter in every direction the moment you get close to them. I'm thinking that maybe their leg was roped to the cage...probably not what the PETA people want to hear but, alas, this is China!

Anyway, just wanted to share the fun picture. I'm certain there is a market for this type of fresh meat in the US for any of you entrepreneurs out there. Have a great week!

And PS: for those interested...we survived the typhoon with very little fanfare except a lot of rain and a bit of wind. It mainly hit way south of us but we certainly got quite a bit of rain from it.

Two peas in a pod

I just had to put this picture on the blog because it is just the
cutest picture I think. The girls asked me if they could sleep on the
floor tonight in their room and I said I didn't care. So when I go in
to check on them they were sound asleep but both on Lauren's pillow.
You can't really see it in the picture but Leah's pillow is right
there beside her but she is content to be snugged up next to her
sista...as we call them in our house.

I know that the closeness they have now might not last forever but I
just love that right now there is no one they would rather be with
more. I prayed when we were adopting Lauren that God would knit their
hearts together...I am certain He answered my prayer!!!

An archaeology dig...

Today the girls had a fun day so I thought I would share some picture of it. This year the girls and I are studying Ancient civilizations...you know, like Egyptians, Romans, etc. but before we dive into that I have been talking to the girls about archaeology and how we know some of the things we know about the past because of archaeology digs. Of course, we saw the Terracotta Warriors earlier this year so they had a bit of an idea of how it works. I found the coolest things at Toys R Us here that I bought to help explain the concept to them a bit more and they were a huge hit. Basically they each got to do their own little "dig". I didn't tell them what was in the block of "dirt" so they had the fun of discovering what they dug up.

It was so funny to watch the two girls dig out their treasure...so indicative of their personalities. Lauren was digging as fast and as furiously as one could imagine (as you can see by all the debris on her face and everywhere) with big chunks coming off and me saying over and over, "be careful, watch out, make sure you don't break the treasure."

And Leah sitting digging very carefully, patiently, overly cautious making sure that she didn't go too fast so as not to break anything or miss anything! She would dig for a minute then carefully brush away the debris...I had to keep reminding Lauren, don't forget to use the brush! :)

It just cracks me up how completely different they are and yet they really are the best playmates and absolutely love being together. I guess the "opposites attract" thing is true of sisters, too. In the end, both found their treasure...Lauren's Terracotta horse and Leah's Terracotta warrior.


After she finished, Leah said, "wow, archaeology is really cool!" Mission accomplished! :)

Total Solar Eclipse

From Solar Eclipse

I forgot to post in my last email message that the girls and I got to experience the Total Solar Eclipse on Wednesday, July 22. John was working in Xuzhou and it didn’t look even nearly the same. Evidently, Shanghai was supposed to be one of the best places in the world to view it. Unfortunately, we could not see any part of it because it was very overcast and rainy that day but what we did get to experience was very cool...total darkness at 9:35 in the morning! It was really amazing because around 9:30 it started to get dusk like and I thought that would be about it but within a couple of minutes it was just like the middle of night and then within a couple of moments, daylight again! A friend snapped this picture of the girls and I and you can see us because of the flash but you can see by the background how totally dark it was. It triggered the night time lights in our complex to come on, as well.

I have a video that really shows how dark it is that you can click here to see it on Picasa if you would like. Click here to see the video.

Or it might show up here:

The block continues and summer fun!

Lauren turns 6!

I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a long while but they continue to block access to blogspot and now Facebook so I have no way of updating things. The block now is such that even a few of the VPN’s I was using (thanks, Sandi) still don’t allow me to access blogger. Actually, I can access them but can’t log in to update. I can only look at the sites. So I am going to try to post this from my email account. Please forgive if the formatting comes through funny!

We have had quite a few things happening around here the last month or two. First we finally got to check out the Emergency Room services of a hospital here in Shanghai! Lauren was riding her bike very fast when she lost control and had a major wipeout. Somehow in the wipeout, her pedal punctured a small hole in her leg (literally) requiring 2 stitches to sew it up. It was, of course, at about 7:45 at night and John was in Xuzhou but fortunately, my friend down the street was still here in Shanghai so the other girls stayed with her while Leo drove Lauren and I to the ER. Lauren did really great – not even shedding one tear during the whole time of stitching up – through the shots and everything. She’s much braver than I am because she watched the whole thing being poked, prodded and sewn while I turned my head away for most of it! :)

Later that same week, Lauren and Leah got an extra special treat of going to Dubuque with John. My great friend, Jeannie, housed them all and the girls got to see all of their little friends that they miss so much while John worked. Kate and I had a great time hanging out here in Shanghai. Those of you who have just one kid – don’t read this next sentence as I don’t want to offend you – but boy, only having one kid was SOOO easy! I was amazed at how different the work load was with just the one kiddo. Granted I would never trade my crazy days spent corralling all 3 for just one but it certainly was amazing to see. By the end of the week, though, Kate and I were ready for the family to get home! Funny enough, the day they were supposed to fly home, Lauren woke up with a 102 fever. Normally this would have been fine to fly home with (a little uncomfortable, albeit) but with all the H1N1 stuff, China is very skittish and was temp checking every person on every flight rendering anyone with a temp into mandatory quarantine. John obviously didn’t want to chance that so he and the girls hung out in Chicago for an extra two days to let the fever pass and then came on home! In the midst of all of Lauren's escapades, she also turned 6 years old! It's amazing that she is so big now...by age, not height! :)


It’s very hot here now in July – reminds John and I SO much of our College Station days – so we decided to go ahead and start school. We are in the house most days anyway so we might as well get ahead a bit. By doing this we will take off several weeks this fall when the weather is great and enjoy the great outdoors. Flexibility is one of the things we love most about homeschooling! The girls are enjoying their new routines with their new subjects. This year we are going to study all the ancient civilizations over the course of the year and try to learn a ton of geography as well. It seems that we Americans as a whole seem to be quite geography illiterate (definitely me, included) so I’m going to try to expose the girls (and myself) to tons of places this year through our studies and show them where things are located. Leah is in 2nd grade and Lauren is in 1st now. Where does the time go!

Well, that is a bit of an update on what we are up to now! Nothing too exciting but we certainly are enjoying our summer here in China! Hope you all are having a blessed summer!
Lauren enjoying her ice cream cake here in Shanghai!

Cristi and crew!


Summer is here...

Greetings everyone! Summer has definitely arrived in Shanghai. It was nice, hot and muggy today! I'm not complaining-I love it. My theory is you can only complain about either the hot weather or the cold weather otherwise you are just whining all the time about the weather...so I choose to complain about the cold! :)

I still cannot get on to blogger to post. I did find out that this country I call home was/is blocking it because of a certain event that happened in the late 80's in a certain large city here. Evidently, they are afraid people might get together and I don't know...do something I guess. In the mean time, it is really frustrating me!!! It is part of the joys of living here, I guess. I thought that after the anniversary passed maybe they would stop the block, but no such luck yet.

We have been busy this past month. The girls and I finished up with school so now are enjoying some time off from the regular routine. Kate actually went to preschool the last month or so and she was just starting to warm up to the idea of it when it was finished! :) She will go back there in September so at least at that point, she will know the ropes.

We went to Yangshou, near Guilin, at the end of May and it was really beautiful. John certainly needed the time off and away from the craziness of work and we loved having him all to ourselves. We did tons of fun stuff - went riding down the river on bamboo rafts while shooting at things with these water gun type things, we went for a 10 mile bike ride through the countryside and saw absolutely beautiful scenery and then rode a bigger boat down the Li River to see those sites.

The bike ride was the best though. John was on a tandem bike with Leah behind him and then a "baby seat" behind Leah. Lauren sat in a "baby seat" behind me. I say baby seat in quotes because it was literally a little wicker chair with it's legs tied to the back storage rack thing behind our seats! You just have to love the Chinese for their ingenuity! I'm not sure how safe it was but luckily for us most of the ride the only thing passing us was water buffaloes and bikes so there was no imminent danger from cars! We rode passed so many rice fields and they were greener than anything I have ever seen before. Really the green was amazing. We got to to ride through tons of old villages with buildings that are 500 years old and yet there are people living in them. I have some great pictures that I am going to put in our Picasa web albums so you can see them if you want since I can't post too many pictures on Blogger because of the way I have to post it. We ate lunch at one of the farmer villages and all in all it was pretty good. Once again, I just try really hard not to think about what the kitchen looks like where it was prepared. I have to say, I have yet to get sick here from eating the food so really I should be a little more trusting going into it, I guess. I really felt like when we were riding the bikes through the villages that I was seeing the real China! But I guess maybe that is the real China of years gone by - it seems most young Chinese people are definitely concerned with how they can get the latest and greatest gadgets, clothes, etc. and busy trying to seperate themselves from that farming type of lifestyle.

Here are pictures from the trip:

Guilin Trip

Here's a link to the Guilin pics in case the album doesn't work: Guilin Pics

I never did get back around to posting about our trip to Malaysia back in March. Let's just say that it was one of the most beautiful beaches that I have ever been too! We spent 7 nights at a resort in Langkawi, Malaysia and it was fabulous! It was filled with sunshine, swimming, fruity drinks, beach playing, relaxing and all around heavenly bliss! I uploaded some pictures to Picasa so you can see them here if you are interested.

Malaysia March, 2009

We are still here!

Well, for some “unknown” (AKA – China) reason I am not able to go to any blogspot blogs for the past week or so.  So I am going to just try to update it via an email and hope it works out OK.  The only problem is I can’t adjust the formatting so I have no idea what the final result will actually look like! 

 

The last few months have been very busy around our house.  My parents actually came to visit for about 3 weeks and we had a great time with them!  The girls loved getting to see them and show them around Shanghai!  They also went with us to Xian which was fun for all of us.  Dad even became a fan of Chinese food – well, at least the Chinese food that Fang makes us for lunch…noodles and fried rice!  J  While my parents were here we had the great pleasure of getting to watch the girls do their end of the year dance recital.  Lauren was in a tap class and Leah did a ballet class; although Leah’s dance was a Hungarian folk dance or something similar that she had to learn for her ballet class.  I’m posting the pictures of them in their costumes.  And, of course, Kate could not be outdone so when the costumes were on and the pictures were happening she HAD to have her “costume” on too and do her dance for us!  Too funny!

 

I was so proud of the girls.  This is the first time they have ever done anything up on a big stage in front of loads of people and they both did great.  Leah’s was actually a solo so I wasn’t sure how she would do on that big ‘ole stage by herself but she did great!  She told me she was really nervous.  And Lauren was just as cute as can be in her little Tap Dance outfit – her song was the Itsy, Bitsy, Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot bikini so we had to talk to them about her first costume that was not all together modest.  They came up with what you see above which was better!  It was very cute though because after she tried it on the first time (I wasn’t there) she told me after the class, “Mom, I tried on my costume today and it was not very modest at all!”  I asked her what she did about it and she said, “well, I told my teacher that it wasn’t modest.”  Good girl!!  I had to talk with them a bit as well but they were really great in working with us and getting a costume that was more befitting of a 5 year old! J   So anyway, that was one of our very fun weekends where the girls got to feel like super stars for a small time!  Lauren is now done with tap and decided tennis may be more to her liking so she is trying that instead.  One of the very nice things about living in Shanghai is that have tons of kids groups that have lessons for anything one wants to try.  Lauren is doing pretty good with the tennis so far.  One funny story about it, though…it was her first week of lessons and I was telling her some ins and outs of tennis (the very few details I know) but I mentioned to her that girls who play tennis wear skirts.  She immediately said, “YES, I knew I was going to love this sport!”  Said by my girly, girl that would love nothing more than to wear dresses and skirts everyday!  Leah, of course, love, love, loves ballet and can’t imagine doing anything else! 

 

Other than that, we really have not been up to much at all.  We are trying to finish school up and only have about 2 weeks left.  We started late this year and so are having a hard time getting it all done by the end of May (when I like to be done) but we’ll get there!  The weather is beautiful here now so trying to keep them tied down and inside for any amount of time is a trick.  Luckily the beauty of homeschooling allows us to go outside to do lots of our reading and such!  We have a trip to Guilin coming up this next weekend.  It is supposedly one of the most beautiful places in China so I will let you know how it is.

 

Blessings!

 

 

 

 

 

The 8th Wonder of the World

Today we are in Xian to see the Terracotta Warriors. Xian is about a 2
hour flight from Shanghai and we arrived yesterday. We went to see
the warriors this morning and it really was amazing. The first
building which is pictured below is about 100 yards wide and probably
200 yards long. They have only excavated out and restored a portion of
it but what is done is really phenomenal. Each of the warriors are
life size, unique and completely handmade 2200 years ago!!! There are
horses and chariots as well. This was all made by the emperor of the
time. He had them made and buried around his tomb to protect him in
the afterworld. I wonder how that's working out for him. :).

Happy Easter

We are sitting waiting for church to start so I thought I would post a
picture of the girls in their Easter outfits. We are having a
beautiful day here in Shanghai and really enjoying the spring weather.

Well, happy Easter to you all. I am so grateful to serve the
resurrected and living God. Praise God for the sacrifice Jesus made on
the cross for each of us so that we can have the assurance of eternal
life.

He is risen!!!!

Leah is 7 today

Well, today Leah turned 7 years old and to celebrate we are at the newly opened Barbie flagship store. It is 6 floors of pink and Barbie and all things girly. It is sparkly and filled with all kinds of fun things to do. Right now Leah and Lauren are in the design studio getting to design their very own Barbie and outfit to take home. Leah was very excited to get to spend her day here. We have a party on Saturday that I'm sure will be fun.

I'll post about our fabulous vacation to Malaysia after I survive this week of birthday celebrations.