A Lego day, old friends and more

Well, I have no great excuse for not blogging other than laziness perhaps! Today was a "Lego day". We had a quieter day at home and the boys played Legos for a good part of the morning. Austin is enjoying making more complex creations, like houses, castles and boats. Bennett loves Lightening McQueen lego car and all the animals from our Lego zoo. I was surprised at how long they stayed entertained today.

You can see Austin's house with the steps, the boat in the front. He is pretty creative with what he wants to build.

Bennett with "Light-nin Ma -Keen" and a runny nose...he doesn't seem to go long without one.

Austin transported his Lego family in the car to an art museum- which was his comforter. Of course only our child would pretend to send his legos to an art museum :).

We have also had a number of old friends we have seen or run into lately, which has been fun but busy. Our good friends Christy and Jess from Chengdu were in town and had dinner a week ago or so. Another friend who was a student at the school where Chris got his master's from was in town a few days later and got to come over. He has now graduated and is working in a nearby city. The most amazing story was last Sunday we were on the subway on the way to church. Chris noticed a guy across from us with his wife and son who looked familiar. However, it was hard to tell because it had been 10 years since he had seen the guy. It turned out it WAS a guy that Chris had met our first year in China. At the time, he was a senior and though he was really interested in friendship with Chris, was gone before they had spent a lot of time together. Years later Chris had gotten an email learning this guy was like-minded and doing well. Now he is married, has a son and is off to school in Boston in May. But he lives one subway stop away from us! Crazy.

Austin's school will start next week after a long holiday break. Big changes are coming though. The mornings are now all English (learning simple spoken English and ABC's- Austin would be bored to death), with some new teachers and a new program. So we are switching him to a few afternoons a week. Though the afternoon is definitely not an ideal time, it is all in Chinese then. Tuesdays and Fridays are actual Chinese language lessons, starting character recognition and some writing. I think he will enjoy that part and get a lot out of it. He doesn't usually sleep during naptime anyway, but getting him there while trying to get Bennett down may be a challenge. Bree will probably be doing the same things though so we can share the transportation load. That's it for now. Chris is gearing up for a trip to the US- he will be gone 2 weeks (so I am gearing up too).