Frogs and ice cream (don't they go together?)

Tonight we had an impromptu ice cream cone party outside in our neighborhood.  A couple of families joined us and the Hunes outside. A hot day actually turned into a nice evening and after the ice cream, the kids went crazy catching frogs in the pond and creeks in our complex.  It was such a fun, spontaneous way to end the week.

Attempt

Oh I hope this attempt is successful. Life has come at us fast these days while our internet has been ...S-L-O-W.  Too slow to attempt blogger at all. So I will try.  Backing up a few weeks, here are some highlights from Lucy and my trip to the States.  It was great to connect with family, meet Harrison and Grace, get to catch up and see what life is like for everyone.  Lucy loved her cousins and loved to give them their pacifiers or toys...however when it came to sharing Mommy if I held them, she was not such fan. Shrieking jealous. However we managed to make it work because I did have to hold my niece and nephew! Lucy charmed everyone as she usually does and really did well with all the travel, jetlag, new beds and people.  After throwing up the day we left at home, she made it the whole plane ride with NO throw up though she did have a fever.  Coming home she did great and slept half the ride.  Poor Chris wins a great husband award.  He got strep throat right after I left and was pretty miserable the first week.  And 3 of our close family friends all got sick and could not help with the boys like we had planned (with various things like strep, hand, foot and mouth and throw up bug). But he took great care of them, took them along to his class, meetings, took them camping and they had lots of boy fun.  Bennett greatly warmed up to Daddy (as he usually had preferred me to Daddy a lot) and is usually as happy if not more to be with Daddy now. Score!
Here are some pictures...I really did not take a lot of pictures and not many good ones (if any of you have some, don't forget to send them on) but here are a few (with my sisters, Mom and Grandpa all missing... sorry!) :

 Lucy and Bop...Lucy was a crazy gymnast around Bop and loved to dive off his lap headfirst to the floor. Fortunately he was quick and usually caught her.

 Attempt #47 to get all the cousins with Bop on Father's Day to look at the camera. Pretty much impossible but I thought Lucy and Bop's shared moment was a winner...and the littles are at least facing the camera.  Might be hard to tell but Lucy and Grace dressed in matching outfits and it was so cute.

 The "big sister" Lucy trying to entertain Grace with toys and the singing doll...she did a pretty good job trying to be a little helper.

 We were so glad to have a visit from Grandpa and Nai Nai...Lucy warmed right up to them and had fun trying on pretty dresses that Nai Nai gave her.

Harrison!  What a cutie and it was so fun to get to hang out with him (and his parents) and see him in person.  He is an active little guy and keeps Emily and Mark moving.

I love this sweet picture of Grace. She is such a treasure and really overall is doing well.  She will have challenges ahead but I was really impressed with her spunk and sweetness. She had just started wearing her new shoes after her casts came off when I arrived and there were some rough days for her and for Charlotte and John as she did not like them and Grace kept getting her feet out of her shoes. But by the time I left just a short time later, she was doing so much better and had adjusted a lot. 

Uncle John!  Lucy continues her love of men and Bop and her uncles Mark and John were no exception.  We spent a long weekend in Newport News and Lucy would run around the house screaming for John at the top of her lungs (John and Campbell, their black lab). She does not know a stranger, this girl!

Hopefully this works and there will be more posts to come...look out for a humorous description of the boys' last day of preschool/kindergarten.  There were songs, performances, awards...and shoving a brother in the middle of his lines.  To peak your curiosity....

Rain Walk

It has been a cool, rainy week.  Rain almost every day.  Tuesday at noon the sky was so dark it literally looked like nighttime...very strange.  Yesterday it was raining lightly and the boys begged to go outside in it.  So we scratched homeschool for that hour and took a rain walk.  Lucy finally got to wear the cute raincoat she inherited (I thought she might never get to wear it, it does not rain often).  Caught some frogs and snails, waded through some overflowing ponds, splashed in some puddles...the usual stuff. Here are the cuties. Notice Bennett's rain boots (Thomas the Tank of course)...he is very proud of them.

So Lucy and I leave on Sunday for our two week trip back to the States.  We are so excited to meet cousins Harrison and Grace and spend some time with family, and do a few medical things.  Please pray for our flight (Sunday 6 pm Asia time, Sunday morning 6 am EST), as Lucy does not like to sit still for long these days (13 minutes can seem long with her, much less 13 hours!). Pray for Chris and Austin and Bennett, who I am sure will have lots of fun doing male-things, but 2 weeks is also a long time to be apart.

School

This month has been a little out of the ordinary in our homeschooling routine.  Let's call it the school of life...but very educational.  A week of language immersion camp (aka Xiao Chen comes to spend the week with my kids while we are away), a close up study in history, geography and politics (aka our trip near a bordering country) and most recently, a lesson in forgiveness ( I will get to that in a minute).  We are finally back to a little routine, in that we are back to daily math, reading and handwriting. I don't have a game plan yet for when we might finish in the summer or maybe we will take breaks but keep going on slow weeks..who knows.  Here is a little glimpse from our school mornings.

Working on math...coloring a pattern. Bennett loved that assignment- right up his alley.  Colors are his favorite and he can spot a pattern or anything out of the ordinary from a mile away.  This boy is observant!

Austin working on handwriting.  This used to be his most frustrating subject, but he has improved so much and sometimes even likes it now.  They have to do handwriting and math at opposite times, since they both usually need help with math but handwriting they can do pretty independently.

Of course Lucy cannot be left out of school time.  On good days she wants to color or sit in her highchair with something to entertain her.  Then there are the bad days...when it is hard to get through more than 30 seconds without an interruption from Miss Busy.

The lesson in forgiveness you ask? So Sunday after church we went to lunch with a friend and near the end Austin comes running over to our table crying, angry and I could tell something hurt, saying Bennett had pushed him.  So as is not unusual Austin and Bennett had some argument and Bennett pushed Austin, who fell backwards and bumped the back of his head on this pointed shelf in the play area (why it was in the play area remains a mystery).  I could see blood on his finger and leg and suddenly in drops on the floor.  It didn't take too long to discover a gash on the back of his head.  After a bit, we decided maybe we should get it looked at and oddly enough we happened to be only a few blocks from the international hospital (pretty far from our home and church). So we went.  He needed 3 staples (why not stitches I don't know) and was pretty brave about it.  Poor Bennett...he was pretty aloof at first but when we got home he just sobbed for about 30 minutes.  He felt really bad and of course had no such intended consequences.  But Austin shared the lollipop we got him after the whole thing with Bennett and I think our recent SCripture reading of the story of Joseph seemed to hit home.  So he is fine, but will get the staples out next Sunday or Monday.  Hopefully that will not be too much of an ordeal.

Chris kept saying he looked like a Teletubby... He had to wear this "hat" to keep the bandage on since he has so much hair.  Thankfully they did not shave the spot.  It is a bit unnerving to see these staples sticking out of his head, but he says they mostly do not hurt now.  Brave boy!

Where have we been?

BUSY, that is for sure.  And tonight will be a brief update because I must go to bed at a decent hour...but wanted to reenter the blogosphere.

Chris and I spent our week away while our kids had a great time with Chen Ayi.  We are so thankful she could come back for the week and care for our kids...and a sad reminder too that she cannot stay.  But all 3 kids did well with her and the help of many friends in driving/picking up and playing with them.  She arrived on a Sunday afternoon and that evening she so quickly had them all playing and entranced with reading.

Chris and I got home on Saturday and Monday morning we all flew out on a short trip north...near a neighboring country on the other side of that mountain.  It was cold but beautiful.  It was quite a trip...a flight, a 10 hour bus ride the next day (which had I known in advance probably would have opted to stay home) and another flight back home the third day.  However, I am also so thankful for opportunities for us to travel with Chris and for my kids to gain such a big perspective on the world and experience new things.  (but I also admit ten hour bus rides with a 1.5 year old is not my favorite way to spend a day).

 Austin loved this part of the trip...loved being free to run around in nature and explore.  There was even an excavator on the mountain digging snow!

 Lucy- with oreo on her mouth.  Let's just say any previous rules we had about snacking quickly go out the window on a long trip like this.

Bennett probably had the hardest time with the cold and climbing...but was happy with Daddy on this walk through these beautiful woods.

Here the kids are making cards to deliver at an orphanage we visited.  We didn't get to see many of the kids but still got a picture of what these children's life looks like on a daily basis.  Better than many orphans at this place for sure, but still falls way short of where children belong...in families.

More later but we are back and playing catch up this week at home.

Away

Chris and I are preparing for a week away.  Not exactly what you might think of as "a week away".  We are taking part in a leadership development week, which is supposed to be great but also deep, emotional and intense.  Meanwhile, I am busy busy getting things ready for our kids, who will not be joining us.  I am so thankful our precious Chen Ayi is coming back to our city for the week to be with the kids, plus the help of many other friends as well to get our kids places and care for them.  Still, it is a lot to leave them so please pray for the kids and for us, that this would be a meaningful week.

Lucy is quite taken with members of the opposite sex right now.  She already numbers her GeGes and Daddy as her favorite people in the world, but she is really attached to several of our Shu Shu (uncle) friends right now and readily jumps in their arms.  Really cute (but hopefully not a sign of the teenage years... shudder).

 Riding the Daddy train.

 "Coffee Shu Shu" - Chris' drummer and good friend probably ranks at the top of the Shu Shu list right now.  She sees his picture and gets excited and jumps in his arms, runs after him as he wrestles and rough houses with the boys.

 One of our oldest, favorite friends from former days is in town for an entire year!   Lucy had fun warming up to him over a book recently.

 Loving on Bennett...she and Bennett are great buds and adversaries but she was loving on him the other day.  She loves to crawl in a bed, lay on the pillow, be tucked in and pretend to snore these days.

And we got to wish another very important man in our life Happy Birthday this week...love and miss you Bop!

Dress up

The girl likes to dress up. These pictures were taken in a span of about 15 minutes. She kept finding things in the bottom drawer of her dresser and bringing them to me to put on.  The hats she managed to put on all by herself.  I think having a little girl is about to really feel different!

 She loves this doll and calls it "baby". In fact, she really loves babies right now (pretty much any child that looks slightly younger than herself is a baby). If we go outside, she points out all the babies.  She had a great time today Skyping with cousin Grace...she just kept saying "baby, baby".