This is what happens when our internet is slow...

I have some pictures to post, but alas, internet has been impossibly slow the last few days. This happened the middle of last month, too. Maybe it's a trend. In the meantime, I know you are sooo anxious to know what we've been up to, right? (Just play along.) Kevin's been busy and still travels some each week. I'm looking forward to the weather getting cooler so we girls can accompany him from time to time. He's such a great husband and daddy and is working hard to juggle work and family time. Grace had a rough first month back in country. I'm not gonna lie. There were some tough days in there. But the last two weeks have been MUCH better and I think I have my happy girl back. As most of you already know, foreign kiddos here get so much attention every time they leave the house. People come and touch their hair, face, etc. Most times when she's spoken to, Grace will look down at the ground and say she is shy. But every so often she surprises us. She loves to engage kids and will talk to men more readily than women because they aren't in her face as quickly. We thought Grace had lost almost all of her Chinese, but she's pulling out a few nuggets here and there. Every day she's asking me what something means in Chinese, and she's learning new words (or re-learning old words) each week. Baby steps. I'm hoping she will be ready to begin at a local preschool a few mornings a week beginning this fall, but we will see how that goes come September. She still makes me laugh every day. ("Mommy, God is here but we can't see him with our eyes. But we can see Jesus with our sunglasses," for example.) There have been several times Grace has been mistaken for a 5 year-old, I guess because she's taller than most 3 year-olds here. One one occasion, when I mentioned Grace's age, two older ladies started discussing why they thought foreign kids were taller than kids here. And they concluded it was definitely because our milk in America is different. Another neighbor (who knew Grace before we left) asked me how Grace got so tall in America. "Does it have anything to do with the weather in America? Is it because of what you feed her?" Trinity, at the ripe age of 4 months old, cut her two bottom teeth this week. And she's been rolling over front-to-back. Oh my, I'm trying to savor her baby-hood. It's already flying by so quickly. She's at that golden baby stage and I'm loving it. By my best scientific efforts (using the bathroom scale and holding her) she is somewhere around 8 kilograms, or 17.6 pounds. I seem to spend half the time I'm holding her kissing her chubby cheeks. I can't get enough of them. And me? Well, I have to confess something. I've never actually learned how to cook Chinese food. I don't think stir-fry counts. It's really a shame that I'm working on almost 4 years of living here and still can't cook local food specialties. When I cook at home, it's almost always western food. And Chinese food is so cheap to eat out. We have some local friends who will probably be staying with us in the near future. And I can't just tell them we will eat out every meal. I really want to be able to host folks in our home, so I'm going to hire my neighbor to teach me. There, I wrote it down so now hopefully I'll do it! What have you been up to lately?