just pictures

Texan at heart Dancing like sister playing with a sweet friend who brought us dress up clothes

First time to be willing to get her hands dirty with finger paint

Finger paint which turned into body paint

too cool for school

yogurt face

Her rendition of Lammy

the treehouse

I can look around my apartment and instantly have memories of friends who have moved on and left their belongings behind. Life overseas is filled with transitions, with people coming and going, giving and lending and receiving and sharing and packing and moving on. I truly believe it's made me hold on to things a little more loosely. When we first moved to Asia 6 years ago we filled our entire earthly possessions into 6 bags, or was it 7? It was so long ago I honestly can't remember now. But boy we have certainly expanded since that time. Loved ones are so good to send toys and clothes and gifts from home. Grandparents have been known to package an entire tent into their suitcase all to bring some joy to their granddaughters! And they've also notoriously paid for overweight luggage because they know how much fun it is to get goodies from America. Last week some of our favorite people moved into town. (Can I get a hallelujah!?) And their oldest daughter, Miss H, is growing up. She decided to pass on her American Girl doll treehouse to my girls. Now let me tell you, when I found this out I almost cried because I know that her sweet Nana brought this over from America in her suitcases (I would have loved to see how she did it!) and this was certainly no small feat. I think it would be great for Miss H to be able to pass this down to her own kids someday, but I've been told there's likely no way to get this back over the ocean once again. So, Miss H has now made my 4 year old one happy girl. We've already had lots of fun playtimes with the treehouse. Hopefully we can take really great care of it and (one of these years) pass it on to another little girl who will love playing with it too!

I'm so thankful my little girls have such a sweet friend to look up to! Thank you, H!

the grandma club

Before moving overseas, and even for a long time afterward, I figured there would be a magical day in which cultural differences wouldn't really "get to me" anymore. A day in which I was so integrated into the culture that I was no longer seen as an outsider and I'd be just like one of them. I figured wrong. Or maybe I just haven't arrived there yet. I think if you talk with any expat living in this country, most would say there are periods of loving the culture and life overseas and then there are seasons where the stress of being the outsider really gets under your skin. When I take my girls out to play in the mornings, some days I feel like I'm back in junior high, not quite sure where I fit in the social order of things. Because the other kids playing outside are being cared for by their grandmothers. I've only met one stay-at-home mom in the entire apartment complex. Even at night, when the parents are off of work, it's still usually the grandparents who are outside playing with the kids. This group of grandmothers seems pretty tight and knows each other well. They are nice enough to me, but some of them are still not sure how to take these foreigners just yet. I had the most hilarious conversation with one grandmother (nai nai) just two days ago. Mind you, I've already met her on several occasions but she still can't seem to get over my, well, foreign-ness (is that even a word?) Nai nai (not even giving a morning greeting or saying hello): "Your skin is very weird. Why is your skin so white? Does your skin not get dark even if you stand in the sun?" Me: "Well, you can see I have freckles. If I stay in the sun my skin turns red and then develops freckles." Nai nai: "Well, I think your skin is very strange. Look at us, our skin does not get freckles. It just turns dark." Me: "Yes, us white folks have different skin." Nai nai: "Your daughter's eyes are not right" (yes, she literally said bu dui). Why are they blue? Our eyes are dark. Her eyes are just not right." Me: "Have you never seen a foreigner before?" Nai nai: "No, never." Yes, there's some pretty funny fodder that goes on in our morning play times. I might have to start a series on the subject because it's where all my parenting/cultural/generational gaps with the grandma group seem to loom the largest. But I'm praying and hoping we'll be good buds before long. Once they can stand to look at my white skin, that is.

in her words

On Granna's last day in town, she and Grace spent a little time remembering the fun things we did together. They even wrote a little homemade booklet to commemorate the time. So, here is Granna's visit in a nutshell, as told by Grace (with a little help, of course!) The new van picked Granna up. We live on the 4th floor. I am 4. It is my favorite number! Granna loved our new apartment.

I showed her my new pink bike and rode it for her.

She read many, many books to me.

We played school together. Granna was the teacher and all the kids came to my room.

We went to N___. I got to sleep in H's bed because he wasn't home. His bed has a big slide on it! I was so excited I could hardly sleep. At the hotel, Granna and I were roommates. We had princess beds. We played with L__. We talked and laughed in a tree. (Editor's note: no actual pictures were taken on our trip to N___, therefore you get the random picture added below.)

Back at home, H, E, J and I played with finger puppets. Granna enjoyed that.

Granna also flipped a lot of pancakes that night.

Later we had fun with Daddy and some other friends at the Stone Forest Park. Granna, Daddy and I all rode on the motorcycle together.

Granna made silly movies of me. Sometimes I call her Gran for short. Granna has to go home to Papa now. She will be back. Granna loves me and my family! Guess what? I love her too!

Granna is here!

Granna (my mom) has braved the long plane ride and jet lag once again. This trip makes her seventh trip to Asia, if I am counting correctly, and six of those times have been to come see us since we moved here in 2004. We are having a great time and savoring the last few days of her visit. We miss my Dad this time but know he is right where he needs to be overseeing a busy project at work. July has been a crazy month for Kevin managing lots of visitors and projects, so it has been a double-blessing to have my mom around while we are still settling into life in our new place. Granna has worked her tail off helping me get my house in shape, loving on my girls, and helping host meals for visitors. I do believe if she hadn't been here this month I might have had a few meltdowns along the way! It's been like having my own mental-health professional living here this month to keep me from going insane. Ha! God is very good. I will post more thoughts later but here are a few pictures to get us going... Here's the view from our new apartment balcony. I enjoy how peaceful (quiet!) it is where we live now. Another nice thing is we live close to local gov't officials and therefore don't have the power outages like folks do in other parts of town. The bad part is we don't live close to any markets or stores so getting out to buy things is a bit of a hassle. I enjoy our view of the karst (limestone) formations in the background! And sometimes we see water buffalo walking down the street.

This is completely random but Trinity started making this face one day and saw how we laughed when she made it. So now when we ask her to make her "excited face" this is what she does. She is such a ham!

I love this picture of these two...

See Trinity's black eye? She had a run-in with our coffee table. We've remedied the sharp corner situation but this child seems bent on getting hurt somehow every day. She's into EVERYTHING but I do love this toddler stage!

We love you Mom! Thank you for being here! More to come soon...

thoughts from the first two weeks

I keep meaning to download pictures off my camera and get some blog posts going, but by the time I sit down at night lately all I want to do is sleep! So until I get around to downloading pictures, I'll write a little bit of what I've discovered over the past two weeks.

• Our move went more smoothly than we could have even asked! And ironically, I like this apartment better than any I've lived in before. Go figure. Sure, this apartment has some of the funny plumbing and electrical quirks that are standard for living anywhere in this country, but overall we are really enjoying our new place.
• By day two of living here, I had a long conversation with a local friend that reminded me why we moved here in the first place. In regards to our relationships with local friends, the benefits of living here are going to be amazing.
• It is a funny experience to have local friends in your home who have never, ever in their life eaten western food. A few nights ago we had 3 ladies join us for spaghetti. I figured spaghetti, garlic bread, broccoli and fruit wouldn't rock the boat TOO much. Two of the three ladies enjoyed everything but one girl didn't like the spaghetti sauce. (Kevin laughed at the funny faces she was making and said it's a little bit of payback for all the times he's had to throw down some weird food here!) They examined all of my silverware (something we brought from the States) and couldn't believe how well-made it was. Even my apple-corer was a source of great conversation. They were thinking up new business strategies how they could make apple corers and sell them here!
• I was totally, utterly, completely spoiled in the big city by having a helper. It looks like my days of living the high-life have come to a close until I can find another helper here that I trust. The "that I trust" part is the kicker. Actually we've been asking around but have been told it will be difficult to find a helper here. My body might be 33 but most nights I feel somewhere around 73, or maybe 83. I don't know. Between going to the market/store almost daily, walking more in the heat, cooking everything from scratch, daily sweeping/mopping my new nemesis (aka the all-white flooring in my apartment), and taking my kids out to play each night I am using muscles I haven't used in a while. At night I'm tired but it's a good tired!
• My girls are transitioning so well, PTL! Grace is overall really excited to be here. One thing I've prayed specifically for is at least one or two good friends for her. There is a sweet girl two days younger than Grace who lives in our apartment complex. She and Grace have already been swimming together and last night Grace went to her birthday party to celebrate this girl's birthday on the lunar calendar!
• Another pleasant surprise is that the local knock-off version of KFC is actually pretty good. There is one place in town where we can go get our fast-food fix. I just can't look at the floor too closely. When we went last week to eat, I walked to the sink to help wash Trinity's hands and a boy (probably around 6 years old) came and peed on the floor right beside us. Not even into a drain, just right on the floor. Some of it sprayed onto my foot. I know I've been in this country long enough because I didn't hesitate to tell him he really should have gone into the toilet, which was a mere 10 feet away. He just looked at me, finished his business, and walked back to his table.
• My family consumes much more cheese in a week than I realized. We have to store it up from the big city and were (GASP) running low but had wonderful friends save the day by sending some cheese, butter, and other supplies down to us. Lesson learned: always buy more cheese than what I think I will need.
• The big preschool-hunt has begun. This is worthy of a blog-post in itself. Grace is SOO ready to go to preschool. I'm ready for her to go. This will be trial and error. I am torn between taking her to what everyone calls one of the "better" preschools which will likely have almost 50 students in a classroom versus a smaller one that everyone says is not as good but would have 25 or so students in a class. More on that and pictures to come later...

Thank you for lifting up our move!

Grace's 4th birthday

Grace enjoys a party as much as anyone I know. She loves to celebrate other people's birthdays, both young and old alike. And she's pretty much anticipated her 4th birthday party since, well, June 13 of last year. Thankfully it worked out to celebrate with her friends here in the big city before we move. We have some pretty wonderful people in our lives here and they made her day special. Thank you, friends, for loving on our girl! Being the girly-girl that she is, this year Grace wanted a princess party. After last year's Dora cake-falling fiasco I decided I needed to do some research to avoid a repeat. So I saw online that doing a castle cake was the easiest way to go. Candy and ice cream cones as decorations? That's about my speed. I wasn't really concerned about it looking professional, I just wanted Grace to like it. But I made the mistake of telling Grace she would have a castle cake, because then I heard her say things like, "Mommy my cake is going to be sooo cute!" Umm, no pressure at all there. But thankfully she liked it. I don't see professional cake decorating in my near future, but it was fun to do nonetheless. Here we are before the party trying to straighten up the castle a bit and working on fixing the crooked flags! (Can you tell from my empty walls we are moving soon!?)

Boy, do I love these 3 people...

Cousin Macy was our first little guest to arrive! She recently had her first birthday! We love you, baby girl!!

The first game played was "pass the teapot."

Then we had a little fun with "Kiss the frog."

Blowing out the candles... Today we learned Grace was under the impression she automatically turned a year older when everyone sang to her and she blew out her candles. And then, at the end of her party, she thought her birthday was over. No wonder she places such a high value on the actual birthday party!

Sister played a little peek-a-boo with the kids at the party.

checking out the party favors...

Grace was so excited to have new jammies and jewelry that she changed into both before the party was over and napped in them that afternoon.

Grace, what a wonderful year this has been for you. I can't believe how much you have grown and changed and learned, especially in the last few months. One of my favorite things about you is your imagination. You are ALWAYS pretending and role-playing. This year you've taken on a hundred and one names. Some days you decide your name is Fern, some days you are Uniqua, some days you pretend to be one of your big-girl cousins or your buddy Hannah. But more and more lately you've been Grace. It's been fun to pretend with you this year, and you've taught me how fun imagining can be. You love to read together and recently you began sounding out words. While we've been packing up our apartment, you've surprised us by reading some of the labeled boxes on your own. You love to "do preschool" with Mommy and you certainly want to go to school "for real" you say. Daddy and I are praying you can enjoy going to local preschool this year. Despite the fact you will be the "different" kid, we pray you can thrive and make friends and learn to speak the local language.

Yesterday evening after your birthday party we went out to eat and let you wear your princess dress. People were smiling at you, and you asked me why they were laughing. I told you they weren't laughing at you but maybe that thought you looked like a real princess. You immediately told me, "Mommy, I'm God's little princess. I love God every time. Not just some of the time but all the times." Oh baby girl how I pray this will be true your whole life. I pray you won't grow up to be a princess who feels entitled to all that life has to offer but that you will first and foremost be proud to be a daughter of the Most High King. I love you so much.