DONE!

The school year is officially over around here, so it's time to celebrate!

I'm really proud of my big girl; she's had a great year. She's reading and writing, can tell time and count money, will tell you how to find a perimeter, and has some fun facts about space she'd be happy to share with you at any moment.

Here she is signaling for you that she's DONE with kindergarten! She's so happy to be a big

first-grader.

When I asked Grace how she wanted to celebrate the last day of school, she said she wanted to have her good friend Luke over to eat cake with her. Sounded great to me! 

I'm not gonna lie; there were a few days this year when we both felt like this.

But the majority of days we were smiling, having fun, and learning together.

Grace has truly been a joy to teach. I think I'm getting hooked on this home school thing. And it's a good thing since it's our only option right now. Bring on first grade!!

When

• When I think about landing on American soil for the first time in 3 years, I get excited. When I realize both of my kids remember nothing about the last time we were there, I can't wait to make new memories with them. When I realize I won't have to subtract 13 hours to remember what time I can call my family, or when my daughter talks about how much she can't wait to play with her cousins, I say "bring on July!"
• When I read about a pastor in the Dallas Metroplex who has started his own fashion blog because it's just that important to stay current, trendy and "relevant," I want to throw up in my mouth just a little. And I get a bit nervous remembering that re-entry culture shock is a real thing.
• When the water is out for the 20th time this week and I just want to take a shower, I say July can't come fast enough. When my helper shows up one day asking for a 42% raise and then I tell her we might have to cut back on her hours because 42% more per hour is a bit much, I am frustrated. And when my helper calls the next day to say she won't come to work because she has to "pay her electric bill," I feel played. The passive-aggressive way situations are dealt with here drive me C-R-A-Z-Y. 
• But then, when my helper shows up for work the next day and we work things out in our "talk around it," dysfunctional culturally-appropriate fashion, and when she proceeds to spend over an hour washing, peeling, and chopping vegetables so I can play with my girls, I decide it's worth it. I think. I mean, in America, sure there are luxuries like frozen vegetables and sauce from a jar, but goodness gracious I get spoiled having a helper here.
• When I realize I'm on edge again today because people are staring and talking about us once more like we can't understand them and are simply monkeys at the zoo, I want to tell them they are in need of some serious manners. And then I realize I have anger issues. Never before did I struggle with anger like I have since moving here. You know why? Sin. As if I have the right to not have to hear people talking about us or stare at us. And I realize it might be good to get some perspective outside the fishbowl again.
• But when I think about the last year and how FAITHFUL the Father has been to give us joy and to allow us to see Him work in amazing ways, I am grateful. I feel like we've received more blessings from this overseas journey than I could have fathomed if we'd lived here 100 years. And He doesn't even owe us a single one.
• When I read in Luke about Jesus calming the storm and asking his disciples, "Where is your faith?" I identify with the disciples. I feel pretty great about how much I trust the Lord until a trial comes along. Lord, fix me.
• And when I think about how my heart really loves two countries at the same time for vastly different reasons, I am grateful for the opportunity to see some strengths and weaknesses in both cultures...and to have people to look forward to seeing on both sides of the ocean. I am blessed to be on this ride.  

Good Reads

I don't normally blog about books, but I've read two lately that I loved so much I just had to share. First of all, this is the best parenting book I've ever read. For real.




Maybe because it stepped all over my toes, or maybe it's the stage of life I am in right now, but this book spoke volumes to me. In essence, it challenges us to examine if we are building homes based on grace or on legalism. Kevin and I read this book at the same time, and it's given us much to discuss. And please, do me a favor, if you read the book, make sure to read it in its entirety.





And next up, Redefining Home by Carrie Hudson.



 Carrie gives her family's story of moving to Asia, moving back to the US, and coming back to Asia again. If you want to get a glimpse of what it's like to live cross-culturally and have a piece of your heart in 2 cultures at the same time, this is it. I got to meet Carrie a few months ago, and I have to say she's as passionate, down-to-earth, and hilarious in person as she is in the book. I've read her blog for a while, and when I met her I might have said in a slightly-stalkerish way, "You don't know me, but I read your blog."

Do yourself a favor and download these books. I'll even refund your Amazon money if you don't think they're absolutely great. :) You're welcome in advance.    

Easter weekend 2012

On Saturday morning, we hosted an Easter party for some neighbors and had a grand time. Most of the people where we live have never heard of Easter and have no idea why it's celebrated. It's a fun and natural way to talk about the hope that we have. We started out by decorating cookies with the kids. I'm learning to make my icing MUCH less sweet and it seems to be working; nobody complained about the cookies being too sweet this time. Then we moved on to dyeing eggs. I'll admit; there were one or two of these little ones I was scared to give access to food-colored water, but they did great and were much less messy than I anticipated. I think they thought the whole concept of coloring eggs was fun but pretty strange.

But the 1st graders got into it and took great care to decorate their eggs.

Little ShanShan is hilarious. She was fascinated with the colors and wanted to make sure she took some eggs home to her dad.

The hunt begins.

Here's most of the crew post-hunt. I think the parents enjoyed it as much as the kids. We had a big lunch at the dumpling restaurant across the street afterwards.

On Saturday late afternoon, Kevin and I took the girls out to play right before the heavens opened up and poured down RAIN. Now, usually we'd be upset to be caught in a storm, but we've been in a draught for a while and have experienced horrible water outages. So, we let the girls play in the rain until we had to seek shelter in a public bathroom. Gross, I know, but having to skip showers and only occasionally flush will lead you to do a weird happy dance in a public restroom when it finally rains. On Sunday morning, it rained again so we changed the outdoor fellowship plans we had with friends. But we still enjoyed an Easter brunch, had worship together, and my girls got to wear their beautiful dresses Nana and Pappaw sent from America.

I know I'm totally biased, but the cuteness-factor was off the charts. Trinity requested to wear her dress on Monday and Tuesday as well. Time to wash. You did good, Nana.

Since we had a rainy day and already enjoyed an egg hunt, we hunted chocolate eggs from America inside the house...

and made an empty tomb out of cupcakes, oreos, and coconut dyed green for the grass.

I'm so thankful that Grace seems to be grasping more and more the message of the gospel. She's been asking lots of good questions and I believe He's working in her heart. One of my favorite memories of the weekend was hearing Kevin talk with her about the Resurrection. He is risen; He is risen, indeed!!

March was milestone month

There are times when I step back and feel like my girls are growing up in fast-forward. March was one of those months.

Early in March, Grace began reading to her sister from time to time. It was fun to walk into the room and catch them like this! Score!

Then Grace lost one of her front teeth. The other front tooth is loose. She laughs about how funny she talks now.

And next, Grace decided it was time to learn to ride a bike. She'd been asking her daddy for a while now to take off the training wheels, and one beautiful Saturday morning he agreed. She learned very quickly and is zipping all over the place now.

And as for my little one? We've finally had the time at home + motivation + lack of cold weather/layers to get some serious potty training done. I'm one of the worst potty-trainers in the world, but this one is making great progress in spite of her mother.

There's just no denying how quickly these girls are growing.

Look who's three!

This little girl is getting big quickly. On the 5th, we celebrated Trinity's 3rd birthday. This year, we are embracing the small, family party for birthdays. We had a blast celebrating her life. On the morning of her birthday, while big sister was at local school, Trinity got to stay in her pajamas and lick the icing off the spoon. BEFORE lunch. I mean, get crazy. You only turn 3 once. We had a fun morning playing together.

All day, Trinity put on her shy face when we sang to her. Usually she also buried her head in a pillow out of embarrassment, but here she faced the music.

Big sister kept a countdown going for Trinity pre-birthday so she could stay up-to-date.

This girl takes her cake seriously. Very seriously.

Afterwards, we went outside and played with bubbles. Can you tell she got some princess-bling for her birthday?

You make me smile, baby girl.

At three years old, Trinity:

• loves to laugh and to make us laugh
• has some crazy good dance moves complete with a new break-dance routine she just invented
• loves to ride her peanut car crazy fast down the hill
• will climb up behind you while you're sitting down and try to wrestle you to the floor by putting her arms around your neck
• plays the ornery little sister role very well
• begins every prayer with, "Dear God, you're so big, thank you for our friends..."
• knows all her alphabet letters
• recently was in childcare for a week where her teachers told us Trinity was a good friend and played the role of "little mama" to the other kids
• brings our family so much joy

Happy birthday, baby girl. We love you and praise the Lord for your life.

while Daddy was away...

When we got back from vacation, Kevin had one whole day to unpack, regroup and repack before he headed out for a long business trip. And since Grace's local school hadn't started back from the holiday break, we had lots of togetherness/girl-time. For me, this meant I needed a P-L-A-N to avoid losing my mind. Fortunately, we had a few reasons to celebrate. First we had a little Valentine's celebration. Any excuse for chocolate cake, right? I love having little parties like this with my girls. It doesn't take much to get them excited. We had a few friends over to eat cake. Waiting for them to arrive proved to be torture for my girls. They literally stared at the cake and willed for 12:30 to come. Two days later was Grace's 100th day of home school. I know schools in the US often have 100 day parties, and thanks to google I copied/looked up ideas to celebrate. We started out the day making 100 day hats and doing some dancing in our pajamas. Because if there is one thing my girls love to do, it's dance. And use the tv as a mirror to watch themselves dance.

Later, during school we did 100 jumping jacks, read a 100th day of school poem, guessed how far we could walk in 100 steps and then walked them, and counted out 100 kernels of popcorn for a snack.

100 kernels, popped

Grace also answered some questions for me in a short interview. Here goes:

1. If I had 100 dollars, I would..."Save the money for buying stuff, not just spend it all in one place."
2. If I had 100 pencils, I would..."not use them all in one day. I would keep sharpening them if they ran out."
3. If I had 100 mosquito bites, I would..."itch a lot because I'm allergic to mosquitoes."
4. If I had 100 friends, I would..."try to love them all."
5. If I had 100 legs, I would..."walk on each of them and it would be kind of weird."
6. If I had 100 eyes, I would..."see all over the place!"
7. If I was 100 years old, I would..."maybe die."
8. If I had 100 bikes, I would..."need to think hard about which one to ride."

And since we were on a roll, I switched from the 100 theme and asked Grace about some of her favorites:

1. Grace, what's your favorite food? "pizza"
2. Favorite thing to do with Daddy? "wrestle"
3. Favorite thing to do with Mommy? "snuggle and read books"
4. Favorite thing to do with sister? "Play with her and with our baby dolls; we like to play with Haley and Bailey."
5. Favorite thing to do as a family? "Go to Old Town and fun restaurants"
6. What do you want to be when you grow up? "A farmer-well-I might want to change my mind but today I want to be a farmer."
7. Why? "Because I think it would be cool to grow things."

Lots of books, trips to the playground, craft projects, and a movie night later, Daddy came home. And we all said "HALLELUJAH!"