Halloween-Christmas

I think we're behind on blogging. We just got back from a wonderful trip to the US, but I'm not even going to post about that today. I have to play catch up. The sad news of the month is Will's better-than-words-can-express pre-school is closing it's doors for the final time this June. :( I don't know what I'm going to do, but we'll figure that out soon enough, I suppose.

I took Will into school late this past week and they were already heavily into their music circle (we humorously call it the drum circle). All the kids were dancing in a circle with their drums, and they were singing to the Earth. "Now Children, the Earth is a circle, and everything in life is a circle. The Indians would dance around the fire and pray to the Earth". Then the teacher had all the girls circling one way, and the boys circling the other, and they were singing and drumming, "The Earth is our Mother. We must take care of it..."

I dropped Will off and left in tears. Gosh, I just love this gem of a school. 

Each month his school has a family day, and we eat together and do some sort of activity. This was the Halloween Family Day. Will's good friend is sitting behind.

 I pictured the desserts above because I made the spider cupcakes on the right with the licorice legs. The The kids really appreciated that.

 playing games in costume. He was Batman with an added touch of creativity-nacho libre cape and mask. 

 I don't W. think liked how to play this game so he made his own rules-grab the donut with your hand.

 W. with his buddy. They are best friends.

This is Taylor's best friend. Look how happy they are together ;)

We are sad that these good friends of ours are relocating. In our expat community it's not uncommon for this to happen-people come and go as their work dictates. We know this, but it's still hard to see good friends go. We are thankful this family is from CV, so we will see them in the summer.

 bowling with a gourd.

 Full costume. I forgot W. added in a pirate sword to complet the look.

 Then the kids paraded around the complex in their costumes for all the see. One teacher had his guitar and was leading the kids in rock songs.

 Princess J.

 parade

 We were able to witness this race and cheer him on. Thousand Islands. 4 hour drive for us.

I was so proud I almost cried when he crossed the line in 4th place. I could not have been prouder. This guys got some talent. W. was so happy to see Baba 'win the race'. He is a great example to our kids that when you have a dream, you go after it. You set goals. You work hard, and you accomplish those goals. And you never quit. Good life lessons. 

  Looking at a fountain overlooking one of the thousand islands.

 At school W. enjoyed being a member of the sewing club. There were about 5 clubs offered during the fall. I asked Will which one he chose, and he didn't know, so I asked him to describe. He said he was in a room upstairs and they used sharp things, on flowers...Ha. I just thought it was the cutest thing. And this is his final product. Pretty impressive. He was very proud of his accomplishment.

 doing hair with a friend.

 On the way to the big bus. They had a field trip to a large park where they were on a hunt for fallen leaves for Fall crafts.

 At the gates of the park. W. is back row 3rd from left.

 Leaf hunt.

 biking to school. W. loves doing this when the weather permits. He lifted his arm up 'like Baba does when he wins races'.

 he's got good control on the bike. Future cyclist in the making...?

 These kids love to paint. I thought it would be a great activity for them to do while I prepared dinner. 

 It quickly got out of control. That's paint on the floor. It's black because they mixed many colors.

 Thanksgiving feast at our most favorite, splurge of a buffet. All very happy.

 Best quality food ever.

 Early December we had the luxury of H. visiting us for 10 days while I saw another hip doctor in Thailand. Thankfully we were back in time to have some fun time to play with H. We had a lot of fun. H., do you remember these shorts? Ha ha! Good laughs.

 We explored part of the city, and I found something I've never seen before--a fruit and nut cake, made purely of dried fruit, nuts, and honey, I think. Very creative. It was huge! We bought a small piece, and realized he took advantage of our foreigner faces and overcharged us. Typical. It was yummy, though.

 Bro and sis

 W. loved having Auntie H. They had lots of fun. I enjoyed having a running friend for a week. We went out quite a bit, and got some wonderful running in. 

 Exploring a water town. I took Tr. to this same town, and H. bought the same comforters, at the same stall. Good price!

 For my birthday we went to one of my favorite restaurants. I loved seeing a flower in my salad, and the red crunchy quinoa was super tasty. A work of art plate of food.

 Making gingerbread cookies, and house for the holidays. My favorite cookie. It was my birthday month, remember?

 Remember how I said good friends come and go often?...well, this beautiful lady on the right is one of them. She is simply fabulous. I am so grateful I had the opportunity to mingle and make friends with this beautiful lady. She was my faithful visiting teacher, and went above and beyond what was required. She taught me a lot. She was firstly my friend, then my VT. I was so sad to see her go. The lovely lady in the middle will also relocate in the summer, and I will be equally sad to see her go. 

 Christmas stockings!!!

 This is the mandala W. made for us at his school. This was his gift to us. He worked so hard on this piece of art over many days. Super special, and super beautiful. 

 happy!

 happy!

 joy!

 joy!

 LOVE!

 Oh Christmas tree!

 quickly getting carried away in their painting project yet again,

 But having fun. 

Christmas 2013

I wanted to get in a quick blog post mostly because we have posted so little this year.  The kids had fun this year during the holidays and with Will in school now he is learning more of the commercialized part of Christmas and Santa etc.  In the past the kids didn't really know who santa was.  Will was however quite disappointed Christmas morning to find out the Santa wasn't going to come by and spend time with him.  He figured that Santa would come by for lunch and play all day.  He didn't like the idea of him only coming at night and not being able to see him.  

Will at his school a few weeks ago making gingerbread houses during the December Family Fun Day.

June enjoying eating the decorations for the gingerbread houses during Family Fun Day.  She loves FFD because she gets to go to Will's school for a few hours on those days.

Will after a haircut where he got a "Chinese" cut that looked suspiciously identical to the Chinese guy that cut his hair.

We found June here with a spoon having a go with the peanut butter that aunt Heather brought over.  

For Jen's bday, Dec 20th, we joined a gym that has a big indoor kids play place that the kids love.  This is Will in pure joy at the bottom of a slide.

The Pearl Tower on a December night.  The city "looks" Christmas-y but doesn't feel like it. 

Santa brought Jen some new wheels for her bike.  Watch out boys.

Christmas day feast with some friends.  Ham on the bone, funeral potatoes, salad, rolls, veggies.  yum!

June was clearly happy about the feast.

After dinner we watched the Grinch and had hot chocolate.  On Christmas day we were able to Skype with some family and friends back in the US but certainly would have liked to have been able to Skype with more.  Christmas in China is fun, sort of.  I had to fly to a northern China city on the 26th for work which wasn't fun.  Fortunately we had a few friends that stuck around this year although most expats leave to go to their home countries for the holidays.  Church attendance went from about 150 to 30 the past two weeks!  We got to have my sister Heather come for the first part of December which was a lot of fun.  I should just go and copy and paste her blog posts on to our blog because she included a lot of pictures and a great description of her trip.  The kids loved having their "big friend" here.

In December we also celebrated Jen's bday.  We had lots of fun going to a healthy restaurant and getting a massage.  Happy Birthday Jen!

The Wonder Center

Was just looking at our blog and it shows the number of posts per year since we started in 2008.  We used to post 40+ times per year the first two years.  Then...not so much.  2012 only has 6 posts while 2013 has had 7 posts year to date.  Probably need to do a bit better job if this is what we count for our family journal.

Not too much special happened this past week.  Will rides his bike to school each day.  He started riding without training wheels when he turned 4 yrs old.  When we asked him why he could suddenly just pick up a bike and start to ride it on his first try (true story, just just grabbed the neighbors bike and started riding around the parking lot) he said that he could do it now because he was 4 and when you are 4 you can ride a bike.  Fair enough.  So he rides with Jen to and from school each day.  It's about 1 mile each way - not uphill or in any snow.

Will loves school.  We love his school.  The school is probably best described as a hippie village, complete with drum circles - I'm serious. There are no desks in the school, they cook all of their own food and it's all vegetarian.  They recycle and make their own paper.  The school starts anywhere from 8-9am depending on when you want to show up.  They have a family day once a month where the parents all come for lunch and participate in activities.  They have a school blog that gets updated every Sunday night that talks about what they will be doing during the coming week and has a video montage with photos from the previous week.  There are 6 kids in his class and two teachers (just like Utah schools....one thing similar to Utah though is that there are 3 mormons in his school of 30 kids - not exactly Provo numbers but more than you'd expect in China).  One teacher is from Australia and the other is Chinese.  Every other day his lessons are in English or Chinese so they get both languages.  They were blown away by his Chinese at the beginning of the year.  He is learning to write his letters and numbers and the sounds they make.  We don't yet know if he is right or left handed since he uses both to write and doesn't seem to have a preference for either one.  We don't push either one but just watch.  If he were in a Chinese school they would just force him to use his right hand.  He has classmates from a variety of different countries and cultures.  Will learned a few things pretty quick at school.  One of those things was that he needed to participate in all of the cooking and cleaning.  Early on in the year they were baking some cookies one day and Will said he didn't want to help.  They said 'ok' and he played while the other kids helped make the cookies.  At the end of the day all of the kids got to take the cookies home to eat.  Will wasn't given any.  He was very upset about it.  From then on out he is always one of the first to help out to cook!

June always loves to go pick up Will at school or go and play on the monthly Family Fun Days or join on the field trips.  The teachers all know and love her and she has a great time.  In the front yard of the school (they transformed a huge villa/house into the school) they have a big cage with a few rabbits in it.  When June shows up the rabbit always come over to the gates because they know that June will never let them down and give them a snack.  She loves to feed the bunnies.

Both kids have swim lessons every Friday, which they love.  Then on Saturday's they have gymnastics which they quite enjoy as well.  Gymnastics finishes at lunch time and there is a Subway in the same building (some of you that have visited us will know the building as the tallest one with the hole on top like a bottle opener.  The Shanghai World Financial Center, 3rd tallest building in the world and tallest in China - at least for another two years anyway) so we always get a sub sandwich after class.  Will calls these his 'gymnastics sandwiches'.

This coming week is Thanksgiving.  This is one of the only times I get homesick.  We haven't decided exactly what we will do but nothing every compares to my Aunt's spread that she puts on.  It's the best. A week from today my sister Heather will be here!  We are all looking forward to her coming over.  Will has been saying all week that "Quinn's mom will be here soon!".  While she is here Jen will go to Thailand for hip surgery.  Hoping that is uneventful and smooth.

The is a pic of the kids doing dishes at home recently.

This is the waitress in Queenstown, NZ that Will fell in love with.  She is from Shanghai and her and will had an instant bond.  She was a good sport and almost fell over when this blond haired blue eyed kid asked her for a glass of orange juice is Chinese.