TidBits: A Friend's Party, Soccer Game, and Other Happenings

 The three olders and I walked to a friend's birthday party and stopped for a pic in the truck.

Our yard (and sometimes house) is often filled with kids swinging, playing, etc. A group of 6th grade girls started coming around a few months ago and we see them many times a week. They go fishing with our kiddos and often just swing away, always asking if our kids can play.

Finally, it was one girl's birthday and she asked us a whole week prior if we would come (which rarely happens here). She reminded us every day. I figured it would be a good idea to see/meet her parents and see what her home life was like. This was the last thing I felt like doing on a school night, but I was committed.

She lives a few blocks away and we all walked together.
Many other kids started to gather (it was 7:30 p.m.), and I made my rounds with the adults, fielding the same twenty questions. "America. Yes, four kids. No, I don't work outside the home. My husband works at yadayada,  Yes,  America is nice place to live, so is here." The questions tend to get deeper when parenting issues come up.

One lady asked where all of our kids slept. She was astounded when I told her and promptly called her grandson over and told him the breaking news: kids can sleep separate from their parents.

I actually started to enjoy myself sitting around and shooting the bull with these ladies and drinking green tea.

The kids played games, and our kids meshed right in with this crowd, not holding back at all.
Sophia is usually a take charge kind of gal, but even Bella volunteered to be 'it' one round, and Tobin joined in the fray. That our kids can do this (with language) and are not timid (with culture) wowed me once again, though it shouldn't. This is what they are used to. But I praised them all the same on the way home.

Here she is YangYiXia turning 13.

And at the end of the same week we went to our friend Caleb's soccer game at the Minority Elementary School in town. Driving there brought me back almost 15 years when I stayed with two other single gals nearby during my first trip here.

 Our school won the game! Yeah, way to go #4 Elementary School!

 I took G with me one day to pick up Sophia and Bella, she promptly sat down as if she belonged there!

Bella is doing great in school, and likes it most days, but does complain about 'all the writing'. She also gets scared of some things they learn in "pin de class" which is like a life skills class. They talk about earthquakes, bad guys, brushing your teeth, and the latest thing that kept her up at night was their talk on rabies.  Her teacher described this as : "the scariest thing in this whole book". We had to bring down the drama of it all while highlighting some certain facts (David has his own quite compelling rabies story, that we opted not to share at that time). Mostly on these nights we bring God's word to bear on all our fears and teach our kids to pray.

And that is the recent round-up.

Our countdown to Thailand and America is on...things are getting real, as we are SO busy.
Blogging tends to be therapeutic for me, so if I find the time I may write a three-part series:
Coming to America: The excitement
Coming to America: The stressors (my to-do list)
Coming to America: The fears