Feb 1st: Another Village Visit

The grand finale of our Holiday visits was going to our current house helper's house in her village. She helped us a few years ago and is helping us part time right now. Her village is about twenty minutes away. We made our way out there in the morning and because there is a new highway going through we did not recognize the turn, but finally made it! 

Our kiddos had the most fun in this home because there were more animals, and more space, and more kids. 

Sophia discovered this table and I told her it was a sewing machine. Seeing her interest the mom started to teach her (us!). It was hard. I was afraid we were going to mess it up.

 They didn't care at all, they loved that she was interested. David had to translate what they were saying, they were not speaking Mandarin, which meant this was pure visual learning. It takes strong legs, Soph was using her left and they told her to switch, she actually did sew a few stitches to her delight.

Next Sophia wanted to help in the kitchen. Our helper, Ayi (Aunt), let her add wood to the fire with tongs. This is Ayi's daughter, also Sophia's age.

 This home and/or village seems to have more money than the previous two we visited. For various reasons, one of which could be that the government paid them for their land to build a highway through some of their fields. This actually was a bit of a fight, because they were paying bottom dollar of course. But still, home and village improvements abounded in this place.

Bella enjoyed the animals as did all the kids. They had 3 HUGE pigs, one would be slaughtered for a wedding next week. 

They also have a refrigerator!

Ayi's husband took (carried) our kiddos out to see their water buffalo.

 This was a highlight!

And of course there was some cartoon watching going on

Sophia kept helping out

 She did not want to leave this place... She was playing really well with Ayi's daughter and even learning some new language, she even realized the grammatical difference of the possessive, saying: 'oh, it goes on the end!' Ayi offered to bring her back in the afternoon, but we called it a day after staying about three hours. All of the kiddos did great, and while they don't love all the food, there are things they will always eat. David and I ate it up, Yummy!

Happy Chinese New Year! Year of the Horse! Ours was a blast, literally.

Chinese New Year's Day: Village Visit 2

It was great to be back in Ai Muan's home. David lived here for awhile learning language, it holds a special place in his heart. Since then we have had four kids, and Ai Muan, his teacher, got married and has a son. He now is a teacher along with his wife, they teach elsewhere but were home for the holiday. They are actually building a nice house in this village, it was great to see it!

 The kids had lots of fun even though they were very tired.

Gabrielle trooped through it all. I reminded David that this was the perfect stage to visit the village, she can't crawl and is very content.

Ai Muan and David. Ai Muan said: 'do you want to go out to the field and eat strawberries?' They laughed because this is what they did every day almost when David was learning language.

His wife was in the kitchen preparing the meal, I always try to help and they never let me. Because Ai Muan and his wife are teachers they speak Mandarin, but the rest of his family does not (not even his brother).

cooking lunch over the fire. 

More discussions in the kitchen....then he took us to his new house which is not yet done. We joked about which room would be ours. His village is right on the way to where we plant our Chinese Medicine, very convenient!

Chinese New Year's Day: Village Visit 1

We tried to sleep in some and mosey through the morning. We  had planned on heading to our friend's house in the village around 9:30 a.m. or so...we left a little later and it still worked out perfect. We stopped by the store and bought some gifts: a BIG bottle of cooking oil, some special snacks, and some soda.

Gabrielle, by the way, slept pretty well through New Year's Eve, and on night two, with still all the fireworks slept from her 10 p.m. feeding all the way to 7:45 a.m. Wow. Not consistent yet, though.

Here she is, meeting our friends...

 

 She is at a great age because she will go to anyone, and is a really happy baby.

But still, she seems to ask: 'who are you again?'

Lots of fireworks going off. See the smoke?

Sparklers...pretty tame. We did let Sophia hold Roman Candles too. She is what we call UN-afraid, which for us is a little scary.

Talking in the kitchen while they prepare the meal.

More and more villagers (in the valley anyway) are getting refrigerators.

Sophia climbed the ladder to the loft where they stored things and wanted to pretend she was Laura Ingalls.

 The mom took the kids over to play this game. It is gambling pretty much and she lost her 5 Kuai pretty quick. The kids wanted to keep playing, I had to remind them they were losing real money.

 We talked about it a bit and let them have one more go. They left after having doubled their money (after having lost it all to begin with, so really they were doubling their 2nd round of money), less than one U.S. dollar so don't worry!

After a delicious meal we headed home for naps and refreshment. We received a phone call in the midst of this about visiting another family in another village that afternoon. Because it was David's old language teacher and a close friend of our family, we said yes, of course!

Chinese New Year: Attempt at a description

I know I have often tried to describe the scene and sounds of celebrating 'spring festival' or Chinese New Year, but every year we experience it, words still fail the whole phenomenon. One American who has lived in China a while described it as: 'purgatory and Groundhog's day' hilarious and fairly accurate.

Let's try this...

Put on your favorite war movie...lots of bombs, shellings, lots of gunfights. Blare the movie as loud as your TV will go. Maybe put it on in your back room for a full week. As it gets closer to 'the day' go sit in that room for three days. Turn on the surround sound. When we say 'lots of fireworks' we do not mean the small town, beautiful, 4th of July variety, our next door neighbor had those. No no. We mean the packed- full-of-gunpowder- BOOM kind, times 500, or however many neighbors you have. At least this year they did not set them off in the stair well.

We had  a very pleasant evening, enjoying our cook out, our walk, seeing all our neighbors also eating outside with their family and friends. We built a fire and roasted marshmallows and enjoyed smores. Yum. We lit off some of our own fireworks. Tobin was NOT having it. He actually did not mind all the loudness around us, but when David tried to do one Tobin would cry. But he eventually got okay with most of it.

We put Tobin and Gabrielle down around 7:30-8:00 p.m. and let the older two girls stay up until 9:00 p.m. and watch half of a movie with us. Then David and I watched a movie (still fireworks blaring behind us the whole time). A true-story war movie.

The girls really wanted us to wake them up for the midnight commotion. They were sleeping so well when the mayhem and loudness started, we almost did not wake them. Then we did and opened their curtains and watched beautiful fireworks all around us and heard all the others. We are always amazed that they sleep through the fireworks going on all evening and then wake up when they get really loud. This time we woke them. Then Tobin did wake up and David let him watch too. David laid down with him while I laid down with the girls. This is when Sophia, in all her tiredness said: 'actually, I don't really like Chun Jie (Spring Festival)'. 

This year's festivities have been fun and enjoyable, despite the noise. We were invited to various friends' houses, and chose three villages to visit. Pics of those will follow soon.

Chinese New Year's Eve: Jan 30th

 This was the first time I have had all three on the moto. They were SO excited. I have taken Tobin once and David has taken him once. He is now used to it, knows the rules and loves to go. I was grilling chicken and making 'onion strings' (pioneer woman's recipe) for our New Year's dinner, and needed something else from the store. While almost everything shuts down for weeks around the New Year the grocery store does not. Thankfully.

 This reminds me of Sophia saying she wanted to go to school in America so that she could ride a school bus. Our friend, her Aunt K, reminded me that most American kids would want to go to school here so they could ride on a moto like this. True indeed.

 We had a light homeschool day and then spent the day getting ready for dinner and fireworks. David took the girls and bought a TON of dynamite fireworks! I prepped dinner and we ate outside...

 Gabrielle's baby chair is right below Bella there. A few moments after this pic Bella's chair flipped on top of Gabrielle, with Bella still in it. The corner of her chair missed Gabrielle's face by an inch. It happened so fast, I grabbed the chair quickly, Bella was screaming, and David jumped up to pull her up. Gabrielle was completely unharmed, and it should have REALLY harmed her. Really. Somehow I remained calm. Miraculous. All of it was quite miraculous. I sat down closed my eyes folded my hands and Tobin asked: 'Momma, what are you doing?" 

"I am thanking God, honey, I am thanking God." And a tear rolled down my cheek, a thankful tear.

 Then we went down the boardwalk as a family, something we haven't done in a while.

 One of our goals is to do less tag-team parenting. It is harder. Dividing and conquering is easier, but it is not better. Together is better!

 I love Bella's face below. It is so...Bella.

I will tell you how the night went in the next post.

Fine Arts Glimpse

Two weeks ago we got back into CC Cycle 2 after a short break. These six weeks we will study famous artists. We started with Rembrandt, who happened to have been from Holland. I asked, who do you know from Holland? And the kiddos named our friends. Then Sophia said: "oh, he probably said 'nay!'" Yes, he probably did, that is her one Dutch word. When we told our Dutch friends this they had a good laugh.

For Rembrandt we got mirrors and made faces in them and then drew our different faces, angry, sad, happy. 'Pay attention to what your eyes and nose do with different expressions'. They had fun with this. Our neighbor and friend, Yang Yang, has now joined us for two weeks of our Fine Arts lessons, so I try to translate what we are doing. She is a good artist and does very well.

 Here is Sophia's face drawing...

 

 

 This past week we studied the Botanist, Linnaeus, who drew lots of flowers. They went outside and picked one and then we used magnifying glasses to try to see the detail better.

 Tobin was up a little early and  did this with us. But not really. Instead he tried to steal the magnifying glass. Many times.

 The girls all did a great job drawing their respective flowers/ferns/ whatever.

 Here is the Roman Road I promised...layers and all. Daddy David did a great job. You are supposed to show the layers by doing all the bottom, then 3/4 next layer, then 1/2, then 1/4 (the top). The top is supposed to be smooth flat stones. These are from a common Chinese game, they used glue  and sand for cement and the road is actually 'rock solid'.

Seriously...

 Quick David get the camera...see how perfect our kids are....

 Yes, they sat like this for a while...

And they were reading....

The Bible. 

Yes, my two year old can read. I told you. Perfect.

JUST KIDDING.

These days are rough and fun with sibling squabbles and fireworks galore, LOTS of training, and tired parents. But they are fun. And we are learning....this year as a focus, to enjoy Everything in our story(death by living). They actually did sit and 'read' for awhile and then got up and got into yet another fight. 'She hit me! He hit me!' all ring as loud as the fireworks around us...and we continually try to put out the fires with truth and patience, sometimes we have to put them out in our own heart first! Sanctification folks, hurts so good. But in pictures on a blog....things do look pinterest perfect don't they? Don't believe the lie, we are in the thick of it, right where we are supposed to be...not wishing it away...digging in and trying to live it well.