Christmas Eve.

 On Christmas Eve we went over to another family's house for dinner. I took roasted chicken, pecan pie, and green beans. We also ate pasta salad, other greens, and yummy bread.

 Bella chose to wear these shoes. I let her because it is so...Bella.

And those dresses, they spin superbly.

Back at home the girls were thrilled with a princess sticker book.

Christmas cookies with neighbors

Sunday, December 23,2012

 The girls and I prep the cookie dough. Then we went out to round up some neighborhood kids, who usually frequent our yard on the weekends. We wanted to introduce them to Christmas, via Christmas cookie decorating.

We had four friends and two parents come over, It was the perfect amount of people. Here I am explaining Christmas to the group and why we celebrate it. They had never heard it before. At some parts of the story there were even some gasps. Yes, we should all be in awe of the miracle.

 We then got down to putting icing on the cookies. Some kids had made it in time to choose their own shape and shape the dough with cookie cutters and wait for them to cook. This was super fun for them.

 I demonstrated a little, chopsticks were very helpful for spreading the icing.

 And everyone just took off with it and had a blast.

This boy below lives near the back of our complex, he is incredibly sweet and comes over to play often. The night before he had brought us an apple wrapped pretty, this is what the Chinese give on Christmas to friends. 

 YuMingHua enjoys her first ever icing-laded Christmas cookie (sugar rush).

This boy was very meticulous about his designs, color-coordination with sprinkles, etc. I mentioned that he must be good at drawing and the lady there (not his mom), said that yes, he was really quite good. I could tell.

This is YuanYue, She is ten years old and comes over a lot as well. Our girls love her. She is fun for them, but not always the best influence, being five years older than Sophia.

David was quite sick the previous night and this morning, but he participated a little. The kids had a blast doing this, and I was so thankful that we had people come!

A few gifts

 For our Christmas celebrations we open gifts (from other family) leading up to Christmas, and just do stocking gifts Christmas morning (from us). We decided last year that we would, in general, start to really tone down the gifts, their 'bigness', etc. and try to focus more on giving. This year it really helped, and we did a lot of other things along the way to enjoy giving and receiving and focusing on Christ's coming.

Here are some pics of the kids opening gifts from Poppy and CC:

 

 A truck, with lots of little trucks/cars underneath.

I asked Sophia (as a joke) what she thought the gift to daddy was. With all her drama she swung her wand around and said: "it is a SHIRT!" And it was. 

Bright blue eyes!

Beautiful bracelet for moi.

David reads a book that Poppy and CC gave the kids

One of their favorite gifts: two of their favorite movies, Madeline and Swiss Family Robinson. On this day, We set it up on their bed on the ipad so Tobin couldn't reach, I wrapped a card with a picture of Madeline on it and some popcorn. A huge hit. Still in those dresses, can't you see!

Cupcakes and Dresses

 Bella enjoys a cupcake brought from 'Cinnabon' in Bangkok.
Yes. Yes, I brought back quite a bit of goodies. I felt so bad for David, that I tried to give him a Bangkok experience (at least what we love).
I bought Cinnamon rolls from 'Cinnabon', a six pack of Schwepps Manao soda (best soda in the world), and even two beef Schwarmas (Lebanese food).

And because I bought so many Cinnamon rolls (and had them pack it well), they gave me two free cupcakes, which were actually very yummy. This is what I gave the kids the night I arrived.

 Look at this handsome boy in his new Christmas shirt.
Poppy and CC sent a package and had some amazingly cute Christmas outfits (for the record, not all Christmas outfits are cute). These dresses were PERFECT for our girls and their personalities. They wore them four days straight (until finally on Christmas Eve Bella spilled hot chocolate all over hers).

 This is what they were wearing when they greeted me at the airport. My little gifts.

knitting by the fire

 This is our friends' heater. It looks like a real fireplace. We borrowed it from them while they are in the States. We have only had to use a few times actually. In the afternoons we can still wear short sleeves and capris! While I was gone Sophia wanted to 'knit'. She is weaving a string through a plastic cloth with holes in it. She really wants to learn to sew, and so do I!

Hood happenings: Santa and fire

 Tobin was out in the yard and our neighbors gave him this Santa doll to play with.

 

 This girl is 5 but looks 3 years old. Her parents are really nice and we are getting to know them a bit. they also have a first floor and a dog and the start of a garden. When we start our garden, I am recruiting her help!

Take this Santa! Tobin wallups him to the ground. He showed him what our family thinks of Santa Clause (kidding! Though we don't celebrate with Santa). I am just glad he didn't do this to the girl, he is almost as big as her.

And speaking of neighbors. One day the we saw a guard running with a bucket of water and heard some commotion. David went to check things out. They mentioned a fire. We thought some kids had started a fire somewhere. Then the commotion got a little more intense. Fire trucks were called. David took the girls on our little scooter down the neighborhood to check it out. 

Indeed a townhouse was on fire in our housing complex (not same building). I knew instantly what had started it: a cigarette. It was later confirmed. This house was not being lived in yet, it was almost done with the finishing touches on the inside. But bars were on the windows already (this is everywhere in China). Although they knew no one was inside, it still took the firemen too long to get in. David said they used in Ax to hack at the bars to get in, it took about 3 minutes. 'THREE MINUTES!' I said, that is a long time. David said: "Lorraine, it took them a total of over 10 minutes to figure out what they were going to do, not to mention actually getting inside". David watched the whole seen and was quite amazed. He said he could've gotten in a lot faster.

We relayed this story to another Foreign family that lives here and he was with us on 'you think they would have a really good strategy for getting in houses with bars on the windows' and then he came up with at least three that sounded good to me. I told him that if we have a fire we are calling him, NOT the fire department. 

Seriously though, at least these are all cement block houses, or else that fire would have spread. It did destroy the inside of that house because the guy was doing all the work himself (which meant he had no insurance), and he had just installed all wood floors, which burned real good when he put his own cigarette out on them! Hmm.....

Oh yeah, and what was that lady with the bucket going to do? Smoke was already pouring out of the windows. Interesting.

Hats on!

 I came back from GuangZhou and was very surprised to find the crew (minus Tobin) at the airport to greet me. I was wearing a new hat. All the kiddos had to wear hats too...(including Tobin)

 The kiddos did wonderful while I was gone. David seriously had very, perhaps zero problems with attitudes, etc. Plus, I had planned things out quite a bit, meals, school, etc. I trained Sophia how to teach Bella her 'letter of the week' activity every day. She loved doing this, and Bella loved having Sophia as a teacher. David said he didn't want to go out of his office and bother them because they were doing so well. And, Bella learned her new letter. I was so thankful for all the answers to prayer that allowed me to be with the Williams in GuangZhou.

Of course, when I had to leave for my dental work, that was unexpected, and nothing was planned. Things did not go quite as smooth as the previous week, but still God was very gracious. The best news was that it only took the doctor 2 full days, which usually takes a week (the first thing I mentioned was: 'I came from China to have you fix my tooth, and I have three kids I need to get back to', he laughed and said 'okay, let's take a look'.