Final post of 2013: You know you've arrived when...

I am speaking of 'arriving' as in truly coming more and more 'in tune' or 'at one' or whatever you want to call it, with Asian culture. We have been here almost ten years and I thought I would comment a bit on things I never thought I would do or see or say....

• Let's start with last night. David, Gabrielle, Tobin, and I went out for dinner while our other girls ate at a neighbor's house. We went for sushi and ordered Tobin fried rice. He ate 6 sushi and wanted more. Then, because Bella did not like what our neighbor served, she was hungry. She said: 'sushi, yes!!!' And then Tobin had to eat a few more too. Our kids eat variety and really well, they will try new stuff, and we are SO thankful for this, still, I didn't think I would see them eating Sushi as their night time snack. 

• Eat fermented foods. Just the past few months I have finally started adding the fermented or 'sour veg' to my noodles and other dishes. This is a local thing that David has always loved, but I always said 'yuck' to, not anymore, it is yum and adds great flavor.
• Eating local fish. Here is another thing I was always hesitant to do, until our helper started fixing it, and we all LOVE it.Now we eat it anywhere.
• Cooking with fresh ginger and garlic. I have said this before, but I cannot imagine cooking with anything but...
• Saying 'bu you'. This is local for 'I don't have', and I would always grimace when people said it because it is not grammatically correct for Mandarin, it is slang. The other day I repeated it back to somebody and quickly had to change it.
• Drinking hot water. Yep, I do, just plain water, and green tea, of course. But I drink hot water at home too, never did that pre-Asia.
• Ask for discounts at any and every store. The bargain culture has gotten to me.
• Ask workers to eat with us, or anyone for that matter. The hospitality of this culture has gotten to me in a good way. I often offer the water delivery guy pizza or anything western I may be making. He has taken me up on it before.
• Drive in the wrong lane, do a U-turn the middle of the road, and all other manner of driving maneuvers I would NEVER attempt in the U.S. (hear me out though, it is for survival, really)
• Drive kids on the electric bike, drive three kids on the electric bike. 
• Drink coffee black. This has nothing to do with culture, but David and I both drink our coffee black now and I love it. In general, we eat less sugar. We also enjoy the french press, though we don't always use it. It certainly makes the coffee more flavorful. (I actually am not drinking any coffee at the moment because I am nursing, and every time I prepare David's for the morning, my mouth waters)
• Love soups. I was never a soup lover, but I really enjoy almost any soup served at restaurants here. 
• Spit bones on the floor of a restaurant. Not in every restaurant but we know the places where this is what we should do (and drop any trash on the floor too),and there are many like this. They just come around and sweep up as soon as the customers are done.
• Tell people they are looking 'fatter' or 'skinnier'. This would be locals, of course. I know the cultural nuisances enough to know I would not tell any American friend who just had a baby that she was looking fat (yes, locals said this to me). I have commented in this way to other locals as well and it is not offensive.
• Ask local friends how much their stuff costs. We get this all the time, and we ask right back.
• Home school our kids. In the U.S. I just never had the chance to think about this, I was no where near that stage of life. Now I love it, though I am constantly overwhelmed by the responsibility.

Baby Gabrielle Smiles

 Yes, I know. Why am I posting this pic? Once again I was trying to get her to laugh and smile while holding the camera lower away from my face. I thought I would let you in on laughing at my attempts. Still, such a cutie.

 Blessed, blessed, blessed.

Cookie decorating

 We finally decorated Christmas cookies, better late than never. We usually like to go outside and invite people in, whoever is around....but not many people were around, though some loyal friends came and loved it.

LuBingHua and her family are turning into some of our closest friends, we love them.

Faces of Baby G: Cuteness

I told David that we really need to capture Gabrielle's smiles and laughs...the days are getting away from us. She is so cute and cuddly these days (I LOVE the 3-6 month stage). And after a weekend of no rest in the 'sleep at night' department, and my despairs to David over what to do, how to get her to go longer, etc., she slept through the night!! (9:30 pm- 5:30 am). Of course, she has never done anything consistently, but I was still so thankful.

The other girls thought G would like to play with their American Girl dolls.

 Here is our first attempt of capturing smiles, but she stopped playing the game. And she got distracted by the camera, which is always the problem.

 She makes some hilarious faces...bottle up the cuteness!

December fun: Our Christmas Day!

Our Christmas tradition for the 25th, is to eat Bacon and egg biscuits! I make Paula Dean's biscuit recipe from scratch, buy local bacon, pre-packaged, and cook the eggs in the grease, we do this about once a year, so we really look forward to it. 

Our gas stove top was having problems the past few days, and finally did not work right when we wanted to scramble our eggs. I had remembered that our friends had the same problem and the fix-it man 'dropped' it back down in its place and it was good for a little while. I tried that and that made it worse. David was going to cook our eggs outside over a fire, but it was not getting hot enough fast enough. Finally, we cooked them in the microwave. Thankfully we had cooked the biscuits and bacon the day before (while I had a helper here), so everything turned out fine and YUM!

Final Day of Advent! The Messiah is born!

 We LOVE this tradition and This book: The Advent Book, it is beautiful, filled with Scripture and our kids end up having it memorized by December 25th! Worth every penny. They love opening the doors.

 Wise men above, King Herod below.

We started a new tradition this year with an Advent Banner that a friend of ours made, along with devotionals to go with it. We did this after breakfast and read The Advent Book at night along with another very kid-friendly calendar that is just sticking the picture on, no devotional attached to it. We plan to add to the depth of this banner and its meaning every year as the kids get older. Our name is on the bottom in case you can't see it.

 After breakfast, Advent celebrations, and much singing, We get down the stockings. 

Daddy goes first: He had many home-made cards inside.

And a nerd-rope from mommy (from Bangkok)

Mommy goes next. Bella had drawn a picture of hens eating (we had done it together), she wrote the name of the month like this: Deesibre and drew the math problem 5+5=10. Good job girl.

This is another picture from Bella, it is mommy with a baby in a baby carrier or sling, I think she may have done this when I was in Bangkok because there was also an airplane in the picture.

Tobin is ready and waiting patiently.

We allowed them to do this at the same time since they all had the same thing. 

Movie ticket to the theater

 Sour skittles, each got their own small bag!

Nerd Rope!

And then we played a little version of 'The Wise Man' game, with clues leading to a bigger gift. I made up four rhyming clues, Sophia led them in reading each one and they all figured it out and followed. It was very simple! 

The clues:

Hello Children, Merry Christmas to you!

To find your gifts you have to follow this clue:

Where mommy gets out her kettle bell

Is where your next clue will dwell

Go to the place where the movies sit

See if I’m there or is it a trick?

Now go to the Tree hanging on our front door

Behind it you will find clue number four.

Hurry to Daddy and Mommy’s window seat

Your gifts will be waiting all nice and neat!

 The girls received American Girl Dolls, from taobao, MUCH cheaper than the original price. We were not quite sure what we were getting, but we were very pleased. They are real. They are beautiful. The girls LOVE them. We couldn't really maneuver and make our own like from the website, but we did try to get ones that looked like each of them.

Brown hair, brown eyes.

Bella's came from a different vendor, and was much cheaper. We do think hers is real, but an old factory reject maybe. Her hair tangles more easily, and she has an interesting smell. We may replace hers down the road, but she has no clue about the difference. 

blonde hair, brown eyes. This is the historical 'Julie' doll from the 1970s, but Bella has chosen to call her Julianna, and Sophia has named hers, 'Ellie'. They also received PJs for their dolls and one dress. The clothes were so cheap that we bought 10 outfits and have them stored for gifts down the road, or to put in the school store.

Tobin received quite a few more train tracks and trains (ikea), that included a tunnel and bridge making ability.

 They LOVE these dolls.

Sophia said: 'if I ever stop playing with my doll, which I won't, then I want you to put it in my keepsake box so when I grow up and have a daughter she can have it' exact quote.

After playing a bit, we went out for lunch and ate dumplings, stopping by the fix-it shop to see about our walkie talkies. We came back rested, (I took a nap, a great Christmas gift), played in the afternoon, and had a friend over for leftovers, she ate all of the biscuit, bacon and eggs! 

We had a very blessed day. 

Now, we are looking forward to what God has in store for us this new year!

December fun: Christmas Eve mishap

This truck driver did an excellent job of getting the very heavy bamboo (about to be used for scaffolding) off of his truck. He just jerked the truck forward quickly and stopped abruptly about 5 times and they shook off. He obviously had done that before. Today the men are atop the scaffolding working on the house.

Walkie Talkies!!! Christmas Eve gift! They were so excited, but when David went to plug it into the converter a knob was covering up the amount of voltage for that plug in and he plugged it into the wrong one (my Kitchen Aid is plugged into the other one), so the charger smoked and is of no use. We now have our electrical fix-it man working on it. Hopefully we can use these soon. They have been wanting walkie talkies for awhile. We also have another set coming so our whole family can get in on the action!

December fun: giving and receiving

We slowly give and receive gifts leading up to Christmas day, this makes things more relaxed and focused on Christmas day. Though we involve the kids in giving on a larger scale, they have great simple joy in making cards and drawing pictures for us, and they started doing this months ago, then ask me to put them away until Christmas...

Gabrielle, precious gift.

Here are some more gifts from Poppy and CC

Lite Brite, I remember these from when I was little, they love it!

All the kiddos set up a store outside in our yard with their 'cash drawer', a friend came over to help. They wrote the sign in Chinese and asked for my help, then I asked for her friend's help, who then asked for my help. I was encouraged that she didn't know how to write the character either.

A small Thomas train, remote control. Excited eyes.

A cool helicopter with batman that goes inside...

They also received a Dora game, which all of us played right away, including Tobin.

And then they all did the Dora dance....it was hilarious

These are some of my fave pics of the season:

Handsome hubby and precious baby