Halloweenies

We're total weenies when it comes to Halloween. If the "holiday" totally got wiped off the face of the planet, I couldn't care less. It's just never been something I've been "in to."
Don't get me wrong...kids in costumes are cute! Who doesn't love a little boy dressed up as a cowboy or a blonde little tinkerbell?!
It's the freaky faces. The hoards of candy. The strangers my kids encounter while out knocking on doors. The festivals, the candy corn (gag me now!), and those rubber "fingers" that look like witches wrinkled old fingers.
I really could just do without it all.

And then I moved to Asia. A place where Halloween is almost unheard of. It's one of THE very few things that totally makes me fit in here...the fact that the billions of people around me couldn't care less about that holiday.

And then my blessed husband went out for a bike ride looking for a gym. He stumbled upon a place called "My Gym" which totally suckered him in since he was looking for a gym, after all.
Turns out, it's a kid's gym! SCORE!
With truly great play areas for the kids! SCORE AGAIN!
That was having a halloween party that evening and who really wanted the foreign white kids to attend! oh blast.
We juuuuuuuust almost made it through October without the mention of Halloween. I seriously had JUST posted on facebook that I was glad this year that Halloween was passing us by.
But like all things "western" here, Halloween is becoming more popular.

So I got over myself, my pity party, my tendency to want to crawl in my bed and pull the covers over my head at the mention of Pumpkin Carving, and we loaded up and went to the full blown Asian Halloween party.
What would be appropriate for an Asian halloween party??
Answer: Entirely too many people crammed into one room.

Eden and Salem were promptly lined up for a million flash bulbs to ensue.
What makes white kids stand out even more in an Asian crowd??
Answer: Put them in superman and princess costumes.

What's the little girl to Eden's left supposed to be dress as??

Answer: no idea.

What did Caleb think of all the hoopla?

Answer: He's indifferent. Like his mommy. 

Or, maybe he's less thrilled than me...

Either way, he was the cutest little cow there...even if Eden insisted that he was a Giraffe.

I'll try to have a better attitude next year about it all...because you never know what can come from a Halloween party.
This year's halloween party resulted in me teaching a parenting class (wha?!) next sunday at the Gym for attending parents so that our kids can attend classes for free. That's right...occasionally we take full advantage of our "foreigner" status. :)

It's just not that Unusual

Doors are over rated right?

I mean, who needs a door when you can just crawl through a window to enter a building?

Because that's what Eden has been doing the past few weeks when she goes to preschool.

So this one day Brandon came home from dropping Eden off at preschool and said, "They want us to drop Eden off at the back window now when we take her and pick her up."

After some semi-confusing conversation with her teachers (semi-confusing because my Chinese skills are still under par...over par? I have no idea. My golf skills are bad too.)
Anyway, what we think they were saying is that the preschool is next to an elderly couple's apartment. The preschool is in an apartment so it's surrounded by actual tenants. And apparently they complained about the door to the preschool opening and closing too often, loud children, and what not. So the solution for awhile was to climb through the back window.

And then the elderly couple kept complaining. And kept complaining. And kept complaining.

Not about us specifically. But just about the noise level of the kids. And we all know, kids are going to be noisy kids, no matter how many times you ssssshhhhhh them and no matter what nationality they are.

And since the preschool's teachers are too nice to say, "Get over it Granny!" the preschool is moving to a new location. It's bigger and better, so really, it's a win/win.

We realized just how adjusted to the culture we've become though, when they told us that we needed to pick her up from the window for awhile. Because our immediate thought was not, "hmmmm, that's strange." or "uhhhhhhhh....alllllriiight....."

It was more along the lines of, "ok. sure!"  Because, well, that's just China. And in China, picking your kid up from preschool through a window is just something that's not that unusual.

Pie Month has Arrived

I scoured our blog this afternoon for evidence of me ever informing you of one of our family's traditions. Lo and behold, I think this is the first mention of it!
Which is so sad, as it really is a great little tradition.

This is our Third Annual Pie Month!

Yes, you heard me correctly. Pie Month!

Three years ago Brandon declared October to be Pie Month. He felt that October kind of got the shaft as far as holidays are concerned, with Thanksgiving in November, and Christmas in December. Plus he thought we kind of needed a "warm-up" for all the eating that comes in November with T-Giving.
(why not go ahead and give your waistline a little stretch in it before the big event comes along?! :) Since I've finally gotten back into the routine of exercise post-baby, I'm ok with the arrival of Pie Month!

If you know my husband at all, you understand that his declaration for completely-made-up-holidays or traditions is not unlike him at all.

And so yesterday, yes the 21st of October, I finally fulfilled our Pie Month tradition with a warm apple pie.

In Brandon's perfect Pie Month world, he'd like one pie per week during Pie Month. I'm still playing my I've-got-a-newborn card though, so we're over half a month in to Pie Month and we're just now getting around to it!

But isn't it a fancy shmancy pie to kick things off with?!

Next week: Buttermilk Chess Pie! (yes, we miss you Bekah!)

Next year I vow to get our 4th Annual Pie Month off to an appropriate start with a pie on the FIRST day of October! Anyone want reservations at Hotel Chancler next October?!

The Dawning of a New Era

Well, we've done it. We've made the jump into electric transportation.
I know. I know. All you Ford 150 Texas Edition people are totally hating on us right now.

And believe me. I get it.
In all of my driving years I've owned three cars.
(I'm using owned loosely...as I didn't purchase a single one with my own money. But lets not get nit picky here...)
And all three of those were trucks.
They ran the gamut. Chevy. Ford. Toyota. All using more gas than should be spoken of.
But then we traded in our gas guzzler for a society that depends on the bicycle.

The past several months our mode of transportation has been taxis. Occasionally buses. And we have a bike that we've shared. And until recently, that's been sufficient.

But then we found out that Eden's preschool is moving to a different location. Which gave us reason to think about finding a quicker mode of transportation. Quicker than a bike. Quicker than walking a couple blocks away to flag a taxi. Quicker than a bus that makes 7 stops between here and there.

Enter: The Electric Bicycle.

Well. okay. This one is actually our house helper's. Which is a good thing as it's pink, has flowers all over it, and has flower "pedals." No lie.
But we rode it today to the bike street. You know how in America all the car dealerships seem to crowd right next to each other, creating miles of cars on display?
It's the same thing here. Only it's bikes. The normal kind. The three wheeled kind. The electric kind. The scooter kind. you get my drift...

So our tutor rode our bike and went with us to help work through any details that might cause any trouble. He rode our bike because he doesn't have one. He doesn't have one because he's a scaredy cat. He's a scaredy cat because Chinese traffic is nutso.
(ok...scratch that last sentence mom and dad. You never read of such nonsense.)

So we arrived at the bike market.

Brandon picked out a black one. Any surprise there? ummmmm, no.

Kudos to him though for picking out the one with the safest kid's seat. I mean, it's no Britax Roundabout car seat strapped on the back and passing all DPS child restraint laws... but I don't think they can fall out of it at least.  :)

It's got a removable battery that'll plug right into our wall when it's low. It came with protective knee gear (but no helmet...does anyone else find that strange?!) And it's got pedals just in case the battery goes dead while you're out. But good googly if I have to pedal this thing with a kiddo on the back, I'm in a world of trouble.

So we're green now. We're saving the ozone layer one bike at a time.
And if anyone wants to come and visit us I'll let you take it for a spin. We can ride it together and make Dumb & Dumber jokes all day long.

Who Needs Sleep?

Everyone loves a picture of a peaceful sleeping baby, right?



What you don't see in this picture is the minutes leading up to this moment. Minutes, as in about 52 of them. 52 minutes of inconsolable screaming.

Look closer.

Yep. See those four pacifiers? Four different kinds of pacifiers.
All to no avail. The boy just won't have any part of them.

It's a good thing I don't live in America because otherwise, last night at 2 am I would have fled to the closest Wal-Mart and bought every single pacifier in stock...just to see if he'd fancy anything at all.
He doesn't.
And he probably won't. Which makes my sleepy eyes a little more droopy just thinking such thoughts.
This is uncharted territory for me...a baby that won't take a NUK.

But he makes up for it during the day.
Because when 7 a.m. rolls around and he wakes me up with coos, smiles, and flashing his dimple, I forget about all the hours of lost sleep.

My Four Year Old Baby Girl

We ended the week last week with a birthday party for Eden. Can't believe how quickly four years has passed! She greeted me friday morning with, "Mama...Are you going to say Happy Birthday to me?!"
And then we had a conversation about why she wasn't much bigger that morning than she was the day before.

We're notoriously bad about remembering to take video. But we broke out the video camera and dusted it off just for her birthday. I compiled a video of the highlights...so I'm hoping the grandparents will at least make it all the way through it. :)



A four year old and her chonies. I hope when she's 14 she's as easily pleased with a package of Disney Character Underwear.
Her birthday party invite was all in Chinese and when it came time to sing "Happy Birthday" at her party, her little classmates had to remind us that we should sing it in English for her too. It's times like this that I hope our calling here isn't totally warping our children.

Eden, oh how we love you. You continue to challenge us, stretch us, make us proud, make us laugh, and make us wish we were childless and back in college some days. We hope you'll look back on your childhood and forget the times that we screwed up when disciplining you. We hope it will be a good example of God's grace in our lives.
We love you beyond words, Eden Grace!! Happy 4th Birthday!