The Blogs that Could've Been

I'm in a blog funk. And having a hard time getting out of it.

I'm one of those bloggers that first writes the entire blog post in my head with commas, sarcastic remarks, anecdotes, italicized emphasis, everything. I lay in bed at night editing my pretend blog in my head.

I wake up in the morning and try to piece together what I came up with in my head. Apparently I was such a poor writer the night before that I put even myself to sleep.

Thus, the slow activity on our blog.

But over the past week or so I've mind-blogged about several things going on in our world. I don't get more than a couple sentences in before I give up hope on making it long enough to actually blog about. So, I'm giving you the summarized and ragged remnants of a few of my nightly mind-blogs...

The Blogs That Could Have Been. 

(see there's the italics I mentioned.)

mind-blog #1:

The Day My Son Ran into a Trash Can

High point: Salem ran full-speed on into a plastic garbage barrel. He didn't cry. So I laughed. I haven't laughed that hard in a really long time.

Low point: Salem's face, nose, and probably tongue and lips implanted on the side of the trash can. 

Awesome... For .2 seconds I thought about having him drink some antibacterial hand gel.

mind-blog #2:

Roach in Our Sink

Our house helper is deathly afraid of roaches. She apparently has a long standing history of waging war against them. One morning this week before she arrived at our place, Brandon killed a roach in our kitchen sink. When she arrived, I informed her of what he'd found. She looked at me wide eyed and worried. And well, maybe slightly confused too. And then that's when I realized my Big Chicken language wasn't quite ready to kick in at 9 a.m.
"Oh, uh...I mean...a roach. NOT a dragon."
(note to self: learn how to say "My bad..." in Chinese.)

mind-blog #3:

Adventures in Rice Cereal

(in my #3 mind-blog I wasn't going to write any words because a picture is worth a thousand words, right? well, that and sometimes I'm just lazy... 

BUT then mind-blog #4 happened and it's just better suited for a no-words-mind-blog)

mind-blog #4:

I Have No Words

mind-blog #5:

My Husband, My Hero

Setting: local friend's home.

Opening scene: We sit down for dinner with the three friends at a table with homemade local dishes scattered across it for us to choose from. I'm thinking to myself that with this much to choose from it'll be easy for me to politely avoid the slow cooked beef-fat, the congealed duck eggs, and deep-fried lotus root.

Crises: Our friend in slow-motion form, reaches across the table and scoops several congealed duck eggs into my bowl and encourages me to try them. I'm having flashbacks of 5 years ago. 

Tension builds: Brandon sees the terror in my eyes. He knows his wife well and knows that I'm a total weener when it comes to trying weird new food.
Climax: Nearing the end of the meal, both friends notice that I've yet to try the congealed duck eggs and do they're best to persuade me to have a try. Brandon, knowing that this cannot end well, informs them that he really liked them and that he'd like some more and proceeds to eat every one of my congealed duck eggs.
Conclusion: "Face" was saved. And Brandon went to sleep with a stomach ache that night.



That's the best of my mind-blogs from the deep recesses of my brain, a very scary place to visit!

Friday Fotos

We got to see a friend this week that we haven't seen in 4 years.
This photo was originally here.


What a difference 4 years makes!

Chinese New Year

On Sunday night, the night of non-stop 5 hours of fireworks, Chinese New Year, I was fully expecting myself to be a completely grouchy, foreign, white-lady, irritated mess.

But when midnight rolled around and our children were soundly sleeping in their beds and all around us were the sounds of war-fare, we sat in our windowsill in awe of the bright lights, in awe of the noise, and laughing hysterically at the utter drama of it all.

It was our first time to be in country for Chinese New Year, and we truly enjoyed it. We started the evening off at a friend's house, eating local food, watching the Chiense equivalent of the "Ball Drop" on tv, and blowing up fireworks in the middle of the city streets. (of which Salem was definitely not a fan of...as you can see in the video)

3 hours later, at 9:30 at night, we decided bedtime was futile for the kids, so we popped in a Disney movie, and let them watch until they fell asleep. Truly, they couldn't hear much of the movie because of the noise going on outside. 

At midnight they brought out the big guns and lit up the sky outside our apartment with fireworks that are illegal to shoot off in the city limits in The States. (and after they nearly shot out windows in our apartment complex, I can understand why! :)  With no fire bans or fireworks restrictions, the next morning our apartment complex looked like a black cat graveyard!

Enjoy the video!

In the blinking of an eye...

Happy 5 months, baby boy!

Don't grow up too quickly, please.

Fish in my Bathtub

The events of today culminated in Brandon tossing a bag of dead goldfish into our trash can outside.

Eight goldfish to be exact.

But let me back up here. I'm getting ahead of myself.

You see, I thought when I went out to our local cloth market today that the only thing I'd be returning home with would be some material to make a few things for the kids. I guess I forgot where I live. Allow me to let you in on a little secret about Big Chicken living:

Things are never as they seem.

This token rule applies in most cases. I could exaggerate upon this point all day long, but for now, I won't go down that road.

The rule still applied today at the cloth market. I bought several yards of fabric from the same lady that I usually buy from. She tallied up my total with her little calculator that speaks to her in Chinese and I paid my insanely cheap amount for some way cute fabric.

Then she pulls a bucket out from underneath the counter and says, "My husband likes to fish!" She points in the bucket toward a bunch of large shiny goldfish that he'd caught at the local lake and asks if I'd like to take one home. I insist that I truly don't need a goldfish today.

She keeps asking... "Do you have a bathtub to put it in?"

Me: "Yes. wait. What? A bathtub? No. no. We use our bathtub. I can't put a fish in our bathtub."

Her daughter (laughing)... "No. Not a bathtub. A fish bowl. Do you have a fish bowl?"

Darn those Chinese language tones. They get me every time. Bathtub and fishbowl are the same word, but toss in a few different intonations here and there and you might have yourself a goldfish in your Whirlpool.

I concede. "Ok. ok. Yes I'll take home a fish for the kids to see."

That's when the daughter pulls out 2 plastic sacks, double layers them, and my fabric lady starts pulling goldfish out of the bucket with her bare hands like she's Bear Grylls. 

One. Two.

"Ok that's plenty."

Three.Four.Five.

"No really. That's enough."

And then she dumps the last three in...Six.Seven.Eight. She pours some water in with them since they're fish (after all), hooks the sack over my handle bar and says, "Good. Just like this!"

The fish slished and sloshed the whole way home. At a stop light the guy next to me informed me that there wasn't enough water in there and that they'd all die.
Note to self: Learn how to say, "you think so, eh?!?!" in Chinese.

Lo and behold, he was right.
The kids enjoyed them for about 2 hours before three went belly up. They were too big to flush down the toilet so we did the next best thing. Bagged them back up, and took them to the trash can outside.

And that's the story of how things are never as they seem, even at the cloth market.

A Christmas Re-Do

Let's pretend it's December 27th. The hype and busyness of Christmas day has waned just a little. Everyone's pants are fitting just a tad tighter (but they're new pants that you unwrapped on Christmas day so it doesn't really matter...) and finally it's time for everyone to post pictures on their blogs of kids in Christmas pjs, festivities, parties, family gatherings, etc...

Great! I'm so glad I'm not late. Because, after all, how embarrassing would that be?!?!



That photo is about how every photo is looking these days; Salem with some sort of injury to his face (carpet burn on his nose this time), Eden generally overwhelming her baby brother, and Caleb a bit awestruck by it all.





Why is it that you don't understand the trouble your mom went through to do certain things for you as a kid until you attempt to do it as a parent?!
Hey mom, what were you thinking doing this with us every year?! Man, you were a sucker for pain! :)



But it was still fun (for me and a friend) to make it. And it was fun for Eden and Salem to eat lick every piece of candy that went on their respective side of the roof.





Turns out, the Gingerbread House was the main attraction at our Christmas party with Eden's preschool teachers. A tiny house made out of cookies, icing, and candy?! They loved it! and what's not to love?  oh yeah...the cesspool of germs living on it. Oh well. It was still fun to look at.



Eden's teachers are all so fab. And not once did they make fun of us for having crappy language skills. In fact they were super kind, obliged us in our silly Christmas trivia games, and cheerfully ate every single chicken salad sandwich.



I'm posting this next picture not because I want you to be sure and notice that I've soooooo NOT lost my baby weight, but so that you can see Eden's preschool teacher. This lady blesses me more than she can know.



After all the Christmas cheer began turning into New Year's cheer, and our Gingerbread House had served it's purpose, we made sure to dispose of it in a completely responsible way...

by giving our 4 and 2 year olds a hammer.





This was right up Salem's alley. All of his little boy power, tongue and all, poured right into that hammer.



Next year, I'm sure they'll gladly build another Gingerbread house, not only for the candy, but because of the fun it holds even after all the Christmas festivities have come and gone.

Yes, this is a post of JUST words...

This is the first post-Christmas blog post.
The blog post where there should be an endless amount of pictures for you scroll through.
Stories about children's faces lighting up at the sight of new gifts.
Recounts of our new favorite traditions for our family and stories of our first Jesse Tree Adventure.

Oh and has New Years come and gone, too?
Well then, I should be listing last year's happy memories and this year's resolutions.

Alas...I'm going to make a list of excuses for being such a poor blogger.
Excuses such as
- Christmas morning I woke up with mastitis. Which meant I did not attend the Christmas morning play put on by our house helper's daughter's kindergarten, but Brandon and the 2 bigger kids did. So Christmas morning was a bit lonesome around our house.
- Christmas evening at about 8 p.m. Brandon remembered Caleb and I needed new passport photos printed off for our trip up to the US Embassy in the Capital the next day. He scurried off to a local print shop to have that done while I watched It's a Wonderful Life by myself.
- The next day we dropped Eden and Salem off at a friend's place and the three of us went to the Capital for an overnight stay for Caleb to get immunizations and coincidentally for me to see a doc for the mastitis.
- Did not get to see a doc. They were overbooked.
- Next day. mastitis cleared up, praise the Lord. We came back home to a sickly Salem.
- Salem graciously passed along his cold to the rest of us...which lasted about 3 days.
- New Year's Eve, Eden's cold seemingly morphed into a stomach virus as well. We woke up after a couple hours of sleep to the sounds of a vomiting child, the worst sound ever.
- New Year's Day, Eden has officially made best friends with our sofa, her blanket, and our tv.
- Somehow we became even more insane over the past couple days and have commenced potty training with Salem. Yes, we've clearly lost our minds. As long as we're at home being mopey, we might as well be getting something done in the process, right?


While our Christmas day, the days that followed, and New Year's weren't exactly as we'd hoped, we're still grateful to our Savior for His birth, His gift of life to each of us, and yet another year to look forward to his goodness.