Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Happy Birthday, Taylor!!


Tomorrow is Taylor's 6th birthday! Wow! He is growing up. Since Amanda leaves tomorrow morning, we are celebrating his birthday today. He has been so excited that it is HIS birthday......not MinMin's, not LiAnne's, but HIS. He wanted pancakes for breakfast, and didn't really care about the rest of the day, as long as he had cake. Lancy made him a piñata, so we filled it up with the candy that we have collected from other piñatas from the holidays, and will break that open once LiAnne wakes up from her nap.

So much for our wonderful, sunny weather. Actually, it continues to be sunny, but this morning was only 37. That is quite a change from the upper 50's we've had in the mornings. It is 56 now, so though we can't say we are freezing, it certainly isn't the upper 70's we had all month. No complaints though, we have been enjoying having the fire going today.

It was a bit of a hard day with homeschool today. MinMin has days when she does her math papers with no complaints, and gets done quickly. Then she has days like today when she cannot figure out what 10-9 is.....literally. It is soooo hard to be patient when she is in this mode. She finally got through with math, so I had her working on the names of body parts---arm, leg, fingers, waist, etc. She told me that she knew them all (she has been working on them for a few weeks) so I gave her a blank page with the body outline and told her to fill it in with the parts she had been learning. She got about 1/2 of them, and had a number spelled wrong. I had her write out the ones she missed, then had to ask her to do it over neatly, as it is hard to write neatly when you are mad. Well......you get the idea. She didn't want to do it, I insisted, and erased the messy ones to be done again, and again, and again. She went into her silent, staring off and ignoring me mode, which she does when she has had enough of me. So.......she finally finished school about 4:00 this afternoon, when we usually finish about noon. Now, you may be thinking that I am too hard on her, and should give her a break.....but she has had a couple of months of breaks, and she has to take school seriously if she is ever going to move ahead.

It has been really great having my two big girls home for the holidays. Amanda leaves tomorrow morning to head back to college in Missouri. Lancy leaves Friday morning. I will really miss having them home....

Monday, December 31, 2007

December 31, 2007

Are you a little jealous of our weather???





Christmas





Christmas Eve--Christmas Pictures

The electricity was off Christmas Eve afternoon and evening, so we had Christmas cookies and hot chocolate by candle light while we read the Christmas story from the Bible.





Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Three Years Ago Today......

.....we were in Nanchang, China, where we met our daughter.....LiAnne.


Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Friday, December 14, 2007

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Chinese Language

MinMin has been learning to write in cursive for the last couple of weeks. I also have her write her spelling/vocabulary words in Chinese next to the English word. It is so interesting to watch her write in Chinese....and it reminded me of a fascinating website that I found a few months ago. You should really take the time to watch this. I'm sure that you will agree that it is amazing,

http://www.wbschool.org/Chinese.swf

OK, so you'll have to cut and paste this as it won't make it a link for me. Sorry.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Two Months Ago Today.....

we met our daughter, Janelle MinMin at the Civil Affairs Office in Guangzhou, China. As most of you know, that was not an easy day for her, nor were the days to follow. It is so amazing to see the difference now, two months later. MinMin is a happy girl, is learning English, loves her brother and sister, and is happy to have big sister, Lancy, visiting right now. Though the beginning was hard, and we wondered how things were going to work out, we never doubted that God had chosen MinMin to be our daughter.

Four years ago this week we were first challenged by God to bring home another child for our family. It was not something that we had planned to do. Maybe there is someone, even one family, reading this post today who God would call to adopt. Watch the video that follows and be OPEN to God's still small voice calling you.....

(Please mute the music on the slide show above.)

Friday, December 7, 2007


glitter-graphics.com


May you find God's Peace this Christmas Season.