The Night Market

I love the night market.  The colors, the people, the darkness, the lights...the strange food (yes, those are chicken heads on a stick).  These pictures are just a snapshot but someday I want to do a real shoot where I can take time to capture the beauty.  I love having a "real" camera.

From 2013.2 February

From 2013.2 February

From 2013.2 February

From 2013.2 February

Climbing

Matthew is our little climber.  He's still a month or so out from walking, but he finds his way to get around :-)

From 2013.2 February

From 2013.2 February

From 2013.2 February

'Cause it was too hard to go around to get the orange cup...

Faces of Matthew

From 2013.3 March

From 2013.3 March

From 2013.3 March

From 2013.3 March

From 2013.3 March

From 2013.3 March

From 2013.3 March

Our Chinese New Year

In case you haven't heard yet, this is the year of the Snake.

From 2013.2 February

We had the opportunity to celebrate the holiday in several ways.  Our school every year has an all staff party where we can experience many cultural activities.  We had:

Jiaozi making

From 2013.2 February

From 2013.2 February

From 2013.2 February

Caligraphy

From 2013.2 February

From 2013.2 February

From 2013.2 February

Also, paper cutting, a talent show, a feast together, and of course fireworks.

Another day our Chinese helper invited us to her house, where we made more jiaozi and had more food than 7 people could eat in a month :-)

On the bus to her house

From 2013.2 February

More jiaozi

From 2013.2 February

From 2013.2 February

Daddies and their babies.  When we first came with this couple 4 1/2 years ago, there were no kids!  Now there are three amongst us.

From 2013.2 February

The start of the food:

From 2013.2 February

After we had eaten for a couple hours:

From 2013.2 February

That night, we had more fireworks, this time set off by our neighbors.  Matthew and I stayed in the warm house, while Nathan and Lizbeth went out to have a front row view.  Lizbeth was a bit scared (she has a love/hate relationship with fireworks) so she took her bear with her.

From 2013.2 February

From 2013.2 February

Happy Chinese New Year (even if I am more than a month late in posting this)!

Thank you God

This morning was cold.  Bone chilling cold.  Thankfully, my Chinese helper had texted me this morning to give me the heads up so I knew to put "enough" clothes on Lizbeth (I put "enough" in quotes because it means different things to different people.  I had her in 3 layers along with a scarf, gloves, and hat.  A Chinese child would have had 7 layers).

Despite the cold, as we were climbing the large hill that runs by the ocean on the way to the school bus, Lizbeth stopped for a minute to take in the view.  The bitter cold winds had blown away any semblance of fog or pollution, and the air was beautifully clear, the ocean breathtakingly blue.  Lizbeth drew in a deep breath and declared, "Mama, the ocean is SO BEAUTIFUL today!" Then she threw her chin into the air and said "Thanks God!"

What a sweet girl.  Thank you God indeed for a beautiful day.

What Have We Been Up To?

I hate when I go so long with out blogging.  The longer it goes, the more awkward I feel.  And how to start? Just jump in without acknowledging the month+ break?  Try to set up a series of posts to cover everything in between?  Make excuses?  Back post with fake dates and pretend it didn't happen (It was a computer glitch, I promise!)  Well anyways, here's my oh so awkward step back into the blogging world.  You can pretend it didn't happen or harass me in the comments section, whatever you feel best about. :-)

ANYways...what have we been up to?  Well, the first thing is that Matthew has been (mostly) healthy for more than a month!  Hurray!  We did have a small stomach bug go through last week, but it was short (although Lizbeth DID throw up in a TAXI and Matthew DID throw up all over me!  Yuck!).  Matthew has been fairly snot free for several weeks and I've managed to stay out of the international clinic for a long time.  I wonder how our doctor is doing?  I'm not accustomed to not having our weekly chats :-)

In February we had a two week break for Chinese New Year.  During that time we went to my Chinese helper's house for an enormous feast.  Nathan made a movie for/about Lizbeth (hopefully I can post that soon).  We all rested a lot, although I'm getting a little bit of itchy travelor's feet.  It's been years since I've been anywhere but the US on vacation. 

We then went to the Hawthorne Festival with our Chinese helper and had yummy fruit on a stick dipped in sugar.  What more could you ask for?  I would post pictures, but that same day we lent our camera to our friends who were having a baby, which leads me to...

my five days at a hospital translating for our friends giving birth!  What an experience.  Poor girl ended up having a c-section after 3 days of labor (though not continuously which was part of the problem).  As a translator I was allowed in for everything except the 5 minutes of actually pulling the baby out.  It was a good and stretching experience, although I think I might have permanently fried my brain.  I now think in a mush of both languages, so please forgive me if what I say doesn't make any sense sometimes.  You can harass me about that too ;-)

Well, I hope to have more pictures up soon, and more regular blog posts.  The kids are cuter every day.  Thank you to all who stick through my absences with me.