Two Months?!

Seriously?  How could I have gotten two months behind on blogging yet again?

I swear we skipped March.  We got a nasty bug that knocked us out for 2-3 weeks, plus Nathan was finishing up his third quarter masters classes.

April was filled with our trip to Thailand, finding out we're pregnant with baby number three,  Matthew's birthday, a wonderful visit from our friends the Carmans, Nathan's Masters culmination exam, and preparing for the Middle School Drama!  Wow.  Who knew you could do so much in one month?  No wonder my house is trashed.

Not to mention I've been feeling pretty poorly from said pregnancy.

I'll try to catch you all up to speed in the next couple weeks. 

Here is the link to our announcement video, plus lots of fun shots of other things we "discovered" in Thailand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqKoAqU4M7I&feature=youtu.be

Lastly, we will be in Oregon and San Francisco June 4th-19th, so please look us up!  We would love to see you!

Juice

I recently bought a juicer second hand from a friend, so we decided to pull it out and try it.

I went to the fruit seller across the street and he gave a bag full of apples to me for FREE because they needed to be thrown out!

Six large apples (after the bad parts were cut off) made this much apple juice:

The kids had a ton of fun making it, and I was impressed by how easily it worked (strong motor) and how safe it seemed (not easy to get fingers caught in it).  I love the concentration on Matthew's face here :-)

Both kids were eager to drink it as soon as we finished, but as soon as the novelty wore off my finicky second child won't touch it.  Bummer.  We're going to stop buying store bought juice and see if we can convince him this is better.

This little girl was happy though!

A Few Morning Pics

The sunlight was so nice the other morning while the kids were getting ready for school that I decided to snap a couple shots.

My little babies are growing up!

Best Friends

I am super thankful for how well our kids get on.  Everywhere we go, you can usually spot them playing, laughing, or holding hands.  Recently Lizbeth declared that her favorite toy in the world was her little brother...funny way to put it but sweet just the same.

An added benefit is that they play well in the mornings...allowing Mom and Dad to sleep in a little.  They are even big enough to get themselves cereal.  As long as we don't care how many bowls of cocoa puffs Matthew will eat they can take care of themselves for an hour or two!

Lizbeth also loves to "teach" her brother.  Below is a sweet video of her teaching him piano.

So thankful for these sweet kiddos!

More on Laundry (Unfortunately)

As I mentioned before, I tried to stay on top of laundry while we were with our friends to lessen the huge piles that would face me when we returned to Qingdao.

Unfortunately, I learned a hard lesson while using her machine.

Most washing machines here (mine) only have a cold option, although several front loading machines (hers) now have the option to heat the water inside the machine.  The day before we left, I decided to do a quick load of darks.  Being that we had had so much sickness going around on our trip (and forgetting that you should only wash darks on cold) I decided to pump up the heat.

Unfortunately, what came out was some strange shades of purple and a VERY shrunken pair of jeans.

To make matters worse, it was my favorite pair of jeans (and I only own two pair total).  Getting back to Qingdao, I made it a top priority to replace said favorite pair.

I was hopeful the numerous western brands (Gap, H&M, ect) would give me some decent options for a western shaped body.

Unfortunately, skinny is the only thing in right now.  100 styles of jeans ranging from "skinny" to "boyfriend skinny" to "extra skinny".

I bought the skinny.  My first pair in my life, and born out of necessity.  Sigh.

Laundry

One downside of a big trip is the mountains of laundry to catch up on...

Even though I tried to stay on top of it while we were gone, a lot had accumulated by the time we got back.  That combined with the fact I felt it was a great time to strip our beds and wash our sheets, I'm drowning in the piles.

The hard part is, without a dryer, I am limited in how many loads I can do a day (usually 1-2).  Unless we get some real sun (it's currently snow/sleeting), it will probably take weeks to catch back up.

I'll probably have to start getting creative about my hang drying spaces again!  You can read about our struggles in this department last summer (and why I can only wash 1-2 loads a day) here. 

Friends

We are extremely excited that our close friends recently moved back to China.  Although not to our city, they are now only a 4 hour train ride away.  When our other plans for our Chinese New Year holiday fell through, it was no question where we'd be.  It seemed a little crazy to leave our cold city for somewhere farther north, but good friends are worth it :-)

They were extremely kind to host us for an entire week, especially so recently after they moved into their new apartment (they've been there less than a month).  How they scrounged up enough blankets/sheets/pillows for all of us, I don't know!

Although the kids hadn't seen each other for a year, they got on famously.  Both our kids cried their eyes out when we had to leave.  Our only comfort is that it shouldn't be a year before we see each other again!

The only downside was that we battled a stomach flu while we were there.  It was a very strange version of 10 little Indians...every day just one person would throw up.  Thankfully, three of us escaped, so the last couple days were vomit free.

Being Chinese New Year, there were fireworks galore.  Thankfully our kids seem to have adjusted to the thundering blasts (Matthew used to wake up screaming), so we were just able to enjoy the colorful displays.  One night Jacquelyn and I went out walk.  There are very few controls about where you can set them off.  We were walking down the road and suddenly amazing blasts appeared right in front of us--we had to wait until they were finished before we could continue on!  At least I was able to get some good up close and personal shots.

Overall it was a fantastic trip, and so hard to leave...we are thankful for these amazing friends, and that it is now that much easier to visit them!

The Rest of the Story...

Remember how Matthew begged for weeks to "race the cars"?  A few days after he earned the ticket, we were able to head across town to fulfill his wish.  This was a long time ago, but I still wanted to post the pics.

 

We're in the "hard to get a natural smile" stage as you can tell.

The best thing is, the program runs yearlong so he can earn a new ticket every month!

Updates

It's been a while since I've kept up on this, so I'm going to try and get some updates up during the next few days.  For now, I will leave you with these cute pictures of Matthew and his best friend here.  They are two little peas in a pod.

Grey Skies

Lately our city has looked a lot like this:

So we've been seeing a lot more of this:

 

 

Thankfully he likes it and thinks it makes him look like a ninja.  Or a doctor.  The girl doesn't complain either.  She hates the smell of pollution and tries to hold her breath if we forget the masks.  I think they're better at using them than me.

Today supposedly the blue skies are back but we are stuck sick inside! 

Another interesting fact is that the pollution definitely makes it warmer.  So you either have biting cold-want-to-chop-off-your-nose winds or choking smog...can't wait for spring! :-)

Merry Christmas from the Greenes!

It's been pretty busy around here, but we're doing great.

As of December 18th, I'm officially done teaching.  They've hired a replacement for me, so that felt good to hand it off.

Nathan has three semesters of his masters under his belt.  One more to go!  The fall drama went well and now we're looking at spring.

Lizbeth is excelling in Kindergarten, though she often gets bored :-)  Hard to keep that girl challenged.  She absolutely loves everything artsy or crafty, taking after her mommy.

Matthew doesn't love school, so we're pulling him back to three half days now that I won't be teaching and can get him at lunch.  But he still loves anything cars and has started declaring he wants to be an astronaut.

Fun times all around!

The Desires of Our Hearts

Anyone who knows Matthew knows he is all about cars.

For the past few weeks, Matthew has endlessly asked to "race the cars on the racetrack".  A new mall where we live has a Carrera store with a racetrack that you can pay to race the cars.  His favorite thing is to spend a half hour (more if I'd let him) walking around the shop looking at every model car they have.  He then asks to race them.

The problem is, it costs nearly $10 to race for 20 minutes.  As much as he would love it, we've talked about it and just don't feel it's a wise use of money.

But every day, he asks again.  We again explain that it costs a lot of money to race the cars.  He says he'll save up his allowance (his allowance is about 50 cents a week).  We explain that even so, it would take a long, long time to save that much money and we don't think it's a good use of his funds.  He sticks out his chin stubbornly.

Friday, he came home from school excitedly.  The school recently started a book reading program.  If they meet a set "goal" for reading X number of times a week for a month, they earn a prize ticket.  The ticket can then be redeemed for one of five prizes.  He had turned in his reading log a few days previously and was anxiously waiting for when they would hand him his prize.  I didn't remember the options, only that one of them was for a bag of cookies, so I was hoping he would not be disappointed after all his hard work.

He hopped of the bus happily.  "Mom, I can race the cars!" 

"Honey, we've talked about this, and it's really too expensive.  I'm sorry, but you can't race the cars."

"No, mommy, I got my prize ticket today, and one thing I can do is race the cars!"

Sure enough, he pulled out his ticket and listed as a prize redemption was one free 20 minute turn to "race the cars".

This brings tears to my eyes, because it has been so difficult to tell his tender heart "no" over and over again.  I had questioned our decision.  After all, we have $10.  Or maybe we can use some his Christmas money from his grandparents.  Or maybe he can do extra chores.  Or...but I just came back to that it just didn't seem like a good use of money.

He has truly worked hard to meet his goal.  Although he obviously can not truly read on his own, he has remembered most days to ask us to read to him.  Other days he has sat on the couch and "read" to himself, turning page by page, carefully studying every picture.  Some simple books he has mostly memorized and will "read" pages or lines of them to me.

It felt so perfect then, that after his hard work he had won such a perfect gift. 

It also provided a perfect opportunity to talk about how the Father meets the desires of our hearts.  He is usually reluctant to praying outside of meals and bedtime, but he happily got down on his knees with me and thanked the Father for this wonderful and unexpected gift that we had not even thought to ask of HIM. 

Thank you, Father, for providing even these silly things for which we don't even think to ask.

Creative Decorating

They have some creative decorating ideas here in the East.  After spring, summer, and fall flowers fade away they decorate with different colors of cabbage.  While I've always found this strange and kind of funny, I also appreciate the added color on dreary winter days!

Markets

We have a really great market in Qingdao.  The great thing about this market was that it had several grain sellers, who would fresh grind the grains for you.  So if you wanted to be fairly positive you were getting 100% whole wheat, this was the place to go.  They also have lots of other grains they are willing to grind, such as soy, rice, millet, ect.  Unfortunately, while it was fairly convenient to get to from our old apartment, our new apartment is a two bus, 45 minute one direction trip away.  Once you are laden down by 20-30 lbs of produce and flours, you don't really want to bus the return trip.

Just the other day, however, I accidentally found one just 2 miles from our home.  Two different buses can get me to it in about 10 minutes (15 including walking).  Super exciting.

While the grain section is not as exciting, I did find one stall with lots of options.  He seemed to have many of the same grains available, if not displayed as prettily as the other one.  It is also a fun place to walk around with lots to see!

Pictures!

I finally was able to get pictures from my phone to my computer.  Hurray!

A few weeks ago we had a family date night, and it was Matthew's first time Ice Skating.

 Ready to go!

A lot of the night was of course spent like this:

But he had fun too.

 Lizzy had recently learned to roller blade, so going from that to ice skating was a piece of cake.

 And of course we had to end with ice cream!

Sorry You Missed It

It was a great show.  The kids really stepped up at the last minute and everything came together.

The Hard Facts of Life

A few days ago Matthew had a rough day where he found out a few very important truths.

1. If you suck on a whistle lolly pop, after awhile it will no longer be a whistle.  (He cried about this one on and off for about an hour)

2. Eating cold ice cream fast gives you a brain freeze.

3. There is no way to have warm hard ice cream.  If you ask mommy to warm it up, it will turn to sweet milk.


No amount of talking could convince him there was just nothing mommy could do to change any of these facts.

**As I write this, I realize I gave him a lolly and ice cream in the same day--what kind of parent am I? :-) **

A little story to make you laugh

So, still no pictures.  Need to figure that out.

The past few days have had their humor.  Sometimes not always funny when it happened.  For instance, last night after ordering a pizza, we waited an 1 1/2 hours (though we called a few times) before they told us they accidentally gave our pizza to someone else...if we wanted to wait another half hour, they would make us a new one and give us a whole 20% discount!  (This was already 8:00PM, an hour past our kids bed time)  Needless to say, we declined.

But today I had an experience that truly showed my lack of Chinese.  I was at the hospital for some general check-ups (the international clinic is in the hospital).  I thought, hey, the play next weekend needs some patient clothes for one of the costumes.  From a past experience where a friend had to have an emergency appendectomy in the middle of the night, I knew you could purchase them at the hospital, at least during daytime hours (the middle of the night crisis get to wear their skivvies).  So I started wandering around, trying to figure out where to buy them.  Found the little convenience store, not in there, so asked the teller.  She motioned me out the store and to the left.  No sign of another store, so I asked someone else.  After several people, I finally end up at a window, where they teller says, "Yes, here! 42 kuai!"  (in Chinese of course)  So I hand over my money and he hands me my change and a receipt...no clothes.  Turns out you have to be a PATIENT to obtain clothes.  But I've already given him my money, and I don't exactly know how to explain that I needed them as a costume and don't have a department to obtain them from...so I eventually go back up to the International Clinic to beg mercy.

Well, they laugh their heads off with me, but don't really know what to do about it.  A friend walks up and we laugh about the story, and we ask if we can buy the clothes for him (as a patient) which he will then give to me.  They're not sure if this will work.  In fact, since they are simply an out patient clinic, I don't think they even know where to find them.  So they call around to some nurses they know and find someone willing to trade my receipt for some clothes.  They scribble down her department and name (in the equivalent to chinese cursive, nearly unreadable to a foreigner) and give me some broken instructions, half in chinese and half in English about where to go.  So off I head across the hospital again, back down to the 2nd floor.  Can't find this department.  Start showing the slip of paper and asking around.  Finally get instructed to use the other elevator (the one I had just used only goes to floor 4) to get to floor 5.  Apparently you have to use one elevator to go down to level two, walk across the hospital, and use another to get to level 5.  Of course they have half the elevators turned off, so in this elevator lobby there are about 40 people waiting to get on elevators.  I talk Matthew into taking the stairs.  Finally get to the 5th floor.  We're apparently in the cardiatric unit, but there's two sections.  Ask around the first, they don't know what I'm talking about, send me over to the second.  These doors look scary, and the sign above says Intensive Cardiac Unit...um, am I allowed to just walk in here?  So I wander in, Matthew in tow, wander down the hall, past the surgery rooms, ICU, ect.  Finally find the nurse who was expecting me. 

"What size?"  She says.  I tell her about my size.  She hunts around forever...and comes up with an XXL.  what?  I know Chinese sizes run small and all...I try to get her to go smaller, but she is insistent that I need this large.  I ask her if it's a women's XXL, nope, just a general one.  They don't differentiate between sexes for these oh so attractive patient clothes.  I ask her for a M size, she shakes her head and gives me a XL.  "Pang!" she says, which means "fat!"  Okay, this is the first time I've been called that in China...

After I left (XL in hand, I had given up by now) I finally realize I had been wearing my heavy winter coat, carrying two bags, two umbrellas, and a bunch of other stuff.  I probably really did look "pang" to them.

Well, our poor Korean student will be wearing an XL set on stage next week.  We'll have to make it work because I am NOT going through that again :-)

Technological Issues

Uhg.  These past few months have been trying, especially in the technological area.

I am under some sort of curse.  Or at least being challenged.  And I haven't always responded well. 

Now that I'm getting into the swing of living here and working part time, I've been wanting to get more posts up, maybe even put together a newsletter of sorts.  Unfortunately, I've been thwarted at every take.

For instance, today I had sweet pics on my phone of Lizbeth and her close friend huddling under an umbrella on the way home from school today.  I thought I'd quickly upload them and give you a few notes about our changing seasons here...unfortunately, my phone is Chinese so it does not have gmail and I can't get it to talk to my computer through either the cord or bluetooth.  So...no pics today.

This is my third phone since moving to China, trying to get one in the affordable price range that does what I need (both works well and has a high connection speed--seems to be I can't have both).  Each time I switch or reset the phone I have to re-enter all my phone numbers and contacts...so basically I don't ever have the phone number I need.

Before we left America we invested in a high quality computer that I hoped would do everything I need.  Two weeks ago, it worked great.  The next morning I woke up and the keyboard didn't work.  After exhausting every option, I have had to buy a wireless keyboard to use instead.  Turns out my warranty is only good once I step back into the good old US of A.  Which I don't plan to do anytime soon.

Shortly after that, my sewing machine quit.  Was sitting at it, sewing.  Stood up to go iron the piece I was working on, came back and it no longer worked.  

Last month I was in Beijing and basically couldn't get on the internet through my phone or computer no matter where I went.  Completely unexplained.

So...I'm frustrated.  Trying to be patient.  At times I even find humor in it all.  But it definitely doesn't help my ability to get things done.  You can pray for me.

Where Am I?

So, a flurry of posts, and then almost two weeks without one.  "What happened?" you might ask?

I started teaching.

Now, maybe many of you don't know, but I never planned to come back and teach this year.  In fact, I got rid of 90% of my professional clothes over the last two moves we made.  Making the last 3 blouses and 2 black skirts work four days a week has been a challenge.

BUT, we are currently in immediate need of an elementary teacher.  Over the past two years, BOTH of our full time art teachers have moved away, leaving just one local staff behind.  So, after being asked by the Head Principal, the Preschool Principal, many parents and fellow staff members, then finally the Elementary Principal, I agreed to teach for the first six weeks while hopefully they can find another full time Art Teacher.

Anyone interested in teaching abroad?  Know of someone who might be?  We would love to hear from you.

I am actually really enjoying teaching again, but with two little ones and a husband in masters, it is not a sustainable position for me right now.  Plus, as part time, I can't fully meet their needs even as it is.  How full time working moms do it, I will never know.  It is exhausting! 

So if it is a little quiet on here, you'll understand why.  I have lots of pictures to update you all on, but not the time to do it.  Alas, always the problem.