noodle bead art

This morning Julianna and I pasted noodle beads onto construction paper. You'd be surprised at how much glue we managed to use! It was fun. Here she is posing with her artwork before bedtime tonight.




We are gearing up for a busy stretch here - between family celebrations and work activities, the holidays are full! The fun starts tomorrow night when we host a birthday dinner for Julianna and a local friend - his birthday was the 16th, so we are combining celebrations. We're having make your own mini-pizzas for dinner and cupcakes for dessert. Yum.

We made the cupcakes today and Julianna asked for one at dinnertime. I asked, "when are we going to eat those cupcakes??" In response she sang, "happy birthday Ju-nanna". Which reminds me, she's started referring to herself as Ju-nanna - pretty soon she'll have her entire name down!

She loves to sing and frequently requests, "mommy, Ju-nanna sing songs". Her favorites are "yes Jesus me", "happy know it", "birthday you" and she just became a big fan of "jing jing bells". [the rest of the world refers to those songs as "Jesus loves me", "if you're happy and you know it", "happy birthday" and "jingle bells".]

noodle bead necklaces

A few days ago Julianna and I colored noodle beads. We dumped dry noodles in ziploc bags, added some drops of food coloring, sealed the bags and shook til the beads were colored. We even toasted them in the oven at low temp for a few minutes to dry them out.

Noodle beads have more uses than you might imagine... I made a "needle and thread" using a long piece of yarn, a thin drinking straw and some packing tape. Julianna kept busy threading colored noodle beads onto the yarn and creating a long necklace. (An added benefit of a noodle bead necklace is that it is delightfully loud if you drag it across a hardwood floor!)

Colored noodles are also lots of fun in the kitchen. Julianna likes to sit on the kitchen counter and stir her noodles while I cook.

Here she is, concentrating hard on stringing noodles. She LOVES her apron (my old button up shirt turned backwards, with sleeves cut short and collar cut off). Once she has it on, it's hard to convince her to take it off. One of Matt's buddies was here on Saturday afternoon and asked, "what is that thing Julianna is wearing?"

decorating the apartment

I can't believe it is already the 3rd Sunday in advent! Wow :) I thought you might like to see a picture of some of our apartment decorations - Matt took some the other day to show in class (he's been teaching some English classes again recently, but not on a permanent basis, just off and on for a teacher friend of his).

Every year I try to create some sort of advent wreath, and this is my most successful attempt ever. I managed to find some pillar style candles, but the store only had 9 - 6 red, 2 green and 1 purple. I settled on four red as the outside candles, and put the green one in the center. (It doesn't really follow the traditional color patterns, but, hey, it works.) The greenery is fake, and here's a little secret: the black "base" that it sits on is a piece of cardboard covered in a scrap of black fabric. It's all about working with the resources you have....

The nativity is sitting on our dish cabinet and I really like it there - this photo was taken early one morning. It looks like it's raining outside, but it basically never rains here except for during the rainy season (summertime). The moisture on the windows is condensation. Our windows aren't double paned, and the warmer temps inside cause moisture to form. We have water running down the inside of our windows almost every morning in the wintertime. The windows on the sunny side of the house dry up first, but the windows on the north side are often wet until late afternoon.

Yep, that's a Wake Forest stadium cup sitting on the end of the table. Go Deacs!

happy 4 month birthday LYDIA!!

Here's a little photo tour of the past four months with our little girl :)

This one was taken the morning after she was born -

one month
(this is from our time in Grand Forks, Lydia actually turned one month old the day after we arrived in Asia)

2 months.....

3 months....

4 months!! (taken this morning - about 5 minutes ago!)

two little princesses

The girls got matching princess sweatsuits in the package yesterday and boy are they cute! I got a little carried away taking photos!

I love Lydia's grin in this picture!


Julianna just finishing lunch....

Julianna loves to pat Lydia's head (it's a very bald, very pat-able, very kiss-able head!)




When leftover lasagna meets applesauce and oreo cookie....


another package arrived today - thanks to our friends at Faith in GF, ND!! We are so blessed to have so many loving family members and friends.

Lydia's check up went super well

Yesterday afternoon I took Lydia to see the pediatrician and get her 4 month shots. She did great - hardly even cried :) She weighs 15 lbs - not sure what percentile that is, and I already forgot how long she is - but I do know it's a lot bigger than Julianna was at this age. She sleeps a lot better too - just did two 12+ hour nights in a row!! Yay Lydia!!! She celebrates her 4 month birthday tomorrow.

She's sleeping now and Julianna is in the kitchen with Xiao Li making mini-loaves of banana bread and apple bread to give to some of our friends in the neighborhood as Christmas gifts.

We've been reading lots of books together recently - here's a photo from yesterday morning, reading in our pjs (well, the girls are in their pjs, I beat them out of bed by almost 2 hours, so my pjs are already distant history by this time of morning!)

if you think you are a patient person....

If you think you are a patient person, I challenge you to make 300 salt dough ornaments with an almost-2 year old! (you can borrow my toddler for an afternoon if you think you are up to the challenge!) Julianna wears an old button up shirt with the collar cut of and the sleeves trimmed down to size. Works like a charm!

Our first Christmas package arrived and we dug in this morning! (No, we didn't start unwrapping gifts yet - just the stuff we were supposed to have and enjoy the whole season!) Julianna and Lydia are now proud owners of hand-knitted stockings from Grandma Jan. They are beautiful! I'll take a photo and post it soon.

Here's a photo of Julianna digging in to the goodies.

Lydia is a laugh-er

Lydia is becoming quite a laugh-er. She is especially entertained by her big sister, but appreciates all efforts to coax a laugh out of her. A few days ago Julianna was playing peek-a-boo with Lydia and the two girls were both laughing so hard at each other. Maybe I'll try to get a little bit of laughter on video and post it to the blog. in the meantime, here's a photo of Lydia and Matt laughing at each other....

taking the TV plunge

Well, for the first time in our married lives, Matt and I are TV owners. We bought one yesterday (and a DVD player to go along with it). We, obviously, don't do much tv watching, and we watch movies on our computer screen. But, we decided it was time to jump in and buy one - Julianna watches a video sometimes, and we would like to be able to have "movie nights" at our apartment without having 11 people huddle around a 11inch computer screen. Our first movie night is planned for Friday.

And, here's a photo of our tree. Realized I never posted it. You can see that it is not only real and alive, but still growing in it's own pot. in past years when the Christmas season is over we have put our trees out in the public area of the apartment complex and the gardeners have planted them. You can go back to our old apartment and see our old trees. I think we might ask them to leave this one potted and use it again next year.

It has a wonderful "real tree, not perfect" flavor to it. If you know why the ends of the branches are bending down like they are, please post a comment and tell me what to do - yes, we know that we need to water it!! so, the issue is deeper than that.

And don't worry, we've added lots of presents since we took this picture :)

more christmas outfits

We had a full day yesterday and it was nice to get home, get the girls in bed and enjoy a few quiet hours working on various projects I have going for the Christmas season.

I have been busy making salt dough ornaments for Christmas parties we are having in December... Erin Ashley and I hope to make about 300 ornaments, so we've got plenty of work ahead of us. Julianna is a big "help" :) I concentrate on pressing cookie cutters into the dough and scooping the shapes to the tray quicker than she destroys them in her own attempts to cut and scoop.

Here's a picture of Julianna sporting her candy cane shirt... a hand-me-down from Caroline Redfern - Caroline's mom Julie is my first cousin. Does that make Caroline and Julianna 2nd cousins? or maybe 3rd? Julie used to get my hand-me-downs and now she's repaying the favor :)

And, our sweet Lydia, who just gets sweeter by the day. She is a joy and our whole family delights in her. Lydia has an appointment on Thursday to see the pediatrician and get her 4 month shots. I am eager to see how much she weighs. She is definitely bigger than Julianna was at this age.

Matt is home!!

Matt is home!! He got back about 10:45 last night, thanks to a two hour flight delay - but I was just glad to have him back :) Julianna is trailing him around the house this morning and having a grand time. [I am having a grand time reading my email and disengaging from the girls for a moment or two!]

Here are a two pictures from the past few days. Both the girls are taking a break from their normal pink-and-purple-explosion wardrobe to sport their cutest Christmas outfits. Grandma Jan gave this outfit to Lydia last Christmas, when Lydia was just a teeny little kidney bean sized baby growing in my belly! check out her grin...



Julianna took a break from helping me make chocolate chip cookies to cuddle her puppy. See how she has carefully wrapped him in a blanket to keep him warm? It's been pretty chilly in the house lately. It was especially cold yesterday when we had a scheduled power outage from 9 am to 6pm. But, the power came back two hours early and it made my afternoon!!! (The brown smudges around Julianna's lips are misdirected bits of chocolate chip cookie.)

who's in our family??

Julianna and I have been practicing naming all the people in our family (well, technically, I have the answer to this question down pat, but she's still working on it, so we practice together!)

Anyways, I ask, "Julianna, who's in our family?" And, about 70% of the time, she names all four of us, and smiles. But, about 30% of the time she names all four of us, then looks at me with a sly grin and adds a fifth name: "Emma Grace!!!" she proclaims.

Emma Grace is the Huffmans little girl (she'll be 6 months old next week) and if there was an "Emma Grace fan club" Julianna would be a charter member. We see the Huffmans pretty much every day. Yesterday Emma Grace and Erin Ashley were hanging out at our house. Julianna decided to bring EG a few things to play with, and the next thing we knew, she was buried under a pile of toys.



Matt is headed out of town for a few days and the computer goes with him, so I won't post again until Saturday at the earliest.

a very dairy breakfast

"Julianna, what do you want for breakfast?"

"ummm, milk, cheese, yogurt, ok! butterfly plate and spoon, yeah!"

Julianna's verbal ability continues to grow by leaps and bounds. She is especially fond of affirmative words like "yeah", "ok", "good", "sure". A nice change of pace from her love affair with the word NO.

(For breakfast she settled on milk, granola & yogurt, and some banana.)

Lydia is one of Julianna"s favorite conversation topics.

"Mommy Lydia changing diaper."

"Lydia eat milk too"

"Lydia go outside, sure!"

and my personal favorite, "Lydia smile at you!"

Lydia does love to smile at her big sister. This morning they were laughing at each other. pretty special....

it's family photo time

It just wouldn't be Christmas if we didn't take a family photo to send to our 300 closest friends and neighbors, would it? So, we decided that yesterday would be "The Day" ... got the kids dressed and ready and headed out the door to the local photo developers. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "absolute disaster" and 10 being "roaring success", I was giving this outing a solid 4.

First, the local photo developer's shop is, quite literally, a hole in the wall. With temps hovering at about 50, I figured we'd be pretty chilly during the photo shoot.

Second, the photo guy and his wife are about 60 years old. Last time I was at their shop getting digital prints developed I had to show them how to upload my photos to their computer. Hmmm...

And, last but not least, Julianna has developed a decided dislike for strangers, and both these folks fit that category.

But, in the end, it turned out quite well. I was shocked to discover that in the back of the photo shop they had one of those doo-hickies suspended from the ceiling like the JCPenney photo studio, where various background colors roll up and down like the maps in my 7th grade classroom. (The one in my 7th grade classroom was about a generation newer than the one here in town, but, hey, it still worked!)

We managed to get a few shots that I labeled "I can work with that...". They gave us the digital copy of four of our favorites. The whole experience cost us 45 minutes and 3 USD (including the snack we bought for Julianna to stave off her hunger pains).

Here's one that ended up on the cutting room floor. The photo we ended up choosing is headed to your mailbox in the next few weeks! hope you enjoy :)

Lydia's 100 days

In Asia families celebrate a baby's 100th day of life. Lydia actually turned 100 days old last Friday, but we didn't get to celebrate then - so we had a party last night (when she was 107 days old). 35 folks joined us for dinner at a restaurant near campus. After dinner, we prayed for Lydia (and for us, as parents).

We also announced Lydia's name in the local language. Her name is ke qing ya. Ke is our family name. Qing is her "generation" name - all of our kids will be ke qing something. Qing means celebrate. Ya means elegance. It also sounds a bit like the last syllable in Lydia. (Julianna is ke qing en, "celebrate grace").

Here's a few photos from the party.

Julianna and some of her admirers -


The Huffmans were the only other Americans there -here's Andy with Emma Grace sitting next to Matt and Lydia at dinner.


This guy LOVES to hold Lydia. She seems pretty content herself.