time to get serious

The children and I leave for America in two months.  We'll be at my parents for five weeks and then Matt joins us and then we all move to ND for the spring.

It's a big deal to relocate ....the details and decisions are enough to spin minds for days.  We've talked dreams and hopes for a while but last night finally got some details down on paper.  

It was quite the production :)  And one bowl of popcorn didn't last long.... 

Emotions are so mixed as we prepare; I'm eager to be there, yet not eager to leave here.  It seems everything is falling into place fairly easily and I'm hopeful that our last months here will not be consumed with plans and preparations for getting there.  Of course there will be packing to do, and we are waiting for a few last major details (housing and transportation)! 

Honestly, our days here are plenty full and leave me little time to stew on future details - a blessing, I think.  I'm hoping to get up a big post about our first three weeks on the local school journey soon.  It's incredibly demanding.  School, I mean.  For me as much as for the girls.  They are scooting right along, memorizing more characters a day than any college program would require of a Chinese major; they seem to both do well in the highly structured academically demanding environment, and they seem to understand their inherent disadvantage (not first-language Chinese speakers) and still tackle it all head on.  I'm in major cultural adjustment myself as I interact daily with the teachers - not easy, at least for me. 

Julianna's been playing around with a lot of idioms and throwing them into conversation.  One of her current favorites is "It's no picnic". And that's local school for me.  No picnic.  But still full of blessing, so much blessing.  Hopefully I'll post some more pictures and stories soon. 

And it won't be long before the pictures are blue American skies and we're adjusting to life on the other side of the Pacific.  Wow.