Lots of Lost Teeth!


No, we're not hitting our children in the mouth - but it seems like lots of teeth have been lost since we left the U.S.A. The twins have now lost both of their front bottom teeth and Brooks has lost his first premolar!



Meet our wonderful new house helper! She is such a joy to have around, and she thinks just like our family, though she thinks (and speaks) in Chinese. We have basically let her loose in the house to do whatever she thinks is best with the cleaning and it has made life so much easier for all of us. She comes each weekday to clean and make our lunch. Here she is making Chinese dumplings with the children. The filling is made with ground pork and lots of fresh chopped veggies. They were beautiful and delicious! We really feel like our new helper is a wonderful gift to our family -

Here's a picture of one of the wonderful Foreign Affairs Officers at the college - She has gone over and above her job to take care of us ever since Albert first inquired about being a student here. She and her son brought a cake from the bakery over for Whitney and Sidney on their birthday last month. She has made our transition to China and "college life" a whole lot easier than it would have been.






We thought you'd get a kick out of this next chinese blooper that may deserve to be on David Letterman's headline segment. We have some sweet friends that sent us lots of yummy goodies a few weekends ago. One of the great things they sent was bread from the chinese Wal-Mart. It was absolutely delicious, but we're glad it wasn't made of what it said it was made of (we hope). We need BRAN not BRAIN in our diet :)












Well here are the pictures that we promised you of the beautiful place we went with our friends the other weekend. It is kind of like the Grand Canyon, only with waterfalls instead of dust. It is a huge gorge with beautiful plants and butterflies, and it attracts visitors from all over China. If you come and see us, we'll take you there!

In some places you can even walk behind where the waterfalls are cascading down.
Some of the trip down is quite treacherous, so it is not really for the faint of heart. The bridge alone just about gave me a heart attack. I kept thinking the kids were going to fall into the rushing river that was far below where we were standing.

If you look to the left of Brooks' head in his picture you can see some of the little steps that we walked down to get to the bottom of the mountain. Not only were they steep and rickety, but they were also wet from the mist of the waterfall! Like I said, not for the faint of heart - or calf muscle. Ours were sore for several days. The kids started out counting the steps we had gone up and down, but they gave up after they got past numbers that they were familiar with. I don't know if they have ever had occassion to count that high before!


Our trip down into the gorge was yet another reminder of how much beautiful earth God has made that we've never seen before now! We can't wait to find more stuff to see and places to explore. And we continue to be thankful for all of the wonderful family memories that are being made over here - But we still miss y'all A LOT!

So sorry for not updating you during the last 2 weeks! I really am going to try to do better at adding pictures and stories here more frequently. Now that I have started regular language classes myself, along with my teaching all four kids at home and then Albert's 12 college hours a week, we are finding ourselves quite pushed for time! But you, our friends and family, are of utmost importance to us, so just know I'm going to keep trying to do my best :)




Here are a few pictures from a trip Albert and Brooks took up one of the mountains here in town with our friend Lily. There is a temple on top of the mountain, as well as other neat (and strange, or maybe bizarre is a more fitting word) things to see. If you look closely at the altar, a little right of center, you can see a 2 liter bottle of Pepsi that someone gave to the idol, still in a plastic grocery bag.


Brooks has taken up a new hobby - trying to build huge houses of cards. Here is one of his masterpieces, along with its proud creator.
We have a wonderfully nice neighbor who has brought us gifts of food and all kinds of things ever since the day after we moved into our apartment. We were settling down for a family movie along with some friends the other night when there was a knock at the door. It was this precious lady, holding a square plastic container with a fish swimming around in it! She said that her son had caught it that day and that she wanted us to have it. "How do you make it ready to eat?" Albert asked. She made the motion from charades that I assume means "whack it on the head, of course." So here is a picture of the fish swimming around in our sink while we tried to figure out exactly what to do next. After much deliberation we decided that we must end its life, and Albert was nominated as the one to wield the meat cleaver. It was quite the interesting weekend entertainment and science lesson rolled into one, and I'm happy to say that we did get it killed, cleaned and ready to eat. You'd have all been proud of the breaded, southern-fried finished product, of which you see a picture here. We even made a short movie of it swimming around in the kitchen sink in which sweet little Whitney says that we're going to "get the bread knife, chop its head off and then chop its whole body." She said, however, that she made friends with the fish after we made the movie and, when we sat down to eat it, she refused to eat her "fish friend" (her words, not mine - reminded me of "Finding Nemo," though - Fish are Friends, NOT FOOD!).


Here is Whitney in a little less hostile mood, ready to sit down with Mommy after she invited me to her tea party.

Here are pictures from the final 3 kids' birthdays, which flew by at lightning speed. Brooks got a Transformer, which was a big hit. The twins got a jump rope to replace the one they "accidently" threw in the little pond here on campus, as well as a big Cinderella puzzle. When I asked them to pose for their birthday picture, they decided to turn upside down. Maybe that's so those of you in the opposite hemisphere could see them the right way up? Perhaps because they are six and full of energy - I think that's a more likely option!

We visited a beautiful place in our city with some friends the other day - I'll update you with those gorgeous pictures soon!