We're Ready to MOVE!

We are more than ready to move. As with life here we have been just waiting for our landlords to tell us we can move into our new home. It has been over a month now and the deadline we were given has gone and past. That is just life here. We just have to wait and deal with it all as it comes. We have packed up almost everything. I left out a few clothing articles for all of us and it seems like we have gone through them all. We left out a few dishes and cups for the kids so we've been eating out a lot lately. Our house is a mess with boxes everywhere and we are waiting on cleaning until everything is out so the house is DIRTY! I am so ready to move it all and to finally be settled in our new home. In the mean time Todd and I have spent several days going to different places trying to find furniture and things we need. If only we could just go to a Home Depot, Bed Bath Beyond or a Target. It would be so much easier.

Since everything is packed I've been spending a lot of time on the computer trying to figure out how I am going to decorate our new place. I can't wait to do that. The kids are off their normal routine too. They can sense something is up and the fact that all our belongings are stacking in boxes all over the house. While Todd and I are gone Elijah has taught himself out to start his own bath and I realized that he and Ev have spent a few days this week in their pjs.

I guess it is time to move because it seems like this week several things are starting to break. You have to love the quality of merchandise here. Our shower started not working. I think there is a leak somewhere and we have little to no pressure. The curtain rod in Ev's room broke, ours broke a couple of weeks ago. We haven't had consistent hot water in the kitchen for the past month. I am sure I am forgetting something. We are crossing our fingers to hope to move by at least Wednesday.

My Finds

Back in May we had a "clothing swap" among the expats that live here. It is a wonderful time to take clothing the kids have outgrown that I haven't made things out of, and to take other items we don't use and so on. The first day you take your items then the next day you get to pick up others. It is similar to a large garage sale but you don't have to pay. I found a few great finds for the kids. I have been reading Clifford books with Ev and I found a small Clifford stuffed animal. I also found a large set of doll house furniture. Then a week or so ago one of Ev's friends came over to play. Her mom brought us some dress up clothes and a small Fisher Price doll house from a sale here in town. Ev had some little dolls that we have bought here (4 dolls for 15 kuai - a little over 2 dollars!) that she loves and uses with the furniture and house. These items have afforded us much time as Ev quietly plays for hours!

More Felt Food

Next Saturday Ev is going to a birthday party. Back when I made felt food for Ev I thought it would be cute for her friend to have some too. The little girl loved the food so I asked her mom what her favorite foods are. This afternoon I had a little time so I made spaghetti, pizza, and some cookies. I may make a few more items if I can find time between now and then.

As I took these pictures Elijah thought the food was real. He was really interested in the sugar cookie, chocolate chip cookie and the Oreo!

Elijah

We've had a week of firsts for Elijah. He picked up the kid sized baseball bat and held it the correct way and would swing it correctly. He also started giving kisses when you ask him to. And today he used a spoon all by himself and the food made it into his mouth!

Todd is very proud that he holds that bat the correct way. We have to show Ev how to hold and swing it correctly. He's a natural. :) He also throws any ball he can get his hands on. When we were playing baseball with the kids we had him throw the ball to Ev and she would swing. It was a pretty cute site!

In addition to his new tricks this week I have found him climbing on top of bags and boxes we have out as we are packing. Today during Sunday school I turned around to see him standing on top of a chair. Thankfully he called out to me so I could see him and I quickly picked him up.

Another fun thing that Elijah did this week was get in his car seat. We put it in the living room and he goes and sits in it like it's his lazy boy or something.

Project

Before we left on our trip last week I squeezed in a little project. I had found a blog that did this so I tried it out. I took one of Ev's t-shirts that was too short and cut off the bottom and added fabric to it to make it a dress. Really simple and easy to do. I managed to get Ev in the dress that day and haven't since. She is really picky about what she wears. I think it turned out cute.

Family Trip

We got back last night from our trip. We are a little tired today after driving for 10 hours to get back a day earlier to deal with some things here at home. The kids did great in the car. We are really proud of them. We spent at least 3 or more in the car every day but yesterday and since they are not use to wearing seat belts or having car seats they managed to not complain about being buckled in.

We went to 4 different places. We saw a lot of beautiful scenery along the way as well as lots of yak, sheep and horses. We stopped on the side of the road to see a large group of horses. Then we stopped to see a herd of sheep and some yak. Our last stop off the road was to see a group of our people shearing their herd of sheep. What a fun experience. They enjoyed our company and even gave Todd some scissors and let him cut some of the wool off one sheep. They also had a baby yak that Ev enjoyed seeing up close and we got to watch them milk the momma yak. Our kids love animals so this thrilled them to get to experience this. They love that Todd can talk to them and they love seeing white kids up close.

I had a funny experience happen to me. After watching them milk the yak a little grandma touch my chest and then touched Elijah's mouth, through her jesters she was saying, "it's your turn to milk now!" I guess since we have been here for 2 years now the fact that she touched me there didn't phase me. I had seen someone do that to a friend of mine a while back.

Our trip was mainly to get out of the city and into the towns where we have some relationships and to practice language. At a couple of the places we couldn't get a hold of our friends but we enjoyed seeing the areas. Todd got to practice language the most. We got to a point where we didn't need to use the language I am studying.

Here are some pictures of our trip. I took almost 300 pictures. It was so beautiful. So I have to narrow down a few to post here. Elijah isn't wearing pants in a few pictures. The reason behind that is because he gets car sick. After trying to wash out his clothes the first time I learned my lesson and just keep him in a shirt with a plastic bib covering the car seat straps. We made it all most all the way to our first destination before he threw up all over himself, the car seat and the back of Todd's seat. Too bad we couldn't' get the smell out for the rest of the trip!

Birthday Pictures (for real this time), Baseball Game and Trip

I finally got around to downloading pictures from the past week. I downloaded 104 pictures. Wow, I guess we had ourselves a busy week. Todd's birthday, ours and Ev's friends were in town, we had Todd's teacher over for dinner, went to watch Todd play baseball and I got some pictures of the kids as I packed all day for our trip tomorrow.

Saturday ended up being packed. Todd went straight from 9am until 9pm. The kids and I went from 10:30am to 9pm. It was a LONG day. Todd started off going to sort through why our Internet service wasn't working. Crazy experience, frustrating language time and after about an hour of his time he finally got an answer to our question. Then on the way home he called me to tell me that our new landlords wanted us to meet them at our new apartment to pick out paint. So as Todd was coming home I was quickly getting me and the kids ready to leave. As we rushed out the door and were heading to the apartment our landlord calls back to say she has to deal with something else first. We didn't know when she was going to show up. So we went to the car rental place and picked up the car and I went to pick up a couple of care packages and we met back just as our landlord said she arrived at the apartments. So we headed over there and were there for a little while and then we were off across town to go to paint stores and decide on paint. Thankfully we had done this when we came here 2 years ago and I knew what colors we wanted or our next 2 hours could have been longer. We went to a couple of stores. Side note- it was lunchtime when we were driving to the other side of town so thankfully my mom had put some snack items in the 2 care packages we picked up or I don't know what the kids would have done. So there we are talking over how to purchase paint. You would think all you had to do was tell them the color but no, maybe 45 minutes later we walked away HOPING we will get what we want.

Next we rushed home, leaving the paint place at 2:15pm to get a few things and head over to the opposite side of town to watch Todd play baseball. The game was suppose to start at 2pm but they called while we were driving and asked where Todd was and ended up waiting for us to show up before starting. We get over to the school around 3pm and the game lasted until 6:30pm but since it was the last one we didn't end up getting out of there until 7pm. Our poor kids. They are use to eating dinner at 5:30pm. Around that time I gave him another round of snacks to satisfy him temporarily. We ended up taking home a couple of the guys on the team and we had to stop to get gas and stop to get cold drinks. While we were on the road I called the Italian restaurant and ordered dinner and after dropping off the 2 guys we picked up our order and made it home around 7:30 and ate and then put the kids to bed. They were ready for bed. After going to so many places ,not really eating lunch, having dinner at the time of bedtime and not getting naps- we were all worn out. Maybe that is why Elijah took a 4 1/2 hour nap today.

We were suppose to leave on our trip today but we decided we all needed to rest and so we are leaving tomorrow morning. This will be the first time that all 4 of us will go out to these different areas together. Elijah's first trip out to the villages. I haven't been out to these parts in almost 2 years because I couldn't go out when I was pregnant or while Elijah was too little. Hopefully he will do fine in higher altitude but we will be watching both kids closely. We are hoping to go to about 5 different places some of which we have friends who live there and other areas we are just going to see because it has been way to long. Since we have rented a car for the week we will get to be on our own time schedule. We don't have to mess with the public transportation and I am SO thankful for that, especially with 2 young kids. We got care packages from my grandparents, Todd's family and my mom over the last week and a half. So we saved some toys and snacks and other goodies for the road. We bought a car seat for Elijah and the car that we rented is brand new so it actually has seat belts. So everyone will have one for our trip.

We will head out tomorrow (our Monday morning) and will most likely be gone until our Saturday. So we won't have Internet so I won't be posting until we are home. Have a great week!