Heading out of town

We are heading out of town for the week. The exciting news is that the city we are going to has some good western food, including Papa John's pizza and my personal favorite, a starbucks in walking distance from the place we are staying. They also have incredible local food as well-way better than where we live! We are staying at the apartment of some friends who are back in the US to have their first child so it works great for us. It's much easier to stay in a home with Emma Grace rather than a hotel! They even have a crib so we don't have to lug our pack n play there! Andy will be busy in the mornings so I am guessing EG and I will make a daily run to starcucks for my caramel macchiato and hang out with some friends in area.

In other news, I'm becoming more Asian everyday. Recently, I've picked up the East Asian habit of taking a nap in the afternoons-anywhere from 20 mins to a whole hour and a half! Somedays I fall asleep reading and just nap for a few minutes and then other days I actually get in bed for a real nap! East Asians are serious about their afternoon naps. It makes sense because they often work really long into the night. High School students get out of class about 6pm and often have tutoring and then homework-staying up til 2am-so a nap becomes a necessity as you can imagine. For me it's much less of a necessity and more of a luxury! Though sometimes taking care of a little baby makes me feel like I've stayed up til 2 am! Anyway, my goal this week is to try and catch a nap everyday while EG naps! I'll keep you posted on my progress of indigenization!

Around the house

Here are some Saturday photos for you to enjoy!

Emma Grace loves playing with the wipes. They are a preferred toy over many of the other more expensive ones! I usually let her take one or two out of the package before taking them away. There is no doubt she would pull out every one if I let her! As we were playing with a wipe, which took a good 5 minutes of our day, I made it into a hair bow for her! I can't wait til she is ready for real hair bows! How cute!

My mom commented that I always seem to keep Emma Grace clean....this picture is proof that what you usually see on our blog is not the whole story! Here she is after finishing some banana vanilla wafers for her snack.
Her newest talent is pointing. She like to point at everything! Her favorite things to point at are the pictures on the refrigerator. She gets really excited when she points to the one of herself and I tell her, "that's Emma Grace!" She usually starts bouncing around and laughing. I really do think she is pointing at things so that we will tell her what they are. She's growing and changing everyday!

The reasons I love Saturdays

Saturdays are my one of my favorite days of the week.

Here's why:

Andy is off so we get to spend lots of time together.

We like to sleep in on Saturadays. Let me clarify, that means we wake at the late late hour of 7 am when Emma Grace wakes us up talking in her bed. We get her out of bed and put her in bed with us to play and have her bottle. Fun family time!

We usually talk with Andy's parents on the webcam while having our morning coffee...still in pajamas

We try to go outside and do something fun later in the day...the park, out to lunch, etc.

Saturdays nights we get to catch up on the TV shows we are into. Right now those are American Idol and Lost.

Right now we are in the pre-webcam, making coffee, still in pajamas phase of the morning! Just thought I'd say hello and wish you all a happy Saturday!

Andy's Birthday

Happy 27th Birthday Andy! We started the day with some homemade cinnamon rolls. These things are really yummy...you should check out the recipe on allrecipes.com. It's called "clone of the cinnabon" Here's the funny thing. I accidently left out the sugar when I was making the dough. oops. The good news is that the filling and the cream cheese icing more than made up for the lack of sweetness in the dough. Next time I will remember the sugar though! Emma Grace had some cheerios for breakfast while we enjoyed the cinnamon rolls. Your time will come EG! Check out Andy in his new robe-a birthday gift from me. Andy bought me a really nice robe for our anniversary this year-I am really glad I have it here in the cold winter but I wasn't quite as happy when we were packing it to come over. it weighs about 20 lbs and took up half of a suitcase. Also, check out Andy's new hairdo. I like it. Kinda reminds me of my brother.

Later in the morning, the Kvernens, some local friends and I surprised Andy with a trip to the nearby xue lan milk factory. Sounds like a wierd birthday outing and it is....but Andy has been telling me for about a year now that he really wants to tour the milk factory that is about 5 minutes from our home so I made it happen! We're both really into knowing how things are made. That's why we own the series "Unwrapped."

So, a few weeks back I went with Xiao Li and set up a tour for us and our friends. (sorry I forgot the camera) It was interesting...the only problem is that the tour was in chinese so there was a bit that got lost for us foreigners. Oh well. I did learn the word for "milking" as in milking a cow. We also learned that the milk that gets delivered to our home every afternoon came out of the cow that morning! wow-that's fresh! After the tour we ate donuts (which we brought) and had fresh yogurt...we asked for chocolate milk but somehow that got lost in the language too and we ended up with yoghurt. Oh well...nothing like a big glazed donut and some blueberry yogurt to hit the spot! hehe.

Originally we planned to have a picnic at a nearby park for dinner and enjoy the awesome weather we've been having but it's turned off quite cold. So option B...we had a picnic at home (I made Andy's favorite Janet Holtz chicken salad on homemade croissants) and watched our current favorite-AMERICAN IDOL! We also had a homemade keylime pie. So all in all, a great day for Mr. Huffman. Thanks for the birthday wishes for him!

Ultimate Frisbee Bash

In honor of Andy's Birthday this week, we hosted an Ultimate Frisbee Bash on Saturday to celebrate with some of our foreigner freinds here. We rented the field in our local town and everyone headed out here for a morning of ultimate frisbee and some THRILLS FROM THE GRILL! We lugged the grill (a gift for his birthday a couple years back) out to the field along with all the fixins' for a great lunch! We had grilled chicken sandwiches and hot dogs along with chips, drinks, watermelon and cupcakes! It was a treat for everyone to have food from the grill, as we are one of the few families that owns a grill here.

It was a blast and the food was really yummy! The best part-NO INJURIES! You might remember we had a Broomball party for his birthday a couple years ago that was a lot of fun but ended with a dislocated shoulder and a broken tailbone!

Our town has a really nice soccer field. Here;s the crew getting ready to play.

Here are the Kvernens warming up for the game. Couples were on the same teams to protect marital harmony.

The spread...

Emma Grace also enjoyed some of the lunch spread. While I left to grab something and Andy was "watching" her she managed to get a hold of my bag of Lay's potato chips and eat a few before I caught her! Notice she has them spread all over the blanket. oops. I guess Andy was having too much fun at his party to notice his daughter chomping down on those salty greasy can-choke-a-person-who-has-no-teeth chips! HEHE. Just kidding. We all got a good laugh, I took a picture and then we took them away from her!
What a fun saturday morning! Happy Early Birthday Andy!

Happy Birthday Andy

Andrew Reid Huffman is almost 27 years old! I just love this man and know he's the perfect man for me! The blog is usually a place where we share the mundane details of our daily lives for the grandparents and other blog-addicted freinds. (I am addicted to reading other's blogs too!) But today I thought I would share with you a little of my heart. I hope this entry encourages you in your marriages and encoruages my hubby too as he reads these words. Most of all I hope it encourages us all to press on as we pursue knowing and loving Christ.

It all started 9 years ago on a Friday afternoon in August. I met Andy on our way to the "Great Adventure Retreat" hosted by a Christian group on campus. We became instant friends and he was my first real guy friend who I'd seen passionately loving and following Christ. Four years later, on another Friday night in August we officially starting dating. This was an exciting stepping stone in our relationship. I'd always had a special connection with Andy-we could talk about anything, laugh about everything and I could tell he really geniunely wanted me to love Christ more. I could totally 100% be myself with him and know that I would always be unconditionally accepted. It was his kindness to me that I most appreciated and that drew me to him. There was a rare freedom that I felt with Andy that I knew was a reflection of God's acceptance of me and the freedom I have with him. Andy is steady, I am often changing. Andy is gentle. I can be harsh. Andy has deep roots in the Word of God. I am a newcomer to this fountain of life. But I had some "letting go" to do before I could totally embrace this relationship as being THE ONE!!! I had these ideas of the perfect romance with the perfect romancer. Through God's grace to me, I have slowly come to the belief that marriage is about way more than romance. Though romance is a good healthy part of marriage, (which I really like!) I am more and more convinced that God uses marriage to primarily help us-to help us to know him and love him more and to help us to be more like him. This life is really about one thing: knowing and loving Jesus Christ and our marriages are a big way God graciously helps us to do that! It was only because of God's grace that I, the ultimate over-the-top-in-love-with-the-idea-of-being-in-love-hopeless-romantic, came to believe that this is true. So, after some "letting go" and some "picking up" of these new beliefs about marriage, Andy and I had another special Friday night in August, 3 years ago. Becoming Mrs Huffman has one of my greatest most treasured privileges in my life. The reason is that I love "doing life" with Andy and most of all because I know and love Jesus Christ more because of him. Because of his love for Christ, because of his and my own shortcomings and struggles with sin and the way those make us desperately dependent on our savior for both grace and help. And for the way we both encourage each other on when the journey seems really long and really hard. We know we have a great and awesome hope awaiting us and we can remind each other of that when the days get long. So April 24th is a great day for me. It's a day I get to celebrate and thank God for making this wonderful, sincere, Godly, struggling yet depending on Christ, knower and lover of God and his word-my husband, Andrew Reid Huffman. I love you! Happy 3 days early birthday!

Naptimes are great for...

Naptime is the perfect time to get a lot accomplished. Here's a whole list of things one could do during your child's naptime:

Laundry

Getting ready for dinner since your child is most fussy at the normal 5-6 get dinner ready hour

Mop the floor from where a big glass of milk was spilled this weekend and not well cleaned up

Take out the starting to stink trash

Read a deep theological book

Wash the big pile of dishes in the sink

OR

one could sit down with a snack of cheetos and pepsi (this is the second time I've mentioned this snack on the blog-not a good sign for my health) and write on their blog about all the things they should be doing! you can see which one I've choosen. While I'm indulging in the latter and better choice, I'll post some pictures for you!

Emma Grace talked to her Grandma Nette this weekend on the phone...here's how the conversation went:

EG: Hello? Mamma Nette is that you?

EG: So when are you guys heading our way?EG: Can you repeat that, I think I heard you incorrectly!

EG: WHAT????You're not coming til this fall....That is insanity. I can't wait that long to see you!

EG: Listen Granny, you better get over here soon, cause I miss you and I want to see you ReeeeeaL bad!