Happy Mother's Day

To Emma Grace, my first born. You're fun, you're silly and you're quite verbose! You say words like, "motivated, quesadilla, and tentacles." You light up a room. You've started to say, "I love you, Mommy," on your own initiative. You lavish Jackie Boy with lots of love and you're great at helping me change his diaper. You are very motivated and have begun to go to the bathroom all by yourself (though next time let's try to find somewhere other than the sidewalk to do your business, sweet one!) On this mother's day, the thing I am most thankful for about you is the way God is using you in my life. Looking at you is like looking in a mirror sometimes. As I teach you about his love and forgiveness, I am preaching a message my soul needs desperately needs to hear daily. As I call you to obedience, I am forced to face my own wandering heart and repent for the way I try to rule my own life. Teaching you about our wonderful Savior gives me opportunities each day to "reschool" my own heart with truths of his holiness, his worthiness, and his abundant grace toward a sinner like me. I am so thankful to be on this journey with you.

To Jack, my son, a sheer delight. I love loving you. You looked so precious today in your 9-12 month Kacki shorts and you're button down shirt. You roll over now in your crib but haven't quite figured out how to roll back over. This is not so fun for you, but great for me! I get to come to the rescue and snuggle with you! You're the happiest little guy and making you laugh is so easy and so fun. You look like my brother and you are like Andy's brother in personality. On Mother's Day, I am thankful for the joy you bring to our family and especially to me. No matter how crazy and chaotic life gets for the other three of us, I can count on looking over to that little blue bouncy seat and seeing you kicking those chubby legs and hearing you squeal in delight just 'cause you're happy to be alive!

Father, thank you for creating these two little ones and allowing me the privilege and honor of being their mother. "Your works are wonderful. I know that full well."

Camping...well, sorta

Sorry it's taken me so long to get this post up! I had lots of pictures and haven't had much spare time these days! Here's the rundown of our first attempt at Huffman Camping!

This is where we wanted to go camping...mountainous, green, lots of water.

This is where we ended up...Our morning started great and we were excited to get out of town and head for the hills, the water and lots of nature. Unfortunately, when we reached our destination (a reservoir where Andy had been camping with some friends several times before) we realized the reservoir had been drained! NO FUN. Our plans of camping beside a large body of water were the first to get thrown out the window. We decided we didn't have to have water to have a fun camping experience, so we pitched the tent, told our driver good bye (who by the way, thought we were insane for taking our two little ones out the in middle of no where to sleep in a tent beside a dried up reservoir) and tried to make the best of our first camping experience. At first, things went great! We had a simple PB &J lunch and EG munched on fruit!

We picked up lots of sticks for the campfire and explored the area!

Jack took a great nap in the tent and even sported his cute camper gear!

But then, they started to come...lots of them....

Now we like kids, don't get me wrong. But since the reservoir is now dried up, there is lots of new land and our once secluded little spot is now very accessible to people from several villages surrounding the reservoir. Lots of people came by...not just kids. And they were all very friendly. Some even stayed for a good long while! This of course, wasn't what we had hoped for. In a land where people are every where, part of the appeal of camping was to get out in nature and to be alone, just us and the trees. EG, being the social little butterfly that she is, loved the company and made herself right at home with this little gang of girl visitors. After several visits from people ranging in age from 3 to 70, we decided it might not be safe to camp there overnight. OH WELL! We decided to make the best of it and push the s'mores festivities up a few hours and then call it quits. LOVING THE S'MORES is a bit of an understatement!

I am pretty sure we all ate a good amount of grass with our s'mores! I even "Flambeanied" one in honor of my Grandma. We did this for her when we were little and she loved it. Or did she? Gmaw, please let me know, did you really like those flambeanied marshmallows or did you just do that so we wouldn't feel bad when we accidentally torched one? We always thought she loved them that way, so we would make sure to make lots of flambeanies for her, plus it is fun to torch marshmallows! Gmaw, you've probably eaten more charcoaled marshmallows than anyone on the planet! You're the BEST! I made sure to tell Andy about how much fun we had going camping at the lake for all those years. Sure do miss those days. Can't wait to take our kids to Buggs Island! After the S'mores, we packed up and headed home. After the kids went down, Andy ran out and got us some yummy McDonald's. After a full 8 hours of roughing it, we thought we would treat ourselves! HEHE! We decided we will definitely try camping again...we just need to find a new spot with more water and less visitors!

Jack and the Bean

Our friend Ellie gave us this great Bean Bag and the kids love it! It's perfect for Jack to lounge in and great for EG to snuggle up in for some reading time! Thanks Ellie!

The cover for the Bean Bag is one she had made and it matches some pillows we already had in the same fabric. One thing you might not know about life in China is that we get a lot of stuff made. In part because some things just aren't available here and because the Chinese styles are different from our American tastes and also because it's really cheap to get things made! (Our life is somewhat "Little House on the Prairie-ish in terms of making things from scratch, but I haven't started sewing my own stuff yet! It's way faster and super cheap to just get a tailor here to do it! ) Over the years, my friends and I have had many things made. Here are a few: clothes, aprons, bean bag covers, purses, diaper bags, kitchen mixer covers, quilts, really cool 1920's suits for our Murder Mystery Party (for less than 20 dollars!), curtains, placemats and napkins, and the list goes on.

Queen of getting things made is my friend Ellie. She was my roomie for two years before the hubster came on the scene. She is from Durham but is Carolina Blue through and through! She will be heading back to America this summer and I am really sad. She's been a part of China for our family every step of the way and things will be really different without her! Since we've moved out here to the country, she's come out several times for sleep overs when Andy is out of town. I am so grateful for her friendship and will miss her dearly! But I am excited for the next chapter God has for her! She's the one of the far left in this picture!

Thanks for the Bean Bag Ellie! I am sure you will know every cool craft and fabric shop in your new city within a few months!

If you're looking for us...

If you're looking for the Huffman Family between 10am Monday and 11 am Tuesday, you'll need to hop on a plane and first get to our city. Then you'll need to hire a van (called a bread van for it's resemblance to a loaf a bread) to drive to where we live. But we won't be here. So you'll need to tell your bread van driver to go another 30 miles south and when you get out in the middle of nowhere...you'll look to your left and you'll see some smallish mountains. And you'll need to tell your bread van driver to try and cross those mountains. (which might be a tad difficult with his small engine so make sure you don't bring too much stuff. But if you didn't bring your own sleeping bag and your own ration of s'mores goodies, then you'll need to head back and find those before coming out to find us!) Once you cross those mountains, you'll need to find a reservoir and look for the two adults and the two little ones enjoying some family time, a campfire, throwing frisbee, eating s'mores and snoozing in a tent...and that will be us! (Hopefully the snoozing part in the tent will actually happen!) The Huffmans are going camping!

This is our first family trip with kids and we are really excited to get out of the city and enjoy nature and each other! We hope this will be the beginning of many family outings! Say a prayer for us! Pictures to come!

Andy's Birthday

Here's a picture from Andy's Birthday celebration. We normally try to do something BIG for his birthday but this just isn't our year for BIG! So we went low key and had a nice dinner with our friends Steve and Marlene. We ate at this really funky Thai restaurant downtown and had Andy's favorite cupcakes for dessert. I got him a case for his new computer but didn't even manage to wrap it or write a card. As you can tell, I don't really have my ducks in a row these days. Thankfully Marlene had a card! HEHE! Steve and Marlene have four kids all very close in age (the middle two are twins) so they've been a big source of encouragement for us as we've adjusted to life with two little ones! (we are still adjusting, by the way!)

The food was incredible. But all food is tasting incredible to me these days, especially Asian foods. I think because Jack eats so much and I constantly feel hungry, food tastes especially good to me these days! Ok, I'm off to eat some chips and salsa! Yum!

We are Family!

It's so fun to watch Emma Grace and Jack's relationship developing! Jack only has eyes for his big sister and laughs at everything she does! I was talking with EG today about the people in our family and I asked her who would be her husband one day. She of course said JACK! When Jack is around, EG spends a lot of her time dancing and making silly faces at him, which he loves and giving him toys. She's also my diaper changing assistant. Her responsibilities include getting out the wipes (two for pees and four for poops) and helping me unsnap a few buttons! She's gonna be a great mommy someday! I am so busy these days caring for my precious little ones but I am so grateful to have them so close together in age and look forward to all four of us growing in our love and enjoyment of one another!

Welcome to EA's Salon

Here are the Top Ten reasons I decided to start cutting EG's hair. (there are more but I'll stop at ten)

1. I don't really have a lot of time to go in search of a good hairdresser.

2. I've heard that over 80% (my guess is more like 90%) of all "hairdressers" in this country have never received any formal training on cutting hair.

3. I am positive that 100% of them have received zero training on cutting fine foreigner hair.

4. The hairdressers here are really into the "feathering" scissors. This is disastrous for said fine foreigner heads of hair.

5. I have cried at a Chinese salon on more than one occasion. Once, I returned from a haircut and had ANDY re-cut my hair. You know it must have been bad!

6. Last week Andy received the worst haircut of his life from one of these "trained professionals."

7. It takes them about 1-1 1/2 hours to cut my hair. Can you imagine if I tried to make EG sit still for that long?

8. For some reason all the salons in our town close within a month of opening and another one pops up in it's place within a few weeks. Makes me wonder...

9. Most of the hairdressers here have really really really crazy hairdos. Doesn't give me much confidence in them!

10. I have learned how to say, "No Mullet Please." Until I do, there is no way I am letting these trained mullet makers touch EG's hair!

Now, if I could just learn to cut my own hair! It's getting really long and out of control but I can't figure out what to do about it. I'm considering letting Andy cut it again.