Pics for Grandparents

We've been trying to get some good photos of EG and Jack together for our parents. We just can't seem to make it happen. Either one of them is looking away, or screaming, or they are blurry or something else is wrong. This is our best one yet. They are both wearing Christmas gear, both smiling and both in front of the tree. I tried to crop this so it was just more of their heads BUT, if I do that, then you realize Jack's face is blurry, he has a runny nose, EG has face paint on the side of her face and Jack's right ear somehow looks blazing bright yellow when I crop it and make them bigger. I think his ear, which he gets honestly from the Madden clan, was right in front of a light on the tree. So you can almost see it through his ear. Weird. Anyway, this is the best we've got, Grandparents! Here's the bright ear, runny nose, blurry face, face paint up close...

Happy Birthday Jack

On a snowy day back in December of 2008...A sweet little boy made his entrance into the world... Jack Alexander Huffman. I love you. All day I've been thinking back to this time one year ago. I was thankful you'd waited 'til your due date to arrive. I was busy trying to get lots done before you came. And labor and delivery went really smoothly. We were so happy to meet you. Being a part of God's creating a person, creating you, Jackie Boya, has been one of the highest privileges in my life. You were really quiet as a newborn and I'd sometimes almost forget you were in our house. Around month 3 or 4, you turned into a smiley, bubbly little guy-a delight. Around month 8, you started to crawl and by 11 months, you were tottering all over the place. These days, you're not nearly as quiet as those newborn days! You are busy exploring and making your presence known with your man noises most of the time. You smile easily, have a contagious laugh that gets our whole family going and you're by far the best snuggler of the four of us. You're affectionate. I LOVE that about you. You lean in for kisses from time to time, as if you need a reminder that someone loves you. You are loved dear Son, more than a lifetime of kisses could express.

Tis the Season...for strawberries and meat products?

For Strawberries? Well, in our part of the world it is! There are many things I love about the month of December in America but one thing missing is fresh strawberries. Because of our mild climate, we have incredible produce almost year round. And we have two strawberry seasons-one in spring/summer and one in Dec/Jan! They just started to come out and we've been eating lots of them! We have yogurt delivered to our home everyday along with our milk so we've been making a lot of yummy smoothies. During peach season, I froze a bunch in anticipation of this season. So we've been using peaches, strawberries, bananas, and frozen blueberries (a new find for our city!) and yogurt to make all kinds of delicious smoothies! (Makes me think of you Carmen, every time I make them. You are so healthy!) Xiao Li loves them. It might be her love language.

And speaking of food being a love language-nothing speaks love to Andy like good meat products. If he could only choose one food to eat for the rest of his life, it would definitely be some sort of meat! We can get all the basics here-chicken, pork, beef. Pork is the meat of choice in this country and usually turns out great no matter how you cook it. I've had recent success with beef, as I've been using my Dutch oven and the Pressure Cooker. But i still put ground pork in place of ground beef in most recipes. So with those basics, you can do a lot. I learned to make homemade sausage a while back, which is surprisingly easy. David and Andy had both been talking about Italian sausage (you know in links) and I asked Xiao Li about making it here. In our city, the winter is sausage making time. Chinese people buy their meat and take it to the sausage making shop at the market. They pick their flavor-you can choose several, among which Spicy Italian is sadly missing!-and then the sausage maker grinds with meat, mixes it with the spices and stuffs the meat into casings and hangs out to preserve. After I did a lot of reading online, I learned that the meat and the casing being really cold is really important in the process-I guess even more so if you hang out of your window and let them preserve. So it makes sense they only make them in the winter here.

So, I found a recipe online, got the meat, made my own Italian spice mixture, and then Xiao Li took it to the sausage shop! Next thing you know we have 7 lbs of Italian Sausage ready to be consumed by all the meat loving men in my life. I actually didn't love it but Andy and David did. We froze ours as it's not the kind that preserves. Andy wants me to load up the freezer with other varieties of Italian sausage but I'm busy loading it up with strawberries!

Decorating

EG helping pull out the fake tree.

Me busting a hole in the super cheaply made coffee table while decorating. We had moved it to serve as a barricade so Jack couldn't get to the tree while we were decorating. I tried to step over and my knee went right through! EG decorating the tree for her room.

Our tree in all it's glory. Notice the middle section of the tree is looking poorly lit. We used two different brands of lights and this was the result. We still love it!

Same Spot

Here we are at a local park in March '08. I was just pregnant with Jack. And here we are again at the same spot in the park December '09:

Our Christmas Card

We decided not to spend the money to send out a card this year. So here's our Christmas photo via blog!

Getting ready for Christmas!

I love our home at Christmas. I love getting up early to read and turning on the Christmas tree. I love staying up late and talking with Andy by the Christmas tree lights. I love rehanging ornaments every day after my kids pull them off. Ok, not really that part. Most of all, I love this season because it give me the chance to focus my heart on Jesus and the hope that I have because he came.

I read something recently that talked about the discipline of Celebration-not as an excuse to just overindulge ourselves, but to really be light hearted, filled with joy, and to purposely set out to enjoy God and his good gifts. My heart needs to celebrate. In tbe monotony of daily life, the trials that we are facing, and the struggles we have with our own sin, it's so good to pull back and be reminded why we can joy on this earth and hope for the future. So that's what we're setting out to do this season!

Xiao Li and I stayed up late last Friday and made all kinds of treats! We made the Huffman Family peanut butter balls, coconut balls and almond bark pretzels with sprinkles. Next on the list is sausage balls.

We put less lights on our tree than normal. Mainly because we decorated it with kids so we needed to be speedy. But also because we don't really have the power to support the "Huffman gazillion lights on a tree standard." But it still looks beautiful! Last time we decorated it up to standard, we couldn't run our heaters while the tree was on!