Who am I?

Emma Grace is a little unsure of where she is from. Sometimes she tells me that she is Chinese. Sometimes she tells me she is American. Sometimes she tells me she is a foreigner-we get called that all the time. And just yesterday while out in our town, a Chinese lady asked her where she was from (they meant what country is she from) she looked straight at her and without a doubt in her mind said, I'm from this town! Yes EG that is true. It must be hard to be an almost 3 year old and try to make sense of the complicated life our family lives!

Chinese New Year-the day in pictures

We decided to live it up on the final day of Chinese New Year! Milk Gmaw invited us over to her house for lunch. We started the time with lots of fruit!

Then on to lunch...You might remember this picture...

After a few months of tender love and care, Gmaw gave them back to us...

Yep, that's our rabbit. Actually pretty tasty. EG and Andy both really liked it. We also sampled a Spring Festival traditional food, called Tang Yuan.

These little glutenous balls are filled with some sort of sesame seed paste, boiled and served in their broth. Not my fave, but at least I can say I tried it. For some reason Milk Gmaw decided we needed to eat six each. There seemed to a be a significance to the number six but I didn't exactly understand. In the end, I decided Andy needed to eat 8 and me, just 4...shhh...Don't tell! Note: I never actually saw any Chinese people eating them while we were there...hmmm....

EG had a great time playing with Xiang Xiang, who is just 2 weeks older than her. They were allowed to have A LOT of juice. (We just went with it since it was a special treat and we were guests.) At one point EG stopped and said she was going to throw up!

There were a lot of toasts from the adults and the kids! (This is before EG almost lost her cookies from drinking too much juice!)

Afterwards, we came home and Jack slept for three hours! Perfect that our kids got to recover because we had lots more fun ahead of us!

The fireworks started at 6 am, got really loud again about 6 pm and then continued to increase in size and volume til about 12 am. We went out and had a walking picnic and enjoyed losing some of our hearing. Remains from some firecrackers near our house...

We walked around our town and enjoyed the sights and sounds (sort of) and bought some fun Chinese New Year toys. It just happened to be Matt's birthday so we bought him some fireworks to celebrate!

First we serenaded him with Happy Birthday-

And then on the fireworks-

They were huge and really fun! Since Jack slept til 6 we decided to venture to another part of town (the far away part-just 1/4 mile down the road) for the light show with Milk Gmaw and A Xin and Xiao Li.

The electronics department of the factory in our town put on the light show. They built all these crazy light displays themselves! We had fun looking at them.

It's the year of the tiger on the Lunar Calendar, so tigers were everywhere.

The kids had a fun time looking...and touching...

We commented that you would never be allowed to touch these in America.

This one was my fave!

Milky G was proud to tote Jack around.

What's a Huffman Holiday without a meltdown? After 12+ hours of fireworks and lots of attention and lots of juice, EG had had enough. Time to call it a night!

Emma Grace expressed what we were all feeling...overload. After we left the light show, things calmed down attention wise but the fireworks were just getting started. We enjoyed seeing some HUGE fireworks on the way home and then we finally got in bed. Cranked up the sound machine and our kids had no problem sleeping!

Happy New Year!

Congratulations Charlie!

There are a few people who have made their way into the deepest parts of my heart-the "I love you so much I can't explain it" part. My brother is one of those people. Though over the past 7 years I have only seen him a handful of times, my sister love for him is strong. I cry at times when I pray for him and when I listen to country music and think of him. I laugh when I think about his great sense of humor. I am proud of him, of how hard he works at something he believes in so much. I think (some of) his tattoos are really cool. I think he is handsome. I have fun memories of our circus show (walking on those big blue barrels), of cheering him on at sporting events...his team won the state football championship when they were like 7!... of digging a hole to China in Troy's back yard, of hanging out at the lake with Gmaw and Gpaw, of finding out he could rap...Y Y Yo You thought I was gonna stutter, but I slide through like butter...I still feel terrible for making him walk from the high school to the middle school when I was running late. So sorry Charlie. Again, please forgive me for those few years where I won the Jerk Sister of the Year Award!

And now he is a married man! Andy and I are excited for you and we can't wait to see you and your beautiful bride this summer! Congratulations Charlie and Devlyn! We pray God would bless your marriage, grant you deep love for and commitment to one another, and that he would bring you both great joy and strength as you walk the road of life together! We love you!

The winner is...LOUD

If I could only choose one word to describe the Chinese New Year I would have tough time deciding between QUIET and LOUD. It some ways our city is very quiet during the New Year. Everything shuts down. Everything. Most people go back home (outside the city) or on vacation. Traffic is way better and things are just low key. So in some ways Quiet is the right word.

But then at 6 am this morning I was reminded why LOUD wins out as my word of choice. Today is the last day of the 15 day celebration and we started things DARK and early with a lot of firecrackers. A WHOLE LOT OF them! Many people lit strings our firecrackers right outside our windows between the hours of 6am and 9am. EG actually really liked them. We got stools and stood by the windows to listen and watch. This is a big improvement as just a few months ago fireworks brought shrieks of terror from her! Here's a little video of a Chinese New Year performance we watched in Thailand. I think LOUD is a great word to describe this performance. Even Jack covered his ears!

This year instead of being annoyed with how early and how late our neighbors set off firecrackers and fireworks, we've decided to just join the fun. You've already seen our video of our first firework adventure. We had so much fun that we went back and bought more! We are setting off more tonight for Matt's birthday and we bought a giant box to set off when the Huffmans visit! I can kinda see why Chinese people like setting them off so much!

Birthday Video

Iknow I am way behind on most things in my life these days but I figured you'd still enjoy this video! I am very proud of myself. I figured out how to upload it and then embed it on my blog. I know that's as simple as turning on the computer for most common folk, but for me, it's kind of a big deal. So if this actually works you should definitely tell me how amazing I am.

Andy loves to make videos for our family. The plan is to make one for each child's one year bday and then make a family one at Christmas each year! So fun. Hope you will enjoy!!!

The Final Countdown

March 19th is quickly approaching and we are excited! Why? Because these guys are coming to visit! (minus Pepaw Ted-Bish, we wish you were coming too!)

Last time they saw our kids, they looked like this:

We are so excited for them to come over and see our life here and spend time with our kiddos! We've started the final countdown chain!

We are counting down the days til their arrival by removing a loop from our chain each day. I heard it's good to have a visual for little kids in helping them understand time. I thought this would be a fun way for EG to "see" how many days until Kacki, Poopaw, and Mary arrive. Each loop has something written on it about them that is meaningful to us and the kids. (Like Kacki loves to make "cakes." Poopaw is very thoughtful. Mary loves to wear headbands.) We will be reading one each day to help us get even more excited about their visit! Woohoo!

We have A LOT planned for their 10 day trip and we can't wait to sip coffee with you, talk about the Mountaineers awesome basketball season, and just enjoy each other! March 19th here we come!!!

Took down my tree

I said I would change my blog background when I took down my Christmas Tree. For the record, I actually took it down at the end of January (late but not as late as my blog would indicate!) But I am just now getting around to changing my background on the blog! My New Year's Resolution for the rest of 2010 is to stay on top of every single thing in every single aspect of my life every single day. HAHA. Too bad I haven't taken a shower in 3 days. Hope you enjoy this background. My guess is it'll be up here til next Christmas!