personal pan pizza anyone???

It's starting...the mass exodus of foreigners from our city. David and Marianne board a plane in about 2 hours. Every year about this time most of the foreigners in our city migrate west-for sunnier skies (it's rainy season now), family and chic fil a. (well, those are my reasons!) Summer is a great time to head back home and visit with family or travel in other parts of Asia. For the past 5 years Andy and I have spent every summer outside of China-mostly in America and one summer in Thailand. This will be our first summer to stay in our city for the entire time. About 95% of the people that we know in our city will be gone as well. There will be about a month stretch where we are totally on our own!

In one way it will be a little lonely. My English speaking outlets will be greatly narrowed! Poor Andy-he might get tired of me! My friend Laura, who will be gone for about a month, and I take a walk most afternoons with the girls. One day Andy asked me, "so what do you and Laura talk about on your walks?" (as if he thought we must not have much to talk about since we see each other every day) I began listing the topics we had covered in our 45 minute walk that day and he was blown away-basically we talked about everything from discipline to future plans, to deep heart things we were learning and solved most of the world's problems all in a 45 minute walk- (all while trying to teach Emma Grace to keep her hat on, help Lydia when she dropped the keys she was playing with and open a lid for Julianna to get out more goldfish) His response was, "WOW!" So without Laura and my other English speaking friends around, Andy might get his ear talked off when he comes in the door!

In another way though, I am really looking forward to this summer. We do a lot of traveling and our lives often feel like they are full of transition. It will be nice to stay in our routine (which I value more than ever as a mom) and just to be "us." I am looking forward to Emma Grace learning how to walk this summer. (which might be a bit challenging since it is the rainy season here-I foresee a lot more laundry this summer) I am looking forward to some downtime with my hubby. Andy will be studying Chinese this summer, as he hasn't been able to spend much time on it during the school year because he is teaching English. We are planning a "Book-It" summer. Remember in Elementary school, they had you read all these books and if you read enough you got a free personal pan Pizza Hut pizza? I am pretty sure it was called "Book-it." I read a while ago that they were doing away with that because people were up in arms about motivating kids to read with food/the issue of pizza hut cashing in on this whole thing-your kid gets a free pizza so now mom and dad feel obligated to take them but also must buy pizza for the rest of the family. I'll keep my opinion to myself but let's just say Andy and I might celebrate our book-a-thon summer with a trip to Pizza Hut. Anyway, back to Book-It, or whatever it was called-The TV shows we watch are on hold for the summer and we thought it was a great opportunity to find a way to 1. spend time together 2. do something educational 3. eat pizza. We are currently reading Jane Eyre, which has been a year long read for us. My problem was that we would start reading late in the evening and I would be asleep within the first two pages. Now, we start about 7:30 and read til 9. We are covering quite some ground- I am mad at the book right now. Something good better happen in these last 100 pages. I have a hard time when things don't end perfectly. Anyway, our think our next book will be Swiss Family Robinson. My husband has an amazing ability to "do voices" so it's really fun to hear him read. Let me just say, Andy does an old, haggard, Irish servant lady's voice really well!

So, that's the news for the Huffmans. Although we are sad to see our friends leave for the summer, we are looking forward to some Huffman family time and a few good books-hopefully enough to earn the personal pan pizza.

Here are a few pictures from last summer! Makes me miss you guys!

Here's my "I really ready to have this baby" bloated face, along with my cute sister...

The few hours previous to this picture were no fun, but at this point I was doing good...

She's here!

hanging with the Dickeys...if you Nimbus heads see this, give us a shout out!
Andy wrestling with his cousin Luke...Pink Ladies. I love my Rossi....First trip to the beach. That hat is still too big for her!

well, I'm off to earn my pizza