CHIC....

It came in our package this week. It starts with a Chic, it was vacuum sealed and it made one female in our family very happy! Any guesses as to what it was?????

sending some love your way

We got two big boxes of LOVE last week from some super special people! My cousin, Jane, who I don't think I've ever actually met in person, has "adopted" our family. She is a huge blessing to me. She sends great emails, asks great questions about our life here, prays for me, and makes us feel super loved.

She leads a group of kids and they worked really hard putting this stuff together for us. Each week the kids brought in their own money and saved it up to get these goodies for us. They went to Walmart and had a blast getting stuff on our wish list and other surprises!

We had a BLAST opening it and we're enjoying all the stuff!! Thank you guys sooo much for all the time, love, money, and energy you put into getting this stuff to us. Andy and I both said we felt so loved and cared for. TO TEAM KID: Your package crossed lots of land and water to get here-my guess is it was on 3 or 4 different planes! And when it arrived it was still full of all the love you put in it-and the goodies too! My box runneth over! Jack in the BOX!! We couldn't resist-we opened the craisins immediately!

Jack ate the box while we ate craisins.

OH BLESS YOU STARBURST SENDERS!!! EG LOVED EVERYTHING!!!!!

She's figuring out how to work Jack's toy!

Thank you guys soooo much for everything! I can't wait to make this new cake I've been wanting to try. Now I have the ingredients to make it! Andy thanks you! Emma Grace has already put the craft items to good use! We had craft time today and used the color pencils! And for the puppy and the giant boxes, Jack says, "YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!"We feel so loved. Having some American goodies is such a fun treat for us! Thank you for all you did for us. We are grateful.

We also got another package this week and it had something in it that starts with a CHIC...can anyone guess what it was? I'll reveal that in my next post!!!!!! My clues: It starts with a CHIC, it was vacuum sealed, and it made one female in our family VERY HAPPY!!!

Bowls

It's funny the things that entertain our family. Last week we had lots of fun playing with bowls. Check out all the fun uses we found for them!

HATS!

We thought Jack looked like an acorn! And a rousing game of Skee Ball.

I creamed Andy!!

One Hour of Greek

The last 10 days of July were pretty warm-a few overcast days and a couple of thunderstorms but nothing that could help me win the bet. Andy had already won our July weather bet by the middle of July. Sad. But Andy will admit that the locals say it's been the dryest rainy season in a LONG time! On June 30th and July 31st we had pouring rain all day-those days book-ended the dryest, warmest, most beautiful rainy season this area has ever seen!

So Andy will get an extra hour to study Greek and my blog will have to stay the same for a while.

4th Anniversary!

On Wednesday, Andy and I celebrated our 4th Wedding Anniversary! What a blessing it has been to be married to my best friend for these four years. I've always told Andy that it was his kindness that won me. This year, more than ever, I have become aware of how undeserving I am of God's kindness to me through this man. Our marriage is truly a good gift from my Heavenly Father. It's a gift that strengths me, humbles me, brings me so much joy, refines me, and fills me with thankfulness. I am becoming more of the woman God wants me to be because I am married to Andy. Thank you Father.

We started the day with some homemade cinnamon rolls and we watched our wedding video-not the actual ceremony but the one with all the pictures from growing up. EG loved it! Jack looks a lot like Charlie when he was little!

Then Andy and I got away for 24 hours!!! We got a really great deal on this hot springs and spa place in our city. The scenery was great!

We stayed in a little cabin type thing that opened up to the pool!

(Which was freezing so we didn't swim) But we did enjoy the hot springs fed hot tubs. This area of the country is famous for it's hot springs and you can find lots of resorts that boast of hot springs fed pools. (Though my friend Laura thinks some of them might just be using really hot water!!) Some of the pools had minerals in them, which made your skin feel weird. So we mostly stuck to the fresh water ones.
We also opted out of this option....
That's a man's foot with hundreds of little fish eating off his dead skin. It's a pretty popular treatment. We just gawked and took pictures. No flesh eating fish for me, thanks.

We enjoyed a foot massage, a long walk at a nearby lake, and the highlights of our trip were AC in our room and sleeping in til 7:30!!! I feel unbelievably rested! Happy Anniversary to us!!!

Our 24 hour break was fun and much needed. I returned to be thrust right back into the adventure of motherhood the moment I walked in the door!!! When we came home EG was supposed to be napping already. She had gotten up and somehow managed to lock herself in her room. She was crying and Xiao Li and I had to dig out this big ring of keys and Andy tried each one until we finally got her out!! Welcome home Mom and Dad!!!

Jack's first watermelon!

This blog is all about food. We Huffmans love to eat. All of us. Here's more information than you would ever want to know about our eating habits.

First all, there's breakfast. It's by far the most challenging meal for me to provide and I don't love breakfast foods to begin with so I kinda wish breakfast just didn't even exist. Cereal, a very reasonably priced and tasty option in America is rather expensive and quite boring here. Some American brands run as much as 12 dollars a box! Andy has found a brand of German cornflakes that he likes so I buy them about 5-10 boxes at a time for a little less than four bucks a box. He's memorized the German labels and attempted to read the back of the box in German. Reading labels is a little of an obsession for him. Der Nuperfriesh de start en den tag!!!! (a fresh start to the day!) Andy can eat cornflakes every day and be just fine but I get quite bored with them. So we sometimes opt for bagels. That sounds easy enough but the place we get the bagels is kinda far away. So I try to stock the freezer with bagels from time to time. EG likes a cinnamon bagel with cream cheese. Another option for breakfast is toast made from semi sweet Chinese sliced bread. It's ok in a pinch. EG's faves include oatmeal and yoghurt. I also make banana bread and other muffins from time to time. I made cinnamon buns yesterday, which were great, but way more like a dessert. I'd rather have it as a late night snack or something. Recently EG has started to ask for fried rice for breakfast. We often have some left over in the fridge so she and I have been enjoying that lately. In my opinion, it's the best of our breakfast options.

For lunch we eat Chinese or left overs. The Chinese is usually way better than the leftovers. Lunch may be my biggest meal of the day. I don't love breakfast so I eat very little and by lunch I'm starving. That on top of nursing gives me quite a lunch time appetite. EG loves the Chinese. Fried rice day is her favorite by far. That's when we take all the left over Chinese food or fresh veggies in our fridge and stir fry them with rice. By we, I mean Xiao Li. It's so yummy.

And then there's snack time. We have one in the morning and one in the afternoon. If she hasn't already had her yoghurt for breakfast, she'll have that for a snack. She usually drinks the yoghurt but occasionally we put it in a bowl and add sprinkles, which EG pronounces, "Sphinkles!" Otherwise, she has fruit, or pretzels, and some Chinese snack foods that are pretty normal tasting to our American taste buds. She loves running errands with me because it usually includes a snack-one that takes a while to consume, like a lollipop!!!

And dinner. Oh dinner. I spend a lot of time thinking and preparing for dinner as we eat American food and it takes a while to prepare. We eat everything from Spaghetti and grilled chicken to Philly cheese steaks and chicken salad sandwiches. We love food. We love American food. We love dinner.

Dinner is a little challenging for me, as I have two little eaters who need lots of attention during dinner time. From shoveling pureed pumpkin into Jack's mouth to cutting up noodles and making sure EG eats everything, dinners are sometimes a tad chaotic at our house.

We also love dessert. Sometimes we go the extra mile and have things like homemade popsicles! And then other times we do something simple like watermelon.

Speaking of watermelon, Jack got his first taste of watermelon this week in quite an unconventional way! Let me explain-I've been nursing him for almost 8 months now and making lots of baby food for him. I recently decided to wean him. The main reason was that we felt like I was just not able to keep up with how much he needs to be drinking per day. I was sad as I feel super attached to nursing him for some reason. But he seems way happier these days. He's started to eat Rusks. I know...what is a rusk? well, evidently it's a word for a teething cracker. I bought these vegetable teething rusks this week and he had a blast gnawing on one while we ate dinner!

I found evidence last night that Jack was not getting to eat from me. It seems he decided to take his hunger issues into his own hands. Last night as I was changing his poopy diaper, I found paper in his poop. Upon further observation, I recognized it was from a book we have! The funniest part is that the book he decided to snack on is called "God Made Food," a book full of pictures of food. I confirmed this by finding missing pages in the book. It seems his food of choice was watermelon!!

CONGRATS KATIE!

Way to go sister! We are proud of you! Danny is a great instructor! You should ask him about the first time he took me out to do a left turn. I now know you should break rather than speed up when turning left. It didn't take us too long to get out of that ditch, did it Danny?