Andy has been out of town for 4 days now. One more to go! Our kiddos have missed him more this time than any other time. "It feels like forever" til he comes home. I agree with you Emma Grace! We've kept busy while he's been gone. We tend to do better with activity than just sitting at home. So we've been to a birthday party, the library twice, to three parks, to a friend's house, and I've had two girls nights at my house after the kids were asleep. I've been really blessed by these times with other women. WE DON'T DO WELL without the leader of our family around, so it takes a lot to keep us afloat-thus the flurry of activity. We all need him in different ways and we all feel the sting of his absence. I'm especially feeling it at 5 am when Jack is up due to the time change! I am reminded of what a servant leader he is-he usually gets up with our early bird. And I just need him. Things just feel off inside my soul when he's not around. So I'll be breathing a big sigh of relief and we'll all be offering big hugs when this man's plane lands tomorrow afternoon. As our sidewalk chalk says, "COME HOME SOON DAD!"
Monday, November 7, 2011
COME HOME SOON!
Andy has been out of town for 4 days now. One more to go! Our kiddos have missed him more this time than any other time. "It feels like forever" til he comes home. I agree with you Emma Grace! We've kept busy while he's been gone. We tend to do better with activity than just sitting at home. So we've been to a birthday party, the library twice, to three parks, to a friend's house, and I've had two girls nights at my house after the kids were asleep. I've been really blessed by these times with other women. WE DON'T DO WELL without the leader of our family around, so it takes a lot to keep us afloat-thus the flurry of activity. We all need him in different ways and we all feel the sting of his absence. I'm especially feeling it at 5 am when Jack is up due to the time change! I am reminded of what a servant leader he is-he usually gets up with our early bird. And I just need him. Things just feel off inside my soul when he's not around. So I'll be breathing a big sigh of relief and we'll all be offering big hugs when this man's plane lands tomorrow afternoon. As our sidewalk chalk says, "COME HOME SOON DAD!"
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Halloween Festivities
This year was our first "real" Halloween in America. Last year we did venture out into our apartment complex and the kids got a few treats. Actually-5 apartments was just the right amount of candy for our little ones.
But this year, we really experienced part of American culture that we forgot existed. Halloween has taken over this country in the last 7 years while we were gone. Seriously, our neighborhood came alive over the last few weeks with decorations, lights and anticipation! And I understand why now-last night was a blast! Everyone was out, spirits were high, candy was overflowing, and people were talking and getting to know one another, something kind of rare in the "single family dwelling" culture that we are now a part of. Halloween brought our neighbors out and we really enjoyed the community of it all.
We hosted a pumpkin carving-cookout the weekend before Halloween. Down here is hot Florida, you have to wait until 2 days prior to Halloween before carving your pumpkin. Otherwise the pumpkin faces all look like wrinkly old men with a few teeth. Everyone got really into it and some of our neighbors even brought power tools to use! WOW!
Smurfette, Ninja, Mermaid, Aerial, and one cute cowboy! We enjoyed trick or treating with some of the kids from our street.
EG and Jack were a little timid at first, but they got the hang of it really quickly. (and after they realized they got candy at every single house, they were leading the charge from house to house!)
Mr Brian, our neighbor who has helped us a ton on our foreclosure-of-a-house, with his buddies. Jack the lion is the newest addition to our street!
Now I am just trying to figure out what to do with the 20 lbs of candy we collected. To eat or not to eat???
Happy Halloween from the Huffmans!
But this year, we really experienced part of American culture that we forgot existed. Halloween has taken over this country in the last 7 years while we were gone. Seriously, our neighborhood came alive over the last few weeks with decorations, lights and anticipation! And I understand why now-last night was a blast! Everyone was out, spirits were high, candy was overflowing, and people were talking and getting to know one another, something kind of rare in the "single family dwelling" culture that we are now a part of. Halloween brought our neighbors out and we really enjoyed the community of it all.
We hosted a pumpkin carving-cookout the weekend before Halloween. Down here is hot Florida, you have to wait until 2 days prior to Halloween before carving your pumpkin. Otherwise the pumpkin faces all look like wrinkly old men with a few teeth. Everyone got really into it and some of our neighbors even brought power tools to use! WOW!
Smurfette, Ninja, Mermaid, Aerial, and one cute cowboy! We enjoyed trick or treating with some of the kids from our street. 
EG and Jack were a little timid at first, but they got the hang of it really quickly. (and after they realized they got candy at every single house, they were leading the charge from house to house!)
Mr Brian, our neighbor who has helped us a ton on our foreclosure-of-a-house, with his buddies. Jack the lion is the newest addition to our street! 
Now I am just trying to figure out what to do with the 20 lbs of candy we collected. To eat or not to eat???
Happy Halloween from the Huffmans!
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Thursdays
On Thursday mornings, it's just me and this little man-
Someone recently defined joy to me like this-You have joy when you know someone is delighted to be with you. I like that definition. Jack loves his momma. And he loves spending time with her. And holding her hand. And telling her he loves her. And his momma feels the same way. Our joy cup was overflowing this morning.
Together. On the horse farm that is in walking distance from our house.
On a cool fall morning.
It was perfect.
Someone recently defined joy to me like this-You have joy when you know someone is delighted to be with you. I like that definition. Jack loves his momma. And he loves spending time with her. And holding her hand. And telling her he loves her. And his momma feels the same way. Our joy cup was overflowing this morning.
Together. On the horse farm that is in walking distance from our house.
On a cool fall morning.
It was perfect.
Friday, October 14, 2011
somewhere between platinum blond and gray
Today was a first for our family-we attended an annual event in our city for the second year in a row! It seems crazy to me that we are starting to do things a second time around. Last year everything was new and still a lot of things are new to us even this year. But it feels nice to begin to have some "familiars" in our life. When I told Emma Grace and Jack that we were going to the Fall Festa, as Jack calls it, at Daddy's work, they immediately remembered last year's event. Their mental wheels starting turning and they were full of excitement thinking of the bounce house and the maze and the free pumpkin. (I was excited about the amazing dessert table!) It's nice to start a sentence with something like, "remember last year when we...." instead of everything being new and unfamiliar.
I hung some more pictures on my wall today-these really groovy hand stitched minority patches??? not sure how to describe them, that I bought before we left China. I framed them today and hung them in our entry way. I had the thought, "wow, those will be there for a while." who knows the next time we will pick up and move again. There is part of me that misses the adventure of moving apartments every few years, getting a chance to pick new paint colors, and discover life in a new place. But quite honestly, it feels really good to be staying for a while. I am sure I'll get restless a some point, but for now, staying put is really nice.
Today I talked with the kids about why Andy is going back to school. He and I have dreams about what the Lord would call us to do one day and it was fun to share them with our kids. We talk about them a lot but I have neglected to ever tell our kids. Emma Grace really tracks with most of our adult conversations so it was fun to share with her a little more about our hopes and dreams.
By the time those dreams are realized though, I am worried I will have a full head of gray hair. Perhaps we will be old by the time we get to do our dream job. Andy and I often talk about being 65 years old bopping around a certain city in China doing certain things that make us want to dance with excitement. I seriously can spend hours daydreaming about this one particular dream I have for my job after my kids are on their own. And we might be old and gray before it happens. Or we might not be old, but just gray. At the rate Andy and I are graying, we might be totally gray before he even finishes his masters degree, much less have our kids grown and out on their own. Today I pulled about ten gray hairs from the front of my head and then just gave up because there were too many. DRATTS. I definitely think gray is hip so I'm looking forward to rocking a full head of it when the time comes. Plus gray goes great with blue and black, some of my favorite colors to wear. (As did my college days platinum blond color!)
The reality is this-the last few years of my life have been the most stressful of my 30 years and my body is really starting to show it. "Outwardly we are wasting away, but inwardly we are being renewed day by day." This sums up the last year of my life for sure. Every strand of gray hair and every wrinkle on my face has been hard earned. But I wouldn't trade them for a dip in the fountain of youth for one second, though I may be tempted to buy a bottle of platinum blond once they really start to take over. Just kidding.) Every gray hair and every wrinkle on this pilgrim's body represents a thousand opportunities I've had to see the Lord come through for me, to know his love for me in a deep and real way, and to have my heart be made more and more ready for the resurrection that is to come!
I hung some more pictures on my wall today-these really groovy hand stitched minority patches??? not sure how to describe them, that I bought before we left China. I framed them today and hung them in our entry way. I had the thought, "wow, those will be there for a while." who knows the next time we will pick up and move again. There is part of me that misses the adventure of moving apartments every few years, getting a chance to pick new paint colors, and discover life in a new place. But quite honestly, it feels really good to be staying for a while. I am sure I'll get restless a some point, but for now, staying put is really nice.
Today I talked with the kids about why Andy is going back to school. He and I have dreams about what the Lord would call us to do one day and it was fun to share them with our kids. We talk about them a lot but I have neglected to ever tell our kids. Emma Grace really tracks with most of our adult conversations so it was fun to share with her a little more about our hopes and dreams.
By the time those dreams are realized though, I am worried I will have a full head of gray hair. Perhaps we will be old by the time we get to do our dream job. Andy and I often talk about being 65 years old bopping around a certain city in China doing certain things that make us want to dance with excitement. I seriously can spend hours daydreaming about this one particular dream I have for my job after my kids are on their own. And we might be old and gray before it happens. Or we might not be old, but just gray. At the rate Andy and I are graying, we might be totally gray before he even finishes his masters degree, much less have our kids grown and out on their own. Today I pulled about ten gray hairs from the front of my head and then just gave up because there were too many. DRATTS. I definitely think gray is hip so I'm looking forward to rocking a full head of it when the time comes. Plus gray goes great with blue and black, some of my favorite colors to wear. (As did my college days platinum blond color!)
The reality is this-the last few years of my life have been the most stressful of my 30 years and my body is really starting to show it. "Outwardly we are wasting away, but inwardly we are being renewed day by day." This sums up the last year of my life for sure. Every strand of gray hair and every wrinkle on my face has been hard earned. But I wouldn't trade them for a dip in the fountain of youth for one second, though I may be tempted to buy a bottle of platinum blond once they really start to take over. Just kidding.) Every gray hair and every wrinkle on this pilgrim's body represents a thousand opportunities I've had to see the Lord come through for me, to know his love for me in a deep and real way, and to have my heart be made more and more ready for the resurrection that is to come!
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Just call us Swamp People
To live in Florida is to live in a swamp. It rained for about 2 days straight recently and the field behind our house became a pond. Literally. We had 20 ducks, 3 sand hill cranes and about 47,000 frogs appear out of no where. Emma Grace and Jack love the wildlife in this area. And we love the blessing of our yard/swamp which is home to lots of this wildlife. We have a speckled hawk that visits us each morning. We've seen deer, a white owl and we had an armadillo living in our bushes for a while. There are even ARRRRGUANAS here. (Lizards really, but I don't correct Emma Grace because I love hearing her pronunciation of Iguana.) Our most recent wild life adventure-During the two day rain storm, our drains overflowed into our street and 5 catfish came up! You can imagine the delight of a 3 and 4 year old "scooting" the catfish back into the drain with their dad! They loved the rescue mission! Now if we'd cooked them, you could really call us swamp people!
Monday, October 10, 2011
China Moment
Our Home Owner's Association has some rules. Most of which I think are for the good of all of us. But the "no clothes line" rule is just so...."not green" of them! Well, we are abiding by the no clothes line rule. But they never said anything about this! 
Anyone who has walked an apartment complex in China on a sunny afternoon knows this familiar sight! At the first sign of warm weather, Chinese grannies are competing for bush space to dry their linens. Thankfully we "own" these bushes so there is little competition. HEHE. I am sure our neighbors already think we are weird, but this might have sealed the deal! To my China friends, definitely jump on this bandwagon if you haven't already...the quilt dried in no time! And to my American friends, you should try this at home!
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Saving the Animals...two by two
Emma Grace's first homework! Last week in her class they talked about Community helpers-policemen, doctors, teachers, etc. They had to construct a building from the community with boxes from home. She and Andy made an animal hospital. Andy was pretty into it, maybe more than EG. He'll be great for all the projects in our future!
Here they are constructing "Noah's Ark Animal Hospital"
"Saving the Animals two by two" was the slogan for their hospital and they glued animals walking in the door two by two! Wonder if the teachers got it??!!!
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