So happy to be home

Between trying to get EG to sleep on a palate in the floor in our hotel bathroom and washing bottles and bibs and bowls and spoons in the bathroom sink, and cleaning up poop from said palate in the floor, Andy and I spent a considerable portion of our out of town time in a bathroom. EG has a busted lip, our plane was turned around when we were super close to home because of bad weather. Emotionally, I'm in about the same state as EG's lip-bruised, battered, bleeding, and ugly.

Ok, got that out of my system, so I'll move on...

Actually there were some highlights of our time-seeing some friends, eating Dairy Queen and Papa John's twice (in that order), a trip to Ikea, and EG having a chance to play with some of her friends. Also, my personal favorite highlight-Jack got even fatter-I fed him pizza and LOTS of bread since it was easy to carry and not too messy. We are happy to be home and enjoying using our bathroom for it's intended use.

We haven't made much progress on our camera issue. We really want one that has the SLR feature and also does short bloggable videos-but these two features together are kinda hard to find. So we are looking...we are thinking about buying a cheap something to tide us over until we can make a decision. So for now, there won't be many new pictures.

Ok, out to buy some errands with EG.

8 months

It's getting harder and harder to get good pictures of Jack in his "x months" shirts. Here the best two I got at his 8 month birthday! Andy said he thought Jack would crawl before he was 8 months and he was right on. This little man is all over the place. I look away for a few seconds and he's found his way into the bathroom or some other random/slightly dangerous spot in our house. We need to work on boundaries. It just all happened so fast. With EG, it felt like she took forever to learn a new skill-maybe that's because I was watching her every move so it felt like a more long and drawn out process. But with Jack, it seems like one day he can't do a certain thing and then the next day-WHAM-he can do it. (His first word was wham, actually. HEHE. Just kidding. Not sure why I said WHAM-just seems to capture how I feel about him learning new things. Ok, I'll stop using random early 90's words now.) Andy has also predicted he'll walk earlier than EG. I am a tad scared about that, but I think it's true.

Jack is moving rather quickly to table food. I am tired of dealing with baby food so I am pushing the table food. So far, he's had bananas, crackers, tofu, zucchini, spaghetti, bread and pancakes-all in adult food form, just cut up really small. I am pretty sure his two faves were the tofu and the pancakes. Just imagine when I start giving him syrup to go with the pancakes-he'll really go hog wild then. "Hog wild" also seems like an 80's or early 90's word me to word to me. I'm wearing leggings today, maybe that's why I'm feeling in an 80's mood.

We'll be out of town for a few days. not sure when we will post again-I'm hoping we'll have Internet where we're going. The city we are going to has Starbucks, Papa John's, Subway and Dairy Queen. We are excited! Random side note-we just found out our city is getting a Papa John's and a Dairy Queen! It's not Chick Fila, but it made me happy enough that I called Andy right away to "tell him the good news" as soon as I heard! Cool beans.

Camera News

Thanks for your comments to put a little pressure on Andy to get a new camera. It's working. Actually, he doesn't even know about the comments yet. I was gonna wait til I got a bunch and then spring them on him. But what is working to convince him is the fact that our old camera, though technically revived, has some major functions not working-namely the flash and the zoom. So, looks like my dream will come true! But if you wanna keep leaving comments and send him some emails, I'm sure it can't hurt!

PS-Kathi-we got out the camera this morning to take pictures of the Kacki Cakes-that's when we found out it was only half revived. EG LOVED the pancakes. She ate five! The pan you sent works really well. I dyed the pancake batter pink, which made the imprints of the animals even clearer. We had extra and put the freezer to pull out one day soon! Can't wait for you guys to enjoy some Kacki cakes when you come!

New Life

See those videos in my lats post? See how grainy they are? See how each one is only 15 seconds long? Yes, that's what I've been living with for the last 4 years. And on Monday night I thought my grainy-15-second-video days were OVER for good. Andy dropped our camera and broke it, or so we thought...

I had some pictures and video on the camera and so I tried to figure out how to get it off the camera and managed to FIX the dumb thing in the process. Let's be honest, I was severely disappointed when I realized I had resurrected it.

So please please, leave a comment or send me an email telling Andy why we should still get a new camera. Grandmas, plead your case!

They were made for each other

Over here in this giant country, outside a giant city, in a little no name town, in a 4 bedroom apartment, there's a friendship blooming. It may seem an unlikely pair...a jolly little fellow who has a penchant for eating non edible items. He's all boy-crawling and rolling and tumbling off the couch. He's usually happy unless he's hungry and then he finds some stickers or a book to munch on! So there's this little guy... and then there's this little lady...

And she's all girl for sure, usually toting a stroller and baby doll to the store while we "buy some errands." She's full of excitement and questions and is way sharper than we give her credit for!

And this odd little pair are building quite the friendship. They started off a little rocky in their first few days together and we still have our issues daily (namely sharing), but overall, these two are becoming fast friends. One thing that binds them together is their love for entertainment. One of these little ones loves to entertain and the other one loves to be entertained so it works out great for everyone-including Andy and I who often sit back and watch the two of them interact and just marvel (and laugh) !!! We are so grateful for the friendship that's being built and pray it will grow stronger and deeper over the years!

Check out these videos to see which of this dynamic duo is the entertainer and which one is the entertainee!

New Camera

We went to the airport on Monday to pick up our good friend John and his daughter Kayleigh. I had plans to take some pictures and post for his wife who is still in the US. But...Andy dropped our camera and it currently won't even turn on. I was 49% bummed about it since it is a good camera and takes good pictures. It's seven years old and still works great. (Thanks Papaw!) The other 51% percent of me was happy-I've really been wanting a new camera-specifically one that does videos longer than 15 seconds. We have a video camera but you have to go through a lot of hoops to finish the disc, edit the clip you want and post. I just want to be able to easily post short videos on our blog. SOOOO-here's my big chance. I was so thankful that it was Andy that dropped it. Otherwise, he might have thought I did it intentionally. HeHe. So, we won't have new pics for a while but the good news is we're gonna get a new camera soon! Yipee.

Chick...

Sorry it's taken me so long to reveal what was in our package! I was waiting on Andy to edit some video for me. Here we are opening our "Chick" package...

Unfortunately, our package did not include a Chick-Fila Sandwich, nor my Grandma Chick-either of which would have had me flipping cartwheels! But it did include CHICK CHICK, a giant stuffed chicken who Emma Grace adores.

About a month before we left America to return to China, Andy's family bought Chick Chick for EG. It was an impulse buy at Sam's club, one Andy and I strongly advised against. While Andy and I were shopping for items to take back with us, EG and her lovely Aunt Mary, Kacki and Poopaw went "browsing" around. They came back with EG grinning from ear to ear holding this giant yellow chicken. Of course, being the party pooper parents that we are, we told them it was wasteful to buy the Chicken since there was no way we were gonna take that thing with us to China. They bought it anyway and EG slept with it every time she stayed with them until we left. They of course tried to convince us to take it as a carry on when we came back to China!!! Chick Chick has made his appearance on many web cam calls in the last few months. I guess Kacki, Poopaw and Mary just couldn't stand it when EG cried when she couldn't actually touch him on the computer (you were torturing her!!!!) so they decided to send it. But sending a giant stuffed chicken in the mail is not easy. So they vacuumed sealed it! It was at the bottom of our package and EG loved it! She's been sleeping with it every night!!! As a very important side note, if anyone wants to attempt to send either a Chick Fila Sandwich or my Grandma Chick over, I would be forever grateful-though I don't think my grandma would like the vacuum seal very much. My dear friend Sheryl brought over 10 Chick Flia Sandwiches one time...it was amazing. All this has gotten me really hungry. I found a copycat recipe online for their fried chicken. Do you think it's even worth tyring to make it? Andy and I had this long discussion yesterday about how Chick Fila really is the best fast food restaurant in the world. I mean, their chicken sandwich will only be topped in the new heavens and new earth, and they have nice ladies, like Jeanie (in Burlington) who come around and ask you if you need a refill and give you butter mints. How great is that? Ok...I digress.

Thanks Huffmans for sending CHICK CHICK!!! We feel very loved!!! Next time you send something that starts with a "Chick," make sure you include extra pickles!!