FPO-Winter is Upon us

I am not sure when winter officially starts, but for us, today marks the beginning of winter. Not because it turned extremely cold all of the sudden, or because all the leaves have fallen off the trees but because of something I like to call the FPO. That means the First Power Overload of the season. As you might recall, we have limited power in our home. (and unfortunately the living room, bathroom and laundry room all happen to be on the same circuit.) Throughout most of the year, there is just enough power to run our dryer, the oven and other random little appliances. But as it gets cooler at night, we start running the space heaters...and those put us over the edge. This morning while drying my hair and running the washer and dryer and running one space heater, the breaker flipped. So it begins-I have to decide which is more important-dry hair, heat, or clean clothes! Today I turned off the dryer while I finished drying my hair. Winter is officially upon us! Last year we assumed we would not have this same problem in America but for some reason our house totally had the same issue. I guess that was good for helping us remember things go wrong in America too.

So fun

I'm back from my Mom's retreat and it was FABULOUS. I was praying this past week for our time and God really answered my prayers. I had sweet sweet fellowship with friends, going to new levels in our relationships, great teaching from God's word about hope and faith and God's love for us. Great teaching on loving my man. I had a great, long, uninterrupted, no clock ticking time with the Lord. I had A LOT of coffee. That's because I didn't have much sleep. (10 hours total. hehe) It was just too tempting to stay up and talk with friends. After I finally decided to go to bed, my roommate and I talked for a couple MORE hours before finally falling asleep. So, much coffee was in order. I decided to skip out on the pedicure since I was in desperate need of a nap Saturday afternoon. But since I had already consumed so much coffee, I could not sleep. So I watched TV. That was amazing too. I had not watched TV since we lived in America. I watched this fascinating program on the National Geographic channel about Landfills in America. I was so proud to be an American. I mean, we produce a lot of trash, but we have a pretty amazing system of recycling and putting it into landfills. Americans do a lot of things with excellence. Amazing. (Especially amazing considering that we live beisde this construction site where they dump garbage at night...pretty sure it's illegal and also pretty sure our apartment complex is built on top of a garbage dump.) Ok, that is random. Back to the Mom's retreat...

I told Andy last night that this retreat will be one I will remember for a long time. From the topics the speakers choose, to the topics of conversation with friends, I can so clearly see how God was in charge of the time. He is so sweet. I've been thinking lately about his goodness. This weekend was a great reminder of that.

Andy and the kiddos had a good weekend too! Andy was a real servant to me this weekend and to our kids. They were happy I was home and I was excited to see them and to give them the gifts I bought for them! I got Jack some really cute slipper/sock things-now that he's walking 20ish steps at a time, I figured he needs some house slippers for the approaching COLD. I got EG some cute socks and some brown winter boots. She loved them.

So fun. Thanks for praying for us.

Where are my Red High Heels?

While this handsome man....

is hanging out with these cute kids....

I'll be.....

FREE! For a very brief 48ish hours I will be away for a mom's retreat. A bunch of mom's will all gather together for some fun, fellowship and freedom. Don't get me wrong, I love love love my family. But I am really looking forward to 48 hours of having absolute freedom. I hope it will be a refreshing and encouraging weekend and help me to be a better wife and mom upon my return! I told my roommate that I was torn. Part of me wants to stay up super late and talk with her til the wee hours of the morning, like I'm in high school again. The other part of me wants to get in the bed at 7 pm and not wake up til 9 the next morning. I'll let you know what ends up happening!!!

Andy will be accepting calls of encouragement and your prayers throughout the weekend. Actually, he's a GREAT dad (he's like Tim in that respect) and he'll do great. He has loads of food to eat and David and his little girl, Sarah are joining them for the weekend. 2 Dads + 3 kids = still out numbered. Oh well.

I, on the other hand, will only be accepting calls if you are offering to pay for my Caramel Macchiatos (hope to have one each day) or my pedicure! Well, I best be going now. I've got to dig through the back of my closet and pull out my red high heels!

Harvest Festival

There's really nothing quite like fall in the South. The leaves, the crisp air, the football games...Andy and I both love fall and all that comes with it. But in our mild-weather city, we don't have many of the "fall fixins" that make this season so amazing. But thankfully, there are other foreigners in our city who want to recreate the feelings of fall for everyone to enjoy. Last weekend, we took the kiddos to a Harvest Festival-hotdogs, caramel apples, lots of costumes, and candy...For me, the anticipation of the whole event was half the fun! EG and I talked about her wearing her Butterfly costume. As you can see, she looked great as a butterfly...At the last minute, I found a football jersey (thanks LUKE!!) and asked EG if she preferred to be a football player. Of course! In the end, we all followed suit and went as the Mountaineers!!! Andy was just thrilled. I think our growing love for Mountaineer football is linked to our growing disconnect from all that is "home." Diving into a love for something familiar, something from home, somehow makes us feel more connected to the place and people we love and miss. So part of what made this harvest festival so fun for our family was the connection we felt to all that is home-the feelings of fall, the people, the football.

Though it was really hot and super crowded, we still enjoyed our time. EG played a Bean bag game and while putting the last bean bag in the pumpkin, a scary man jumped out at her. She was terrified. We left immediately. HEHE. Just kidding. After she stopped crying, we played for a few more minutes and then took the obligatory family pictures.

Happy Fall, Ya'll!!!

Jack is almost 11 months!!

But here are his 10 month pictures! I am just now getting around to getting them on the blog. It's the beginning of November, and just as it should be, it's getting cold here! I love it!! The mornings are cold enough for a jacket and hat and the afternoons are just delightful. We've been spending lots of time outside, eating pumpkin cake, and listening to Christmas music. You know we like to start early in the Huffman house!!!

As for Jack-Phase Danger has turned into Phase Extreme Danger. I can't leave him for a minute without him eating something non edible, climbing the stairs or hacking my computer. He has taken several steps this month but I would not classify him as a walker just yet! He's not nearly as interested in talking as EG was at this age. He's too busy wrestling things, eating books and cruising around the living room via the furniture and walls. He's pretty much eating table food-which is a great relief for me. He ate about a third of my double cheeseburger this weekend. It's nice not to have to make baby food anymore. He will be moving to whole milk next month and a strict diet of cupcakes and ice cream come Dec 12th! I have no doubt he'll love them. Just like EG at this age, his hair is quickly moving towards baby mullet status.

Happy 10th months-almost 11, Jack-o-latern. (EG calls him Jack-staaaa, Jackster, Jackson, Jackafer, Jackeus, or buddy buddy buddy) We love you!!

Thank You Uncle Wang!

When we go in and out of town, we often hire a driver to pick us up and run us to the places we need to go. We don't have a car and there aren't taxis in this part of town, so we've become friends with some local people who use their personal cars as taxis to make money. The great part about this set up is that we just call, they come pick us up, we load our car seats in their car and off we go. We don't have to brave the insane traffic ourselves and the best part is-we get to build an ongoing relationship with them as they've become a regular part of our lives. There's Uncle Qi, Vincent Van Guy and his wife Van Gal, and there's Uncle Wang-his name means king and it's fitting for him. We call him the King of Drivers. He kinda rules the roost in our part of town. He was the first driver in our area and he kinda gives orders to all the newbies. Wang is so kind to our family and has really made an effort to reach out to us and our kiddos. He took Andy cherry picking last spring and he's been asking us for a few weeks now if we wanted a "tu." Not sure exactly what he was talking about, we declined. But this week, we figured out what he meant and we agreed to accept his gift....Here's Emma Grace holding a "tu zi" (he kept leaving off the zi part so we weren't sure what he was talking about. But now we know....)

That my friends is a bunny. And here is the other one....

And there is also a GIANT one, which Andy thinks is actually a hare. Not sure the difference between a rabbit and a hare, but the light brown hare is huge. Uncle Wang took us to his house on our way back home and picked out two bunnies for us to raise and one hare for us to eat now. He asked us if we ate meat. YES, we love meat. Not sure about rabbit. He also asked us if we have ever killed our meat ourselves. That would be a resounding NO!


We let the kiddos play with the bunnies when we got home. We left the hare in the plastic bag it came in.

We decided we couldn't keep the bunnies. We live in an apartment and I have a bad history with rabbits. My mom once bought us a rabbit for Easter. Roger was great until we lost interest but still had to go out in the creepy scary dark and feed it every night after we got home from basketball practice. Roger had an under bite and had to have his teeth clipped every month so he could open his mouth and eat. So there was no way we were gonna find someone to give it to. Who wants a rabbit with a debilitating under bite? So for years I had to feed that things in the dark with my heart pounding, sure someone was gonna grab me or Roger was going to bite me.

Emma Grace was a tad distraught about our decision.

But we came up with a great plan! We felt obligated to eat the hare but we had no interest in or ability to kill it ourselves. We decided we would give it to Xiao Li. She has raised lots of animals and even killed chickens so we thought she could help us take it the market and find someone to kill it. Then she could also help us cook it, since I don't know any rabbit recipes and we could honestly tell Uncle Wang we ate the hare. All was well and good until Xiao Li saw the rabbit and decided to couldn't bear to have it killed. Xiao Li, you softy, you. So her mom took the hare on a 7 hour bus ride, I guess in the big plastic bag, to her home in the country....where it will reside from now on. No rabbit meat in our near future. I'm still not sure how I will break the news to Wang that we aren't eating it.

As for the little bunnies-We just don't have a place or desire to keep them. So I decided to see if Milk Gmaw wanted them!! SHE WAS THRILLED. She said, "This is just too great, I was planning to buy some next week and raise them myself!! I will raise them and then when it's time to eat them, I'll invite you over for a feast!" PERFECT. I finally out-gifted her! She gave me a pear as I was leaving...a pear? seriously? I just gave you two live animals. I totally win the gift war...at least for now!!

She's been bringing the bunnies out each day to play. So EG will have lots of opportunities to play with them...at least for now.

What are they looking at?

I think Jack is looking at Emma Grace who is looking outside. She spends A LOT of time in her window sill...her room overlooks our apartment complex's courtyard. There is usually something of interest going on out there-little kids playing, boys climbing the big rock structure and shooting plastic guns at each other, Chinese women dancing in the mornings and evenings. Emma Grace is definitely their biggest fan! We also like to snuggle up in the window sill with some books for some afternoon reading. So thankful for the sunshine and the awesome view we have from our house. We are so blessed.