Beautiful places and interesting.....

Here are a few of the places that we have seen in the last little bit



Temple architecture all hand painted

The gardians of the temple roof tops

This rock was apparently to big for the truck! Rob saw this on a trip. The rock had landed on the truck and completely crushed the back end!

This was also on that same trip, it had rained some and so the road that they were traveling turned into a nice mud slide! The trip should have taken a couple hours turned into 10 as they had to push the van out several times!

Again some more mud!



But as you can see the rain has some benefits! The rice fields will produce a harvest because of it!

More to come later.... having trouble with internet today! See you soon!

Elias Birthday

Elias decided he wanted to do his 5th birthday at KFC
which is a special treat to start with! So he choose two special friends to bring.

Here is our goofy group minus two sets of parents

They had eaten there sandwiches and were working on the icecream!


As you can see it was well enjoyed!


We came back to the house after for cake and presents


We had a special friend over for dinner and had an ironman cake

gladiators

Its amazing what you can do with some skateboard padding and a couple of bicycle helmets!


Look at those muscles!


Do I look cool dad?


The three musketeers


Looking tough


Working on his real muscles

catching up! :0)

Ok, so yesI've gotten very behind! Again my apologies! Since going month by month will be impossible ill summerize. Lets see over the last few months we have traveled, done lots of homework, traveled a little more, gone to school, made friends, gotten colds, found out we were pregnant, found out we were having a little girl, made and are making travel plans to have the baby, went to school some more, made lots of language mistakes, went to school, played with friends, make more language mistakes and are now back into another semester of school to try to fix the language mistakes that we continue to make! :0) If school and mistakes seems to be previlant thats because they are! We learn new ways of saying thing and grammer to back it up only to mix it up and somehow say the oposite of what we mean sometimes!
The boys are doing great with the school preschool/kindergarden here and we are looking at maybe moving them into an all chinese speaking school after the new year. This will hopefully help them learn to speak better and also allow them to get to meet more kids.
Rob has classes at the university here and also has a tutor that he works with a few days a week. He has writting, reading and spoken classes at the university and the tutor to help with the extra questions that come and to be able to see and do things that a classroom setting wouldnt be able to provide.
I have a private tutor that either comes to the house or we go out to different places for classes. My classes range from working though a work book to going to the postoffice to learn the words and objects that I need for daily life!
The pictures in the next few blogs are some of the things we've gotten to see and do or just some of the funny things that happened over the last few months! Thanks for hanging in there with us!

Micaias 2nd Birthday!

Micaias is totally in love with fish right now soooo we had a fishy birthday! Here are a few pictures from his special day!


The kids playing fishing in the living room.


We found these really cool little gel fish and little plastic fish at the market a few days before his birthday so the smaller kids went fishing for those!



Micaias catch of the day


Everyone got involved after a while


The cake and cake eaters (sorry the picture is a little fuzzy) Elias picked out the table cloth it has dolphins on it.


Of course he had to wear his Nemo shirt even though its a pajamas!!
He's digging into his brownie cake.


He looks a little worried that someone else will eat his cake!


Micaias is silly and fun loving! He thinks he's as big as his brothers so has little fear of things that mom thinks are "to big" for him! We are blessed to have three very unique boys! We look forward to seeing what He has planned for them in the coming years!

We found a very fun little place the other day the the boys really like. They get to paddle the boats themselves. The water is about a foot and a half deep. I think they spent about an hour paddling and still didn't want to come out.

Art Class

The side walk out side our house gets decorated with new and interesting things every few days. Here is one of there "big drawings"!

Elias took and made himself , his brother and his friend into animals!



This is how you do it! You lay down and then have a "mom" draw the outline and ....



Wala you have animal things with little boy bodies! They made duck boys and monkey boys and elephant boys.

Just for pappy!

The tradition passes on! You knew they couldn't make it till there 5th birthday without breaking in a baseball glove! This is Isaias and Elias is taking the picture (after he washed his hands!!)


Yup the hands are incredible messy! They had a great time!

WOW time flies!!

It seems like the months have just flown! Sorry for the lack of info here. We have had language tests and school beginning again, a trip to a friends home town and many other things! Oh yah Micaias turned two!! I will get a few things posted today and another one tomorrow! Thanks for checking and sorry again!! Love you all!

Micaias

Micaias thinks that he is big and can do anything his brothers can! Here are some shots of him doing fun things!



He discovered that he can drink things from his bowl! And even better can do it without making a mess!!

Being a hero (with a binky)


Just straight hero! (binky underneath)


This is near our house, he loves to ride them!


"OK mom whatever you say!"


My little Caesar. These are foam leaves we cut out for fall decor., they work like balloons you rub them and they stick! So funny!


"What there's something on my head?"

Boys will be boys!!

This is one of the boys good friends and when they get together they usually end up playing something to do with getting the bad guys or just acting like super hero's!


Yup there a mean bunch!!


Dangerous guys on the loose!


Check out these muscles!!



Micaias wants to show off his muscles too!! (yup Robs having fun with the boys too)

Isaias Birthday!

Well Isaias turned 3 December 17th! Its crazy to think that he is already 3!! He decided that he wanted to have a lion king birthday this year. A friend of mine here found me food coloring for the cake and my mom and sister send out all the decorations.



The "Lion King" cake.


"Happy Birthday!"



All the friends! We had so much fun having all our friends over and making pizza, eating cake and ice cream and doing crafts! Elias is wearing one of the animal masks that we made.



Elias wanted to get Isaias a sweat shirt for his birthday, so this is the one he choose.



Animals one of his favorite things.....



Race cars.....


And Dinosaurs! He had a wonderful birthday!


This was one of the easiest birthday for me to prepare for as my mom sent out most of the birthday supplies from the states and as we did different things during the day my bao mu and a friend of our bao mu cleaned everything up behind me. We had about 30 people at our house and by the time I said goodbye to the last guest and turned around the house was clean and the dishes done and the wrapping paper put away! It was amazing and I was very grateful for the extra help! These ladies have truly been a blessing to our lives and they prove it every day!

Christmas

So it is Christmas!! Here's an over view of what we did for Christmas with exception of a few things that would have made it over 50 pictures plus!!


Let the decorating begin!


"Hey mom there's a bell in here"



The finished product at night


And during the day, the fan looking thing on the floor is really a space heater.


Rob being a sport for our music teachers Christmas party for the students.



Elias with a can of silly string....



Never underestimate the power of 30 kids with bottles of silly string!! It was a mess!
Here they are playing a game similar to musical chairs but with someone playing a drum as music, if you lose (don't get a chair) you get silly stringed till your white, just about!


Rob playing the drum for the game and Micaias trying to help out with his job.



Isaias concentrating on Christmas cookies




Micaias helping his big brother. Elias rolled it flat, Micaias put the chocolate in and Elias rolled it into a ball. These were cookies for friends of ours.



Cookies the boys made at school.




The boys showing a Chinese friend how to make Christmas cookies. It was his first time making them and the three of them made a mess as you can see! They had a good time doing it though.





Frosting painting the finished product!




Following in the age old tradition of our parents. The "stay up late wrapping presents while we watch a Christmas movie" (This is Rob being a good sport about it!)



This is really how he felt about wrapping at 10:30 at night instead of being in bed especially since he had been at school all day because he didn't have Christmas off.

Christmas Morning 7:30 am. The boys brought there stockings into our room. (notice Micaias with his morning cup of juice. Its like coffee the day doesn't start well without it!)





"Hey there's something in here."



"Can we eat the chocolate now?!?" "Look mom we got the Rock movie"



Boys and there cars.



"Let me help you with that dad."




Micaias



Isaias


Elias acting cool




Mommy's Christmas present ( my Chinese instrument is in the back ground)


And so ends the day with Isaias fast asleep on the couch, he had been watching a movie and this is where we found him!