'twas the night before Christmas...

This year's Christmas eve party was with a group of college students that josh met through an english corner.  They were freshmen - many of them new to the "big city" - and were wide-eyed with Christmas (and foreigner) wonder!  They were so excited to spend Christmas Eve with us; it made it feel special because they also recognized that it was a special thing to spend Christmas Eve together.  

I ended up decorating the cookies for this party, because I was starting to get stingy with my Betty Crocker icing, and I used less if I did it myself.  Me, the stingy hostess..s

The girls were great and friendly...even when it meant they didn't get any of their dinner eaten because everyone was so enamored with them (maybe that's why they were so happy!)  I finally had to move them to the other room because they were a bit distracting... =)  
Later on that evening, we all read the Christmas story together...

...and after it was all said and done, we took the group picture.  I didn't include the group picture with me in it because it wasn't very good.  But I wasn't wearing the red sweater this time!  ** Also, thanks to JoshW, I realized I typed in my trivia question wrong -- it should have been what frosty's EYES were made of, but I'm not so good at catching those little details.  Way to go, josh...and hello! I haven't heard from you in ages!
The group picture started a cascade of picture-taking.  It cracks me up - "here let's take a picture in front of the christmas tree; this couch is cool, let's take a picture in front of the couch! and here, in front of the window!  And here, let's add her!  And don't forget him!"  And by the time it's over, you've taken seven million pictures.  It's hilarious!
They all ended up with several (ahem) pictures of my kiddos...
After the festivities were over and all the paper cups thrown away, we thanked the girls for being so friendly and well-behaved, and told them how much we appreciated them doing these parties with us.  We decided that, even though it was already past 10pm, we'd let them open one of their presents early (and it's REALLY early, since we open presents on new year's day).  They were totally jazzed!  


About seven or eight months ago, I found these little dress up outfits - a nurse and a beautician.  I decided that emma would get the beauty shop girl and mantha would get the nurse, even though theoretically they are sharing them both...

I'm glad I pegged emma so correctly! She was thrilled with her beauty shop outfit and her array of tools - hair dryer, curling iron, comb, mirror, nail polish, scissors, etc.  She immediately saw that everyone needed some work. Mantha was the guinea pig...
...but soon I got my "do"...
...and apparently, even daddy was in need of a haircut!
Here's mantha, finally all dressed up in her scrubs.  She had her own little set of tools - a stethescope, scissors, bandaids, a watch (for the lunch break??), shots, thermometer, etc.  
Samantha repaid her new hairdo with a shot for Emma...
Things got a little dangerous when the beautician started giving shots!
but in the end, we had two happy girls - and they slept late the next morning!

on the second day of Christmas...

Party #2 for us was hosting my ladies group that I meet with and their husbands.  

Dear Pillsbury, 

Thanks for the great idea with the christmas tree cake.  Cake + green icing + snickers bar = cute tree. Fun times.

rachel

These ladies all showed up wearing the same thing.  Unplanned.  Funny?  I thought so!

Here's a picture of our annual Christmas trivia game, though this year we added new (and tougher!) questions.  This year, the one question that stumped everyone was:

Frosty the Snowman's nose is made out of what?

black candy

coal

rocks

chocolate cookies

No one in any of our parties answered correctly!
And the group picture, finally.  Let me just say this - sweaters should be outlawed.  Sweaters for normal, thin people even make them look big and bulky.  Further, sweaters should not be worn by pregnant people.  They make them look like Santa's toy bag in disguise, especially if the sweater happens to be red.  I need to read my own blog before dressing for our next party...

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!  I'm sure by the time you read this, all the wrapping paper will be thrown away at your house and you will be taking some time to exhale from what always seems to be a very busy holiday season.  We have felt so blessed this year by all the holiday activities, though it has felt a little bit like the 12 days of Christmas, with some event nearly every day!  

Every year I feel like we walk this really fine line between wisely using our time and just "doing stuff".  In America, it seems so easy to just "do stuff", but here Christmas is like open season - almost anything goes, and it's such an easy way to share our lifestyle that it's hard to pass up opportunities!  Anyway, after Thanksgiving, we looked at where our relationships were and tried to guess what groups of people would most benefit from having Christmas parties at our house.

One group of people that never entered our minds after Thanksgiving was a group of deaf adults.  We've never done any type of work with deaf people, and haven't even really been interested in it.  Josh knew a deaf man that worked at the McD's down the street, and after learning a praise song in sign language decided to see if he could pick up any more sign language.

What came after that was a month of learning local sign language (different than American sign language) and now, an ability to communicate quite freely with his friend and the deaf community.  Ok, my husband is the bomb!!

Anyway, we invited josh's friend and his friends (9 total) to our house for a Christmas party...and let me say, it was like moving to Asia all over again, plus some.  

For starters, this was the first time in over five years (maybe ever!) that I couldn't communicate AT ALL with someone.  (We had the luxury of studying Asianese in America before moving here, so even when we first got here, I could make basic small talk!)  I felt absolutely useless.  I was constantly asking Josh to translate for me.  I couldn't communicate even simple things like: please sit down, come in, I'm so happy you came, etc.  It was a very frightening and uncomfortable feeling, and it makes me so thankful that I can speak asianese! Fortunately, my hubby could communicate things for me - like...here's how you decorate christmas cookies:

Emma and Samantha were good helpers and led by example...

Emma was happy to do some rockin around the Christmas tree:
...and take more than a few pictures! (actually, emma picked up some easy signs pretty quickly and thought it was way cool to speak with her hands...)

So much about the evening was foreign to me - the way they act toward each other, getting used to operating under different standards (ie, they can't hear me...or my kids when they're yelling at each other ;) and not being able to communicate with them myself.  I loved watching them talk to each other and watching Josh talk to them.  I was amazed.  Truly amazed.

One thing that struck me during the party was how totally normal they seemed.  They were nice, clean cut young adults and yet they are on the fringes of society.  They are poorly viewed by society as thieves, dishonest people who will do anything to get a buck.  They are greatly misunderstood and are neglected in ways that Americans (at least modern Americans) would be shocked to hear.  Their stories are distressing, and reveal what has been a life of struggle and hardship.  And yet, to me, they seem so normal.  They didn't look weird or act weird or anything like that.  They were kind and friendly and thought my cookies were too sweet.  Yes, they were very normal!

It was also astonishing how quiet my house was for having so many people in it!  I found myself admonishing my kids to be a little quieter, to not be so distracting...and then I realized it didn't matter quite as much as I thought!

My heart broke later on in the evening when we showed them a movie about Christmas and started talking about this topic.  They had no idea, had not heard, had no concept for what they were hearing.  It was as if the hearing world around them was familiar with the idea, but they stepped out of a bubble that might as well have been in the middle of the Amazon rain forest.  

How could they not have heard anything?

relenting: the house that love built

I'm relenting, since holding out does me no good.

My friend Amy sent a spy to my house this morning to covertly take pictures of my gingerbread house.  If it's coming down to spying, I may as well just post the pictures on my blog.  Plus, certain maternal figures in my family are bugging me to see the pictures too... =)

So anyway, here goes - the proof that I am not martha and will never be:

Problem #1 - the house was too big.

Problem #2 - I needed a serious stash of icing. Even after bumming some powdered sugar off my house helper, I still didn't have enough. So we only iced the roof.

Problem #3 - I didn't want to use egg whites (since samantha is allergic to egg), so I just used powdered sugar with a little water. (I wasn't sure when we were going to eat it, and I was afraid the milk would go bad before then). You can see in the picture below, this was not icing that was meant to glue hard candies to gingerbread. It was literally creating icicles before our eyes! We couldn't get anything to stay on!!

But Emma enjoyed patterning, finding the red and green candies to use as tiles for the house. She also specifically picked out these shell marshmallow-things at the candy store, and she thought they'd be perfect on top of the house. Sounds good to me...

Mantha, on the other hand, just wanted to try some of everything on her side!  (Plus, josh was supervising her side, so she REALLY had free reign!)  She did wan to contribute to the shell-ness on the top of the house.
After a while, we coaxed the icing to stay put, and once it dried everything did actually stay.  Before bed, the girls took pictures with their side of the roof...

Emma wanted her name written on there, as well as new baby's name (but we blurred it out:  Did you think we were going to tell you so soon??  =)  She was proud...

Mantha was also proud of her work of art, even though it looks rather like she just threw up the candy shop.  Anyway, she also might have been so happy because she got to sit on top of the table for such a long period of time.  

One of samantha's special candies she chose was green frogs.  So this house has been plagued by an infestation of frogs...as if it didn't have enough problems... =)

Both girls with the big huge house:
Even daddy contributed, writing our asianese family name on the front - truly, the house that love built!  And five little hearts, representing all five of the hearts in our home!

bits and pieces

Today was just one of those days.  

One of those days where I wondered where all my energy went to. 

 One of those days where my children - who are old enough to know better - behaved very poorly in a situation where I needed them to behave well.  

One of those days where I couldn't shave my legs because my stomach was too big.  

One of those days where I remembered that I'm more than seven months pregnant and can't do everything I used to be able to.

One of those days where that bottle of coke was incredible refreshing and I could have gone for two more.  Good thing I don't drink alcohol.  

It wasn't a bad day necessairily.  Just one of those kind of days.  

Fortunately, we are the very beginning of strawberry season and tonight after dinner we had strawberries and whipped cream.  Samantha made me laugh hysterically when she called it "whoop cream".  You said it, girl.  

I painted the baby's bedroom one evening this week - rather out of the blue, but decided josh was doing something else so I just picked up a brush and got to work.  We're very close to choosing a name...we've never been so close so early before.  

We've got lots of fun christmas activities starting up this friday - it should be truly like the 12 days of christmas!  I'm trying to gear myself up for it. It's all stuff I want to do, I'm just trying to summon the energy to do it. Thank the Lord I have a house helper!  I'd never host anyone if she didn't help me...!

We made a gingerbread house last week.  Ummm, ok it was fun...but I probably will never do it again.  First of all, I think I'm willing to try lots of new things and lots of craft things, but I'm not particularly skilled in details.  Gingerbread houses are all about details - a minor reason why my detail-oriented friend Amy pulled off a gingerbread house I would be willing to live in.  I, however, am not so detail oriented. I'm more project-oriented, idea-oriented.  My gingerbread house was more like a gingerbread ghetto.  I'm not kidding.  

I'm not even brave enough to post the pictures on my blog, though I will say that early on I figured out the house was going to border on disaster, so when it came time for decorating, there were very few rules the girls had to follow.  They decorated to their hearts' content and had a great time.  They are very proud of their gingerbread house and the little special touches they added and came up with themselves.  Good for them, they can be proud of it.  I also videotaped part of the decorating ceremony as proof that at least one time in their lives, they got to decorate a g-bread house.  I think josh's mom is mailing me a g-bread kit. I'm sure that will go much better, because detail oriented people get it all ready and then idea-oriented people buy it.  That's one reason I really love America.  =)

We got our big fat christmas ham in a few days ago and have been gradually eating it, little by little.  I'd like to take a picture of it in comparison with my leg, just to show you how big it is, but that would be embarrassing.  Even my girls - the notoriously picky eaters - are eating third and fourth helpings.  It's so good.  It's funny to realize that my kids will grow up with so many things that I had as a child!  

What are you up to???

the view from the car

here are some cute pics josh's sister sent me the other day.

she took these in the car while we were back in the US, circa October 08...

things I bought in America, part 1

Have I mentioned that we took one suitcase to America?  It's true. We managed to pack all our clothes that we wanted to throw away in one suitcase, wore them for a few days in America, and then bought all new stuff.  Seven suitcases worth of new stuff.  

What can you fit in eight pieces of luggage? One of my purchases was some little foam hair rollers.  

My kids think these rollers are awesome.  And they actually work ok.  Not great, but they actually don't need any help making their hair any curlier - the rollers were bought just for fun.  Every bathtime, the rollers are requested.  After bath recently, I tried to get some pictures of my little rolled-up girls.  

Emma was happy to show off her rollers - she loves them and feels like a little princess running around. 

Samantha also loves them (especially...can you guess?...the yellow ones) but she was unwilling to let me take a picture.  

...was even annoyed that I kept trying..
...because she was too busy building a little train of blocks.  

But anyway, you get the idea.  They're cute, huh?  I'm telling you, you can buy some great stuff in America.  More to come...

flashback to America - aunt Kristen

Really, I'm trying to put all my America-trip photos on my blog...it's just taking forever.  

Our last weekend in America, we got to spend a lot of time with josh's sister, Kristen.   She doesn't live in okc anymore, so she made a special trip down to hang out with us.  She's only a little more than a year younger than me, but it amazed me how much more energy she had than I did!  

Kristen and Gigi play "airplane" with the kiddos...

And then she made a fast friend when she offered to paint samatha's fingernails!
And even brought yellow nail polish!  Samantha was in heaven!!



Is that the beginning of a pouty, flirty girl? I surely hope not!  

Later on, we discovered what happens when little girls want to play dress-up at a house that only has boys... 
Then one day, Kristen and Emma played outside in the lovely, green, wide-open-space of a backyard.  Kristen got these cute pics of them playing...

And we also got the special opportunity to celebrate Kristen's birthday with her this year!  Mantha had ice cream instead of the fabulously moist cake that was served, but I don't think she seemed to mind!
I think Kristen took this picture of Emma while she was eating cake (though there is mysteriously none on her face!). This is one of my most favorite pics of her recently.  Her hair was straightened that morning because we took family pictures that afternoon - doesn't she look all grown up when those little flyaways are missing??
Happy Birthday, Aunt Kristen!  We all loved spending time with you!