handsful

Smiling in the Beijing airport

We survived our first night on the rock-hard mattress (Randy was in heaven, Donna not so much).  We’re headed to meet our group for breakfast in just a minute, and then we have a full day of touring…the Forbidden City, Tian’anmen (how do you spell that?) Square, lunch at an authentic Chinese restaurant, and then an acrobat show.  Whew.  We’ll check in later and hopefully more than time to post more details about our trip so far and add more pictures!

Thank you SO much for the comments today, you have no idea what it means to read that you are holding us up in prayer.

Jet lag is beginning to hit full force, and my head is about to fall onto the keyboard, so this will be short :)We made it to Beijing today, at 3:30pm (which, I believe, was about 2:30am for you guys on the east coast).  Our flight was great, we were fortunate to have all 3 seats in the row to ourselves.  I’ll go into more detail about day 1 (and post pictures) tomorrow, for now I’m going to bed!

Abbey, Marley, Payton, and Ethan we MISS you so much already.  Hugs and kisses to you!

As a family, we love to watch American Idol. The kids love to choose their favorites among the contestants. Today, I was listening to Stevie Wonder on my Ipod speaker in the kitchen while making lunch. My son, Payton says “Hmm…that was a little pitchy.” Our own little Simon. Would the real Simon criticize Stevie? I doubt it…

Abbey, 3 months old

My oldest turns 11 today! I know it’s cliche’, but where DOES the time go? It wasn’t that long ago that I was a brand new mom, unsure of how this mommy-business worked. 11 years and 4 kids later…and I’m still trying to figure that one out!

Abbey is such a special girl. She loves horses, dolphins and most recently monkeys! She’s an “in charge” kind of girl, which can make her relationship with her siblings dicey at times! She has one foot in childhood and one foot in pre-teen (as evidenced by her love of stuffed animals AND her first pair of (slightly!) high heels). She loves Jesus (what more could a mom hope for?) and will be the first to nix any non-creationist ideas from books or TV! Abbey loves all her treasures (a.k.a. she’s a packrat), has a fairly massive sweet tooth (like mom, like daughter), and can’t make up her mind which she enjoys more, horse riding or basketball. She’s our first…the child that transformed us from people to parents. I’ll probably be a little sentimental today, remembering her as a baby…her word for balloon was “boo-num”…how cute is that?? Enjoy the pictures!

9 months old

Abbey, taken last night…last day as 10!