A look Back and a Look Forward..We are so Blessed

So I am finally getting back down to posting on here. I have spent the morning resting and sleeping and the last hour downloading pictures from my friend's picasso site of shots I did not get last year. It brought me back to pictures of last fall with Danny's birthday party with Alivia and a day trip down to the city with friends. It has brought such nostaliga to me, as many of the people in the pictures have graced our lives here in China, and have since moved back home or to new assignments, or will be very soon. I am so grateful for each one of them and realize that they played such a great role in my transition here to China and life in general. I was also amazed to see how much the children have changed in this past year. Danny has grown up so much and Josh has gone from a baby to a little boy. Yikes that is so crazy to me, as when we are in the daily part of it, it does not seem to go by that quickly.

The fall has brought us back to our home here and I am glad to say that with now living in the house rather than the apartment, I truly feel like we have a house. In addition, Danny started at the American School and it amazes me what a community this opened up to us. We now have sporting events and theater events opened up to us. We took in our first baseball game with the kids in September and it was so much fun. They even handed out cracker jacks. Danny was singing the Take me out to the Ball game song for the rest of the weekend.

Our other new thing this fall is that Josh started school. He began a little preschool with the hopes that he will learn Chinese. His class is called Chinese immersion--they speak in Chinese and then repeat in English until they completely get rid of the English. My wow moment was yesterday when I dropped him off to school. He was a little clingy to me, so his teacher began talking to him in Chinese and all of a sudden he was pulling out and then hiding again his hand in his jacket and smiling. She was playing hide and seek with his hand and he completely understood her in Chinese. Amazing and so exciting at the same time!!!

Finally, our other big change is that we no longer make the 2 hour trek to church down in the city. Shanghai authorized another location for the international church to be opened just 5-10minutes from our house. Praise the Lord (on numerous levels, not just the commute)! We now get to go to church with friends of ours and the children that Danny sees in school. We are really excited about it. The only down part is we do miss our friends Erin and Jeff that we would see each weekend at the other church.

Overall, we are plugging along and falling into place here in China. We feel settled and blessed here. We had a great 5th birthday celebration for Danny a couple of weeks back, and a great Halloween celebration as well. Looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving here with our friends here in China. Then just a few weeks and we will be in the great United States with our families. Love to you all...