Happy Valley

We have a new amusement park in our city which Jason and the kids really enjoy. The kids have lots of fun on the ferris wheel and the carousal.

Lydia's many hairstyles

Lydia's hair has gotten so long and beautiful and mommy loves to fix it (although Lydia doesn't like it very much). But some mornings Lydia wakes up and she looks like she has a rats nest on the back of her head - I have no idea how she manages to do that!

Smiling Julia

Sorry it has been so long since we have posted anything on our blog. Here are a couple pictures of our cute little Julia. She is such a happy sweet baby! She is also developing quite a personality. She loves to move and bounce in her little bouncy seat. We can't leave here alone too long or else she will scoot herself and get stuck somewhere. At first we thought she was going to be a quiet baby but recently she has proved us wrong, she loves to talk, blow raspberries, click her tongue, spit, yell, or make any other noise she knows how.

Lydia's Birthday Party

Lydia was able to invite a couple friends over to join us in celebrating her birthday. One friend is a local friend that she often plays with outside. The other friend and her family just moved here from Texas. The kids had a great time playing and then we had pizza, dumplings and M&M cookie cake - yummy!

Lydia's Birthday

September 17th we celebrated Lydia's second birthday. We had a fun day as a family! We opened presents, rode a bus to the city center where we ate at McDs and played in the city square. It is hard to believe that Lydia is growing up so fast!

Julia 3 months

Here are some recent pics of Julia.  She is growing up so fast!  She loves to smile and giggle and she just got her first tooth!

What a good big brother and sister

Jacob and Lydia really love Julia so much.  They do a great job of being gentle with her and they get so excited when they get her to smile or talk.

Jacob's cultural adaptations

Jacob is doing very well at adapting to the culture here.  He loves to use chopsticks and can even use them to eat western food!  He also loves making new friends and here you can see him at a birthday party with one of his friends.

Lydia and Julia's new clothes

Some friends of ours gave the girls these traditional clothes as gifts.  I don't know if you can tell or not but Julia's outfit doesn't have a back, it simply ties around the back to stay on.  A couple days after we were given these outfits I saw a 3 or 4 year old boy wearing something similar to what Julia has on, the only difference was he didn't have anything on underneath!

The things Lydia wears!

I feel like I am always posting pictures about funny things that Lydia is wearing but she always manages to find something new to try on!

Julia's New Friends

Julia has had lots of new friends come and visit her since we have returned home.  It is amazing how many visitors you get when you have a new baby!

Surgery in Thailand

Just 2 short weeks after Julia was born we decided to try to get Jason's ACL repair surgery done while we were still in Thailand.  It was a bit difficult by ourselves with the 3 kids but after the fact we were very thankful that we had it done.