Silicon bread pans are not my friend.

As I glanced at our fruit basket and saw the brown and mushy bananas, I couldn't help but think "OOOhhhh! Let's make banana bread!" I thought it would be such an effective way to make them worth more than in the trashcan, yet didn't even realize that I didn't have all the ingredients. Let's hope that honey can substitute for sugar.....

The real crash and burn was when I went to put the banana bread into the oven and the silicon bread pan gave out on me!

A day of blessing...food, friends, love and laughter.

It is around this time of year when I feel the most homesick. Especially when I skype call with my loving, cuddly, affectionate family to find them all in a ball of laughter on the floor tickling each other! I could not contain my emotions as I welled up with tears just watching and/or hearing the joy....without me. That is just what I love about my family though....we are all either in college or out, yet we still love to be with (let alone cuddle!) each other. Yes, even my 20 year old brother Ethan with his sisters. Yet while I sit here briefly reminiscing on the blessing of my tight knit family, I can't leave out the blessing of what He has given me right now....in THIS season of my life.

There is nothing better than to have a husband who not only loves me and helps around the house, but actually knows more than I do about cooking/baking! Thank you Becky Evans for all of your many years with your son....he definitely benefits from it (and so do I). Below I have documented a bit of our Thanksgiving preparations before we headed off to join our side dishes with many others!

Remember my post about making jaozi at our landlords house? Well we were finally able to use that idea! We had left over apple filling and pie crust from the apple pie, so we decided to turn them into little jaozi's (dumplings)! We simply whipped out our little jaozi-making tool and began!

Does this table setting not look amazing?!? Thanks Amber and Rachael for all of your hard work in preparing & hosting for us. This was such a fun time of fellowship, laughter, and constantly doing the whole "'excuse me pardon me" when we were slipping by for 2nd and 3rd helpings. Good thing I was thinking ahead and wore a baggy sweater....saving room for dessert.

After we finished eating, we all sat around to watch Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and then Home Alone! Such a relaxing night.

Seeing this little guy at our Thanksgiving meal made me want to just burst out into tears. Two weeks ago this Monday he had heart surgery. Praise Him that he recovered quickly and is back to his normal giggly self. And he is even saying "Mama" now! So adorable!

Now it's time to start putting away the fall decorations and getting the garland, tree, and lights all around. Crank up that Christmas music!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

A few "snips" too short

So I went to go get my hair "trimmed" the other night...

This being my third time in China to get my hair cut, I should not have been so naive to the predictable pattern that would play out (as it does for every haircut). In my butchered vocabulary of hair salon terms, I hand gestured my way through saying "I want it cut.....but not too short.....longer in the front, and a little bit shorter in the back." Then I just sat there crossing my fingers trying to focus on other things until he tapped on my shoulder and asked me a question. There is one thing though, that I noticed about this "inverted bob" kind of hair style. The back is always going to be altered by how short you cut the front piece....pretty common right? But then that means your whole hair cut is based off of just ONE snip! And that one snip was what made this whole haircut the way it is....

(SNIP) "Oh.....uhh.....actually.....I didn't want it.....that.......short........nevermind...."

It's in those moments that you take a big swallow and start envisioning what you can do to "make this work". I guess for this winter season I will be in scarf heaven since my neck is now completely bare. Oh well...it will grow.

Nervously ready for him to start and make the first cut...little do I know...

So far so good....he hasn't taken that neck thing off yet, so I can't really see how far my hair is from my shoulders.

Oh dear!!!!! All I could think of was ("My neck!!!")

I guess I can work with this.....maybe.

Good thing is that hair always will grow back.....phew!

Wolverine man

So apparently just hours after I last posted, my dad's foot swelled up to the point where his own cast was cutting off his circulation. He was in horribly excruciating pain! My poor dad...good thing he now has a bigger cast that is not pressing against his broken foot.

Here is another picture of his "Wolverine foot"...at least that is what he calls it. Creepy, huh?

Weekend shopping!

As the weekdays are filled with work done at school or planning for the next day, that leaves the weekends for all of our market shopping. A good friend of mine, Hannah, and I hit the ground running as went made a successful trip this morning! From the stationary market to a street food pit stop, then to a candy lady on the go, and then off to another market, we were exhausted by noon. Luckily we were focused enough before our shopping stamina left us.

A typical street food scene.

My favorite fried chicken!

Yum!

2nd best part....sweetened popcorn!

I thought I would capture this....Chinese people never cease to amaze me with how much they can carry on their bikes.

A new room design!

There's nothing like being asked by your husband to help change his classroom around. What an exciting request! All he "technically" wanted was his desk moved to the front of the room, but I did some gentle nudging in the direction of creating a new and improved library area. Surpisingly, he let me have at it! Here was our big project this Saturday:

The room before we got started. Notice where his teacher desk and the books are.

Hard at work

My good friend Julie (3rd grade teacher), came up with this space-saving design for bookshelves. Thank you Julie!

Getting there...

Posters are up, carpet put in and pillows set! Tomorrow we are going to get those pillows re-covered...maybe shades of blue (we don't want it to look too "girly").

Ta-da! Here is Dave's new 4th grade classroom :)

Enjoying his new reading area.

Update on Dad's surgery...don't eat before looking at this.

My dad had his surgery and is now in full recovery mode! Talking with him this morning just had me laughing...how he looks at life is so positive. When he went "under" they discovered that it was actually worse than they thought, and had to stick pins down through the tops of his toes (gross, I know). To help with some of the missing tissue, they had to add some for him......from a cadaver! With all of this happening, he still had energy for sarcasm by calling himself "dead man walking"...haha. Love you dad.

Keep lifting him up as he will be recovering for at least the next six weeks. Hopefully he can get back to work after Thanksgiving. Good thing his job is pretty flexible since most of it is with the computer.

Here he is one hour after his surgery :)

Yes....those are pins sticking out from his toes. Hopefully he can build some sort of contraption so that he doesn't accidentally stub his toes!