Our Week Before My China Trip

Another week has flown by.  My China trip is getting closer and closer!

Last weekend was homecoming.

Bri went with a friend from the football team.  She's one of the water girls this year, so she's gotten to know the team well.

Sam demonstrated his culinary skills this week.  He saw a recipe video online and decided he had to make it.  He and Hannah worked on it together, and I was pretty impressed with it.  There's cookie dough, Reece's PB cups, Oreos, chocolate chips, graham crackers, and more cookie dough, and it's baked in a cast iron pan.

The children are punishing me for cancelling Netflix.  When they told me they'd have nothing to do, I told them they could play games or go outside.  The trees are plotting my death now.  Eli has made himself a bow.  And an arrow.  Be afraid.

I caught Paul building with the Magna-tiles.  We really love these things.  I might need to add some specialty pieces at Christmas.

Jack carved his pumpkin this week.  It was his first time carving by himself.

I think he did a great job!

Paul helped Katie with her math one morning.  As you can see, I still haven't come up with a great solution for her having more desk space.

We won!  Figures in Motion had a contest recently, and we made a big dino and showed a picture of it on Facebook, and we won a copy of Dinosaurs on the Move!  My kids love these books, so they were fighting over it to see who would get to flip through it first.

After not making it to the library last week, I was really glad to get a chance to go this week.  We had Sam with us, to help carry the heavy bag of books.

Hannah had to hold her finger in the book when I checked it out, so she wouldn't loose her place.

Jack is enjoying the Redwall series.  I'm really thrilled at how much he's reading now that it's finally clicked for him.

The Walking Dead books are Sam's.  I even got a couple of books for myself this time around, but I'm not sure I'll have time to get through them before I leave.

My friend's kids were over one day this week.  So we decided to fingerpaint.

Katie did two pages.  This one, and one that was much more... blended.

Like Hannah's.  I let the kids get completely gooey.  They enjoyed washing up almost as much as they enjoyed painting.

Jack and the "big boy" of their family jumped on the trampoline and played video games while the younger kids stayed in the playroom where I could keep an eye on everybody.

The big girls played Great Pumpkin Uno.

I turned Jack's carving mess into roasted pumpkin seeds, but nobody really liked them, so after a few tries, they got tossed in the trash.

Another art project we worked on was sand painting!  Several years ago, I ordered 10# of colored craft sand.  We did a few projects with it, and the remainder has lived in the art cart ever since.  It was nice to pull it out and put some to use.  I'll share the completed photos later.

Sam's cooking experiences aren't all positive.  I had started some water boiling and gone upstairs.  I asked Sam to go put the macaroni in it for me, and this was what I found when I came down again.  He'd dumped the cheese packets into the water with the noodles.

Still, he's cute and funny, so I think we'll keep him.  At least until he leaves for boot camp in January.

Speaking of boot camp, we got another letter from Josiah this week!  He sounds good.  I'm seeing photos online of all the stuff he's getting to do, which makes him seem not quite so far away.  Fortunately, I'm keeping plenty busy here getting ready for my trip.  And we'll be off to see him graduate shortly after I get over jet lag from China.

There will be no Our Week posts the next couple of weeks while I'm gone, but I will try to blog during the trip.  And there will be plenty of advocacy posts and posts about the trip after I return.  I appreciate your prayers for the health and safety of our team while we're away, and that God will be preparing the hearts of families who are about to hear about their future children.

While you're here, please take a moment to enter the Balance Beans giveaway we have going!

This post may be linked up at these linky parties.

Thanks for clicking for us!