all in one wild week

Last week was lots of good, tiring fun. Started off with our neighbors here inviting us to celebrate Mid Autumn festival early with them, since we would be gone for the actual day (Wed). So fun to "bao jaozi" (wrap dumplings) with these friends and then enjoy the yummy dishes that all the family brought together for us to try.

Below- The brown dish is mianjin (a type of bread doughy stuff, think tofu) and lotus root and "wood ear" (a mushroom like fungus, rich in nutrients) with marinated walnuts and peanuts.

Then we got on a sleeper train for the overnight journey to the capital. For four days we got to see lots of friends, enjoy a sweet wedding, each have a doctor appointment (except daddy), one appt at the embassy, a trip to the import grocery, a basketball game for Matt with his buddies, a birthday bash for the B boys, lots of yummy meals with friends... fun, fun play filling every moment.

The wedding was great. Matt was a groomsmen so he got to head out early in the parade of the mandatory big black cars to escort the groom to the bride's house. The bridesmaids let him in after only 10 minutes of pounding on the door and pleading to see his woman and everyone said he got off easy. Besides this beginning and the language spoken throughout, the ceremony was western through and through and honestly made me feel like I missed out, but I guess they the bride and groom felt quite stylish about things that way.

I got to be at the site for all the fireworks that prepared the way for the arrival of the couple and I cried thinking of the trumpets that will blare one day when Christ returns for his bride... Oh for that day...

Handsomest umbrella man ever...

I can't believe how few shots I took of our kids playing with their sweet buddies.... you'll just have to trust and imagine- there were lots of laughs, wrestles, tickles, owies, apologies, stories, pictures and treats.

one day we'll get our girl to wear clothes at home...

These B Boys are so sweet! My favorite moment at their party: when their daddy read aloud the scripture verses that he spoke over the boys at the moment of their births, the first words they heard aloud, his voice loving them with Living words.

Our appointment for K4 at the wonderful hospital there (a great private Chinese one where May and John were born) was great and everyone got to see the littlest of us wiggling on the screen. But we also saw the due date and it was much too late for my liking.

I knew the doctor here seemed pretty sketchy, probably a bit off, in her estimate for how far along I was.... but my optimistic heart had not. considered. in the least. that I might be less far along than she told me. She told me mid- March. I was hoping for early.... and now I'm assured I'm due at the tail end. Argh.

With the window of possible baby days seeming larger now and with this train ride foreshadowing how difficult a trip will be with a very full belly, let alone a tiny wiggly one in our arms, I'm backing off my insistence to deliver in the capital. We're really eager to find out every single option for births in this city. Maybe there will be one place with private delivery rooms!? Maybe one superstar midwife gem can come be with us? Or maybe we'll find a place to stay and arrive in the capital just in time to meet our little one? Only God knows! We are praying!