bits of the New Year

wrapping jiaozi with these most pretty folds is called "wrapping little mice"

jiaozi... the yummy dumplings that you must eat to celebrate the new year

my dear friend An Mei showing the kids a fun application she had on her phone

An Mei's family...  this dear friend will probably be a helper we call on around the time of K4's arrival.

Every time we gather with friends (at their place or ours) Marian asks if everyone will please sit down to watch her dance at least one song for them.  This time her dance was topped off with a duo with daddy.

These are our extravagant friends who invited us to a FEAST in their home at 10 am.  Being pregnant, I had finished my first breakfast, but I wasn't quite ready for a second breakfast like this!  The meal went on and on and on.... complete with boiled Coke.  

The friends (above) gave us these vegetable paste patties (on Marian's plate) and these fen tiao special noodles...  neither one did we expect to enjoy as much as our local friends would, so we took them to a friends house to learn from them how to prepare these things.... and let them enjoy these delicacies.

Usually, Marian talks about one day marrying Isaiah's best buddy Hudson, but recently, this guy has moved up to the lead marriage candidate.  Xie Zi Lin (whose back is on the left, his mom is by Marian) was a classmate of Marian's in her preschool and a favorite friend of all of us at the reading nights we hosted at our old place.  

Our goofy guests from Beijing brought lots of fireworks to share.

And a few more scattered sweet spots from this week:

Our verse this week at the table is Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Marian almost always launches into a solo of her own arrangement of words and lines from "In Christ Alone" when we come to the end of the verse.  I Love It. (Love her!)

Isaiah is becoming one diligent and devoted artist.  It's shocking to both Matt and I how his skill has developed in the past few months (he really only started drawing last May) and we're amazed at the attention and ambition he shows for his artwork.  He did not get it from either of us, but we're loving watching him grow in this creative skill!

Daddy has decided that some of John's bad moods lately have been because of his hair.  If Matt walks into the room to see a crying boy, he picks him up and heads straight for the bathroom to give him a sprinkle up top and a style to be proud of.  I think it's honestly worked more times than not to cheer up our sweetheart and everyone of us smile for a good-looking' do on our boy.  (bad shot, but you get the idea)

and the randomness ends here :)