Some things

Briefly...

We are so close to having Joseph with us now. We still have a few things we hope to have done before he comes, but we are putting the finishing touches on Jay's class, he should turn his grades in tomorrow. We have to give the school back a little more than $100 for the visas for Audriana and Vikki - we ended up taking out a loan from the school, rather than pay for it up front. It wasn't until recently that we found out that we could take money out of our U.S. funds directly. Although our budget is not functioning as we would like, we have not yet had to take money out of U.S. funds - which is nice. We will have to do that for the baby! Good news is that it will be very cheap comparatively. Only 5,000rmb is expected (barring no complications). That is not even $1,000 U.S.

Christmas was great! It was such a blessing to have Grammy with us. Still hope to get pictures up, but it is looking more bleak! You should e-mail us if you'd like pictures to put some pressure on Vikki. =)

Blessings!

Ma Luttrell is here!

Vikki's mom arrived last night around 9:40. She had some trouble on the flight over - had to run to make her flight in Beijing, but was early coming to Hangzhou. We got home around midnight last night and everyone slept in this morning. Vikki said that she hasn't slept in that late since Audriana was an infant! We went shopping today to pick up some things for Ma as well. We are glad to have her for the next two almost three months!

update on the periphary

We are now planning on visiting friends in Shanghai on the 13th (This coming weekend).

Vikki has been feeling more pressure lately with the baby, and last night remarked that he felt like he was sitting lower. She considered not going to Shanghai this weekend, and based on how she feels now, is thinking that a trip to Suzhou for Christmas (rather than Putuo Shan) is not going to work - which is what Jay thought originally, though he got excited about possibly visiting somewhere...

We've made contact with the first school we had contracted positions for this school year, again - this is the very school that declined our contracts once we found out we were expecting, and that I thought (while in America) that we probably wouldn't want to work for because of that. However, another friend was considering the same school and Jay is going to go visit (probably on the 23rd) to make a personal visit and to collect information for ourselves and our friend. We hope to make many more contacts with other schools in the coming semester, and this was a convenient way to finally do something about it this semester - albeit just barely!

We went in to look at our pictures at the photography studio, but are still waiting for them to complete the finished product and give us a call so we can come view it. At this rate, Vikki's birthday present will serve as a Christmas present too!

We are going to be very busy this month - trying to also place importance on our Heavenly Father (which we have sorely neglected), our marriage, and Christmas. Jay has never before felt like a humbug around Christmas until this year! There is just something ironic about taking time to put up a small plastic tree in the corner of your room, with blue Christmas balls hung on it, when seemingly there are a ton of other 'much more important' things to do. We are going to try to put up our tree on Wednesday - if we have time to go to the bookstore on Monday and are getting ready for our trip to Shanghai this weekend.

We stayed up late last night trying to think about what things we really want to see happen, and are willing to sacrifice to see them accomplished, versus what things are good and probably should be done, but may not be completed. We actually were able to have quite a bit of fun doing so, not having laughed together as hard in quite a while. We make a three column sheet to help us prioritize when we do this, putting 'must', 'want', and 'could' on one column each. This time, I thought even things on our 'want' column will not be done...we later put hanging decorations on the first column, only to put 'buy Christmas decorations' on the second - when I didn't think those would be completed...talk about putting the cart before the horse. Maybe you had to be there. =)

Hopefully we'll be able to put some more effort into getting more pictures up After Vikki's mom gets here and before the baby comes.

The baby's name, unless we put a lot more thought into it (unlikely), is going to be Joseph Micaiah.

Happy Holiday Season!

The Peanut Butter dance and song

The last few times Audriana has had a peanut butter sandwich when Daddy was around, she has done this 'peanut butter' dance and mantra....we really like our peanut butter!

Currently, she's dancing around wearing a santa hat that her mother recently bought to help us bring in the holiday season.

A short update

Just wanted to thank you for your prayers and tell you that Audriana is over her cough and we had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. We went to a fancy restaurant with some friends and are going to continue celebrating tonight and Sunday. We have a couple of potlucks planned with two other groups of friends, so we are looking forward to those. We will try to tackle making apple pie, green beans, and mashed potatoes today. :)

Blessings to you all. We love you and miss you! Happy Thanksgiving!

On the periphary:

Nov. 27th
Thanksgiving: we plan to go out to eat with some other American friends

c.a. Dec. 3rd
We should go pick up some pictures for a professional shoot that Vikki did (mostly of Audriana) for her birthday. We chose 28 pictures today - they are really cute and we are hoping to share them with you once we get them in.

Dec. 6th
Maybe going to Shanghai to visit friends?

Dec. 19th
Momma Luttrell comes to town
Jay's students' Final exams

Dec. 25th
Christmas at Putuo Shan?



Jan. 10th
Baby Beamon (who still needs a confirmed name) is expected!

An update

Hello!

I'm sitting at the computer (it's 9:37am) while Audriana and Vikki are reading Mickey Mouse Clock Cleaners (a recent gift to Audriana from Aunt Angela!). We had morning devotions today, something we want to get in the habit of doing more often. It took a while to get in the habit of praying with Audriana before she goes to bed, but that is now routine. We want to start having morning devotions with Audriana as well, praying, reading, and singing. This morning we read about Jesus' first miracle, turning water into wine. We bought a Bible for Audriana here in Hangzhou, it has both Chinese and English...nice, but we're still sad we lost the special gift that our friends Paul and Cissy gave us for Audriana's one year birthday...they gave us a very nice children's Bible.



We've been up to a lot lately. Yesterday we visited with our friends downtown and had Papa John's pizza. We strolled around West Lake with Josh and Gao Yan and their son, Caleb. Vikki found some Chinese study materials, she is going to use New Practical Chinese Reader and is in the process of finding a tutor to work with her. She just accepted a job on Friday to teach a woman English four hours a week. They'll pay for her transportation to and fro, which is nice. Vikki is not sure how long she'll be able to teach her, but it is a nice opportunity for the time-being. The woman is learning English because her husband will go to England next year on business for an extended stay and she is planning on going with him.

We just got back from a marriage conference last weekend that was really fabulous. If any of you hear about a United Marriage Encounter conference, we recommend you to go!

Love to you!

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention: Audriana has a yucky cough and she is teething, so if you say a prayer for her we will appreciate it! Don't miss the Audriana dance party video at the bottom of the page here! Yes, she really is sick...the video was taken tonight...

Halloween

It used to be that we would have a Halloween party for students to join us on Halloween, but this year we were just getting over a week of all of us being sick. Friday night was the first day we ventured out of the house since Tuesday, and we really just ran some errands. Audriana had a great time finally getting out of the house (she had been begging us to leave the house for several days!). She got to play with both her friends Tian Tian and Yang Yang, and walk the dog Xiao Xin. Xiao Xin's owners own a store right next to Yang Yang's family's store. He's the very same dog that Audriana got to walk previously.

Jay did a lesson on Halloween for his students in class and had them read some ghost stories. He is thinking to retire the ghost story activity from now on. We also did the traditional scavenger hunt he has done every Halloween in China. Students have a good time trying to find the following things: something black, something orange, a piece of colored chalk, the letters for Happy Halloween all cut out of a magazine...He had a couple of Halloween cards to show his class, sent from his family...the students especially liked the fuzzy black cat on Audriana's card.

We got an e-card from some former students as well. It's in Chinese, but if you would like to see it, you can probably reach it the next month or so at the following link:

Our Chinese Halloween card

I don't know what it says, except the last sentence is Happy Halloween. Only, I don't know how to say that in Chinese either...

Ultrasound

Here are the pictures of the ultrasound we just had today:


We went in for a check-up and were surprised when the doctor asked us if we were going to have an ultrasound today...after wondering whether we would have enough cash on hand (you always pay before services are rendered in China), we thought - maybe we'll be able to tell the gender of the baby and thought it would be worth it. So, we asked the doctor how much it would be and she told us it would be 68 yuan...about 10 dollars! It ended up costing almost 100 yuan, but still much cheaper than what we were expecting...We asked her if the technician could tell us the gender and she told us that they could if it was clear what sex the baby was, otherwise no.

Audriana wasn't too interested in the ultrasound. In fact, she always gets concerned when we go to the hospital. Jay has been once and this was Vikki's second trip. Audriana has been upset every time, maybe from remembering her own traumatic event. She usually will still point to her chin and say boo boo if we tell her we're going to see the doctor.

After showing us the head, heart, limbs, etc. The technician said she was done...and I don't think she would have told us the gender had we not asked...

You probably can't tell from the pictures, but...It's a Boy!

Audriana's daily activities...

Just a glimpse of what our little girl did today:

Changed her baby's diaper...
...watched a Tigger & Pooh Super Sleuths DVD (given to us by Greg, another teacher at our school)...
...colored in her Curious George coloring book (also given to her by Greg)...
...met Helen (with Mommy), a new friend...
...walked a dog (a first)...
...played ride on the stool with wheels, push the cart with a ball, and jump on the couch with Yang Yang...
...prayed for Yang Yang and Tian Tian, our friends...

Thinking about baby names...

We have already found a hospital we like in Hangzhou. It is called Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, named after a famous Hong Kong actor who donated a large amount of money to the building cost. The hospital is the first Internationally accredited hopsital (JCI) in China. They have several English speaking doctors and nurses on staff. We met with one doctor for a Q&A session about a month ago and were very pleasantly surprised to hear that they have a private birth room and midwives who can assist with the delivery. The only potential drawback is that if an emergency arises, the staff would have C-section as maybe their only fallback. We would really like to avoid having a C-section as that increases the risk that you will have complications with a future vaginal birth and thereby reduces the number of children you can have as C-sections are recommended to be performed only so many times...

We are going to check out at least one hospital in Shanghai the first week of November. We are going to Shanghai for a marriage conference, which our good friends, Buster and Amy Canfield blessed us by paying for the fees...Anyway, there is a hospital in Shanghai that performed the first water birth in China, Vikki would really like to use a birth pool as she did with Audriana again. So we want to give that one a look as well and maybe some other good hospitals in Shanghai.

Tonight we were thinking about baby names a little and wrote the following in my journal:

Girl names: Emily, Evelyn, Lydia, Alissa, Jessica; and the following for consideration as middle names: Elise, Anna, Grace, and Janae.

Boy names: Joseph Micaiah (there's a story behind that name), Eli, Isaac, Clay, Joshua, Landis, Micah; and middle names: Jeremiah and Aaron.

We probably won't be able to determine the gender of the baby prior to the birth. It's illegal in China to do so! Earlier, Jay felt as if it would be a girl. =)

What we did today...

Today we went to Jason and Cecely's Clark's home for the first time. They are some friends who came here with two other couples to live in Hangzhou. It was a really good time. Audriana got to play with Caleb, one of her best friends in Hangzhou and we ate dinner with Caleb's mommy and daddy.

Audriana had a great time walking on the street today, we saw a big white dog, played on some grass (which can be a rare sight), and ran along with the stroller's shadow. She also got to sit in her own seat on the bus on the way home, which doesn't happen too often because buses are often VERY crowded. We played stuff the pacifier into daddy's pocket and pull it out again a lot.

Happy Sunday!

An outing with Victoria (not my wife)

Last night we went out with Victoria to a local bookstore and then she showed us around a new area of Hangzhou that was just opened over the week long National Day holiday beginning on October 1st. It was crazy - we don't have the capability to put pictures on our computer at the moment, but when we do, we'll have to put some on...

We can put pictures on now:

Victoria recommended us to take my mother-in-law there when she comes for the new baby's birth in January. It's a little bit like space-age. The most prominent building is going to be the future headquarters of the government - not sure if it's provincial or city, or both. It has essentially four buildings built near to each other in a circular shape, connected only by the high-rise oval offices that completely make a ring around the entire complex...only like 30 stories high at least. The center of the complex is open, except the bottom five stories or so are also a large circular building space...There is also a theater that resembles the Opera House in Sydney nearby and an International Symposium Center (or something) that is essentially a huge globe - a golden globe, at least 30 stories high as well....we'll have to get pictures on later...Victoria mentioned that the area should be completely developed after three to five years. Now, large parts are unfinished and there are other large buildings nearby that are only a shell.

By the way, Victoria is a secretary for the Foreign Affairs Office and is one of our few friends we have in Hangzhou. She has been very helpful in helping us get our feet on the ground here and has gone out of her way to do so.

An update with a promise of more?

Greetings from Hangzhou! We hope to make this blog a bit more accessible, updating more frequently different things that are going on. We are finally coming to more of a grip of what life is going to be like in this city – which is a lot larger and busier (seemingly) than what we were used to in Changsha. We were also right downtown in Changsha, and our school here, Zhejiang University City College is way out with the car dealerships – which from my perspective means you’re way out there…we are a bit far removed from the city center, it takes us about an hour by bus to go anywhere really interesting…that is a big difference from the hour it used to take us to go to the complete opposite end of the city (across the river even) in Changsha. It also takes a lot longer toting Audriana around, but she has been a great trooper, and continues to amaze us at what a wonderful child she is. God has truly given us a blessed child…

Our goal is to shoot off tidbits of info with this blog, and send out another newsletter monthly with extra information. Vikki has also done a great job getting a shutterfly webpage up so that we can easily upload pictures for you to enjoy…

As to what we’ve been up to for the last month…

Audriana is completely healed, physically and emotionally from her major boo boo that we last told you about. She will still occasionally remember her boo boo and will usually mention the doctor at those times, but she’s pretty much over it. She is very daring and I love how free and independent she can be…she is also a very respectful child, and very giving. She will always share food and toys with us and other children. A very good thing is that while still daring, she has learned to immediately stop whenever we say things like, ‘be careful’ or ‘watch out for cars.’ This is extremely important in China where things like walking along the street are especially dangerous with all the traffic, people, bicycles, mopeds, and various accidents waiting to happen…there is always the occasional drastic booby trap you have to watch out for here. Audriana does a great job with running to the side of the street whenever cars are coming, and will occasionally stop and wait until it passes or ask for Daddy’s help. This has only backfired once, I think, when she did the ‘deer in the headlights’ trick and squatted in front of a car without moving…that was not a good trick…she’s already hard enough to see, squatting probably doesn’t increase your visibility if you're two feet tall.

We’re going to keep a running log (I think) of all Audriana’s Chinese words she’s learning. She is a spectacle in China, so many people will run up to her to see her…she’s pretty good about taking care of herself in those situations. I am trying to teach her to say ‘Daddy help please’ if she ever feels inundated or threatened. Otherwise, I plan to just let Audriana handle it herself. People also often ask to take a picture of or with her, and I let them ask her directly. Yesterday, she actually said it was ok for a girl to pose with her, which was a first. It is easy for her to meet people, but till now, she only has a few friends that she plays with. Our friends in Shanghai have a little girl they adopted from China whose name is Emma. Even though Audriana has only played with her a few times, she will frequently ask us to see pictures of Emma on our computer. We were able to go to Emma’s two year birthday last month, and that was a blast! Caleb is her friend that we frequently get to meet on Sundays. His father, Josh, is American and his mother, Gao Yan, is Chinese. We have been able to meet up with Caleb a couple of times outside of our Sunday visits, which is a lot of fun. Caleb is about the same age as Audriana, just a month or two older. If any of you remember us writing about a good friend of ours we knew in Changsha named Lydia, Gao Yan is Lydia’s twin sister. It’s been really cool to have the chance to get to know them better here in Hangzhou. Audriana also has a couple other Chinese friends…Tian Tian and Yang Yang. Tian Tian’s parents own (we think) a store on campus, and we had been going there frequently to buy drinks and such. Audriana would run up and down the aisles with Tian Tian, or pick up merchandise within the store to play with. It is a lot more fun to run up and down the aisles holding candy, for example. One day, they used the brooms in the store to sweep up some of Tian Tian’s toys. Tian Tian is about Audriana’s age as well. She may be about 21 months old. Yang Yang is older than Audriana, she is six years old. Audriana has only played with her one time so far, though we ran into her mother last night and Vikki and Audriana plan to go see her again today. Yang Yang’s mom owns a store outside our back gate, and Audriana had a blast playing together with her last time. Last night when we passed by her store, Audriana really wanted to see her – even though Yang Yang had already gone to bed, Audriana did her ‘bouncing with Daddy’ trick that we do whenever we are going to get somebody or something…I guess she thought we’d get to see Yang Yang quicker the following day if we did the ‘I’m gonna get you bounce.’ Our little girl is growing up fast – it is so different being a parent, but we are so blessed to have our little gift growing and learning with us.

Many of you have no doubt heard of the milk scare affecting China recently. Here is a couple of websites detailing the situation that we’ve found:

www.unitedfamilyhospitals.com - a general overview of the milk scandal

World Health Organization - Melamine.pdf - a detailed analysis of the potential risks of melamine, which has been added to milk in China to increase the apparent protein content

Although, the scare doesn’t seem to be too drastic a situation, it is very widespread – covering virtually all milk products, or anything with milk in it. There have been three reported deaths and thousands of children hospitalized. We have gone from consuming about twelve liters a week, to consuming as little as possible. Vikki and I don’t really drink milk at all right now and Audriana has just recently made the switch from milk to juice-flavored water during the day, still getting a bottle of milk whenever she goes down for a nap or for the night. Yesterday, we scouted stores around our school that would sell milk we would trust, but couldn’t really find much. The only thing we found are these little 220ml Wahaha brand containers, which we aren’t really sure if they’re milk…they’re very sweet, and fruity. Jay’s favorite store on the side streets out our back gate told us it is milk, but not real milk…and that it is for children. At least, that’s what we understood with our limited Chinese ability! They come in packs of four, but that’s not real convenient. And we’re not even sure that they’re safe. We have a list of some brands that passed China’s testing recently and Wahaha Orange and Wahaha Yellow are on the list, but I’m not sure we have that kind…Wahaha AD maybe what Audriana gets for the foreseeable future, as going to the supermarket every day to get pure milk is not too convenient. Before the scare, Jay would carry back two big boxes of milk in bulk, containing six ‘smaller’ big boxes…Bright milk is very prevalent, but we’ve heard that that brand has had some trouble. A lot of milk products have simply been pulled from the shelves. If any of you all have any additional information, we’d love to know about it! It seems that recently the government has said that all products tested were found to be safe, but another report we received made it seem that it would be difficult to fix the problem barring potentially years of corrective measures.

I may try to write more later about other things we’ve been up to…
…such as:
the Beamon budget has gone defunct…
what Chinese study?
some encouraging news about hospitals in China…
an upcoming marriage conference…
Jay’s English classes…
and our week-long holiday (Chinese National Day)

Our first month in China

Being in China with a child has been a lot different than coming as a newly married couple! We have adjusted much more slowly, but life is good. :)