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...