Driving, Cinnamon, and being in love

Ni hao!

Well the big news for this week is that Chris passed his drivers license test and can now legally drive here. Chris passed with 96%. Knowing Chris he's probably upset about that 4% he didn't get. It was a huge relief to him to get it over with though. Now he can drive us around on the weekends when our driver is off.

The other big news is that Anna learned to ride her bike. It's more like she learned to peddle the bike. Steering is still another issue but she's working hard at it. She was so proud of herself and kept saying how she wanted to show daddy when he got home from work. She is through and through a daddy's girl.

We want to throw out a huge congrats to the Johnson family on the big wedding. Congrats to Chris' brother Nate and his beautiful bride Danielle who were married on Friday and congrats to both sets of parents on making it through, one, without any rain and two, without losing your sanity. No really, we heard it was just a beautiful wedding and we are so happy for all of you.

Since we are on the subject of love, I'll tell you what Gabe said to me today. I asked him how his day was on the way home from school and he said, " It was such a great day mom. I fell in love. Me and this girl in my class named Jordy fell in love." I asked if this big event happened at recess and he said, "No, it was inside the school. We were deciding if we should kiss.....ON THE LIPS!" I didn't know what to say. In true Emily fashion, she promptly told him he's not supposed to fall in love. Any advice anyone? Maybe I should stop calling him "Gabe the babe." I think it's going to his head or maybe his heart. I never thought I'd have to go over the dating rules with my kindergartner. I'm still just laughing about how matter of fact he was about the whole thing. "we read a book, had a snack and then I fell in love." Seriously, what should I say to him?

On to our fearless Saturday's Worrier. (that's Chris) Saturday was the "big game" to see if the branch basketball team would go on to play in the tournament. If they lost, they were out. Last game they had plenty of guys to sub in and out but this time they only had five guys. Chris hung in there the whole time. Well, almost the whole time. He only looked like he was going to pass out a couple of times, but the rest of the time he really hung in there. They won by 4 points and so now they play in the tournament in two weeks. Go Saturday's Worriers!

I'm just going about life as usual. My latest anxiety is about how to tell our A yi to stop putting cinnamon in our food. I'm not sure how it started but I think it's because I showed her an apple crisp that I made and told her that we like the apples and cinnamon. Ever since then, everything we eat has a slight cinnamony flavor. The other day she made cold rice noodles with soy sauce, about 50 cloves of chopped garlic and yes, cinnamon. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to eat cinnamon again. Just smelling that dish kinda ruined it for me. She also took the head of lettuce Emily picked on her field trip to the organic farm and cooked it up all nice and oily for us. On a good cooking note, I did teach her how to make Pad Thai. I was determined to eat something delicious so I set out on a mission to learn how to make Pad Thai and then teach our A yi how to make it. We'll see how it goes when she makes it on her own. If she puts cinnamon in the Pad Thai, its grounds for termination. Any Thai food lover would agree with me!

This next week we are heading to Beijing to see the Great Wall. We are really excited to see it with the kids. We're going to also see Tienanmen Square, the Forbidden City and some of the Olympic Venues. A part of me wishes the kids were a lot older so they could appreciate the history of it all but hopefully, they will appreciate the fact we took them there when they learn the history of it someday.

I'm sure we'll have lot's to tell you next time we post. Until then, we send our love to you all.