Birthdays and boxes!

Still riding the 'high' from seeing Betsy & the girls on Sunday - what a perfect way to start the new week! Having sweet Courtney here has been a blessing - everyone is enjoying her visit and Andy has seen more of Shanghai as they sight see each day! A special trip for them was to the Healing Home - a pre/post op home for orphans who have cleft lip/cleft palette. The kiddos were so adorable and they just spent their time down on the floor playing with them - until the kids started to fall asleep (at which point Andy rushed to get one of the little boys before the Ayi's did so he could fall asleep on Andy's shoulder!).

Monday they delivered a new washing machine - hurrah, we can finally do our laundry again without lugging it in a suitcase to the nearby laundromat! And Thursday they delivered our air shipment! We are so excited to have silverware and the legos! Of course seeing what was shipped via air...I am now convinced that we were living in a blurr (perhaps a state of denial!) that last week in Fayetteville...much of what I was expecting in the air shipment isn't here because it actually got shipped by sea. Go figure - Andy is the only one who got more clothes, we got stuff from the garage and a mattress topper for a mattress that is in the sea shipment! Ah well...apparently the slow boat to China actually takes about 7 weeks as our shipment landed in country last Friday and we should have it at the beginning of November - just a little longer to wait (at least that is the plan!).

We also celebrated Abigail's 6th birthday on Wednesday! She looked right past the 'wrapping paper' (a pillowcase, sweatshirt and grocery bag) and just loved the opening the gifts. We made some progress since Lindsey's birthday (clearly not in the wrapping paper department!) as we had matches for her birthday candles. Of course we couldn't find a real cake and didn't have our pans yet to make one - so we got something in the shape of a cake that looked like carmelized flubber (as the girls define it!) with some chocolate swirls on it...won't be doing that again! Andy, Courtney and Mr. Xu get A+'s for persevering to find something to stick a candle in!

On the school (actually sports) front...Lindsey made the Division 1 Middle School soccer team - a more competitive league for the higher level players - great news for her and something she was really hoping for! Also Kelly was asked to coach one of the middle school soccer teams - something great for her as well and thankfully not Lindsey's team!

Thanks for all the prayers...living her in Shanghai is fun, although we miss our family, friends and pets immensely!