when east meets south
In China, the Chinese New Year celebration begins seven days before Chinese New Year’s Eve, and ends on the 15th day of the lunar year. This year, Chinese New Year fell on January 28th and lasted until February 11th – a date also known as the Lantern Festival. Which means that, even though Chinese New Year was officially several weeks… Read More
Such a Christmas. We celebrated similarly to how we’ve done it the last few years. Pared down our giving (and asking) and were very intentional about how we spent our time together all December long. And the best part? This little one. Home and celebrating Christmas. Her very first. And despite a tentative beginning, she caught on pretty quickly. And… Read More
We are a family of 15. We don’t go all the places we used to. For the last few years we’ve been taking two cars most places because we outgrew the old Sprinter a few kiddos back. We began praying over a solution as a family, and I asked for prayer from my prayer partners as well, knowing God could… Read More
I have always loved Thanksgiving. Gathering family from near and far around the table to enjoy the yummiest food of the year. And celebrating all the good things while tracing them all back to His hand. This year we had some especially good stuff to celebrate. Six months home with Magnolia. In that short time we’ve witnessed her receiving and… Read More
We love tradition. And we especially love traditions around holidays as a way to kindle memory-making for our children, and to just plain make things fun. Halloween, however, is one holiday that has been challenging. I have great memories of Halloween as a kid – sooo, as much candy as I can carry, I just have to put on a… Read More
About a year ago, give or take a few days, I did one big catch up post. A whopper of a post that covered the end of one school year and the beginning of another because, well… life. And this year is even crazier than last year. With the addition of our constantly curious Magnolia, spare time is hard to… Read More
We recently celebrated Jude’s 10th birthday. And, as the birthday-to-be boy, Jude got to choose his party favors. And he asked for Silly String. Normally I wouldn’t agree to a request so, well… messy. And not a request so expensive (because $3.50 times 10 ain’t happening for a party favor in this house). But seeing as he was turning double… Read More
I don’t talk a whole lot about Vivienne’s special need because, well, most days it just doesn’t come up. She’s an amazing kid – bright, silly, happy. With the sassiest comebacks ever. And physically, despite her skeletal dysplasia and bilateral arm deformity, she’s quite capable. She does pretty much whatever she wants, in her own special way. But recently her… Read More
We continued this year with our theme of breaking away from our traditional Christmases past. And we continue to be surprised at how the Lord has blessed our meager efforts to reprioritize our time, our energy and our spending. We completed a third year with our wonderful Advent book, every night taking turns guessing which object would be the one… Read More
We recently had a opportunity to have our family photos taken professionally. And, of course, I jumped at the chance. I shared a few of these on a post at No Hands But Ours, but there are a few more. And since this is where I *attempt* do the memory-keeping for this family o’ mine, I wanted to share them… Read More