Preston is praying for...

Every month I make a place mat for Preston. It has different pictures on it of different kids that he can pray for. So every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the month of January Preston has been praying for these guys. In Feb. we will make a new one. It has been a lot of fun praying for and over the many young ones in Preston's life.

This month the line up was:
Ashton and Alex (my nephews)
McKaylyn and Kaiya (friends from Thailand)
Caedmon (friend from China)
Lydia and Alaina (friend from VN)
Emmett (friend from MN)
Grace (friend from village) and Thai Dam kids

Next month we will have some repeats, and some new one's.  I'll post a picture when we finish it.

January happenings

Many of you know that in January I started studying Vietnamese for 18 hours per week. I study from 9 until noon from Mon. until Sat.  Of course I thought I would be entering my last trimester and preparing for baby #2 to be born April 6th, but life didn't happen how I planned.  After our miscarriage in Sept. I had to come to grips with the fact that Preston continues to be an only child. I realized I had to study more and make the most of where I am at today not where I "hope" to be tomorrow. So in order for me to study this much we had to make a decision about whether we should start Preston at a preschool or not. At first I thought ABSOLUTELY NOT. I had this perfect picture of us having 4 or 5 kids, thriving in our work in Southeast Asia, and homeschooling all of them. The "perfect" family picture.  In reality I realized Preston needed more "play" time and there was an Int'l preschool near our house. After checking it out and confirming that they were actually learning something and it was not a daycare, we enrolled Preston for 3 half days a week. 

 He is loving his new school! He goes Tue. Wed. and Fri. from 9 until noon. It is an Int'l preschool, but many of the kids are Vietnamese and one of those days they have Vietnamese instruction. So I am learning more and more Vietnamese and Preston is one happy boy playing with his friends.

Above is the picture from our rooftop. We are pointing in the direction of Preston's new school. It is near the very tall hotel in the background.

NO NICKNAME FOR PRESTON

I remember the day we "named" Preston. I was 23 weeks pregnant and had just found out that we were having a boy. We were sitting in the Dr office and just saying every name we could think of. We first said Payton, but I liked that more for a girls name and then Preston came out. We loved it. We told everyone the name and had everyone refer to him by the name to make sure that we liked hearing it. When Preston was born it fit his cute little face perfectly.

Now to back the story up. One of the criterea for me/us in picking a name is that either the name could NOT be shortened or I had to like the short version as much as the full name. For example I like Olivia, and i like liv or livi just as much. I didn't like names like Sammuel because I didn't like Sam (no offense to the sams out there). With Preston there seemed to be no way to shorten it. I mean who would call a kid Pres...right?

Well we had some Vietnamse friends over and as I was getting Preston ready to head up for bed. I said, "Preston, you need to pick up your toys. okay bud?" Well our Vietnamese friends thought I said bum and now they refer to Preston as bum. They think it is polite and a good way to show closeness in friendship to refer to Preston by his family nick name (which he doesn't have). I don't know how to tell them that I would prefer they call him Preston and that BUM is NOT his nickname. Tim laughs because he thinks it's funny. I have to admit I giggle when I think of them saying it, but his NAME IS PRESTON NOT BUM!

New Beginnings

I rarely make New Year resolutions. This year I decided more to take inventory of what I'm doing and areas that need improvement. I came up with a LOT, but could only focus on a few.

some of my thoughts are:

1. I want to focus less on the heart break of trying to get pregnant again (trying for 2 years now) and just be thankful for the now 3 year old that God HAS blessed me with. I want to be a better mom by: cooking healthy, playing fun and meaningful games daily, reading more to him, and crafting for fine motor skills etc.

2. Memorize more scripture: Tim and I have started a journey of memorizing the book of Philippians together. We should finish by Easter. So far I have the first 10 verses done.  After Philippians I'm not sure what I'll memorize but for now that is enough.

3. Be diligent in my Vietnamese language study. As a mom there is ALWAYS the excuse that you are too busy being a mom you can't be a full time language learner as well. When I learned Thai, Preston wasn't born so that excuse wasn't available to me. However in January I started a new program and it requires me to study 18 hours a week with my nurturer (language teacher). This means Tim has to share more Mr. mom responsibilities. We are now done with the first 18 hours and by the time I post this will be half way through week 2. It has been good and I'm enjoying it. I pray daily for God to give me a sharp mind and a diligent work ethic in this regard.

4.  BLOG MORE!  as you can see Im already doing this. I decided that twice a month I will sit down and write 4 blogs each time so I can hopefully get a post up twice a week to keep all of our friends and family involved on just the ordinary parts of what we do here in Viet Nam

So those are the ones I decided to focus on for now. So far I am moving in the right direction with all of them. Happy New Year to you all.

Preston turns 3 part 2

If you have a child with a birthday in December you might know the feeling of wanting to make their day special and not mixing it in with Christmas. At the beginning of Dec. I made a paper chain count down for Preston. It had a special ribbon for Jesus' birthday and a ribbon for Prestons birthday. Every day we took a ring off of the chain and watched the count down. We made Christmas a big day and celebrated the birth of Christ. When Prestons turn came on the 30th he was so excited.

In the morning we sang happy birthday to him and talked on the phone with family from the states. He then opened a few presents. I made a big breakfast and finished his mini train cakes

At 10:30 we met a few of his little friends at a play area. It is NOTHING like Chuck-E-Cheese, but it was fun for the kids. His friends came back to the house and we had lunch and then I gave them the mini cakes that they could decorate themselves. Of course we then opened a few more presents and after all of that, Preston and his friends went to the living room and played with all of his new trains.

Above you can see the ginger bread train next to Prestons mini little cake trains. It was a fun day. Happy Birthday PRESTON!!!

Preston turned 3

For Prestons birthday this year we had a big train theme. I decided to make a ginger bread train to compliment the mini train cakes I already planned to make (thank you Renee H. for sending the cake pan out). To make the ginger bread train, I cut out the pattern from cardboard, then rolled out my ginger bread dough (recipe from this book),placed my pattern cut outs on dough then cut and baked. When the ginger bread came out of the oven I put my pattern pieces back on to make sure the edges were straight so we didn't have a crooked train. When the ginger bread was completely cooled we put it together with quick butter cream icing, and decorated with candy.

I put some crackers inside the train engine to support the round cookies. Preston sorted through the M & M's to find the red and green ones. We then used little Hershey bars for the coal cart. the poles sticking out were 3 HUGE candles for singing Happy Birthday (more like flames).

We even had a lumbar cart with chocolate sticks and pretzels. We had a lot of fun making our ginger bread train. That was the day before his birthday. Pictures of his birthday are still to come.

Holiday Baking

Besides baking a turkey for the first time I also made lots of holiday cookies. After Thanksgiving I usually make a variety of cookie doughs so that I can make batches of home made goodness throughout the month. This year I put a spin on the traditional sugar cookie and went with melted snowman cookies. I put a half marshmallow for the head and white icing for the melted body. I also made mini pumpkin cheesecakes, and ginger snaps (thanks Clair). What are some of your holiday traditions?

Holiday crafting

One of my favorite things to do over the holidays was lots of crafts with Preston. We made snowmen out of cotton balls (close as I want to get to a snowman). Behind us you can see some of the presents wrapped under the tree. We took butcher paper, and sponge painted Christmas trees onto the paper. Of course there were ornaments and lots of other little fun things we made.

Looking back over our Advent season

The month of December went by quickly. After being in the states last year for Christmas I was anxious to get back to our traditions in Asia for the holidays. Since Preston was almost 3 we had a lot of fun each night lighting our Advent candles and telling a Bible story that eventually led up to the birth of Christ.

Above is the first week of our Advent branch with ornaments. We covered creation, the fall, Noah, Babel, God's promise to Abraham, Abraham and Issac, Jacob's dream. I will try to find a picture of the full branch for later. I had fun making all of the ornaments. It was a very meaningful time for us as a family.

On Christmas day we had many friends come over. I cooked my first turkey and it turned out lovely. We had a great time celebrating the birth of our savior and look forward to similar traditions during Lent.