cooking with my language helper

2 weeks ago my language helper asked me if I could teach her how to make cookies. We decided to make a lesson out of it. I taught her how to make chocolate chip cookies (thanks to the chips my mom sent me) We would then go over all the recipe in Vietnamese. I learned a lot of new vocabulary and we had a great time. 

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.

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.