DJ SamSam Slamin' the Tunes

He loves this activity center

Field Day

This was a fun (and beautiful) day. They had about 7 games the kids played and learned a school fight song.

Ian has a good take off, but we think he will be a distance runner. He can run for 1/2 km without slowing down.

Ian watching Lia's race

This has to be genetic! Why does the tongue have to come out when they are concentrating?

Henry and Ian between heats

Aaron wasn't too interested in the races

Ian and Ariana

Ian, Ariana, and Karsyn

Being silly

Another game

learning teamwork

Transporting trash in China

If you had a huge amount of foam to transport/throw away, how would you do it where you live?.... In the U.S. we would hire a dumpster to be brought to our house and then load it up and then have it taken away.

Not in China...

Just strap it to your bike and peddle to where you need to go. It was higher than our van!

Brothers talking after school

Aaron loves to sit up now. He can't quite do it on his own, but he wants to be a big boy like his brothers.

Ian always misses Aaron when he is at school

and Aaron has a lot to tell Ian about what happened when Ian was at school

Adventure to Puxi

This is out of chronological order because I thought I had already posted it...
A couple weeks ago Eric and I took off to Puxi (west side of the river) which is like going to another country in some respects. It is always an adventure to go in a taxi here with my limited Mandarin, but Eric had a birthday party to go to and it was our driver's day off.


Eric asked if we were going to see his school friends when we got in the taxi. I told him we were and then he proceeded to only speak to me in Mandarin all the way to the party. Most of it I didn't understand and the taxi driver had a good chuckle the whole way there.
Above is Eric and Benjamin (aka BenBen). He is the one who had a baby brother born the same day and same hospital as Aaron (Jonas)

The party was at an Irish Pub. They had games and a kid friendly buffet.

He was excited even after he had been eliminated from the game. Can you see how much bigger he is than the other kids in his class?

Getting prizes

BenBen's mom (Katharina) with Aaron.

"You can't see me!" "Oh yes I can!"

They asked him if he wanted to play "Go Fish", which he loves to play at home (with cards). We were both surprised to find a bowl with REAL fish! Then I was even more shocked that they took the fish home! In our case, it got to go to church in it's bag and then home. We had to borrow some fish food from Amanda and her family (they have a huge tank), but Jason (what Eric named the fish) died after about 24 hours. (I asked why he named it Jason and he said, "because I know how to spell Jason - J A S O N, and I need to know how to spell my pet's name!")

Chinese birthday candles

Catherine is the birthday girl (in grey and pink coat)

Saying Thank You

Ian's school, through their Wu Mao Club (the kids all brought in coins and the Honor Society collected the money), raised over 38,000 RMB that went towards Joseph's surgery. So I arranged for Joseph (who was Samuel's roommate in the hospital) to come and thank the kids and show them what a big thing that they had accomplished.

I also wanted to post these pics to show off what a good photographer Cleo is! She took all these pictures and I am excited to see the pictures she takes when we all go to India in May!

Such a happy boy!

Martha showing the kids where he had his first and second surgeries

Ian's class hosted 2 other 1st grade classes and 1 2nd grade class to see Joseph and ask questions

We also went down and talked to the preschool and 4 of the middle school classes.

Ian's Kung Fu Class

Ian now has Kung Fu after school every Monday. He has really enjoyed it and is doing well.

I have been really impressed with his teachers. There are 3 of them and 1 is some sort of Kung Fu Master. They all could be in a Jackie Chan movie!

Easter fun

The 4 boys got 1 big basket this year.

Eric have started wearing his PJs backwards now, we don't know why

Group effort - Johna made the cake, I decorated it, and Shane made the wire handle

We went to our friends, Josh and Cleo's house (just down the road). There were over 40 people and 320 eggs hidden!

They have a big yard and lots of places for eggs to hide.

Some were really hidden in tricky places! The little kids got to go out and get all the easy ones first, then the big kids had their turn.

Forecasters said it would rain, but it ended up the nicest day we've had in Shanghai so far

Aaron's first experience with grass and leaves

A little too much excitement and Eric couldn't stop to even take a picture. He wanted to keep looking and so got really grumpy when asked to smile for the camera

We told him to smile or we would post this grumpy picture for everyone to see, but it didn't help