Ian's first Day of School (2nd Grade)

Ian has been counting down the days until school starts for most of the summer. His mom and didis (little brothers) do not provide enough entertainment for him I guess.
He woke up this morning in a great mood, ate in record time, got dressed in the blink of an eye with no complaints and went and sat in the car long before we needed to leave or either of his parents were dressed. Let's hope this keeps up (yeah, right...but I can dream)

Ian waiting in the car - buckled up and ready to go.

Ian running up the stairs way ahead of Shane and me

In front of his cubby

With his new teacher, Mrs. Forrester

Catching Up

The way I post to the blog is blocked and has been for months and month. Many of you have written me and asked if they were dropped from the journal email list, but no, I haven't had the time to do that either. So, here I am, typing on Ian and Eric's first day of school. I hope to have a bit more time with them gone during the day...we'll see.
So to catch you all up - We went to India to work with an orphanage there that we have been in contact with since before we left Korea. we met old friends and new from Korea there and also took our friends Cleo and Josh and their oldest daughter Lia with us. It was an amazing time. Since many of you have seen those pictures on Facebook or in person, I will start by adding more recent pictures today (hopefully today). Our summer involved interns coming for Gathering Together, a VERY quick trip back to the US, and then one of Shane's coworkers from GM-Daewoo's daughter coming for 2 weeks. Baobei was SO incredibly busy (both due to new babies, old babies with complications, and lack of most of the staff being in China) that the computer gathered dust the whole month of June. We returned from the US the 20th of July and Johna took off to Guangzhou for 2 weeks and left me with 3 boys, 2 of which got the stomach flu, 15 bags to unpack, and rain, rain, and more rain, so poor Ian, even though he wasn't sick, could not go out to play. We have now all recovered, Johna is back, and somehow we blinked and Ian is now in 2nd grade, Eric in his 3rd year of pre-school (2nd year of Chinese) and Aaron is 10 months old, standing and talking and trying to be the biggest of the Olson boys. Pictures are coming...just be patient...

Love from Shanghai

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)