Thanksgiving with our Cousins

We have all had such an amazing week, filled with family, food, and fun. We celebrated Thanksgiving with Miller's family, as we do every year. His dad always comes back to the U.S. in November because his family commemorates the passing of his mom. While we don't participate in the memorial ceremony, we always attend the family gathering where they celebrate Thanksgiving at the same time. This year my brother-in-law, Manh was visiting from Virginia, along with his two kids, Dat and Kim Anh. I LOVE this family! They are so lovable and fun. Dat and Kim Anh got to spend a few days at our house, and Ly (Mai's sister) decided to join us. The house was full of kids, laughter, wonderful smells of baking, and we all had so much fun. I decided we should all make gingerbread houses and men as a family activity. So we found a recipe online for homemade gingerbread, and Ly and Mai excitedly volunteered to do the baking. They did an awesome job! We each decorated our own gingerbread person, and all the girls decorated a gingerbread house (the boys were too anxious to get back to their game of pool). Once we put it all together, we had an entire gingerbread family and village. All of the kids did a great job, and it was neat to see their individual creativiy. The house smelled so yummy of ginger and cinnamon as the cookies baked, and we listened to Christmas music, sipped on hot cocoa and tea, and ate candy canes. The house always feels so much more cozy when it's full of people, added by the glow of the lights on the Christmas tree. Here are some pictures of our fun-filled week, along with a video clip of some commentary by my niece, Kim Anh, future anchor woman. :)
Ly's house:


Mai's house:


Kim Anh's house:


Eliana's house:


Addie's house:


My house:


Our gingerbread family and village:


All the kids:

Yordy and Mai make Five

...girls, that is. We have unofficially adopted two more girls into our family. If you haven't already noticed Mai in some of our pictures, allow me to introduce you! Mai (she goes by Diana at school) is our niece who has been living with us since June. She just turned 14 (on Thanksgiving Day, actually) and she has been a BIG help and addition to our family. She's great with the girls, and will most certainly make a good mommy one day. She's a positive role model for them- very responsible, a great student, loves to cook and read, obliges when we ask her to help clean, and most importantly, she loves the Lord. We've been waiting on either her mom or dad to come into town to help us finalize the paperwork so that we can become her official guardians. Regardless of the official status, we are blessed to have her in our family.

Back in September Miller took Eliana and Addie out for a father-daughter date night. They went to see Veggie Tales "live" in concert and Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano. The girls were super excited and were thrilled to see their beloved characters up on stage singing and dancing. During the intermission, Miller and the girls went to the lobby area for a restroom break, and there was a table set up by World Vision where people could sign up to sponsor a child. Miller was getting ready to pass by the table, when Eliana asked, "Daddy, what are those people doing?" Miller briefly explained how people were signing up to help needy children and then was getting ready to go back to the concert and Eliana asked, "Daddy, why aren't we going over there?" (SO proud of this girl!) So Miller lead the girls over and asked them to find the name of a child who's birthday was close to Eliana's as possible. They handed Miller the information for Yordy, an 8-year-old girl in the Dominican Republic. Miller signed Eliana up to be a monthly sponsor for Yordy, and we've already received one letter from her. Eliana was excited to learn that she has 2 sisters (just like her) as well as 2 brothers, and loves to paint. I am very excited that Eliana took the initiative to sponsor Yordy, because it serves as a wonderful opportunity for us to teach Eliana to put others before herself, especially as we approach Christmas and the kids are bombarded by ads and images of toys on sale. I'm so proud of Eliana when I hear her make comments like, "Mommy I don't need two paint sets. Can I give one to Yordy?" or "I wonder if Yordy will like to have.... " I've been trying to teach both her and Addie what it means to be Christ-like, and Addie really impressed my the other day when she offered Eliana her Sleeping Beauty coloring page that she picked out from the dollar store. Poor thing handed it to her sister and then broke out in tears because she really wanted it for herself, but wanted to make Eliana happy. I explained to them that that's how it must have been for God when He sent His Son for us. It must have been heart breaking, but that's how much He loves us. That He would come and die for us. All these girls are so special to us, and we are thankful that the Lord has entrusted us with them for a short while.


Mai


Yordy

Baby Dedication Sunday

In October our church held a baby dedication service, and we decided to have Olivia dedicated. Eliana and Addie were both dedicated by our pastor at our Vietnamese fellowship, but he moved to Michigan, so it was a little sad that we weren't able to ask him to do Olivia's as well. First, let me explain what baby dedication is NOT. It is not infant baptism. As scripture teaches, only those by volition who've placed their trust in the finished work of Christ on the cross receive salvation. Baby dedication is not forgiveness of sins or assurance of salvation for the future. Rather, it is us as parents and our church family as a community dedicating our child to the hand and purpose of God and committing ourselves to bringing her up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We commit to instill in Olivia the importance of knowing, trusting, and serving Jesus, and to pray for her daily. We promise to teach our children the things of the Lord by example, and to provide them with spiritual sustenance. It is our hope and prayer that when Olivia is older, she will come to know Christ personally, and choose to give her life over to Him. "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6.

Beautiful Bugs

A few weeks ago our church held a fall festival. The girls decided to dress up as insects. Thankfully we already had a ladybug body from a couple of years ago, so I went to the dollar store and bought red wings and orange wings. I just painted on the black spots for Addie's wings, and tried to paint a monarch butterfly design on Eliana's wings. Then I found Olivia's wings on clearance a few hours before the festival (sometimes it pays to procrastinate!), and just stuck them all in black leotards and tights. Then we made little antennae headbands with pipe cleaners. Nothing fancy, but I think they looked adorable. :) Mai decided to be a cat, so she just borrowed some ears from the girls' dress-up trunk, and I drew on her whiskers and nose. She used one of Miller's black socks as a tail. Here they are, ready to go out and have fun!

The Pumpkin Patch

A couple of weeks ago we visited the pumpkin patch at a nearby church. We let the girls each pick out their own pumpkin, and they all chose little, tiny ones. We had planned to get a large one to carve as Larry or Bob like we've done in years past, but we decided to get one from the grocery store instead, because we figured it would be cheaper. Then when we went to get one at the store, they were all out! So, no pumpkin carving for us this year, but that's okay. We really don't observe "Halloween" in our family- we just celebrate Fall. So here are our little pumpkins at the patch...

Daddy's School Carnival

The last weekend in October, Miller's school held a carnival as a fund raiser. It was a really awesome carnival, as far as school carnivals go. They had the usual games, a bounce house, concessions, and the girls' favorites: a petting zoo and pony rides. The girls went into the petting zoo two times each, and spent a good 20-30 minutes in each time. They LOVED the bunnies, which I thought was funny because I figured they'd be more fascinated with the larger animals you don't see everyday, such as the llama. They also rode the ponies twice, and this was Addie's first time on a pony, so she was really excited. Eliana just couldn't believe her eyes when she saw the pony with its main and tail spray painted rainbow colors. She kept repeating, "I can't believe there's actually rainbow ponies like My Little Pony!" Of course, we eventually told her that we were pretty sure they painted the pony's hair, but she was still fascinated. Olivia was content to just watch the animals from the outside of the pen, and then opted for sitting in the grass and examining individual blades of grass. Silly girl. It was a really fun day for our family to spend time together, and the Lord blessed us with beautiful weather. Sunny skies, rainbow ponies, nachos, and snow cones... What more could you ask for?