Retrospection

Well, here we are at the end of the year already and I can't believe that we have gone nearly 4 months without posting anything. We sincerely apologize for that. We have been consumed with the kids' new school year, our language studies, trips to the orphanage, and, well, you get the idea.
I will try to catch you all up on the past few months' happenings as briefly as possible.
We are making progress in language school, even though sometimes that progress seems rather small. It seems as though I can hear and understand Chinese far better than I can speak it. (Jaime, on the other hand has the opposite problem.) We have been actively learning the language now for six months and now only have the rest of our lives to master this thing called Mandarin Chinese.
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with another family here who also have 4 children. We then had a great Christmas with some of our other team members.
We have recently been experiencing the season referred to as "winter". Apparently there are places in the world where it actually gets really cold from November to March. Living in South Texas all our lives did not prepare us for the kind of cold we are enduring presently. (And these cold winters will only get worse when we move out NW.)
We have had a wonderful year watching our father do all sorts of miraculous things on our behalf to get us to this place. We are very excited at the new year's arrival and all that it has in store for us. We hope all of you truly enjoyed the holidays this year and are looking forward to a great new year. Don't forget to check out our "flickr" photos!