Friends

We said good-bye to dear friends on Sunday night, friends that have been with us here in Shanghai since we first arrived. We met the Allens at church literally the first weeks we were here in China, all a little shell shocked together. We've shared so many of our China experiences with the Allen family, among them men's bike rides, women's Bible study, family small group, travel, school sports, mission trips, kids' sleepovers, and even the adoption of their 5th child. We had a wonderful, emotional prayer time with all the kids, and then posed for this photo right after... thus the red noses. We didn't want to say good-bye, so we are planning already for a reunion in Michigan next summer. Maybe our senior boys will even end up at the same college!
No one can replace Sue and Rich, Stacia, Lucas, Lance, Elise and Wade for us.

We are grateful, however, for the open and friendly community of expats we live in here. New friends arrive in Shanghai, ready to plug into relationships. God has even given me a new upstairs neighbor with a daughter Gwen's age. We walk to school together, run up and down the stairs between our apartments... so good. Another new friend came home with me after school assembly yesterday and we promptly had a 90 minute conversation about life issues, as if we had known each other for years.

It is amazing to me how God has provided me with kindred spirits at different times in my life, often in unexpected places. Even sleeping on the floor in a room in the girls' dorm at Grove City College when I visited Scott for the weekend, twenty something years ago... dear Rebecca, I am so glad we found each other!

Friends... what a precious gift. Godspeed, Rich and Sue! You are loved, from the other side of the world.

Friendship

Caroline and Madelyn~ these two have been holding hands literally from the first day they met, three years ago this summer, when Caroline's family was new in Shanghai and our two families walked to dinner together after church. Today we said good-bye to Caroline. One of the down sides of this expat life, having dear, dear friends leave every year. Seems somehow the hardest on pre-teen girls. The blessing is that Caroline's family is moving to a place where we will easily be able to see her again, and the girls have already made plans for this summer.
The flip side of this difficulty of having friends leave is that we have friends in so many places now! :-) I had this discussion with some good friends yesterday morning over coffee, ladies I have shared Bible study with over the past several years. We all agree it is so hard to say good-bye, but we definitely feel thankful for the time we've had together, and are richer for knowing one another.
So much fun to photograph these two earlier in the week!
They chose their poses...
The jumping ones were so much fun!
The Liptaks love you, Caroline... especially Madelyn.

Good Clean Fun

Mud seems to have ageless appeal!
The culmination of a fun Saturday afternoon together for Madelyn and Caroline looked like this! I wasn't completely pleased with the aftermath of this activity, but the pictures are fun. :-)

Thankful For Friends

AAs a bit of a non-conventional Thanksgiving piece, I thought I'd post this photo from a 1920's gala we attended with a group of our friends last weekend. Such a fun evening, especially seeing everyone's period dress.

We have so many things to thank God for. Friends He has brought us to at many different points in our lives, including here in Shanghai, are high on the list!

One Last Vietnam Post

So much for all the history in Ho Chi Mihn... we left that behind and made our way via a small prop plane to Phu Quoc island, on the west side of Vietnam. We had a couple of fun days there together, at a tiny little hide-a-way called Cassia Cottages. It was the perfect place for our group to play together.

Whiffle ball on the beach with Daddy... check out Gwen's stance!
Four Liptaks on a team for homerun derby... looks like three of them weren't talking about who should catch that hit!
Lots of football played with the dads and guys
Caleb running Jason and Gwen down the beach to get them out of the way of the football game.
The whole football crew!
A little gymnastics...
Look at this crew of our guys racing into the surf after Seth and Caleb's baptism. Love it!
Seth with two of his pals, Jack and Lance
Lovely pool water hair styles on Madelyn and Elise
Part of our crew on a motorbike outing that ended up in a fishing port of a little town.
The main path through Cassia Cottages
Some of the ladies posing at a nice dinner out at a neighboring resort.
Me and my girl!

Whirlwind of Fun

We had such a fun couple of days with the China sisters last weekend. Our girls were busy, busy!
It was neat to see the girls all relating to one another so quickly. I know kids of this age generally do feel comfortable with age mates easily, but I have to believe that these girls have a special bond.
We played at the beach... building a dam, swimming, hunting for shells and lake glass, and sculpting mermaid tails in the sand.
Kate escapes from the bonds of her mermaid tail!
Alia models her tail.

Kimberly and Gwen conversing on the break wall.

Jumping on the bed in the hotel where our friends were staying was a popular activity!

Kate's mom had these initial shirts made for all the girls, including the big sisters. Here are Alia and Gwen with their big sisters, Kela and Madelyn.
Alia and Gwen both have March birthdays, and had the same Chinese surname when they joined our familes. Being the same age, they would have been in the same play and sleeping rooms at their orphanage. They clearly knew each other and enjoyed interacting together in the days we spent together while their adoptions were processing. Alia is a good 3-4 inches taller than Gwen, but Gwen can proudly claim being older by a couple of weeks. :-)
Dinner was a casual one, at Five Guys for yummy burgers. We also had some coloring time so the moms and Dean could chat. :-) Here is our whole crew, minus my girls. I guess they were still coloring!

Last stop on our full day of playing was a visit to a playground that squeezed out the last bit of energy our girls had. At one point they ran around together in a little pack, saying it was time for a "China sisters' meeting". Apparently that meant the other three girls would run after the one in the lead to the leader's chosen destination.

Madelyn and Kate take a ride together.
Kimberly on the zip line.
Gwen gets a big push from Dean, Alia's dad.
It was a wonderful reunion. People have related the bond of families that adopted together as being like all being in the delivery room together for the birth of your children. A group birth experience sounds a little funky, but our four families were all in the same room at a civil affairs office in the Sichuan province when we met our daughters for the first time four and a half years ago, and that did create a special tie for all of us. The girls all knew each other before we had even seen their faces!

Thanks, everyone, for making the effort to gather the Sichuan girls, China sisters, this summer. Let's do it again. :-)

School & Sushi

I met a new friend today, someone another friend gave my name to as a home schooling contact. We spent a wonderful couple of hours together, chatting about parenting, schooling, and God. She took me to a Japanese restaurant for lunch, which was delicious! The sushi was oh-so-yummy. We talked more, about our backgrounds, adoption, food, and more about home schooling. What fun a new friend is!

I found that talking about home schooling with this younger mom who is just now looking at it as a possibility reminded me of all the things I loved about home schooling in the early years. I've relived a lot of that with my sister, too, as this was her first year teaching her son. It was different discussing it with a brand new friend, though, and also different to be looking back on home schooling as a past part of my life. I wondered aloud if I will ever do it again. It's out there as a possibility, of course. Gwen has lots of years ahead of her!

But for now, Gwen will have her kindergarten graduation ceremony at Montessori on Friday morning, and next year go to Concordia for first grade. I feel good about these things.

And I definitely want to learn to make sushi. I'm looking at websites now...

Slugs

There are five tenth grade boys hanging out with the PS3 and 2K10 (a basketball Playstation game, for the uninitiated). They have been in roughly the same position for the last five hours. Madelyn and I have taken food in to them at various points, apparently aiding their long period of relative inactivity. But they haven't been quiet. Oh no, quite the contrary. They're very much into their game, alternately shouting and jeering at one another's virtual basketball skills.

Finals ended today. Christmas vacation starts tomorrow. I guess I'll allow my son and his friends this indulgence for once.

Late Night Fun

Caleb has just showed me a video he and his friend Ben made last night, I think after the rest of the house was sleeping. Along with a couple of laughing fifteen year old boys with a camera, it involved a pyramid of paper cups filled with water, stacked on the bathroom counter. There were a couple of air soft (plastic pellet) guns. How many holes can we shoot into the cups? Can I drain the water out of my stack of cups before you drain yours? How fast can we destroy the cups in the pyramid by shooting holes in them and have water spurt out all over the bathroom?

At the end, after a number of attempts that just dented it, they shot a hole into a aerosol can of Axe body spray. If you have spent any time near a teenage boy in the last year, you know what Axe smells like. Apparently Axe was wafting all over... Scott warned me this morning to stay away from the boys' bathroom.

Caleb declared last night's activities to have been a lot more fun than watching a movie. Is there more of this in our future?

I may stay out of that bathroom permanently.

Flying Through The Trees!

We had a very fun couple of hours with our friends the Bob and Beth and their children one weekend afternoon in July. Bob was in the process of building a treehouse/zipline platform in the woods on their property, and the kids took full advantage of the zipline. I'll admit to even trying it myself! I love how the background is blurred in the picture of Madelyn below... it shows how fast she was flying!

These pictures are compliments of Seth. Nice camera work, man!

Renee joined Beth and I that same afternoon for a bit of a visit. It was such a treat to be with these two friends. I'm sad that we didn't get in more friend visits this summer... it's amazing how the time flies. Those of you that I didn't get to spend any face-to-face time with, please know that I wish I could have!

Dress-Up Day

A couple of photos from the girls' dress-up day last week with their friends. So fun to be fancy!

Saying Good-Byes Again

We're getting really excited to get on the plane for the US tomorrow afternoon. It's that time of year when the increased humidity and the pollution it holds in has us longing for blue skys and clean air. There's a new nephew in the US that we're so anxious to meet, and another nephew that was just a newborn when we visitied at Christmas who is now a little guy with a huge smile that we can't wait to see in person again. There are cousins to play with and face to face conversations to enjoy with some of the people we love most in the world. There is a camp to attend and a canoeing adventure to take and a garage to paint and road trips and shopping trips and relaxing and fun. Can't wait, can't wait!

However, leaving Shanghai for the summer is bittersweet because there are friends whom we love who will not be here when we return in August. Their time in Shanghai has ended, and so the past few weeks we've been trying to squeeze in lots of time with these families. At one good-bye party we had a couple of weeks ago for two families in our small group, Gwen realized part way through the evening that her friends Ariana and Sarah wouldn't be back next year, and she bawled and bawled. Sarah's mom gathered all the little girls together and told them the wonderful news that although they are leaving, because we all love Jesus we'll be together forever in heaven.

This saying good-bye thing is tough... but now that I'm on the second summer of seeing dear friends leave not to return in the fall, and having moved away from friends several other times in our lives, I have to say I'm not sorry. Not sorry that we've had the opportunity to meet people from many different places. Not sorry that our lives have been enriched by knowing these friends, walking to dinner with them on Sundays after church, sharing great conversations and prayers together on Saturday nights, discussing parenting issues together. The kids have had sleep-overs and played basketball and skateboarded and painted fingernails and jumped on the trampoline and strung beads and watched movies and texted each other and gone to school together and so much more. I'm not sorry that we've had these relatively short relationships where we live close to one another. I know long distance relationships sometimes can't keep going. But some can. And in the end, we who profess Christ as our Savior will share eternity together, and it doesn't get much better than that.


Good-bye, Friends. We love you!