Chinable life, chinable food, chinable friends :)

We had a neat missionary event this week. Two of Dallin's coworkers flew out to Utah this week for some training/syncing up on managing and Sid was able to take them to temple square and the Christus. Oh, made me wanna cry seeing the pictures he posted of these two women at the Christus and his description of finally for the first time being able to talk to them about our beliefs. It gave me an excitement about the coming forth of the gospel to the wonderful people that we meet here! One of the families we have met here in our building complex are basically golden investigators. They are the most incredible family! I wish so much I could share what I believe with them. Maybe someday, if/when they come to America to visit! Dal and I are convinced it is no coincidence we met them. She already feels like a big sister/friend. 

So for this week:

Sunday 5/26: We taught 6 rather than our 2 in primary class. It was a blast. I love being in Primary! We also had an amazing dinner, Ginger chicken sliders with cilantro slaw (except Dal grabbed mini celery that looked... kinda... like cilantro so we threw that in instead.) It was AMAZing. It was also my breakthrough for buying meat at our fresh market. Not sick yet. :) I think it is actually safer than buying it at the store...maybe. I don't know. Pray, eat, and don't think to hard about it right.

The dinner that made my husband love me again (other than his birthday dinner with Alex's out-this-world-potatoes :) I think those still win). Dallin ate 5 of these little sliders for dinner! That is a lot for my cute husband!

Cutest boys

My baby girl is 8 months!

Saturday 5/25:We went wild. We went to the morning market, dropped off the groceries. Went to Uniqlo for some Dallin birthday shopping! One of the shirts he got is featured in the picture with toad on sunday. Love it. Then we went to the Flower market and figured out how to walk to our fav. dumpling house from there (trying to prep for when ash is here so we don't have to get lost/wander). Then we stopped at the grocery store on the way home. After getting ourselves some rest we headed down stairs to make/eat dumplings with our fav. Chinese family! It was a tasty dinner. I love Chinese style of eating. it is so healthy. They basically follow the word of wisdom to the T... except the tea of course...and a few other unhealthy habits.

Friday 5/24: While Dal was at work Mitch did his potty work and was washing his hands when suddenly he had been washing them for a while. This happens sometimes, he will decide to stick his head in the sink and make handsome hair. But this time he had really been there for a while. Next I hear some 'Oh no's' coming from the bathroom and I look up and he is trailing blood through the house. Someone had decided he needed to shave. (That is what I get for buying the foaming soap.) Mitch thinks it is shaving cream, and when Dal left out his razor that morning he got a oh-so-brillant idea. He had cut his finger pretty good. And has been loving his Macqueen 'stickers' on his finger ever since! Oh we also went to snack street that night so that I could find it when ash is here. That is where they sell the scorpions and other yucky treats on sticks.:) PIC- me standing with Jules in front of it.

Scorpions and star fish sold on a stick... nom nom

Thursday 5/23: Baby group was supposed to be at our house but ended up being just me and Julia... or really just Julia and her son while I took care of my cute needy kids :). Oh and Mitch tried to attack her son. He was so excited when I told him friends were coming over and when Dylan got here, he tried to play with him. Dylan is 1 and Mitch is a little too physical to play with kids that young... you know. it was a disappointing day for him. I had to send him to the other room to watch Muppets so that Dylan could survive the play date. Luckily that night we went out to play with Mitch's ball and we found two American boys that are here living with their grandparents for the summer! Yeah! They are so cute with Mitch! We found them again on Friday and played with them at the park for a few min. It is obvious Mitch feels much more comfortable with these boys. It was a tender mercy.

Wednesday 5/22: I scored these awesome dishes at the morning market! All of these for $8 USD! Mitch helped give Jules a bath, he loves being my helper! And Jules got to eat a banana by herself out of her little munchkin toy thing. She is getting really hard to feed. She is little miss Independent, I wanna do it myself. After a bite or two she throws a bit of a fit if I don't A. give her something on her tray that she can pick up herself or B. let her hold the spoon with me as I feed her. (Mitch loves us to feed him, especially now that he is potty trained. I think it is where he tries to make up for the attention he used to get when we changed his diaper.) She is also getting into the crawling position! Oh she is growing up too fast!

Such a lounge eater :)

Tuesday 5/21: We went to eat with our friends and then over to listen to Elder Anderson... YEAH Elder Anderson of the 12 apostles randomly says he is stopping by and will address us. OKay! So we went. I went expecting to hear a conference prep kinda talk. What we got were a lot of stories about living abroad. It was very interesting, but not what we had expected. The kids were a little on the squirmy side that night too. Made it a little hard to be as concentrated as we would have liked to have been. Pretty awesome anyway. 

Dinner before elder Anderson's talk with some of our fav. little friends. Reece and her mom Jessica on the right. Jules in the middle. Dylan and his mom Julia on the Left. We love these guys and are so sad to see the Carters (Jess, Reece, and Rod) heading home for good this week.

Monday 5/20: I think this is the day I gave Mitch another haircut. Now he keeps asking for haircuts bc he knows it means he gets TV time. :) His hair looks a little better than the last cut (which dal informed me looked like dumb and dumber). 

I know the lord lives and he loves us. I have been writing down tender mercies this week. One for each day... well trying. And when you are looking it is hard not to find them everywhere. One of my tender mercies this week has been realizing how peaceful and at home I feel here. In China? Where I don't speak the language, I hardly see a white person on a daily basis that is not part of my own family, and everything is so different? I keep thinking, this is wrong. But I know that it is heavenly father helping me to feel so peaceful, because this is where I am supposed to be right now. I am so grateful for the knowledge of the gospel and being here in China continues to strengthen that knowledge and treasure the freedom I have to have this gospel.