How was your Christmas? We had a fun time opening presents and spending time with our friends. I was going to post pictures, but we took mostly video (sorry). For those of you interested in how we celebrate Christmas here in China, it’s the same as we would in the States. The girls wake up around 6am and promptly wake Heather and I as we all head out to our living room and open presents. We then spent the next 4 or 5 hours sitting around watching movies and the girls play with their new stuff. We did order Papa John’s pizza as a fun little treat. That night we headed over to another family’s house to have dinner and cake. It was a fun time!
On New Year’s Eve we went on our first family date as a family of 5! We spontaneously decided to head to a neighborhood called Xiao Zhai to go to Pizza Hut (can you see a trend for how our family celebrates important events with pizza?). Afterwards we picked up a couple new movies and went home and had a family movie night (complete with popcorn and M and M’s… it was a great night!) On our way home it was impossible to catch a taxi, so we decided to take the bus home. The bus would be fine, if it wasn’t so packed, but we decided it would be the best way to get home. On our way home though we got into an accident, our bus hit a taxi, luckily it wasn’t going very fast (only a fender bender). But it was enough to send all the passengers crammed in the bus flying (one lady slammed into Heather). We were all fine, minus the scare of it all. Our first family date and car accident all in the same night.
I wanted to end this post with a story that I don’t want to forget. In our last post, we mentioned the story of a girl here who has HIV and how Sydney donated some of her toys to her for Christmas. What was cool was that a week or so before Christmas Heather and Sydney were praying before Sydney went to bed and Sydney took a moment to pray for Lucy (the girl who has HIV). She prayed specifically for her to have friends (because she had none). The next day Sydney and I along with our friends Chris, Joshua and Zachary all headed to a play place here that we call The Castle. Another family we’re friends with also arrived that we weren’t expecting to be there. They had brought their own kids along with some foster kids. And you’ll never guess who was there, Lucy. Sydney ended up spending the morning playing mostly with Lucy and having a blast. It was cool that it was only the night before that she was praying for this little girl to have friends and the next day became an answer to her own prayers.
Well, I hope all of you had a great Christmas and New Year. May 2011 be an amazing year for you and your family!
The petersons
oh goodness...what adventures you have been on. Just reading your post brought back so many memories, I can't believe you were in a bus accident...wow....I saw pictures of your apt on sarah's blog and I wanted to cry...I miss you all so much!
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