Over the past 3 weeks

It’s been a full three weeks since our last post and a lot has happened. So let’s jump in.

One of the bigger things is that our family became a two car family a few weeks ago. Ok, so that’s not entirely true, but we have a stroller that fits two kids and we talk about it like it’s our SUV. In fact, when I go grocery shopping I will push that stroller (without kids in it) so that I can haul our food back home. Yes this is Matt writing. Anyways, we bought a bike (our second car, the stroller being the first) and it’s amazing. It’s red and looks like a grandma’s bike, but it cruises so well. The kids love getting to ride in the kid’s seat on the back and it makes running errands and going to school a lot faster. I’m ashamed it took me so long to buy one (Chris, Kevin and Jake, I will acknowledge here and only here that you guys were right… I’m an ignorant fool for having doubted you guys so long.) I should also mention that we’ve nicknamed our bike “the spirit of Xian”, which I’m very proud of.

We had some friends visit us for a few weeks and one of our friends gave our family a little photo shoot which was a huge blessing. The pictures turned out super well (see the top of our blog for an example) and I will post more of those pics at the bottom of this post.

Also, I (Matt) had an amazing opportunity a week or so ago. We (My brother and I) took our friends who were visiting out to an orphanage for 2 nights. We translated for them and were able to hold and play with the most precious children. Most of children at this orphanage are mentally disabled or physically handicapped and our time with them was incredible. Between making balloon animals (also swords and hats), coloring, teaching English, playing music and dancing with them, I would say that the kids had an incredible time as well.

A few days after that we had another guest -Lily’s foster mom- who showed up one morning wanting to see Lily, but the time was pretty hard. Lily sat in Heather’s lap, clinging to Heather and not wanting to speak to her previous foster mom. Her foster mom didn’t take it well and was emotional throughout her visit. I was super impressed with two things, first, was how well Heather was able to comfort this woman while only being able to use Chinese (Good job baby!). The second was from my precious daughter Sydney, what happened was at one point during the visit, Sydney walked up to Lily’s foster mom and tapped on her knee, she was crying when she did this, so I reacted by telling Sydney to come over to me, it was then that I noticed in her hand she was clutching some toilet paper. She wanted to give it her because she was crying, I was so touched by my daughter’s compassion in that situation. Way to go babies! The woman who actually found Lily (at the train station) was also with her foster mom and it was cool to meet her.

I have more to write, but this is long, much love,
The petersons