The one regular weekly activity that we have scheduled for the kids (or rather, just for the older two) at this point is a home school co-op group that we've joined. So on Friday afternoons, while Hudson and Noah are napping, I take Karis and Eli with me to a house (yes, truly a house rather than an apartment!) that is a little off the beaten path and we meet with several other moms and their 4 and 5 year olds to have a two hour period of play time and then a mini-lesson and craft. We've done this the past 4 or 5 weeks and the kids have really enjoyed it! The group is made up of other Westerners, all like-minded, and there are 7 kids total (including my 2). Of the 7 kids, 4 are boys, and would you believe that 3 of those 4 boys are all named Elijah (or go by Eli!)!! As I mentioned, we're all like-minded. . . :)
And we're adding one other unstructured activity to our weekly routine as of this week. We discovered the library at the international school, and we are able to have access to checking out books and movies because of our membership in the home school co-op. We're going to try to go there regularly on Fridays after we finish our school time at home. [I do about an hour and a half of structured home school activity for the older three kids while Noah is taking his morning nap on Mon-Thur., then we do a little bit shorter lesson time on Friday if we've gotten everything done that we're trying to get to. Our school curriculum includes Bible time and verse memorization, work books that come with the curriculum I'm using, Chinese practice, and then reading--both of the curriculum and whatever books each of the 3 kids picks out.] So this week we went to get books and movies at the library, and then even get to play on their playground (which the kids LOVED because it had both a swing set AND monkey bars--talk about a treat!). We met up with our friends the Morris, Sara (mom) and her two girls (Adah and Claire) and even managed to fit all of us (and the books we'd just checked out!) onto the 3 wheeler. We were quite a site! Once again, more cameras were pointed our direction out of the bus windows all along the way home! We even had one man pull over and stop his car on a busy road, then get out and start motioning and yelling at us as we drove past. I kept driving, and just waved and smiled, and my friend Sara (who can actually speak and understand the language) explained to me that he was yelling to ask us to stop so he could get a better picture!
We've also set up regular web cam Skype dat
es with both sets of grandparents 2 different nights during the week. The kids LOVE the time interacting with G-Ma, G-Pa, Nana, and Papa, and both sets even are willing to read to the kids for as long as they can sit still in front of the computer (the kids, not the grandparents, that is!) [see photo]. We're so thankful for the modern technology that lets us feel so close in spite of the miles!
