shortest day of the year= longest night of the year!

We made it to California happy, healthy and in one piece. Josiah did great on the flight and slept most of the way. The lady sitting next to us didn't even know we had a baby until two hours in the air! It has been a different story since landing. The last two nights we've been up with Josiah from 1:00- 5:00 am. Here's a pic of him with Dad looking perky as a petunia in the middle of the night. I am typing this at 3:35 am, so you can guess how tonight is going (:

Aside from mid- night dance parties and mid night snacks, here is what else we've be up to with the Paine folk in Oceanside.
wrapping all of our online purchases (thanks amazon)

admiring Grandpa's award winning nativity
filling up on cuddles with aunts, uncles, Gma and Gpa
Eating, eating, and eating
And of course, soaking in that California sunshine!

can you guess what this is?

Crawling 101

Santa's Lap

This is our last "Christmas" weekend in Hong Kong, and we have been enjoying lots of fun holiday events as a family and with friends. After an afternoon of delivering cookies to neighbors, I put Josiah down for a much needed nap. I then checked on Santa's hours at the mall and realized he was only going to be there for another hour! So Jason and I scooped Josiah (who had not yet fallen asleep) out of his crib and jetted to Festival Walk. This mall is beautiful and classy at Christmas. Just as we strolled up to Santa's North pole Josiah konked out. We didn't have the heart to wake him, so these are the precious pictures we got. The "elves" enjoyed it so much, they asked if they could print another copy to use for their promotional display.

ups and downs

Now that Josiah is a hefty 16lber (okay, so he is actually a light weight for his age, but still not small load) we are growing weary of carrying him for hours in the bjorn. In fact carrying Josiah in the bjorn was the straw that finally broke Jason's back (another story for another blog~ ask him about his experience with Chinese Medicine). All that to say, Josiah is mostly stroller bound these days. Since the stroller isn't supposed to go on escalators, I've found I'm using a lot of elevators these days. For example just to get from our house to school (just a 25 minute trip) we have to take 7 elevators- that is 14 round trip.
Here's the break down-
2 elevators to get out of our estate
2 up and over the street
2 up and down the train platform
1 into the school.
When we go to church it is 10 elevators, 20 round trip (that's if we don't got to lunch or shopping afterwards). All of this traveling leaves Josiah (and mom) tuckered out!

"Working" From Home . . . .

. . .it sounded like such a an easy idea when the school approached me about writing their summer school curriculum from my home office. Of course at that time Josiah was just a few months old and sleeping half of his life away. How things have changed! Some days I love the creativity and vision of the project I am working on (designing 300 lessons with biblical worldview integration) but other days go more like this:
9:30- Josiah goes down for his nap
9:35- I grab my coffee, turn on the computer
9:40- Ah, I've got to throw the laundry in
9:45- Write the lesson objective
9:50- A friend pops in and we have a chat
10:10- Back at the computer begin research
10:15- Josiah wakes up- already? I manage to nurse him back to sleep
10:30- Research is not going well, so I check my friend's blogs
10:35- I begin to outline the lesson
10:40- Ah, I've got to defrost the chicken for dinner and email our guests
10:45- Josiah is up again, this time for good!
I'd rather play with him anyways! And because every blog needs a photo- here you go!