Our church friends invited us to their house to pick pears and some vegetables after Saturday lunch together. Those were the most delicious (sweet, soft, and juicy) pears that I've eaten. WOW! Don't judge pears by their appearances! We immediately talked about buying a fruit tree for our back yard afterwards.
The tenant in the Plano house moved away this month. I volunteered to clean out the house, calk the tiles in the bathroom, shop for the broken blind, and replace the locks for the doors. It was a learning experience for me. I enjoyed everything except having to work in a house that didn't have any water or electricity. The kids were with me over there for five days. They were amazingly good even we didn't have any toys to play with. They just played with each other in the empty house. They even missed a lunch and several naps. I had to reward them with milk shakes every day on the way home. One day Emily exclaimed in the car "Mommy, we are good kids now - we haven't made each other cry or sad for many many days!!!" I am constantly thankful for the sweet kids God gives me. Just when I was proud of how the kids had turned out, occassionally (especially at church) they would make me embarrassed to claim them as mine. The call for parenting never puts me to relax.
Our friend Kathy invited us to her new house to make dumplings and swim. The kids played together by themselves while the parents made and ate the dumplings. Mike impressed us by his amazing geography knowledge. He is four months younger than Emily. But he can already find any state in the States and any country in the world on the maps! He can sing several countries' national songs too. What a smart kid!
New school year started this week! I don't know any kids who were more excited than Emily and Andy. On the first day of school, both kids got up before I woke up. They put their clothes on, had the breakfast, cleaned their faces and teeth, and got into the car by 7:45am. Andy called in the car, "Mom, I'm all buckled up!" I had to tell him to wait because I hadn't had my breakfast yet and the school starts at 8:30am. They both attend NTCA this year. Both of them have some kids that they knew from their Sunday classes at church. Andy's teacher Mrs. Jennifer is also his Bible class teacher this quarter. So he felt right at home. As the first week went by, he told me three times every day that he loved school. He asked me every day "Are we coming back tomorrow?" That made me a happy mom. I had chances to volunteer at the lunch room so I could see the kids a little bit and have lunches with Emily (Andy eats at his classroom). It was great to see their happy faces. With the kids at school, I finally had some time to do things that I had put off little by little.
As new school year starts, more FriendSpeak readers come back. We had to recruit six or more workers.
Emily had asked for ballet classes for a while. We finally put her in one class.
For David's birthday, we went to Tulsa during the Labor Day weekend. The kids were so excited for Daddy's birthday and for the road trip. They made the "most beautiful birthday cards ever" for Daddy. We had a great time with Dad and Amy's family.
This is the nest that the birds built on our tree. It's amazing to see what they use to build the nest.
Despite of every effort to save the delicous cantelopes, we failed. After the rabbits ate the first four cantlopes, we put the surviving four cantelopes in the onion sacks and hung off the ground. It worked for a while until the rats found them. Each cantelopes had a black whole on the bottom all the way to the center. Besides, the thriving cantlope leaves acted as the home base for millions of the chiggers. I never had a chigger bite until this summer. Now I can tell you all about it. Probably no creature on earth can cause as much torment for its size than the tiny chigger. So next year for its worth, we probably won't grow the cantlopes again ...
