4 Month Milestone

We admit that being new parents we are super excited by every small thing our little girl does. So, to share this excitement, here's another video. This was taken this morning. She is 4 months old today! As you will see and hear, we are quite excited! Click here to see our newest video of our little girl.

New Parents

As we are learning so many new things about our little girl we are often amazed at what she can do. Click here to see some of her first giggles. On some of our more difficult days we can just watch this and it makes us smile.

West Coast meets the Far East

This is some graffiti art that we found near our school. For those of you who can read the Chinese, please forgive us if it says anything inappropriate. We cut out the bad stuff in English. :)

This is just another influence from the U.S. that we find in our city. Being that our city is considered smaller we are amazed at how Western influences have made it this far out in China. Other things we see are a lot of Western products like Oreo cookies, Lay's potato chips, Johnson & Johnson baby products and, of course, Coca-Cola. Recently the second Dairy Queen and Pizza Hut opened in our city. (We still have no McDonald's.) We also see Western influences in clothing and lifestyle. Sadly, some of our bad habits from the West are making it here to China, like smoking and promiscuity. Something we were surprised by is that now more Chinese are putting their babies to sleep in cribs. This is very recent. The tradition is to have the baby sleep in the bed with the parents.

So, should you like to come to China and visit us, you might be surprised by what familiar things you find!

3 Months Old!

Our little girl is three months old today. It's hard to believe that she has been in our lives only this short time. We've learned a lot from her and about her. The biggest lesson is that we can see how great a parent's love is for their child. We realize how great a sacrifice the Father made for all of us by sending His Son to die for us.

Smiling for the camera!

I love it when she wakes up happy like this.


Play time!

Her new crib! And she's exactly three months old here!

Dressed by Dad

One day while Annie was out at the supermarket our little girl had a huge diaper blow-out. So, Dad was in charge of the clean-up. Afterward this is the outfit he put her in. When Annie asked, "Did you just put her in the first things you grabbed?" Brian answered confidently, "Yes. Yes I did."

Look closely and you'll see the socks for mittens. That was Annie's favorite part. :)

Fun faces from our little girl

She is so expressive and makes us laugh often...

Content. She must have just finished eating.

Happy morning awake time!


I think we caught her by surprise here.

Life in China Means...

Sometimes you can't access the internet and/or websites like you'd want to. Wonder why we haven't updated our personal webpage lately? Currently we are unable to access our webpage and our facebook pages. Yes, this is just one of the adventures of living abroad.

After four weeks back in China we are finally feeling like we've settled in to life again. Brian is teaching freshman and sophomore oral English classes while Annie spends her time with the cutest girl in China. :) We have reconnected with friends, both Chinese and other foreigners. We've also been able to meet two other baby girls in our foreign community who were born within a month of ours. Our apartment is set up nicely now and is feeling like a home. We are grateful for our new apartment with the extra space, especially in the kitchen.

Thank you for all the ways you've supported us with your thoughts and kind notes. We're happy to report that six of our former students worked this summer with a program for orphan children. A student sent us a message today saying that one of these children was just adopted by an American family. Our little girl is doing very well. She is healthy and continues to both amaze and challenge us in many ways. Brian is greatly enjoying meeting his new students who come from many different places in China.

Below is a photo of the freshman students at our university doing their military training, a requirement for all university freshmen. When training, the students are excused from all their classes, hence Brian only teaching two classes per week so far. Starting November 1 he will be teaching seven classes per week.