The Friday before Halloween, I helped at Tessa’s preschool Halloween party. Her teacher loves Halloween so the party was a pretty impressive three hour gig. The kids made blue crusted pizza, cupcakes and cookies. They had a parade and several stations of games and crafts. I helped at the station where they made creative pumpkin faces cutting pictures of eyes, a nose and a mouth out of magazines.
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| Tessa decorating cupcakes at preschool dressed as a ballerina. |
That night Emma and James’ choir performed with the Crossboarder Orchestra of Ireland at the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center. They are both in select choirs that meet every Wednesday an hour before school starts. Several International schools were invited to sing with this visiting orchestra. Our choirs worked hard to prepare and they did a fantastic job. We couldn’t take pictures during the show, but we did during the 20 minute intermission.
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| James and Emma after the concert -- in their tailor made choir outfits. |
Saturday, October 29th our branch had a fun trunk-or-treat party in the afternoon. The weather was perfect. John took the kids around to the different stations, while I worked the cup-cake walk. That night we trick-or-treated with our friends the Sanabrias, another Ford family. They have three kids, including a boy in James’ class. Small world, they lived in our neighborhood back in Canton, MI and were on our same flight moving to Shanghai three months ago. Funny it took moving to China to get to really know them!
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| James and Tessa at the branch Halloween party. |
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| Eliza eating a cupcake at the branch Halloween party. |
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| Emma borrowed a Hostess Ding Dong costume |
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| Oh how I miss peanut butter and chocolate! None of the candy tempted me. |
James said he would rather write a paragraph in my blog than do the dishes so we traded.
James wrote, “Yesterday we had a free Saturday to explore Shanghai. We decided to visit an old water town about one and a half hours away. The town is about 1,700 years old. My dad told us that is the time Moroni lived on the earth. The town is touristy with a bunch of Chinese shops and is called Zhu Jia Jiao. My dad’s favorite part was an old man paddling us in a boat around the place. My mom and Emma went crazy buying jewelry and scarves. We all got an old book to keep a journal in. I got a rubber band gun and we got some chairs for Tessa and Eliza’s room. It was really fun even though bargaining in China is hard. The shops wouldn’t go down on price with some of the things that Eliza wanted. They want us to pay too much. Road trips are fun in our big van because we have lots of room and a DVD player. My mom packed fun snacks and we watched Ramona and Beezus and How to Train Your Dragon. I loved the trip!”
We got home that night just in time for Emma to babysit a family in our branch. This was Emma’s first real babysitting job. They have three young kids. Emma came home happy and said the kids were fantastic. We have entered a new stage of life, where our oldest can babysit and all our kids are in school. It is nice! But it also feels a little sad that our kids are growing up so fast.
