about time...

Sorry to anyone who keeps up with us for the long interval between posts!

For future reference, you can just request items like posts, pics, or video (family =) and we'll tend to work harder on actually getting it done.

Mom, we actually did try to burn a dvd of Audriana, but technology fails us...

For those of you who are technology literate, and you know how to EASILY take miniDV tapes and create DVDs, we will be much indebted to you for some tips! We've got the firewire port and cable, but the software we have completely failed us! Any recommendations?

We've been especially busy at this time...I'll try to capture it for you in a few words:

Audriana's birthday was great! We were busy while Audriana had her fun (and recovering from colds too), but it was a great time!

Audriana went in for her second round of shots today - the dTap, polio, HepB combo; plus HepA and PCV this time. She wasn't happy by the time the third shot was administered, but she handled it really well - she gave her daddy a high five and we went to Chick-Fil-A to celebrate with a milkshake and to play on the playplace.

Tonight she's at Grammy's and Papaw's while her mother and daddy prepare to leave for a weekend getaway in historic colonial Williamsburg. It's 1:57 a.m. as I write this and I just finished sending data for our required duties for teaching English with NSVAE. It's supposed to rain on us on Saturday, maybe tomorrow too, but we are looking forward to it. We've booked tickets to a AAA Richmond Braves baseball game for Sunday after church.

We need to get pics of Audriana's birthday party and the Williamsburg trip up next!

We're in communication with a school in ChengZhou about a possible job there. It's a 'small' city of 4 million, and they have free language instruction for teachers - so that is a big plus!

We finished a budget for China if anyone is interested, we might throw that up on the blog later - or could e-mail it to anyone as well.

...We're planning to pinch pennies (or fen) a little more this time, but all that means is that we won't be able to take four big vacations a year and instead hope to be able to come back to the states every summer and take a smaller scale vacation during the winter break as well. We just sent off to have more pages added to Jay's passport - turns out he didn't have any blank pages left! China's visas take up a full page to themselves...

In May we're hoping to host a couple of garage sales and try to sell our cars - a '98 Hyundai Elantra and a '95 Chevy Lumina. We found out that the feds should be due to give us $1,700 in tax returns, not counting the economic stimulus package...that's awesome because it pays for a ticket to China! We've already saved over $1,200 for upfront expenses to China...

In other news...Jay made a presentation to the International Student Association on Tuesday about an international student conference coming to our area in May. It was cool to see that some students were actually excited about it! Last year we had just one student go with us on this conference, MOSAIC DC. She is hoping to go again this year and we should have a few more this time as well! We're passing the torch, so to speak, in that we've tried to get some good friends of ours here, Julie and Aaron Clark, to pick up with the international students after we leave. They are also thinking about attending the conference.

Vikki is still keeping busy with scrapbooking, reading novels, volunteering with the food pantry on Wednesdays, teaching classes, and now exercising with a new organization that started in our church - Fit2Serve. She usually does that 2-3 times a week. Audriana still takes up a little of her time too. =)