Making Cookies and Grandpa's Birthday

The "Girls" making cookies....cousins Brit and Lauren (twins)

Grandpa turns 78! We celebrated my dad's birthday in Dallas, TX where some of my family came out to celebrate my sister's surprise 50th birthday! We all had such a great time and so many laughs! We have so many inside jokes in my family, that we laugh for hours about stuff nobody would ever get. My nieces (the twins above) are now 20 years old and our girls just loved hanging out with their "big cousins". We shopped, went to their church, and just loved hanging out together....we can't wait to see you guys soon!

China Tree Lunch!

Some of our kids from China Tree School and Ming (teacher). We had a fun lunch at Classic Gourmet for our last day of the semester, we had over 70 people attend!! Thanks to all our families and for your dedication to your kids!! Great job kids and you deserve a huge "round of applause"!!

Our friend who just came home from China with now her 4th child (and she is a single mom)

Some of our dedicated teachers, who are awesome!!

Well, we are finished with our first semester at China Tree School. Dan and I feel like things went well especially with the classes for the 5+ year olds, but we struggled abit with the "little ones". I know we worried and struggled over this class, but just couldn't get this little ones class to "click"! We know the issues were varied but found out this the most difficult class to teach.
Seems simple enough, teach a little language, learn some Chinese games, sing some songs, but the "vibe" of the class comes from the teachers. We have found out how difficult it is to find preschool teachers who teach Chinese language. If you talk to the Chinese people they don't understand how a class doesn't involve, for use of a better term, "strict learning". I guess in some ways it is really against their grain. We have had to really work with our other teachers to get them to "lighten up" and just look at learning Chinese as fun! In talking with all our teachers they have never experienced the concept of "learning is fun" as they have gone through school!! We are going to make some changes in the school for January, and will probably discontinue the little ones class for awhile until we can correct these issues. I wrote some thoughts in our newsletter and feel so passionate about these kids learning and embracing this wonderful language! We will move into our next semester in early January and just thought I would share our newsletter with you, if you'd like to take a look...just go to:
www.chinatree.org ....We are very excited to start a new China Tree school in Gwinnett in January and we are also getting ready to open another one in Nashville, TN in the fall! Now those are some southern talkin Chinese folks!! All the China Tree classes will begin at ages 5+ and we will no longer offer classes for the little ones until they reach age 5. We are excited to help more kids around the Atlanta area and have just received our 501C3 (non-profit status).

We Still Feel Like We are on Vacation!

Grace has her dad's sense of humor and always tries to make us laugh...seems like lately we all find humor in the smallest things, but sure starts the day off on the right foot when everyone "gets it"!! Grace thought pulling her hat down low would keep her brain warm so she would learn so much more today! Mimi agrees!!
I can't image getting serious about school for the next few weeks...we are in a vacation mode and will probably stay in this gear until after Christmas...sounds good to Dan and I!