war eagle, hey.

i'm not quite sure why, but the first few pictures i tried to "fix" the massive spot of water on his shirt. then i thought, okay really? how about i stretch myself. how about becoming carefree about what people think of my son's habitual water spitting outing. and everything else for that matter. but one thing at a time, people.

let's be honest. there's a fun fact about being over seas...

nobody, other than the americans, care much about football.

win or lose, it doesn't really matter to a whole lot of people.

that's the awesome[ness] in still sporting around an auburn bandana. nobody cares.

it's just fun and orange.

at least in noah's eyes it is.

war eagle.

quite the duo

aren't they?

scott didn't know i was trying to film him.

and he didn't even care once he saw that i was.

wishing i knew how to make the video shorter,

but i'm thinking that just getting a video on here is doing pretty good.

so you'll just have to see noah getting excited to see his best little friend.

singing forever

i'm learning from my mei mei [little sister].

this girl has some words.

good, life giving words.

you know, there's definitely some perks to living overseas. you get to hear things from people the closest to you that you wouldn't normally hear. just purely out of our circumstances. we talk less. often that means more.

when the words come out of their mouths and into my ears, they immediately get stored in my treasure box inside my heart.

perfect example.

i opened my inbox on monday afternoon and found this at the end of an email from sarah:

"... i love you and today when i was driving i pictured us singing songs to Him. it was really beautiful. i got kinda sad because i was like, G0D! when is that ever going to be real. you know what He said?..

y'all will get to sing to me together forever one day."

i get to pull this out of my treasure box in heaven. and it'll be real.

meet MAX

This is our teacher, two days out of the week.

We have a lot of fun with him. He's very animated and passionate. He also shames us a little when we get an answer wrong. But we love him.

He told us he had a surprise for our class today. I thought it was going to be something sweet. [I think that's a little of what China does to you... makes you daydream about chocolate.] But no, it was Chinese tongue twisters.

So here he is... MAX.

amen and amen.

i woke up to this awesome truth a friend wrote me this morning. she's one who knows what it's like to be in a different country than her family. she knows that ache in the distance.

she also knows the beauty in it.

"being separated from family is something that you never get used to, but you learn to live with it. that is one thing about being overseas that people don't really understand. they think that we're okay with being separated and that the Lord just made us differently.

but we know that's not really the case.

it's okay for it to be hard, for it to not feel so much like home. and that's really the bottom line.

the beauty of global living and a global perspective is that you understand first-hand that this world is not our home. the moment that He marked us with a seal of ownership is the moment that we became at odds with the world.

called to be in it, but not of it.

our home is with Him. and i always take comfort in that fact. in my heart i am at home with Him. and i go there any time i need that homey goodness to surround me. may sound childish, but hey we're called to child-like faith right?"