Winter Holiday

 It is officially Winter Holiday! Last Friday was the last day of school and now we are on a 3-week break. It came just in the nick of time! I am feeling so burnt out and am looking forward to doing a bunch of Christmas crafts with the kids. Adrian is pretty sick and miserable, so I am happy I can be with him when he needs me, too. 

Anson is doing writing exercises in class now. His teacher showed me the below writing exercises and I was so proud. He loves language! He can trace his name pretty well and recognizes it when I write it. He is now working on blending letter sounds so that he doesn't read "c-a-t" but now he can read "cat." We are so proud of our little boy! He is starting to learn Chinese too, now that he is in the CAL class (Chinese as Another Language). His Chinese teacher says he is picking it up very quickly. The other day he came to me and said "Mommy I want a ping guo (apple)." I laughed; it was so cute. 

 Christmas is rapidly coming and I am feeling the holiday spirit. Our friends lent us their extra little tree and our landlord brought us some Christmas lights. We didn't have any ornaments, so I strung up a bunch of Anson's work from school and we cut out some felt shapes and paper snowflakes. We made a paper chain, too, and I daresay I think the tree turned out pretty cute. 

 I am glad that at school they celebrate the holidays. Anson made lots of paintings, crafts, and cards in class that are serving as good decorations for our bare, white walls.

We had fun making some felt crafts last Friday evening, too. I dug some cute owl prints out of the trash at school, so we are making some owl decorations for they kids' room.

 Anson and I spent all day Saturday making Bunny Buns (rabbit shaped orange rolls). It was an  epic undertaking. Paul spent 2 hours chasing down all the ingredients (not an easy task in China). The next morning we mixed up the batter. By evening we put 3 bunnies in our "Barbie oven" at a time and made 13 bunnies total. We gave 6 to our best friends and devoured the rest between the 4 of us. They were so adorable and absolutely delicious. I included the recipe below and highly recommend making them! We couldn't afford shortening (It's over $12 for a tiny can here), so we used butter, which I think is why they tasted so amazing. Anson helped me quite a bit, especially in putting the tails, eyes, and noses on and glazing them. Here's our proud little cook.

The last couple days has reminded me how difficult it is to be a stay-at-home Mom. Anson is soooo high maintenance because his mind is so active. If he isn't engrossed in something challenging he gets very mischievous (read, relentlessly teases his brother, plays with electrical sockets, etc). His favorite books right now are No, David and David Gets in Trouble and David Goes to School and It's Christmas, David! We are guessing it's because he relates :) In the event that he is happily occupied he is very well behaved. He is pretty much a model student at school and can have a phenomenal attention span when we are working on a project together. Speaking of good projects, the Friend magazine has a great advent calendar project in the December issue. It's called "The Best Christmas Gifts." You can find it online at http://www.lds.org/friend/2012/12?lang=eng. We started working on one today and had to do a few to catch up. Anson did 5 of the projects and I had a hard time getting him to stop. So if you have kids that like projects, this one is a winner!

This time of year has us pretty homesick for our California and Utah homes and missing all our friends and family.  If you have a digital scan or copy of your Christmas card, send it to us!
Love, The Manns