Their first home school, visitors and gifts....

The morning started with my repentance of my American attitude, and praise God for the filling of His Spirit and those new mercies!  Home school started with the girls learning the words "yesterday, today and tomorrow" as I prepared to teach them the wonderful world of English verbs that change for everything (Chinese verbs are beautifully simple and never change from different tenses or nouns.)  The first sentence I wrote was "Yesterday was a bad day"...."Today is a new day!"  We were off to a good start.  The girls are bright, disciplined and capable students, and I had fun teaching them.  We even looked at a manners book and practiced meeting new people, because they will certainly be doing tons of that!  I encountered the first of difficulties when Maggie just didn't want to do something I asked her to do, while Ginger took off with the task.  It had been a long morning, so I pushed her to do it (so we end on a positive, obedient note) and went downstairs and introduced them to Air Hockey!
They fell asleep right after that, and 3 hours later, they are still out cold.  Dear friends were coming to deliver two gifts, and unfortunately, I didn't get them wakened as early as I could have, so they were still a little out of it when they arrived.  Ginger jumped to the challenge, but Maggie dashed up the stairs running away.  Yes, understandable in her circumstances, but not acceptable behavior, so I gently went up to escort her down and get them to interact a little with Marlene, my dear, dear friend who has sacrified to buy them "Mei Mei" dolls (mei mei means "little sister" in Chinese and these are precious dolls that say 25 phrases first in Chinese then in English.)  Well, poor Maggie just sat there like a silent bump on a log, even though Lissa Hopwood, who has lived in China for 5 years, was speaking very sweet Mandarin to them, explaining how she felt when she first moved to China.  My friends were very gracious and understanding, while I searched for wisdom in the balance of giving her understanding on the one hand and correction for her rude behavior on the other.  I'm truly trying to not fall off either side!  They also got very cool Bible story books in English and Chinese, New and Old Testament.  It was very cool to see them playing with Ryan when he got home from work, having the doll talk and reading the book that shows the phrases, teaching each other the pronunciation.  They also read 3 stories together.  They definitely love their brothers and miss Jenna.  Hmmm....what to do with Maggie.  Tony and I have started getting up and having some good quiet time together and pray to start off our mornings.  Maggie was definitely a part of our petitions to our Father!