We are out of here!!!!

Well, we have said goodbye to our Chinese students and I am almost done packing and we are almost ready for vacation mode. Kevin will be home from work in about 15 minutes and we will finalize our packing. We will wake early in the morning and head to LAX to catch our 10:51am flight to Maui!!!! Oh sheer joy I feel knowing tomorrow about this time I will be on a beach in Maui relaxing-- PURE JOY!!!!

I will be blogging while on vacation so you can stop in and check out our activities. After the Chinese students and all the other crazy stuff we have been doing, I would guess that our first number of days will not be very eventful but I will still post to catch you up on our festivities.

So, Aloha to all and next time I will post I will be in MAUI!!!!!

By the way, here are a few cute pictures of Mia and Kevin a few days ago. We had to meet him to give him something he needed and Mia was so excited I had to take a picture. Anyway enjoy!!!

Baseball Games and The Beach

We have just been going nonstop. Sunday after church we went to the beach for the day and night and had a great big fire. The girls loved swimming in the ocean and just had a ball. I have pictures of this but they are on my other camera so I will post later. Last Thursday night we went to a Quakes (the farm team for the Angels) game and it was so much fun. The girls had never seen a baseball game and really enjoyed it. The best part is that if the Quakes win the game, they have a huge fireworks show. They just loved the whole experience. Yilia said, "I didn't understand the rules of the game but I loved the atmosphere."

The girls got to test their throwing arm to see how fast they could pitch. They were good sports and played along-- they actually did pretty well!!!

The girls leave Wednesday morning so we have had this fun "surprise"planned for them since the beginning. They have known there is going to be a surprise but had no idea what. All us adults got babysitters and took one of Brian and Heather's limos and picked the girls up from the church (after school was over for the day) and took them down to the beach and had dinner on the end of the pier. When they walked out they were just amazed. They had seen limos but had never been in one and were sooooooooo excited. We had a nice dinner and we did a bit of shopping after dinner and then we went home. It was a great surprise-- one I am sure they will not forget.

Happy 8th Birthday Owen!!!

Last night we had a birthday party for Owen. We had many friend and family members come over and we had a great time!!!

Owen loved all his awesome gifts!! He got lots of NERF gun gifts and the skateboard that he has wanted for a long time. He also finally got a Nintendo DS lite which he has wanted for years. We are pretty much a non video game family with the exception that Ethan has a DS and can play it once in a while. Owen has always wanted a DS and we have been hesitant-- we just do not like video games and the wasted lazy time it takes to play them. Anyway, the plane ride to and from Hawaii on Thursday helped make the decision to actually buy one for Owen. So grandma and papa Owen decided to buy a Nintendo DS (the little hand held one) for Owen for his birthday-- thanks :)

Owen also got a BMX race bike. Kevin use to race when he was a kid in Canada and he was very good. Kevin wanted to boys to also race so we got both the boys race BMX bikes for their birthdays-- don't tell Ethan-- his birthday is in August :)

Lots of family and friends came to the party--including grandma and papa Bock, Laila and the kids, Brad and the kids, grandma and papa Owen, Cassie, Tenderly and kids, Joanne and kids, all our great camping friends, all the Chinese girls, Kevin's motor work pal Steve and his family plus more. It was a great party and Owen loved being the center of attention!!

A Few Notes

I wanted to mention I was a bit confused between Rick Warren - the author of The Purpose Driven Life and Greg Laurie-- his church runs the Harvest Crusades. Sorry about the inaccurate information.

Two things:

1. One thing is my blogger friend Dawn will be getting her beautiful daughter Lucy in Chungsha Hunan-- the same city and the exact same room we got Mia in. Please keep this dear family in your prayers and pray for Lucy that the transition will go smooth. She is a precious little girl and I am thrilled beyond belief that will soon be with her forever family!!!

2. As many of you know from reading the papers or seeing it on the news, Pastor Greg Laurie's son was killed in a car accident on a local freeway here in Southern California yesterday. His son was married with a 3 year old daughter and his wife is expecting their second child in November. He was the art director at their church Harvest in Riverside. Please pray for this family and the heartache they are going through.

We are having a great time with the students and have a fun filled weekend planned. I will post pictures soon.

Christy :)

Two American Favorites!!!

** By the way I am attempting to use Flicker and some third party applications to post pictures-- let me know if you cant see the two collages. I am having a few issues with it so if you have any great suggestions on how this program is supposed to make posting easier-- let me know because as of now it is not even close to being easier-- much more difficult--uggg!! Thanks :)

My creation, originally uploaded by kcbock.

We hit two American favorites were hit tonight. First we had In & Out Burger for dinner and then headed to Bass Pro Shop to look around. The girls had such a good time and were very impressed by the hamburgers, fries and Shakes but were even more impressed by the enormity of Bass Pro. If you have not been to Bass Pro, it really is an amazing place!!!

Great picture of all the girls with their In & Out hats on. The collage cut the ends of the photo off so I wanted to re post the cute picture (still trying to get the bugs worked out of the flicker thing).

The collage cut this picture off as well and I thought it was a really cute picture of the girls in front of Bass Pro.

The Bear is about to attack!!!

We are still having a great time with the girls!! We have a baseball game tomorrow night so we are looking forward to that. The girls learned to sing "Take me out to the ball game" song today at school so they are eager to sing it tomorrow night!!! I will post pictures soon :)

More Parties!!!

Yesterday after church we went to a goodbye party to Heather's sister Holland who is heading back to Tennessee. Our girls just had such a good time at the party and as you can see from the pictures, they loved the trampoline.

The girls just loved jumping and some of them actually went swimming.

Way too much fun!!

Some more gratuitous Mia pictures :)

So cute!!!!

Mia and her doll-- a little freaky with the naked barbie doll

Daisey ( our girl) and Anna

Just too pretty!!!

Then the Karaoke machine came out and the girls went crazy!!!!

Emily and Ethan singing High School Musical

Ben, Ethan and Ethan singing like pros

My mom and Yilia (our girl)

My dad talking to the men

Medieval Times!!

By the way, we are so busy that I have not had even a minute to check my fellow bloggers blogs-- please forgive me for being a bad blogger friend but we are just running around with our heads cut off :)

What an unbelievably fun night we had last night at Medieval Times. It was just a blast and out Chinese Students just loved it!!! We went with our friends that are also hosting students-- Brian and Heather and Dave and Kimberly. All of our students could not stop talking about the whole event. They said they have never seen anything like that before-- horses, jousting, tournaments, eating with our hands and so on. Here are some pictures of the great time!!!

Yilia, Daisey and the boys.

Yilia, Daisey and the rest of the clan-- minus me.

Oh-- there I am!!

The girls just love Mia-- It is very cute!!

Abe, Brian, Kevin and Dave-- the big kids-- really they are just like big kids-- they crack us up!!

Here are all our three families students-- Daisey (ours), Annette (Dave and Kimberly's), Yilia (ours), Anna (Dave and Kimberly's), Amy and April (both Brian and Heathers)

Some goofy medieval kids

The girls with the master of ceremony-- they loved him!!

Some gratuitous Mia pictures

The master of ceremony showing the kids his sword.

And telling stories

The girl in the middle is Holland who is Heather's little sister (half) out from Tennessee. The Chinese girls were very interested in Holland and wanted pictures with her. Holland is the same age (actually a little younger) than the students.

The kids loved eating with their hands. The food was actually really good. We had Dragon soup (vegy), dragon meat (baked chicken), dragon toe nails (spare ribs), another dragon something which was potatoes and finally dragon tails which was an apple tart for dessert.

Emily and the girls.

Part of the show. It was really cool. They did horse tricks and it was like the horses and people were performing for the king and queen who sat right next to us but there was an underlying story of the kings son being kidnapped and then they had to fight to get him back and so on.

Kidnapping the prince.

This was the red knight who represented the area we sat and he actually won the whole tournament.

This is the prince and princess and the girls thought the prince was very handsome.

Anyway, we had a blast. We just got home from church (about 1 hour ago) and we are now off to a party at Brian and Heather's. I will make sure to take some pictures of that event as well. Have a great rest of your weekend.