We started the night off with shooting off fireworks. The kids were very excited and we heard a lot of “Oooohs” and “Ahhhhs” from them.
We can’t have fireworks without sparklers! Debbie (left) and Ellie (right) playing with their sparklers.

After the fireworks were over the older children came to Michelle and my(Ben) house to watch movies and play until the New Year came. We thought about having our five younger kindergarten aged boys stay up too, but they seemed pretty tired after the first movie so they went to bed.
The children love eating sunflower seeds and peanuts, so we laid out some sponges and let them kick back and enjoy a movie. While some of the boys wore costumes that we have collected over the years for our 3 sons; our girls put on some of Michelle’s hats, dresses and fake jewelery.

Last year we had a paper football tournament that the kids really enjoyed; so we decided to have another one this year. In the above picture Jaxin (our eldest son and on the left) in the second round of the tournament played against Sarah (right) and won his way to the 1st/2nd place final. Sarah was moved to the 3rd/4th place bracket.
For the 1st place prize Jaxin (left) and Gabe (right) went head to head with Gabe winning 5-4.
(left to right)Gabe beat Jaxin for 1st place, Hawk (our housemothers son)joined us for the party and won 3rd place against Sarah. Each child won a small prize.

The later the night got, the more the children were wondering how late we were going to allow them to stay up. We told our translator to tell them they could stay up until midnight. After he told them all the children yelled with such excitement we figured maybe something was misunderstood. When we asked what was said, he told us that he told them they could all stay the night. With such excitement we just went with it. One thing can be said for sure is that we all slept quiet warm and snug with over 21 people in our livingroom:)

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Our Christmas morning we started off with welcoming in some brothers and sisters that preformed several dances and songs.

The rest of the day we prepared for the night activities.
Michelle fixing Wendy’s hair.

Unfortunately we were a little busy to get too many pictures of behind the scenes stuff that went on. For instance, all of our housemothers, even the ones who had the day off, helped cook our dinner. We had several dishes, normally we eat one dish and have a bowl of soup for dinner. We also had the Naayers family (some friends from a nearby college) come to celebrate with us. They helped us set up tables, decorate the dining hall and stuff candy and toys into the children’s stockings.

After dinner was over we started the party with singing Happy Birthday to Jesus.
The Zhang family have been Michelle and my (Ben) friends from the first day we moved to Pingyu and they brought us a cake.

Then we began our talent show.
The Naayer family (pictured above with Jonathan) started the show off with singing Silent Night and Frosty the Snowman.

Picture on left is of Lily(left) and Jenny(right) singing Chinese opera and the picture on the right is of (left to right) Mary, XiuFeng (one of our housemothers who had to quit last year to watch her grand daugter) and Cherry singing a hymn.

Our kindergarten boys sang a Chinese song they learned from school. (left to right)Joey, Thomas, Danny, Chris and Jake.

Our girls sang a Chinese song about Grace. (left to right)Anna, Emma, Sarah, Hollie, Debbie, Wendy, Ellie, and Zoey Click HERE to see the video!

(left to right)Noah, Mark, Eddy, Gabe, Graham, Lester, and Gene sang a Chinese song about Glory.

Jonathan played the guitar and sang a English song with me and the Naayer men backing him up with moral support:)

(left to right) Jaxin, Eli and Tyler (our three sons) danced to a song about the 3 kings.

The last act was Michelle and I dancing to a swing music version of Jingle Bells.

While he was teaching tai chi, several of our older children were riding bikes. Left-Debbie gives Ellie a ride. Right- Gabe giving Anna a ride.

Philip and Wendy zoom by with big smiles!

Being too small to ride a bike or be given a ride; Joey has fun with some roller blades.

While some of the children were riding bikes, Graham played with his new car.

At the same time, a few children were playing on our playground.
Tyler (our youngest son) playing on the monkey bars. We are very impressed because at 6 years old he can go from one end and back on the bars without stopping!

While Tyler was monkeying around, Thomas (left) and Jake (right) were enjoying the swings.

While most of our children were enjoying the warm weather, a few of our children were inside watching TV. They are only allowed to watch TV on the weekends for 1 1/2 hours per day.
(Left to right) Lester, Mark, Zoey and our middle son Eli watching TV.

And as we said above, “Work before play.”; Emma (right) and Hollie (left) were in the classroom finishing their homework.

We finished with checking the kitchen and 2 of our housemothers were inside making dinner. We currently have 9 employees; 6 housemothers, 1 cook, 1 teacher and 1 translator.
Rui Xia (left) and Wen Ying (right) are 2 of our housemothers who were filling in for our cook who had the day off.

We also play music for the kids to dance to.

And we have plenty of time to just hang out and bond.
Hollie(11 years old), our eldest child, holding Joey(4 years old) our youngest child.

Debbie (left) and Zoey (right) showing the greatest thing that all the children learn to have and give….LOVE!

Our children all started school on September 1st! Below is a picture of the children lining up to walk to school. The older girls and boys walk about 7 minutes to the public primary school. The kindergarten boys also walk to school but it takes them about 15 minutes to get to school, its not the same school. Our housemothers drop the children off and pick them up from school.

With having such a long holiday we wanted to use the time wisely. We wanted to make sure to give a time to relax from the intense school pressure, so there was a lot of play time.
Jonathan (our new translator) and I (Ben) played basketball with some of the children. We were a little surprised that Zoey really took an interest in playing….and were very surprised that she could slam dunk a basketball;)

Some of the children played a Chinese version of hopscotch. Sarah is quite the jumper and won a lot of the games. She also loves jump roping; she can jump over 100 times without stopping.

We also brought the children to a nearby park.
Eli (our middle son) and Anna walk to the park together

Park entrance

Jake, Debbie and Eli hanging out.

Here Gene, Sarah and Hollie (left to right) enjoy some of the exercise equipment at the park.

Hollie walking on the balance beam.

Michelle and Wendy getting some bonding time.

Each week we give the children some allowance money to teach them how to be responsible with money. On the way home from the park we stopped at a small store and let them buy some snacks.
Wendy and Zoey are talking about what they are going to buy, while Tyler (our youngest son) thinks about what he wants to buy too.

Eli finishing his treat, while Gene (background) very excitingly received his!

The pizza’s were a huge hit and well enjoyed, as you can see Danny, Jake and Joey (left to right) doing.

The biggest project we did, and one that all the children were very excited about, was making our own garden to try and help with the inflation here in China and the American dollar loss of value. We started this project during the Moon festival. It also taught the children to be more grateful for the food we eat everyday because they now know how hard it was to get.
The first thing we did was find a place for the garden and start pulling weeds.

Then we broke up the ground using shovels, hoes and picks! (left to right)Jake, Jaxin, Gabe, Mark, Eddy, Eli and Philip.

Emma using a hoe to break the ground up

While some of the older children were digging up the ground, the younger boys picked up the rocks and other debris that was dug up.
Picture on the left is of Jake (left) throws in one more rock while Eddy (middle) and Graham (right) carry the heavy load away. Picture on right is Tyler and Eddy dumping the bucket of rocks….it looks like to us that Tyler was telling Eddy to dump the load right here:)

Everyone helped with the work, Joey our youngest child showing off his gloves.

After the work was over, everyone sat under the shade tree and enjoyed an ice cream:)

This year we had just over 60 children who were all primary school and middle school age attend the camp. Each year we split the children into 3 teams for a friendly competition and ask the high school aged kids and college age kids to help us by being team captains and counselors. (Above left to right) Jenny, Vincent, Holly, Wayne, Shirley, Luke, Matthew, Gail and Tony (all from the Gongyi Home of Hope).

Eli, our middle son (pictures above left), chases after Gabe (pictured above middle) and Sarah (pictured above right)

Mark (left) and Gene (right) race to dump their cup!

Above Holly, Shirley and Gail (left to right) hold the bucket down while Vincent (left) and Timothy (right) dump their cups.

The race was very close. The grass started getting very wet around the buckets and several children ran up to the bucket so fast that they could not stop because it was so slick; which ended up with them on the ground and their team bucket being kicked over. The funny thing was that it happened to all three teams several times. Team FIRE came out with the win, and their reward……a bucket of water on each of the captains head (Vincent and Jenny)

Sticking with the Unity theme we played lots of team games. The first game we played was having the children sit in line and pass a dodge ball down the line…without using their hands or letting it hit the ground

Team FIRE was quite excited when they won, it was not an easy feat.

We took a break for a snack, which again we have done each year and each year the children ask us to do the following year. The point of this snack is for 2 children to make and eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich…..but one child makes the sandwich for the other without being able to see and feeds it to them; this involves a lot of team work:)

The afternoon we held a ping pong and basketball tournament. The winners of the ping pong tournament (2 person teams) won a new ping pong paddle for each player, and the winners of the basketball tournament won a new basketball for each player. It just so happened that Matthew (below left) and Tony (below right) won both tournaments. Along with winning the paddles and basketballs they also earned points for their team. Each year the point difference between the teams are very close. When Matthew and Tony won both tournaments, they did not realize that they also earned enough points to push their team (POP) into first place!

While the older children were competing in the ping pong and basketball tournaments, Michelle set up a ring toss for the younger children. We had small toys and nick knacks from America for the children to win.

At the end of the 3rd day after all of the activities were finished and all the points tallied for each team. We had a huge feast that included hotdogs, chips, cakes, assorted fruit and veggies, and a nice cold drink.

The younger children work their way down the buffet table while the older children passed out the food.

Once the children got their food they settled down to watch a talent show that some of the children prepared.

Some of the Gongyi kindergarten aged children prepared a few songs (left to right) Abby, Caleb, Grace (behind Caleb), Ron and Mary

Then Caleb and Ron did a Kung Fu show that they learned at school

All of our children prepared a song, “This Little Light of Mine”. They practiced it for 2 weeks singing it both in English and Chinese. One night during one of the rehearsals we brought them into our house to explain to them the meaning of the song. We turned off all of the lights then lit a candle and passed it down the line showing how easy it is to spread the joy and hope they have to the other children.

After everyone was done eating we gave out the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place awards. This year they received gold, silver and bronze metals!

Thank you

Once they got started taking pictures they wanted to take them everywhere……..

……..and with everyone!

Some of our younger children uprooted some flowers and made their own flower garden. (Left to right going clockwise) Zoey (Meng Yu Qing), Noah (Zhang Chen Liang), Jake (Wang Guo Bao), Jaxin (our eldest son), Gene (Wang Zi Ang), Chris (Zhang Guang Zhen).

Our older girls fixed each others hair. Left to right, Sarah (Ye Meng Jia), Debbie (Guo Qian), Emma (Wang Zi Yi).

Sarah (Ye Meng Jia) wanted to relax by reading a good book.

(Left to right) Jake (Wang Guo Bao) and Thomas (Chen Xin Yuan) blowing bubbles.

To finish the Lantern Festival off we shot off more fireworks and lanterns!!!!
Emma (Wang Zi Yi) is holding a sparkler. The picture on the left is 10,000 fire crackers (about the same thing as a Bobcat fire cracker but more powerful) being shot off…very loud and very messy, but the children enjoyed it which makes it well worth while.

We bought each room their own lantern to light. This lantern was the kindergarten rooms, as you can see Danny (Yang Xin Feng) in the bottom left wishing it a good flight.

Mark (left) and Ellie (Right) playing paper football

Winners of the Paper Football Competition (left to right) Eddy won 3rd place, Philip won 1st place and Debbie won 2nd place!

All of the children love wearing costumes. (left to right) Philip as Batman, Eddy as a Power Ranger and Tyler (our youngest son) as Spiderman

All of our children snuggling down to watch a movie

Ellie (left) and Sarah (right) are our little clowns and are always doing something to get a laugh.

We know most people are tired of the snow in the United States, but our winter here has been very mild with temperatures reaching up to 60 degrees Fahrenheit. So when we woke up one morning with a surprise snow, all of our children jumped out of bed and landed out in the snow. They did not come back inside until all the snow(which was just a dusting) melted or they used it to make a snowman, had a snowball fight and made snow angels.