Pelley Family Blog

Today we put our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes together.  We have so much fun.  If you are not familiar with this, it is a project sponsored by Samaritan’s Purse.  They give you gift suggestions - you choose the sex and age range of the child.  You then fill the shoebox with the gifts.  They are collected in November and then sent  all over the world to children who would not otherwise receive a gift for Christmas.  Ruby has been slow to grasp this.  She’s having some issues with, shall we say, materialism.  We suspect it is in reaction to growing up in impoverished conditions and seeing all of the “stuff” we Americans have.  She wants it all.  She told us she never got a shoebox in China.  I’m sorry that she didn’t.  But as she’s seen her big sisters get excited, she has become more excited.  She had a blast shopping and putting her box together as well.  This year, Samaritan’s Purse will allow you to track your box, finding out just where it ends up.  Should be fun!  Let us encourage you to do this project with your family.  It’s not too late.  You can find out all you need at samaritanspurse.org.  It sure helps with a proper perspective during this upcoming Christmas season!

Thought you’d enjoy seeing some pumpkin-carving fun!

Decorating her own with a marker

Ruby has seen pictures of Joanna and Grace playing in leaves, and has been most anxious for the leaves to fall off of the trees.  Alas, our silver maples are the last to go - usually not falling until after it snows.  So - we took matters into our own hand, and raked some of our neighbor’s leaves onto our grass, so Ruby could take part in the “sliding into the leaves” ritual!  Enjoy!

Even Joanna got in on it

This has been a week of surprise pictures.  This morning, I had this picture waiting on me on my email.  It is my nephew’s wife, Susan.  They are living in India this year, working with an Engineering Missions Group.  For her birthday this past year, I had given her mesh shopping bags.  She sent me the picture to show me her latest use for the bag - collecting pine cones.  I think they are collecting them to start fires in the stove in their house.  They are  living in the foothills of the Himalayans (as you can see from the steep grade), and the nights are getting VERY cold there.  Proverbs 25:25 says, “Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land.”  That’s how I felt this morning when I got this picture.

How neat to open my email earlier this week and find a new picture of Ruby in China.  This picture came from another family who has a daughter from Ruby’s orphanage.  They were going through their daughter’s things, and realized that Ruby was in a picture they had received of their precious girl.  Most of our China kids come with a handful of pictures (if we are so blessed).  It is all the record we have of their earlier life - the years before they came home to us.  These pictures are priceless.  It made me wonder how many families have a picture of Ruby in their “memory boxes” - and what pictures I have that other families would love to see.  We do our best to find each other, but are not always successful.  Anyhow - Ruby was THRILLED to see this picture and explained to me that it was taken in the room where her birthday party had been.  The girl in the middle is the girl whose family sent the picture.  She was adopted about nine months before Ruby.   Ruby tells me the girl on the right was adopted, but didn’t know when.

Last night was a great night at our house.  We had one of Mike’s co-workers, Bob, and his wife Kate, over for dinner.  They’ve been married about 15 months, so Kate has only been in the US about 15 months.  She is very interested in helping Ruby to retain her Chinese lanugage and heritage.  So - even though we invited them for dinner, she came early to help teach us how to make Chinese dumplings.  It was a delicious main course.

Assembling dumplings

Kate demonstrating the proper technique for dipping our dumplings in a mixture of vinegar, soy sauce, and fresh garlic before eating

Kate also wanted to teach the girls how to knit last night. This is lesson one.

Ruby trying her hand at knitting

There is no way Grace can knit, so she got our her straw weaving so she could participate.

Probably my favorite cousin said to me once: “Every funeral I can recall, including my own mother’s, is remembered as a really fun time.”  Well, as terrible as it sounds, getting together with family last weekend, even though it was for a funeral, was a fun time.  My sister-in-law, Brenda, had taken Monday off anyhow, so she and Phil (my brother) could spend the day with my nephew Austin, before he moved to Chicago for his first real job.  So - Phil was determined to do fun things.  I’m sorry I didn’t get a good picture of them playing pool - that is a long-standing family tradition.  We also had to stop at Hickie’s, (yes, that’s the real name).  I had NEVER been to Hickie’s, so this was a new experience.  It is a “hole in the wall” restaurant in Portsmouth, Ohio.  Your placemat/plate is a piece of paper - the kind you use at the “help yourself bakery” to pull out your muffin or bagel.  Yes - that was it.  They have hot dogs, hamburgers, soup and chicken nuggets.  Period.   Mini hamburgers.  I think our table of eight consumed about 20 hamburgers.  You can get them “drained”  or “double dipped”.  Yes, folks, that’s GREASE.  Terrible.  But it was an experience! 

Our group at Hickies

Grandma and Grandpa at Hickies

An official wall picture

We grew up visiting grandparents A LOT.  Family vacations.  Holidays.  We couldn’t really afford to go anywhere else.  Both sets of grandparents lived in the same town, so that was easy.  My  Dad’s parents owned and ran a grocery store across the street from their house.  We grew up stocking groceries, going on delivery runs, packing groceries for customers.  They also owned a Big Boy restaurant.  We ate MANY meals there.  My deepest dream as a kid was to grow up to be a waitress at the Big Boy!  Mom’s parents lived about four blocks away.  They, too, were in business for themselves.  I remember sitting in the shop, watching my grandpa painting signs, and playing checkers with my Mammaw.  Pappaw also used to read the paper to me when I was little, reading aloud the article about Kathy coming to visit her grandparents.  Sweet memories. 

One BIG memory involves the brick wall.  This wall ran around the Kizzee’s house.  That’s where we always stayed.  This wall was only about two feet high, but it was irrestible.  I can’t count how many times we were told to get off the wall. 

Last week my aunt passed away.  She’d been sick for a while.  Ruby and I made the trek to the southernmost tip of Ohio for the funeral.  We drove as far as Columbus and rode with my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew.  It was great family time.  Anyhow, the “kids” had a great time on the wall.  You can see the former store in the background.

walking on the wall

ready to jump to the other side

I LOVE this picture - Austin in motion

kind of blurry, but the guys helping Ruby jump to the next section

 

Ruby has participated in her first Bible quiz.  She feels so good to be able to do something that the big girls do.  Of course, children’s quizzing is a lot different - much easier - but that’s good.  I hadn’t planned on her participating in a quiz so soon - since she doesn’t understand the questions very well, but she wanted to.  She got about 75% of them right! Wow! 

Ruby with her team-mates

Okay - now to the Teen Quiz.  If you know Joanna at all, you know she is NOT competitive.  We learned last year that she was not answering questions in the quiz if her team was winning by a large margin - so the other team would not feel badly.  Last year, she started quizzing more competitively - and - what a change!  She had one goal for this last quiz - to beat Grace!  After every quiz out (answering four questions correctly in a round - then you have to go out so someone else has a chance), she’d say something about beating Grace.  She and Grace were on different teams, so they didn’t really know how the other was doing.  They both quiz out nearly every round, but Joanna racks up more errors, because she pre-jumps (jumps before the question is complete, thus having to correctly complete the question AND the answer).  ANYHOW, when the final results were in, they had TIED for second place overall.  So, they had to quiz-off.  Grace HATES quiz-offs.  It is a five question round.  Normally, she gets blown away for these, mostly because she cannot jump as quickly as some of the other kids.  At this point, I figured - “Joanna has this one all wrapped up.”  Well, out of five questions, Grace got four.  So - she beat Joanna by one place.  Joanna was a good sport.  After all - they are hiding LOTS of God’s Word in their hearts - and you cannot lose when you do that!

Getting ready to quiz off

Displaying that trophy

One of the things I’ve worried about since Ruby’s arrival in our home is the relationship between Joanna and Grace.  They get along better than any sisters I’ve ever known, and are truly friends.  In light of this, I was so pleased to walk into the living room one morning and see this!

Just hanging out with a friend