Some Catch-ups on Ethan

We have had an eventful year, for better and worse.  I spent 6/7 weeks around March/April barely being able to get out of bed due to a mystery parasite that the Doctors found difficult to pinpoint.  Not long after I recovered from that we found out that we were moving to India.  We wanted to arrive as close as possible to the next school year, so a very busy couple of months ensued where we worked our way through the mountains of paperwork that come at you when you move countries (there is a lot with any international move, but sooo much when you are leaving China and going to India).

As such, some tasks such as updating this blog got put on the back-burner.  These updates are starting from around March earlier this year.

Ethan received his school pictures.  We had a little giggle at the different poses the photographer made Ethan try.

Ethan turned 14.  How has that happened so fast.  Ethan mentioned that he would like a new pair of headphones.  Clara kindly made him a pair out of macaroni at school.  Ethan is a good sport.

Ethan received a pull-up bar for his Birthday.  This was a regular view from my bedroom door.

He gave Clara some lessons in pull-ups.

Ethan went on a school camp to Inner Mongolia.  They built and slept-in yurts.  They also went cycling across the grasslands.  Awesome experiences.

Ethan blowing out his birthday candles.

Ethan at a Youth Conference about to embark on an Amazing Race.  Funny story about this..David and another Brother in our ward volunteered to man one of the stations for the Amazing Race.  They were given a location inside a high-end shopping centre in Pudong.  They decided that if they were going to be hanging out there for a while they might as well bring camp chairs.  Good idea in theory, but they quickly caught the attention of security because it is definitely not normal to see two white men sitting in camp chairs in the middle of a shopping centre in China.   In an attempt to stay where they were (completely harmless although peculiar) and not spoil this Amazing Race stop, they had to keep giving the security men reasons why they needed to be there.  Initially they pretended not to speak Mandarin (accurate for David, the other Brother is fluent), which sometimes works because it seems like too much trouble to try to communicate with you, but security returned later.  Explaining the concept of The Amazing Race created more confusion.  Then when security returned again they told them that they were doing market research on the store directly across from them ha ha!  They managed to be able to stay-put long enough to not spoil the Amazing Race.