I'm baaaaaack.....for a bit, anyway.

Pretty sorry that the first post in 2013 is in JULY, but whatever.  Last November, I was doing great with my daily "thankful" thing, but then I got sick and didn't really shake that until like March.     So I was dragging around, barely functioning for all that time.  Ick.

There is a reason for picking it back up now.  We are hosting three Chinese students for three weeks, who are coming to improve their English skills and learn about our culture and lifestyles.  They are girls, pretty young...12 and 13, and their introduction letters to us were adorable.  They seem like happy, fun kids and we are very excited to get to know them.  They are all friends, from the city of Hohhot in China  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohhot .  Anyway, in my email to their parents, I told them that I would try to update the blog with stories and pictures.  

As for what's going on in our family....Sam is still working contract jobs for an East Coast design house.  Nice, because they let him work mostly at home.  Not so nice in that we have no benefits, and when they don't have work for him, we don't get paid.  We're getting enough to get by, but not really enough to replenish our dwindling savings accounts.  It's been almost a year since we got laid off.  No health insurance, as the COBRA was just astronomically expensive.  I'll be SO happy (hear the sarcasm there) when I am forced to pay for something through Obamacare in January. 

Meg will be starting her junior year in High School, if you can believe that.  She's still taking some classes at the local college, swimming on the swim team (we hope....having a shoulder problem at the moment) and right now, getting excited about girls camp.

At church, I'm still the organist.  Not likely to change, since there is NO one else to do it in our ward.  Sam is teaching religion classes at Soledad Prison on Wednesday nights, which has been a bit of an adventure.  He was not excited initially, but I think he kind of likes it now.  He's glad that it's on Wednesday, because if he couldn't do his time in the nursery on Sundays, he'd go through withdrawals.  His little buddies would miss him, too, I think.  Some adult in the nursery said one Sunday,  "say thank you to Brother Bailey for helping out", to which the kids replied "that's, not Brother Bailey, that's Sammy!".  

Ryan and Susan are in Olympia, Washington where he is doing a law internship,then they will return to Utah to finish his last year of law school.  It was weird not having him here for the 4th of July, he and Sue have been here every year for the last ten years.  We are all praying that he can get a job quickly when he's done. 

So, I will post pictures and adventures with our new Chinese friends as I get time.  The sponsoring group has them all day, so we only get them in the evening and on weekends.  Also, in the middle of that three weeks, they take them to Los Angeles to go to Disneyland, etc, so we won't have them then. 

That's about it for now....