Life so far . . .

Wow, we can't believe it is November. Did you know that since we are in the southern hemisphere all of our seasons are opposite from yours?  It's fall by you, going into winter.  Here it is spring going into summer.  It's so weird to have a warm Christmas!  Instead of hot cocoa we will be having chocolate milk. And instead of snow angels, I don't know, maybe we'll just thinking of something else. Hee hee.  Let's catch you up since we last wrote:

AJ had her birthday just 4 days after we moved in. She is now 7.

Our super fun Landy is so much fun! We can sit on the top of it or peak out the top like Savannah is in this picture.  When we go to game reserves we can see all kinds of animals, it is SO fun!

Here is what Savannah saw through the top of the roof :)

We couldn't find orange pumpkins but we found these bluish greenish ones! Halloween is like a bad word here, so none of the Christians celebrate it.  But we found a shopping mall an hour away that had trick or treating at the stores.  For treats, they handed out hard candy, not nearly as fun as all the delicious chocolates we used to get in the states but we were glad we got to dress up and have fun!

This is our backyard. We love our fun fort! After not having a backyard last year we LOVE that God gave us a super huge ginormous backyard!

This is hut is in our backyard.  Mom and Dad want to fix it up for a little guest room.  We like to play in there for now.

Here is our school room. This is Chloe's preschool corner.

Another view of the school room :)

In Asia, there were no libraries so we had to order lots of books. We love having so many books because we love to read.  Soon we are going to visit the library here in Pretoria.

This is Savannah and Chloe's room.

This is AJ's room.

This is called a Lapa, it's in our backyard too.  We will get a table and chairs to put under it and have fun barbeques.

Here we are at the government building in Pretoria.

These are our friends!  Their Dad and Mom work for Cru too. They are South African. They always go around with no shoes like most South African kids.  Sometimes we like to do that too! We really like these friends!

We even went to the circus with them. It was so fun!

We started AWANA a couple weeks ago.  Tanner is our American friend, his parents work with our Mom and Dad. We are glad he is here!

This is Miss Kacy and Given. They stayed with us for a few days. We loved Given, he is so cute!

This is our Terra Cotta Warrior from Asia. We like to decorate him for the holidays :)  This is what he looked like for Thanksgiving.

Yesterday we started to decorate for Christmas. Here Chloe and AJ are helping Dad put up our new tree.

In Africa there are lots of languages. There are 11 languages in South Africa and most people know 3 to even 10 of these languages!  We are learning Afrikaans and Zulu.  This video shows Savannah and AJ counting to 10 in both languages.  Chloe was too shy.  But she walks around the house and says, "yisishagalombili" (the number 8 in Zulu) and all kinds of funny things!

Moving to Africa hasn't been easy, but now we really like it.  Mom and Dad even found a church that we really like.  On Friday nights they have a thing called J.A.M. it stands for Jesus And Me.  It's so fun! We play games and act out Bible stories and have cookies and juice.  They are ending their school year in a couple weeks so it won't meet for awhile after next week.  Next week is a water party!  Oh! Want to hear some funny sayings?  When we got to J.A.M last week, they were playing "touches".  Daddy told us that was the same as "tag". And instead of saying your "it" they say your "on". The funniest thing so far is that they call swimsuits "costumes". So we are supposed to bring our costumes to the water party next week.

Well, that's all for now. Remember we love you and we are so glad you are our friends!

Love,

Savannah

AJ

Chloe

We made it!

Wow, we can't believe we are in Africa!  It took a looooooong time to get here but everything went pretty well.  First, we went to O'Hare Airport in Chicago. We had 14 suitcases, 5 carry-ons, 5 backpacks and 3 stuffed animals! Do you think you could carry your house in 14 suitcases?  Mom worked really hard to take all of our most special things.

Here we are in Chicago!

Now we are in an airplane headed for Washington D.C.

We made it to D.C. and they gave us our wings! When we were landing Daddy said, "OK, when we get off the plane let's get some lunch." Chloe started crying and said, "But I don't want Chinese food, I don't want to be in China again!"  Poor Chloe, we all laughed at her but then comforted her that we were still in America and she didn't have to have Chinese food.  It will be a long time before any of us can eat Chinese food again. Ha!

There's our plane! That plane will take us all the way to Africa.

It's official, we are on the plane to Africa! 

We all got our own T.V.'s to watch with headphones. Yay!

We all took some naps here and there. That really helped the time go by fast!

Wahoo! We landed safe and sound in South Africa! All our luggage got here and we all feel nice and healthy. 

A few days after we landed God gave us this truck!  It's a Land Rover and all the people here call these kind of cars, "Landy's."  We LOVE this truck!!! It's so much fun!

Mom and Dad said we have a home to rent but it needs a little love before we can move in.  Mom really wants to move in before A.J.'s birthday. A.J.'s birthday is on September 30th, she can't wait!  So far we like it here a lot.  Mom and Dad keep telling us to stay by them and they keep telling us lots of rules on how to stay safe.  When we drive, there are beggars at all the stop lights and we really like giving them food.  It's sad how many people don't have a home here, or if they have a home, it's not something we would like to live in.

Well, as our adventure continues we'll post more pictures.  We love you and we are so glad you are our friends!

Love,

Savannah

A.J.

Chloe

Almost in Africa . . .

We are leaving for Africa really soon! On Tuesday, August 28th. We are excited to go, but we are really going to miss our family, friends and being in America. We are happy that we will get a home soon and have our own beds and see all our stuffed animals again soon. Want to know something strange?  When we get to Africa it will be winter!  Mom and Dad say it's cold at night, but during the day the weather feels just right. The three of us got our hair cuts the other day and Mom has been going to lots of stores because Savannah all the sudden was in the next size for clothes!  I (A.J.) am really excited because my Mom has gotten lots of birthday presents to pack since my birthday is on the last day of September.  I even know what one of them is!

We can't believe we will be in another country soon, wow!  We like the adventure, but we wish we could live near our family and friends.  Mom and Dad say God has great plans for us and we hope we can be good missionary kids in Africa. Do you see that flag down there? Of course the one flag is our flag for the USA but the other flag is the South African flag.  All the colors are supposed to represent the many people of Africa: African tribes,  Indians, Europeans and more (yep, Mom helped us with those words).

Well, if you could keep praying for us we would really like that.  Guess how long we are going to be on the plane to Africa?  18 hours!  That's forever!  We hope they show good movies on the plane, last time we took a long flight the TV's on our chairs didn't work, hope they work this time.

We are excited to keep sharing our life with you.  We will share lots of pictures and videos when we can.  We will miss you so much, but we are glad that you are still our friends no matter where we are.

We are praying for you, thanks for praying for us!

Love,

Savannah

A.J.

Chloe

Lots of people and places!

Hi! How are you doing? Thanks for praying for us, we have had a good summer so far.  We have met lots of new people and seen old friends and got to see our Grandma and Grandpa and our Nana and Pops! This picture is us having cowboy coffee with our Grandpa. Do you know what cowboy coffee is? It's chocolate milk with whip cream and a cherry on top, served in a cowboy coffee mug.  We love it!

When we visited our Uncle Mattie, Aunt Heather and cousins Landon and Logan, guess where we got to go? SeaWorld! For a birthday present, Savannah got to touch her favorite animal in the whole world--a dolphin! We all had a great time.

We have stayed in lots of peoples homes and have eaten lots of good food and have been given some really special gifts along the way.  We have gotten to see a lot of our family and have been in lots of different States seeing families who help our family get to Africa.  We have been to a baseball game (because Mom says we need to know American sports), the ocean by our Grandparents, the Appalachian mountains by our other Grandparents, lots of pools and have done lots of driving.

Overall, a great summer but we are really looking forward to moving to Africa. We are excited to have a home again and Mom and Dad might even let us get a pet! Mom keeps buying any school supplies that grab her eye when we are out and about and Dad is always on the phone or the computer trying to connect with people and tell them thanks.

Here are a few more summer pictures, thanks again for praying for us! We are praying for you too!

Nana's wedding!

Chloe slept during Nana and Pops' wedding reception. Jet lag!

An open house fun time!

Yay for family!

Out for tea!

Grandpa with his buddy!

We gave Mom a makeover!

More to come. Have a great summer!

Love,

Savannah

A.J.

Chloe

We're home!

After lots of flying and waiting, we are back in Crystal Lake!  Mom says you should check out their home page for details to come and see us this Saturday, June 16th at our open house. Below is a video we shared in our Sunday School class this past Sunday. It shows our life in Asia and some of what we'll get to do in Africa. Hope you like it and hope you can come see us this Saturday!

Love,

Savannah

A.J.

Chloe

Saying goodbye . . .

We come home on June 4th! We are so excited to see all of our family and friends! It is going to be a great summer!  Lately, Mom and Dad have been teaching us how to leave in a good way.  We need to make sure that we say goodbye to people and places.  So, we've been doing a lot of goodbyes.  It's funny, every time we go out we say, "Goodbye restaurant!" or "Good bye guy who spits on the side walk!" or "Goodbye little kid peeing near my feet!"  It's so silly! But Mom says it's important.

We are also taking pictures of some of our favorite places. The park across the street from us has pretty cherry blossom trees that bloomed at the beginning of Spring, so we took pictures there. 

 Then there is another really fun park we like to go to and we took silly pictures there!

This is the city wall.  It's so cool downtown. There are interesting buildings and huge drums (like in this picture) and great markets!

This is our favorite play place that we said goodbye to.  It was huge and really fun!

Mom wanted to climb the mountains nearby and she wanted to take a bullet train, so we did both and said goodbye to the mountains.  We climbed the whole mountain, which meant we hiked up STAIRS for 4 and 1/2 hours.  We did so well that Mom and Dad bought us medals with our names and the date carved into them!

 We had our last language class recently.  We (Savannah and A.J.) got to be flower girls in our teacher's wedding. She was so beautiful! It was really fun throwing the flowers.  We will say goodbye to our teacher in a couple weeks when we give her our piano so she can continue learning and play for her building.

We are really excited to come home for the summer.  We can't wait to play at a park with swings and monkey bars, roll around in the green clean grass and eat grapes, bagels, and every good food we've been missing! Thanks for thinking of us and staying in touch.  We are glad that you haven't forgotten us and we hope you'll keep in touch with us when we move to Africa.

See you soon!

Love,

Savannah

A.J.

Chloe