Introducing our family...plus one

This blog is intended for friends and family who already know us, but just in case you've stumbled across this and for some strange reason want to actually read it, this is who we are. Mike is Dad, Heather is Mom, and Josh, Caleb, and Esther are The Kids. Yep. That pretty much sums it up. You may note that Esther is more gorgeous than the rest of us, for the simple reason that she has good genes, and she comes from China. We adopted her into our family last year when she was 13 months old and she has been a joy and delight ever since. Josh always wants me to mention that he was adopted too (from Idaho!) and I am happy to oblige for as long as he wants to share that info (and I have to say, he has awesome genes too). Poor Caleb has only Mike and I to draw from.

We also made a rather spur of the moment decision to host an international exchange student from China for the school year. His name is Jiang Tao ("Jason"), he is 16 (and 6'2"!) and is from Shanghai. I will admit the thought of an exchange student didn't interest me much until we heard about him, and it has all just fallen into place and feels right. We were able to call him on skype this morning, and when he asked us to turn on our web camera, I had to sheepishly admit that we don't have one. But Best Buy is open in the morning... We did get to see him though, as well as his parents. It was really sweet to watch him with his mother as she would pose a question, then motion for him to translate it to us. I am in awe of parents who would entrust their only son to near-complete strangers, and I feel a lot of pressure to take good care of him while he is here. I think my biggest concern is that he will starve eating my cooking! Josh is especially excited to have an older brother and can hardly talk about anything else, and Caleb nearly bounced off the couch when Jason told him he was practicing a few magic tricks to show him. Esther will no doubt have him eating out of her palm shortly, just like every other male in this house! Jason is due to arrive on August 13, next Wednesday. I'll put a picture on this blog when he gets here. I am such a novice at parenting 16 year old boys; did I really think this through?!