the Golden Helmet stays here

Back from baseball in Beijing. The Eagles ended on a high note, demolishing ISB 16-2 on Sunday. Saturday had started poorly, with a sloppy loss to Hong Kong, but improved a bit. The early loss was followed by 2 games in which we led but gave up big hits at bad times. So third place in the tournament, and we brought home the Golden Helmet, which goes to the winner of the SAS-ISB game. We'll have our shot at revenge next week when HK visits for the BIG tourney at our field.

In other news, weather here is amazing. Cool, sunny, blue skies, red sunsets. 

Also got our residence permits and work visas, which are HUGE because now we can receive our shipment. 

We voted yesterday and FedEx will overnight them for FREE. Thank FedEx. Oregon has some real stinkers for ballot measures this election, so all you loyal readers there, please take the time to wade through all of them. My personal least favorite is the one that would base teacher pay and retention on "classroom performance," and then fails to define what that phrase means. hmmm....

To quote The Who, the kids are alright. Dad will be chaperoning E's field trip to the Shanghai Organics Farm on Friday. Weather should be perfect for planting/picking/romping. Dez is still kickin' it in soccer every Sunday and hittin' it in tennis on Wednesdays. Emmy runs around the edge of the court and plays his own little games with the ball, and with Mia, whose older brother is in Desi's lessons. Quite cute. I'll try to remember my camera for tomorrow.

Sarah is counting down the days until the beds arrive. We had some custom made, and we saw them 2 weeks ago at the factory. Looked great. Only 2 minor changes needed, but still no sign of them. As they say in Liberia, "Slowly, slowly, catch the monkey." Once the bunk beds are here, we're hoping that Desi sleeps in HIS bed all night. Not ours. Oh, that will be so nice.

Looking forward to Halloween. Usually a big party here at SAS. If our shipment gets here on time, we'll have all our stuff--pumpkin lights, carving knives, costumes. If not, we can be nudists or something.

I'll leave y'all with that image. Toodles!

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