Happy Easter!

Easter Weekend was great! ISB had a wonderful Easter egg hunt which both boys really enjoyed. They had sections roped off for individual age groups-each kid got to find 14 eggs and stuffed inside of those eggs was American Candy (yum yum!), gift certificates to McDonalds, or tickets to exchange for a prize. Botht the boys got 5 prize tickets so they got to go to the table and pick out toys they wanted. Most toys were donated mcdonalds and burger king toys-which was perfect! kieran got 5 guys of some sort, and kellan got 5 truck-like things. We stayed around there and the kids got to dye eggs, climb ropes, and just burn off some energy. It was a beautiful day (besides the air) so we took advantage of it. The next day we celebrated Easter at our house after Riley and I returned from a MILES FOR SMILES walk/run race we were doing downtown.

The week at school was called SMILE WEEK where the middle school where i work raises money for kids with cleft pallets to have surgeries. These kids are abandoned and left to die. A local foster home-takes care of them and spoon feeds them back to health. Each grade in the middle school took on the goal of raising enough money to pay for one surgery for a child-and then a fourth surgery would be done if the community/staff gave enough money. Well our goal was 4 surgeries paid for-but we fell just $300 short of paying for 8 kids to have surgeries! It was incredible! all week the kids bought paper "smiles" for one another for 10rmb ($1.50) and they put positive messages on them to give to other kids. It was amazing. The babies we were raising money for came in for a visit so we could actually see where our money was going....it was truely unbelievable! There is so much work like this that goes on in our school -we are lucky to be a part of it.

anyway-back to the walk/run. Riley and i signed up for a run where 3/4 of the money went towards the children's surgeries. It was a run open to anyone-but one of the teachers at the school had some connections to the organizer so we used it as a fundraiser for the surgeries. The grade 8 students had a competition and my homeroom won for having the most participants! I have a great homeroom....you can see a few of them inthe pictures attached. All-in-all it was a great EAster weekend althought it would have been great to have been back home celebrating with our families.