Merry Christmas!

No update right now. :) Maybe in the new year! Just wanted to say Merry Christmas! We're all excited for Christmas and thankful for Jesus.

New Music

Dave and I are on the lookout for some new music. Here's a list of some recently purchased music that we like:

Jason Mraz - We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.
Leona Lewis - Spirit
Wicked Soundtrack - 5th Anniversary Special Edition
Barlow Girl - How Can We Be Silent and Home For Christmas (Christian pop rock group)
Sovereign Grace Kids CD - Awesome God (It's a kids CD but we like listening to it!)

Lilly loves to dance. She's a funny dancer and comes up with some great moves. One move that will get a laugh out is the jump and spin move. Gets her every time! She's been dancing to Jason Mraz and Awesome God kids CD.

Yes, we're still into Wicked music. We saw the musical back in July!

What's on your playlist? Any good music suggestions for the Chengs?

Truck or Treat

The Halloween events are in full swing here. The mall by our house hosted an event called Truck or Treat. They have different trucks, vehicles, and machinery parked at the far end of the mall parking lot. Then the kids are invited to dress up, get candy, and visit all the different trucks. Lilly liked seeing the trucks and kids running around but she was most interested in the candy. She was excited to pick a piece of candy to put in her Hello Kitty purse. I think she'll like going to the rest of the Halloween activities this month. Lilly doesn't eat the candy, but she knows what lollipops are and knows how to unwrap them. She'll just hold it in her hand and maybe take a few licks.

Dave's family came to visit for the afternoon

Pulling the levers on the crane

Fall Outings

This past Saturday we went to the Meridian Heritage Festival and the apple orchard. We all had a great time and it was such a beautiful fall day to be outside.

The Heritage Festival was by the old school house, general store, and pretty much everything from the "Old'n Days". We saw some funny alpacas, watched the traditional Irish dancers, ate popcorn, and took a pony ride. Lilly loves animals. When the Irish dancers were performing she was distracted by the pony giving carriage rides in the background. She pointed and yelled (pretty loudly), "Neeeeeiiiiigh!!" You can guess what we did right after the dancers were done.

I like this picture of Dave and Lilly with the Alpacas. They look like they're all posing for a group shot.


After Lilly got up from her nap we decided to go apple picking. Well our first priority was to get DOUGHNUTS and cider. Why did we pack our Saturday with so many outings? I scheduled to get my wisdom teeth out the following Monday, and I really wanted to eat and enjoy those delicious doughnuts (only found at Country Mill). Mmm. They were good! The apples were good too! The Gala apples are really sweet and I already made some apple bread with some Northern Spy apples. Dave's hoping for some apple pie muffins and apple pie sometime soon.



So good!



Picking fruit is always fun. This summer we picked blueberries and Lilly did more eating than picking there. This time she didn't eat any of the apples that we picked because she's never bitten into a whole apple and doesn't eat apples with skin on it. Lilly didn't try picking apples from the trees. She was very happy to be handed apples to place into the bag. I'm glad she learned the word "apple" before we went to the apple orchard!



I'm so thankful for Saturdays and time spent together as a family.

Just Like Mama and Baba

I like to do the same things as my mama and baba.
They both like to use the computer, and they both wear glasses.















I love mama!
I love baba!

The Gospel Song

Holy God, in love, became
Perfect Man to bear my blame
On the cross He took my sin
By His death I live again

Over the past week or so Lilly has started singing her bedtime songs with me. I sing her a "Go To Sleep" lullaby that I kind of made up and "The Gospel Song" lyrics by Drew Jones and music by Bob Kauflin. It is so sweet to hear her sing. Not only is it cute but I can hear her sing the powerful words, "... cross ... took ... sin ... by ... again." Hehee she doesn't sing every word but she'll jump in on the words that stick out to her.

I know my nephew, Ethan, can sing this song by himself. Even though these little kiddos don't understand that this song proclaims the Gospel message, they have the words in their memory. I pray that one day the lyrics and the message will impact their hearts and lives.

August 2008

August was a busy month for us. We went to two weddings, visited Maryland, North Carolina, Christine and Noah spent a weekend with us, and I went to a Backstreet Boys concert and had an eLLe sleepover. Although it was busy, we have some great memories from all those events.

Congratulations to Loren and JY and Cassie and Carmichael!!!


It's always fun to have Christine and Noah visit us in Okemos. We wanted it to be like a last hurrah for them before they started the new school year. We went to get bubble tea, swam at the East Lansing Splash Park, went go karting, and played a game of putt-putt.


eLLe didn't just have a one night sleepover. It was an entire weekend together. We had so much we wanted to do together! Friday night we drove to the Detroit Energy Theater for the Backstreet Boys concert. It was fun! It was fun together. Saturday we watched the movie The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. We also sang together and recorded 2 songs that night. On Sunday the girls were able to visit our church. I've told them so much about our church that it was nice for them to visit. Our weekend together concluded with a delicious brunch at Dusty's, our most favorite brunch place ... ever.

Visiting Maryland is always a good time. Everytime we visit we rethink moving out there to live by Kelly and Andy. For now, God has us staying here in Okemos and we're happy with that. We love our church here and actually like this quiet town.
Lilly has so much fun with her cousins. She loves Ethan and Evangeline. She also loves the ocean and playing in the water! Our vacation in North Carolina actually started in September. So it should probably go in a separate post. Oh well ... here are some pictures. Look for the rest on Flickr!