The Zhao Family

This year is slightly different than previous years. Usually we have Thanksgiving Dinner at my sister's place but this year my father requested to have it at my house, probably since Abbey's parents are in town. We also have two additions to our family dinner, we invited David and welcome Phoenix to our home. The whole house was full of food, fun, Christmas music and chatter, but that's what makes Thanksgiving dinner so much better.

More milestones in David's life. 

In the summer of 2015 after coming back from China's trip and while Abbey and the kids are in China. Da decided to take David to BYU Provo to visit the campus and visit old friends. Unexpectedly David end up falling in love with the atmostsphere, the weather, the campus, and the students are BYU Provo, just in one week's time. So over the next year and a half he studied really hard at Montgomery College to bring up his GPA to apply to BYU Provo. With much diligent study, college professor referrals, and help from Abbey on his application letter, on October 14, 2016 he received an email from BYU that he was accepted to the Provo camp and to start the Winter 2017 semester. He was stoked! He's never left home before but we assure his mom that he will be in good hands with a good enviroment and study well at Provo. We are proud of how far he's come along.

After fighting against Da for so many years, one day David asks Da to give him a haircut. That is very unusual since Da's always been giving David a hard time for his unmanaged and uncut hair and refusing haircuts offered by Da for years. Then finally one day, he asked Da. It didn't take Da long to cut his hair but he look like a totally different person after the haircut.

11/13/16 3:30 PM here, David sits in the room where Patriarch Brent Pratt gave him his Patriarchal Blessing in Potomac MD. As he was being blessed, Abbey and I were honored to sit with him in the same room and we definitely felt the Spirit and goosebumps on our skin that blessing for meant for him.

This week has been busy doing things around home. First the senior primary children of our church went to another church to sing to them. Our church is starting to 'share' things with other churches.

Clayton had scouting for food. Our boys ran around one designated neighborhood to ask those people to donate food for the local homeless people. They were pretty successful.

For our scout den meeting night, Abbey's dad wanted to teach the scouts about real life knots since he was a sailor for ten years. He wanted them to know the importance of knots since it saved his life.

Da took Brennan to Edgewood MD, 30 mins north of Baltimore to try out for the State Band Audition. There were a lot of kids there and more than half, Asian. He gave it his best but didn't make it in; it's only his first year but he said he will try again next year.

Since Abbey's parents arrival, they wanted to visit Boston and Maine. On a short notice, we changed our plans to drive up to visit Boston and Maine. They mainly wanted to go up to there to get on those lobster boats to catch lobsters, but unfortunately the boating season ended in October, missed it by 5 days. But we did have a great time going to Boston and Maine and did eat lobsters.