A kitchen facelift

Giant ugly light fixture down.

Room draped off.

Old wood ceiling exposed.

Progress, looks awesome.

Ick.

A good start to the project.

Jia didn't seem too interested in the Easter decorating but she was completely enthralled with the plastic Easter eggs.  Then when Gramma came over last night I told her to show Gramma the Easter stuff and she was really, really excited to show off  'what Mommy did'.  I filled an Elmo Easter Basket with little plastic (not breakable) Easter goodies to play with and she packs it everywhere now!

Taking time to shop in the Antique Chinese furniture store.  Oh, I want soooo much of it.  Priorities.  I think I need about $14000 just to finish my wish list.

No goats on the roof, they're in a pen at the back of the compound.  Jia and I were talking and we were looking up at the roof and I was telling her there were supposed to be goats up there and she suggested they must be up in the trees.  So cute.

I have a true love hate relationship with our kitchen.  There are a lot of changes that I want done.  Eric does the cooking, I do the cleaning.  We both think we own the space.  I think it's possible we bought the house because I liked the kitchen.  It was so homey.  It smelled of apples.  It was my favorite shade of green and golden yellow.  It was light and big and white.  All good.  I soon resented the island in the way all the time and it's cheap and ugly.  The melamine is cheap but it's white and bright, in pretty good shape and easy to keep clean.  I don't care for flourecent lighting, but taking it down meant dealing with a damaged ceiling and you know if you do one thing it all just runs together into a whole bunch of things.  So, we've just lived with the entire room as it was.   Jia drawing on the island, almost meant change but Eric found a wonderful product that took sharpie off the drawers.  Then last week our light stopped working.  Eric had a look and said it was scorched.  Yikes.  So down it comes and then we discover the original wood ceiling is still there a foot higher.  The decision is made to salvage the ceiling and put in giant crown moulding to bridge the gap.  The ceiling is down and we discover live knob and tube wiring!  No idea where it comes from, where it goes etc. so we have to call an electritian to deal with it again.  Third time we've found it live.  We were told that the whole house had new wiring.  Double yikes.  The island is out and we're going to take the big single pane window out and replace it with shelving and a piano window (that we bought at demxx yesterday) and lastly we're going to finally put in the big old white sink that Eric bought me last summer, we found a new tap for the old sink yesterday too.  So, not a new kitchen but fixing all of the things about it that don't work for me.  Exciting stuff.  It's amazing how much better it feels just to have the big ole' island out of there.  The kids hated it at first but now they dance around the whole room.  It's all good.  Oh, and the day the ceiling came down, the washing machine stopped.  Eric and I took off to Combs yesterday to look for the piano window and just ignored that we had a dead washer.  He's off today to Sears to hunt for a new one.  We do a LOT of laundry.  Not sure how many days we can survive without one!

Lili is off to her first sleep away camp tonight.  Fun stuff.  If only there was a way to calm her nerves!

Back to school

Asia and Emily came to play, Jia was delighted, the two littles zoomed around on these cars for a couple hours.  So much fun.  We need to get Jia with more kids her own age more often.

Went for a long walk with Gramma (gwamma) and Grampa yesterday and Fei played photographer.  Jia was pretty thrilled walking Lacie most of the way and then even gave walking Isabel a try :)

We crammed as much fun as we could into our last weekend and now the kids are back to school.  Sigh.

Lili is going to sleep away camp on Friday for the 1st time and she's quite nervous, so I'm assuming that's what our entire week will be about.   She'll have a few classmates with her so that should help.

Just got word today that the group sponsoring mine and Lili's trip to Beijing this summer is looking for our information including flight dates.  We don't have an itinerary for the trip and we haven't been in contact with anyone from the group so not sure what's up there.  It feels backwards right now.  Hoping for more clarification soon.  It is starting to feel real and we're both getting pretty excited about going.

Good Morning Sunshine

Out of bed this morning with her crew, Nemo, Mr. Quack Quack and Mr. Light.

She is sooooo sweet sometimes!

Spring Break

Dinosaurs coming next!!

We all agreed that this photo of the monkey in China was the best photo there.

We get a lot of people staring at our family with three Asian kids, guess how many people stare with five Asian kids?!!  It was a bit funny.  The kids don't usually notice but they sure did on this day.

Ya' know, no matter how many times we see this guy, Jia just isn't warming up to him.  The older girls just love him but Jia is still terrified, no way was she going to take her eyes off of him for a picture!

What gorgeous girls!

Jazz hands.

Strike a pose.  We had fun on our photo shoot.

Two weeks off, sort of.  I'm still working.  Girls still have dance and piano.  Mostly have stuck to our normalish routine.  Ya' know once we get them away from school they become nice again.  Nicer with each other, nicer with us.  More pleasant all the way around.  More agreeable.  They help out without us asking.  It's makes it really hard to look forward to them going back to school.

We had Anna and Abigail over last weekend and we ended up taking them back to their city to play for the day.  How comical is that?!  We had a great time at the BC Museum and then killed some time in the park until we met their parents for dinner. 

Party #3

For Lili's 10th B-day party we took Lili and Fei and four of her friends to Wildplay. What a hoot. The six girls did fabulously. There were some nerves and fears but once they got going and tried out those zip lines they were all hooked.   Jia wanted to know the whole time we were there when her turn was.

The girls got to go through the Monkido kids course twice after their safety and demo class. Lili was totally in her element and she went on-line later in the day to check out what else she can do there. She wants more and would prefer some bigger challenges. They have a buddy course she can do with an adult so she's already trying to pin point a day to go back with Eric. Oh, and she thinks she'll be bungy jumping on her 14th Birthday...I don't think so...

Jia strikes again

Lili met me at the door and said, 'mom, you won't believe what Jia did today!'.  Eric came around the corner and said 'honey, I think you're right, we should get rid of the island'.  I've been asking for the island to come out of the kitchen since we moved in!  Too funny.  Anyways, my fault for having a black sharpie in the house and leaving it on the island, Eric's fault for not checking on her for two minutes while she was quiet.  This is what it looked like after several products and a couple hours of scrubbing.  He finally called Dennis who told him of a product that worked fabulously and I'm happy to report that the island is clear of Jia's artwork.  You'll notice on the top drawer that she did a great job with her abc's and the at the end there is a clear B and T.  Pretty good for a little one just turned two.  Love her exhuberance, could do without the destruction.  We say it often 'thank goodness she's so cute' and 'she's not like the others at all'.  :)

Minature World, school strike and Lili's B-day

Lili graciously went on the ride with Jia.

The museum was a huge hit.  I was pleasantly surprised to see how low it all was, Jia could see most of it without us having to carry her.  She was delighted with the trains and was following them and talking them 'where going train, bye train, you coming back?  Oh, there you are train, where did you go?  where are you going?  bye train'.  Honestly I think she could have stayed in that section for hours.

Yup, a preteen and it starts immediatly, she found naked miniatures, seriously.

We took a moment to study them and admire the paint job someone did on them :)

Turns out planes are almost as exciting as trains!

There were tiny koi under the fake water.  Jia was fascinated with all the fake water and wanted to touch it so badly.

We finally left Jia at this carousel and went to look at all the other stuff nearby.

Lili had three parties, this is #2.

Make up, or as Jia calls it 'makeups'.  Lili wasn't delighted but I like to think that she was secretly happy with the girly stuff.

At Lili's request for her Birthday she wanted to play Monopoly.  Eric won.  It took forever.

Killing time at the pet store.  I'm not excited about how much time they all wanted to study lizards and snakes.  Too much interest.  They barely looked at any of the cats, birds, rats, or rabbits.

Jia so wants to dance with the big girls.  I told her she could dance with Shelley when she was bigger, we then had to go over that statement again and again and again.

The teachers were on strike last week for three days.  I really wished it was for the whole week leading into our two week spring break.  We took full advantage of the three days to play.  On Friday we dropped Fei for a sleepover with Hanna and took Lili and Jia to the mall.  They had a nice time together.  It's sure relaxing with just two kids now :)  Funny how that works out. 

Saturday we met up with friends and had a play and dinner out.  That was nice. 

Monday we went to get Lili's passport renewed and then played in the city to kill time until we met some friends for dinner.  Congratulations to Shannon and Ken on the adoption order for their son Kalum!!  Wahoo.  Dinner turned out to be a celebration.

Tues was Lili's B-day.  Eric took her to Wal-Mart to pick out a new Wii game.  She picked epic Mickey.  Apparently it's really cool but scary.  Too funny.  We got Lili some girly stuff, she was polite enough to say thank you. 

We joked about all the lessons we were learning outside of school.  Commerce and life skills while shopping.  History at the Miniature World.  Communication skills with friends and out to dinner.  Health while picking out food.   PE at dance class.  Math while shopping and cooking.  Science and nature at the pet store.  As much fun as all of that was, I still can't talk them into homeschooling. 

No giant plans for the spring break.  Staying home.  Our weeks aren't full yet, anyone looking for a playdate?