Spring Festival

Spring Festival has started early for us this year.   We had our first CNY party yesterday afternoon.  Nice to catch up with some of the families.  It was a quieter lunch than usual in Victoria.  The older kids aren't showing up as much and most of the kids were quite young.  Nice for Jia, boring for Lili and Fei.  Shame it has to work out that way.  Jia had so much fun playing with Emily that when Debbie said it was time to go, Jia marched up right in front of her and stomped her foot and put her hands on her hips and said "I want to play with Emily!".  She was total attitude.  I know it's wrong that I thought it was funny but she was so stinkin' cute making her demands.  Debbie told her they could play until they had to leave. 

On the way home Jia was trying to figure out when the next party was.  We told her the next one was Mommy's birthday so she sang me several versions of happy birthday and all of them started with no less than 10 happy birthday's to you.  She also wanted to play pretend with me and told me I was Jia and she was Mommy.  I started whinning and complaining "I'm too hot, I'm too cold, I don't want that, I won't wear that, I want what Fei has, I want uppies, I want uppies, I want uppies, I WANT UPPIES!".  Jia instantly said "no, not right now, my hands are full".  I laughed and laughed over that.  She is so quick witted. 

We were in the car a fair bit, two trips out of town.  Kids did great as per usual.  They totally love road trips.  I'm exhausted.  Same scenerio happening next weekend.  We're going to the CNY show at UVIC on Sat. and the CNY show at the Conservatory on Sunday.  Looking forward to both shows.  Also having a play date with 11 kids on Sat. at our house, attending a friends B-day on Sat. afternoon and meeting a new behaviour consultant on Friday.  Then my B-day/flex day on Monday.  While in the car Lili and Fei wear ear buds while they are on their phones or tablets.  Jia was wanting ear buds and we got her some yesterday at the dollar store.  She was so pleased.  She has no music on her tablet and we've disabled her wifi but she has figured out how to record herself singing and talking and then listens to those files over and over. 

 

I'm taking my kitchen sink.

If we ever move, I'm taking my kitchen sink.  Seriously, it's so incredibly beautiful.  Eric bought it for me two summers ago.  His friend just finished enameling it and Eric put it in last week.  It took three days and countless trips to town and finally some modified pipes to get it plumbed in.   I've been obssessive about keeping dishes done so that the sink always looks perfect.  The other day I said I loved my sink and Lili said 'how can you love a sink Mom?'.  Easy, your Dad lugged it home and dealt with it in a campsite and then researched and shopped and talked to anyone he could about refinishing it.  He re-did our kitchen to accomodate my sink and finally took it to a friend to paint because he wasn't convinced he could do it justice.  Then when it was finally ready, he took a friend out to get it, wrapped it in blankets and took three days to install it.  I see it as an act of love from Eric to me.  He won't buy me flowers or cards and there aren't any pretty words coming any time soon but he'll make himself crazy trying to get things done to make me happy. 

There are tons of Mommy blogs out there now.  They are fast becoming one of the most popular blogs on the internet.  I love following families I've gotten to know through the adoption world and I know there are lots of families following our site.  The blog I go to the most is Rumor Queen, it can be controvertial and I tend to lurk more than join in.  One of the topics that keeps coming up is that family blogs are hard for some families to read because they make families look too good.  I agree that is the case here most of the time.  I never lie and I don't embelish here.  I do try to just post the more positive stuff overall.  For the most part I'm documenting the kids lives and writing for my Mom and posting pictures for friends and family.  You can have your blog printed into books now and I'm planning to do that by the years.   It's a fabulous way to keep things documented at least a little bit.  I can say that we aren't perfect, we're not all about parties and holidays, we have days at home where we're just trying to find the surfaces and wash the floors too.  We have kids fighting and melting down.  We are often just trying to keep up with the every day demands.  Lili is moody, Fei lets her autism loose at home and Jia is a going toddler, we are chaos in motion most of the time.  So, I don't know how much more real we'll become on this blog :)  Just clearing up that I'm not trying to portray us as perfect, I just don't want this to be a place of healing and dealing, it really is more about celebrating our family and perserving the nice memories.

Here is a real bit for you to laugh about though, after we bought the kids their quad we were going to go for dinner but it was a bit early and kids had just eaten snacks so we went to Value Village to kill some time.  Eric found some riding pants for Lili, Lili found a book, I found two pairs of size 4 jeans for Jia and Fei found a surprise for Lili for her Birthday.  Eric took Jia and Lili out of the store and Fei stayed with me at the till to make sure Lili didn't see the surprise.  The lady at the till said "will you be using your senior discount today?'.  There was a really long silence while I worked really, really hard at processing that and finally meekly said 'no'.  I looked at Fei who had a look of fear on her face and then she took off in a run right out of the store to Eric.  I didn't feel chatty with the girl and was pretty happy to get out of there myself.  Fei had told Eric and when I got out there she said 'were you embarrassed Mom?'.  Uh no, shocked maybe.  It is funny to watch Fei figure these things out, she knew it was an insult but had no idea why.  I often have people assume I'm the girls Grandma, but I have 19 more years before I'm a senior and although I do have the gray hair there are no wrinkles quite yet!  Oh the joys.  Still not planning to go back to dying my hair, I'm loving not having to worry about roots and touch ups and toxic chemicals.  Oh and the girl at the till was mid 20's and her hair was dyed several different colors with huge roots showing and it was frizzy from all the coloring.   

Kids Quad!!

It's that time of year again to plan the girls Birthday parties.  Last year when Lili turned 10, she took friends to Wildplay.  Now I know Fei is picturing something similar for her 10th B-day but Wildplay doesn't open until March.  So, after MUCH debate I offered up rock climbing at the Romper Room.  Which Fei thought was awesome, but then she was inflexible about what day, she wanted the party on her Birthday which was a Friday.  So, after spending way too many hours contemplating how to get kids after school from an hour away in the wrong direction to our house so we can move all of them an hour in the other direction with signed waivers from each.  From past experience, this was a tall party order and nearly impossible.  I was trying to figure out how to feed them dinner in the car in order to fit it all in.  Then there was Lili, three weeks later, who will be at camp with her class on her Birthday and just wants to go to Wildplay again with her Dad to do a buddy tree top experience. 

It's not that I don't want to do parties for them, I just want them to be easier and more casual as they get older.  No need for themes etc.  So, in a brainstorm moment I saw kids quads advertised on-line at a price I could tolerate and offered them a quad instead of a party.  They both jumped at the idea to my total delight.  Then came the tricky part, actually picking one out that they could agree on.  Eric spent his time researching, shopping, talking, calling and countless hours on-line.  He found a nice deal, lightly used, and we went last night to look at it.  Both girls were smitten right away and after watching the fellow selling it zip down the road and then sitting on it themselves it was pretty much a done deal.  It's dirty but in really great shape.  Eric says it will clean up like new.  Lili got to try it a bit but Fei wasn't ready.  They're going to learn to ride in our yard.  Thankfully it's not that loud.  Crazy thing is, it wasn't much more than Jia's car!  I'm a bit nervous that we've bought into a hobby that can be costly with gear and repairs but I'm happy for Eric and the girls that they've found something to do together that they all really enjoy. 

Chinese New Year celebrations (Spring Festival in China) are starting this weekend.  We're not ready.  Girls are getting excited about all of the parties and events coming up.  I'm just going through the motions this year.  I don't feel depressed but I'm not thrilled about more parties either.  Feeling like we're in limbo waiting to hear about Little Guy.  Feeling sure it will never happen but holding onto a little bit of hope that no one has told us NO yet either.   This is harder than the other waits, because we know who we're waiting for.  He deserves so much more in his life than he has now.  It's crazy that he's not here with us already.  It shouldn't be this hard. 

Doggies

Jia and Fei are playing doggies.  Mostly Jia is the puppy and Fei walks her on the leash (don't worry, it's not around her neck).  It's been going on for hours.  The really funny part is when they stop to give Isabel a turn to be the dog!!  Hillarious.

2013

Every year we have a kidcentric New Years party with an early countdown.  This was the first year we did the countdown at midnight.  Even the littles were up and going strong.  We did our noisy parade, usually have the kids dig in the music box but bought horns this year.  Poor Deanna didn't like how noisy it was so we ended that quickly and moved onto dancing in the New Year.  So cute watching the Littles.  We were missing a couple families so it was a smaller, quieter party than usual but nice.  Dinner was great and then lots of snacks.  Lili was a little misplaced being the oldest there and she ended up spending the evening with the adults.  Four of us played Nertz with her so she was ok.  Our guests all slept over so the fun continued the next morning.  Fei is still having a hard time being nice to Lili, especially when there are other kids around.  She has been making fun of Lili when there is an audience.  NO CLUE how to get her to stop this behaviour.  Kinda' hoping calling her on her actions on the blog might be a little wake up call for her to stop.  She has done it in our group and has started at school too.  NOT cool.   We had planned to take down Christmas yesterday but ended up napping in the afternoon and lounging in the living room with tv the rest of the day.  Guess we all needed some real down time.