Currently named Avalon with the breeder, still waiting to hear what Fei will name her. She is one week in this photo. Hoping for an updated photo soon. If only we could use Ann at Red Threads for an update :)
Luk
Our family.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Crazy, busy days.
New haircut.
More new haircuts.
Shopping with Dad in one of his favorite stores.
Clutching her first craft, a popcorn shaker made with Mom, ok, largly made by Mom, but still fun.
Oh no Isabel! Don't destroy the kids castle!! A couple of the kids were ticked, but most of them thought it was pretty funny when Isabel landed on the castle and rolled all over it.
Happy 4th Birthday Kalum!
A rare photo of me, in my oh so stylin' hat.
Pretty big one, even Isabel couldn't take this one down.
Her fortune is stuck there...ew...but funny.
Kidlets piggy banks were full, so they rolled it all and got it to the bank. They had a riot playing in their money.
Jia's 1st swim in the backyard, doing a cool model pose with the foot/knee turned out.
Water was too cold, she wanted to 'slide' instead. Swings are slides and slides are no no's.
Finally in and loved it.
Got tons of fun pictures of Chayse and Jia playing in the little pool with the balls, but they don't have tops on, so this is the only one I could post. They played and played and played in there.
It's 82 girls, just jump in!
Snack time.
Beautiful recorder music this morning while the adults sat at the table.
Summer has started. We took the girls camping right after school ended and camped with three other families and had a few visitors. On Sat. at the beach we had 12 kids in our group. Super fun. Jia wasn't impressed with sand. The first day she clung to me and finally relented to sitting on Fei's lap but wouldn't touch the sand. The 2nd day she stayed on the blanket with me for hours. In the evening we went for a bike ride to a little beach and the big girls made a teeter totter out of logs and Jia wanted on that enough to brave walking to in with shoes on in the sand. The 3rd and last day at the beach she started out on the blanket but then took off running with the kids and that was that...our sand baby was on the go! She had it everywhere! To say she loved it would be a total understatement. Of course, I didn't bother bringing my camera because she'd just spent two days hanging on the blanket with me! James took some for us, hopefully we'll get them from him. The kids even burried Isabel on the beach and she let them! I couldn't believe I didn't have my camera. So not like me.
Last night we met friends in the city for dinner, a group of 16, boy can we be loud :) Debbie got news yesterday that they have PA for baby Emily so it really was a night for celebration! Then we had Nathalie, Giles, Madison and Chayse come stay at our place. Jia loved having Chayse around. They're 8mo. apart in age but really the same size and fairly similar in developement. They were soooo sweet together. Not really interacting, still in parrallel play. They stayed close to each other though. Madison is the same age as Fei and the three bigger girls had a blast in the pool and then slept together in Lili's room. We'll get to see Nathalie and the girls once more before they had back home.
We leave tomorrow for our 10 day off island trek. We're so not ready yet. It will be a busy, busy evening getting things packed. We needed a new squirrel fan for our air conditioner and it comes in tomorrow (knock on wood) which doesn't leave E much time to get it working. We're a bit concerned that it will be a bit warm in the Okanagan. Our plan was to take Isabel, Lacie and the rats but after four days camping with Isabel, E has changed his mind, so Isabel will be going to her kennel instead. Lacie is still coming because she is so much easier to manage than Isabel. We're taking Mia the rat too. Our wee Dixie died a couple days ago. Such sadness. I really, really liked that little sweet rat. Fei was prepared, Dixie has been really old for a while now and she's been having breathing problems for a couple months. We're pretty sure she had heart failure.
Eric is concerned that every time a rat dies we'll just get another one and we'll have rats forever. We left it up to Fei about getting another one or not. Both girls want to keep going with the cage cleaning. I found a Russion Silver Berkshire female with Dumbo ears and she is reserved for us. She is 2 weeks old and we'll get her July 26th. Fei is pretty excited about the new baby and is totally focused on finding the perfect name for her. Right now she's thinking Pixie, Trixie, Lulu, Luna, Sophie or Starla. Feel free to add names for her to consider. She wants the name shortish, she is fond of ee sound endings and it has to be a cute name.
Can't wait to get this holiday started.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Congratulations to Debbie, Chris & Asia!
They just got their referral for a baby girl on Tuesday!! She's born May 20/10 and is sooo cute! More details from Debbie on Monday. I'm so happy for them. When I got the picture I showed Lili & Fei right away and they were hooting and hollaring, then Lili ran to tell Eric. Big news around our place for sure.
We're off camping for the Canada day long weekend. Hoping the weather gets better!
Day one of summer holidays. Meant being at work an hour earlier now that I won't have to drive the kids to school. What a peaceful morning with those kids sleeping in :) What a treat to not have to deal with school.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Piano recital
Fei on her new bike.
Jia's first bike ride in the trailer, she liked it a lot more than the baby seat.
Couldn't get all the pipers and drummers in one frame, it really was impressive.
Lame stage, but always nice to see our girlies dance.
Ready for the piano recital
Piano Recital Link
Piano Recital Link
Fathers Day.
Jia's first hot dog. I think she liked it.
I'm happy to report that the piano recital went well. Fei had her doubts after the dance fiasco. They've got three years of lessons and it sure shows in their playing! They were fabulous. Lili did an awesome job of introducing them both. Fei is still adament that she isn't talking on a stage. Jia was all smiles when her girls were on the stage. Link is above, but here it is again anyways, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTkbV2Hr0zg
Sat. the girls danced at the Highland Gathering. We'd never been to a Gathering before. There were 14 pipes and drums bands there and when they all played Amazing Grace together during the opening ceremonies it was truely impressive.
Jia has one more music class, the girls have one more piano lesson and then school is out next Wed. We're almost done! Can't wait for the lazy days of summer.
I was just on-line checking out the water slides at Bridal Falls, our first stop on our holiday this year. We're planning to wing the rest of the trip and have a true adventure. Two kids, a baby, a puppy, a chihuahua and two rats in an RV across BC. It will be an adventure no matter what we do or where we go :) My whole family loves a good road trip, me...not quite as much.
We're still not getting great weather here, hard to believe summer is upon us. Sure hope it's better for July! The kids are already talking about all of their camping spots and they are the most excited to get back to Kissinger Lake. It's a tiny lake with no services, small campground, no point bothering with bikes it's too small for that. You can swim or sit and watch others swim. It's amazing to me that it's their favorite. Go figure.
Fathers Day yesterday, the girls and I took Eric to brunch before he left for his day of riding. In the evening we had a fire and hotdogs. Kids played in the backyard until Jia's bedtime. They are such great big sisters, they totally include her when they play outside. Jia's favorite things to do are playing soccer, jumping in the trampoline and swinging in her new swing. She yells 'SWIDE, SWIDE' when we head out but she really doesn't like the slide that much.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Dance
Gramma's 1st find!
The best part of last night, sitting outside, out of the sweltering heat inside, eating a snack.
Another busy weekend. Eric tried to get new tires for Fei's bike, seems 18" white tires are hard to find, special order, turned out to be just a tad more to just get her a new bike. So...she wants the same bike that Lili got. Eric and I are thinking there is NO WAY we'll find the same one, but Friday night we went to the big city and were shocked that there was a 20" store display, only one left and it was on sale for the same price we got Lili's! Yay Fei. How will they tell them apart you ask? No problem, Fei put pink tassles on her new red cruiser :) Then we had Spaghetti Factory (kids favorite) and did some geo caching. The first two we tried took us to people's yards. Not sure what was up with that, but we just moved on to more public ones. As dusk came we stopped at the park to use the bathroom and there is an amazing climbing tree that the kids just love, so while I used the facilities they ran to the tree and started climbing. Miss Jia ran behind them and climbed onto the lowest branch. Her feet were all of a half inch off the ground but she was hanging on for dear life and just thrilled to be climing the tree with her sisters. Eric and I were just howling. I took a bunch of pictures, but it was dark in the tree and not many of them turned out. I need a better camera that fits in my pocket. It was a long night but we had fun.
Saturday we had a pic-nic with my parents and did a puzzle geo at a cemetary. Great place for our pic-nic. Nice and quiet. We all had a great time, but after finding all of our clues we just had no idea what it all meant so sadly we didn't find the final cache. It's bugging my Mom so we'll go back and work on it again another time.
On Sunday Mom, the girls and I picked up Subway and went for a walk and Gramma found her first geo-cache. Then we dropped both girls off at seperate Birthday parties. I went home and played with Jia in the backyard. Penny brought her girls and dinner over (Thanks Pen) and we ate quick to get the girls to dance for their year end show. This was our first sunny summer weekend this year and we were all a bit loath to leave the yard. Oh, funny thing happened when I picked Fei up from the party she was at, another Mom approached me to tell me they saw our geo name on a log/cache at a local beach! Too funny. We're weethreeNelson and she figured it had to be us. Her family has over 300 finds! We have 17 now. We've made plans to do a geo caching play date with her and her daughter.
Now to rant, because it's my blog and I can, the girls have danced for years with the same teacher. I won't go into details about the whole year end show, too boring. It was just so disorganized. Our girls group dance was at the beginning of the show. It went fairly well until the end, two girls were clearly in the wrong spot but one of them decided it was Fei who was in the wrong spot and instead of smiling and just keep dancing (which is what they're supposed to do) this kid marched over to Fei, told her to move, pointed to where she wanted her to go and of course Fei was confused (because she was in the right spot) and didn't move so this kid pushed her, and pushed her again. At which point everyone else has moved on and now Fei is in the right spot still (just dumb luck) and this kid is still telling Fei off!!! So, we're only a few mins. into the show and I'm majorly peeved and feeling sooo, soooo incredibly sad for Fei. Eric thought Fei screwed up, but I'm at the dance class every week and I knew she was in the right spot. Anyways, I've watched the video three times today and Fei was great, the other kid screwed up and then handled it extremely poorly. At the intermission, Fei was sullen. Not sure what to think. Worried she did something wrong. Not keen to go back and dance anymore. She was supposed to do the sword dance but declined and let someone else take her place. Ug. The girls didn't enjoy the evening, were just glad it was over. They normally quite like performing but last night just left them wanting nothing more to do with dance class. They have another month of lessons. Yesterday they were positive they were going to dance again next year. After last night they don't want to dance again ever. So sad. They're old enough now that what happened on stage was humiliating to them. I'm not having warm fuzzy feelings for that other kid. I really, really want to show her the video and just say 'NOT COOL'. End of rant.
The weather is still great today. Nothing planned for tonight so we get to stay home and eat dinner in the back yard. Eric has the pool just about ready to use. The water feels fairly warm, who knows maybe tonight is the night. Wait until Jia figures out there is a body of water in the back yard! We're planning to lock the ladder up.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
19th Wedding Anniversary
Happy Anniversary Eric, I love you. I'm happy to report that I'd marry you all over again and there isn't much I'd change about our lives. Clearly we didn't have kids in school when we planned our big day. Sheesh, someone should have told us that anniversary's would always suck if they fell in June while our kids where young. The kids last dance practice before the year end show this weekend is today, so we'll take them to that. Means a late dinner. We planned to eat at home and use our new patio set and let the kids play on the new playset. Then last night, the neighbor sprayed his hay field with poop! Arg. We've blocked doors with towels at the bottem and put rags in our pot lights, anything to hold the smell out of our house. The girls ran to the car for school this morning while holding their breath. I don't think we'll be hanging around the back yard tonight. Onto plan B, except we don't know what that is yet.
About the poop...what the heck, why are farmers still allowed to do this?! How completely disgusting. Not often I want rain, but man-o-man am I ever hoping for some rain to wash the poop into the ground. You can just see the rows of brown all over the field. I took Lili shopping last night and I saw the poop sprayer go past us and hoped it wasn't going to the field behind us. When we got home Eric was at the door telling us to hurry, hurry, hurry into the house.
About the poop...what the heck, why are farmers still allowed to do this?! How completely disgusting. Not often I want rain, but man-o-man am I ever hoping for some rain to wash the poop into the ground. You can just see the rows of brown all over the field. I took Lili shopping last night and I saw the poop sprayer go past us and hoped it wasn't going to the field behind us. When we got home Eric was at the door telling us to hurry, hurry, hurry into the house.
Adoption by accident.
Many years ago I read the following and laughed and laughed and laughed. I just came across it on someone else's blog and howled again today. Everyone keeps asking if we're done. The official answer is yes. Eric says we're done. I feel in my heart that I'd love to welcome as many children as we can. I do want a son. I am certain we have the energy for 'just one more'. The rest of the family doesn't feel the way I do. So, it's become a joke now that if I want my boy, I'm going to have to figure out how to get pregnant or adopt by accident. We don't have I-800A approvals here in Canada but we do apply to Canadian Immigration with an extensive application.
The Accidental Adoption:
Honey, sit down. I have some news for you.
What is it?
Well, I don't know how to say this, so I'll just come out with it. I went out to the mailbox today and ... well, we got an I-800A approval.
A what?!? An I-800A? As in, we're going to have another baby?!?
It looks that way.
But how? We've been so careful! I put away all the blank I-800A forms. Didn't you hide our homestudy update?
Of course I did. But don't forget, there was that one night...
What night? (pauses) Ohhh, that night. But it was only once. We were just messing around. I didn't print clearly. I didn't even use ink! (pauses again) But it was kind of fun.
(giggles) It was, wasn't it? I'll never forget how cute you looked getting your fingerprints.
So now we've got our approval, eh? But that doesn't always mean you'll adopt, does it? I mean, shouldn't you see the agency or something, make sure everything's okay?
I already did.
And?
I'm five documents along.
Five documents! And they're all notarized, certified and authenticated okay?
Just great. There was one small scare when the agency couldn't see the Notary's middle initial, but it showed up just fine under the magnifying glass.
Thank God. And you, honey? Are you feeling okay?
I'm feeling fine. As long as I know you're happy about this.
Happy? I'm thrilled! It's always a shock at first when something like this happens, but of course I'm happy.
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