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?

Our Cutie Fei

Our first morning together.  She is 18mo.

Adoption day.  In our defense, we did know white wasn't ok for adoption day but it was Aug. 15 and stinkin' hot and she was much smaller than anticipated and it sorta' fit better than most of what we had there for her.  Plus it was very beautiful and hand stitched with delicate pink flowers around the bottom. She was pretty unhappy and looking back, we were doing great just to get the four of us out of the hotel room :)

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9th B-Day.

Oh my gosh I've taken a lot of pictures of the girlies!  So hard to pick just a few.

Moo is 10 today!

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9

Just the other day I was holding my wee peanut and now she's 10.  I turned around and we entered double didgets and preteen days! 

I have thousands of pictures of Moo, it was sooo hard to pick some and I didn't do this for Fei and I saw lots that were fun to look at again.  So I've put a note on my desk to show you all some old Fei photos another day.
Happy Birthday Lili.   We love you.