Holiday Fun & Family Visits

Where did December go??

It went by in a blur of creating, baking, hugging, buying, wrapping, snuggling, driving and rushing around. We enjoyed making holiday cutouts with our in house bakery staff. We ended up making 8+ kinds of cookies that we shared and enjoyed throughout the month.

Uncle Bill & Aunt Janis made their annual visit, despite very inclement weather. We really enjoyed the time spent with them and had quite a game night. Candy Land anyone??

We recently purchased this very comfy leather couch. It's rounded (called a media sectional) and HUGE, so that the entire family of five and two other adults can sit on it comfortably. It has two hassocks that are on wheels and are rounded too, so that they can be turned around for additional seating and game playing. They also open for storage, which is an incredible feature for the organized minded individual like me. Eric likes that he can grab a hidden blanket without moving his feet, and he is still tying to ply me with ideas about refrigerated beer storage. :)


This year we took our family photo on the new couch and finally, thankfully, did not have to say "still waiting for our China girl". She is here and real and really happy about it.


On Christmas Eve we went to Grandma Marion & Grandpa Tom's. Both of Tom's children were there with us, Kate & Terry.

Megan took this picture of me and Mary Alice. She's pretty good with the camera!

After dinner, Matthew played the Xylophone at our church's Christmas Eve service:



Our Christmas Morning Tree

Our Christmas Morning Cinnamon Rolls

Megan's reaction to Christmas morning was very laid back and she made breakfast for herself before opening any presents!

We had lots of snow in December!

Here are Linda & Megan at the top of Mt. Everest.

Okay, it's just our local sledding hill, but it looks good, doesn't it.

After Christmas, we traveled to Pennsylvania to visit Eric's brother's family. The cousins had a great time together.

Here is the cookie man!!

Calling for Pizza....

Ian and Matthew made this Domino Structure. It didn't fall exactly the way they wanted, but it looks pretty cool.

And here is Megan's beloved Miss Elizabeth, which she pronounces "babah beth", who teaches her Kinderdance twice a week.

A major accomplishment of the month was the sending of a care package to Chaoyang, Megan's orphanage. I sent a detailed photo album with lots of pictures of Megan at home and from our brief visit with the orphanage staff in China, along with captions in Chinese, some candy and a letter telling them about her progress so far. I was lucky enough to find a woman at the local Chinese school who was willing to translate the letter and captions for me into Chinese. I tried to use Babel fish, but I had no idea if the translation was accurate or not and I did not want to risk it. I wanted to send them all kinds of outgrown clothing that we had gathered up for the children, but the post office said the cheapest way to send it would be $81 dollars!!! I opted for the smallest possible box and it was still $40..... because of the candy. Next time I will just send pictures. Maybe they will send me the e-mail address and I can send them that way.

Well, I am wondering who is still reading this blog...... Is it just my mom???? Please consider leaving me a comment if you are out there, just so I know...... :) and have a very Happy and Healthy New Year.

Geo Bee and Dancing Class

Last week, both Matthew and Mary Alice were in the Middle School National Geographic Geography Bee. Due to the spelling of their last names, they were seated next to each other. I guess Mary Alice was bugging Matthew...... She looks sweet though, doesn't she? Unfortunately, neither one of them won the Bee, although Matthew got into the final round. Last year, he did win and went to the finals in Albany, so it was a bit of a bitter pill for him to swallow. We are proud of both though, as even getting to participate is an honor for a select few.

Megan has started dancing in a Kinderdance program at her preschool, after class. She absolutely loves it. Here she is with Miss Jackie, her teacher. A very brief (but cute) video follows.

Thanksgiving 2008

We had a wonderful time on our annual Thanksgiving in Georgia visit. We always look forward to this weekend with excitement and anticipation of a fast and furious, intense time for connecting and catching up with each other. Marty and Cindy host us in their beautiful home. Their three adult children, my mom, my sister and her family and our family all stay with them. Luckily, their home is designed to accommodate the masses and we are all still speaking at the end of the weekend!

Here are some pictures of us on our way to Georgia:

Waiting for Grandma's plane to arrive:

Exhausted already? No, just naptime.

There were lots of hugs all around:

Oreo Cookie Turkeys!

Megan loved to "Cheers! with her Sparkling Apple Juice and special glass!!

And of course, hair dressing....

Fun and games

The annual Craft Project this year was Cardboard Frog Olympics

And lots of music making

Go Cindy!

Go Megan!

And general hanging out

Finally, the ride back to the airport. Good to have a shoulder to lean on....

And now for the laundry........

First Snow!!

Wow! Two posts in one day! I just had to share these photos of her enjoying her first snow.

Let the Dancing Begin!!!

Megan is going to begin dancing after school on Wednesdays through a Kinderdance program at her preschool. She is SO EXCITED!!! We just had to share the video of her trying out her new outfit.

Now we have had her 6 months!!!

We have been having lots of fun lately. Mary Alice, who is taking Spanish, had fun on Beret Day, Sponsored by the French Students, and immediately made a Beret for our cats to model. Here they are, Jasmine and Misty. For those of you who do not know, Mary Alice is quite a Cat Hat Maker, and some of you have had the privilege of viewing her private collection. Maybe someday she will give me permission to share it, as it deserves a post of its own. It's hilarious. And yes, the cats tolerate this dressing up in good humor.






Megan has been making "soup" at school for the month of November. We made soup at home, both real and pretend, too. Mary Alice loves to play with her in Megan's kitchen.

Below is pie, which she also made at school and of course, I had to make some at home, too! Turns out she loves pie!!!!

I am not at all sure that she "got" the idea of Halloween, but she thought the pumpkin gushy stuff was great. She and daddy are having fun carving at our annual church party.


The finished pumpkins are below, Megan's first, Mary Alice's and then, the amazing pumpkin by Matthew, who worked for hours and hours, even avoiding dinner and dessert to finish!!! It's hard to compete with Matthew!

Mary Alice was a colonial girl. Megan chose be an ice cream cone but only kept the costume on long enough to walk next door, and then shed it, preferring instead the ease of being a pumpkin.........

Here are our neighborhood children. It's cute to see how much Megan is enjoying herself. She had no idea who they were until we showed her one at a time.

Here is a new photo of Bao Bao, (now Sofia), her "sister" from her orphanage in China, adopted at the same time as Megan. Sofia is doing wonderful and is talking like crazy. We keep in touch regularly and recently were able to "see" them over Skype with our webcam. Sofia is visiting an Apple Farm in this picture and is 3 years old.

While we are incredibly happy and think that things could not have gone better in our last 6 months with Megan, there have been some bumps in the road. She is very self directed and determined and we have had to be very strict with her about things she can and cannot do herself. She is incredibly curious (like a certain little monkey) and has no idea about the dangers that lurk around the house or the consequences of her actions. For example, one day I went to unbuckle her from her booster and she happily handed me a feather that she had been sucking on and stripped clean!! I have no idea where she got it from. Later that day, we were in the kitchen and I was loading the dishwasher and I turned about to find her eating old rice (from the previous night's dinner) off the plates! Another time, when I gave her the garbage to clean up some paper she was cutting, she said "Mama, Egg!" and showed me some raw eggs she had pulled out which I had cracked some time earlier and thrown away. Each time Megan gets into something like that I think "wow!" I didn't even think of that as a possible issue. Childproofing seems impossible with a curiousity level like that!! So anyway, I felt driven to create some very safe area in the house (within my immediate view) where she can play without me worrying about what she is doing every second. This resulted in our changing around our furniture and turning our family room into a reading/play room and the living room into the TV, media, Computer, music area. Now I can gate off the living/dining room and feel much better about her roaming around the family room. I also created an area in the basement (with the help of her lovely special ed teacher, Therese) which is simple and easy for her to play in and clean up. It took a lot of time & effort, (thank you Eric, for spending all last Saturday running the TV/Phone lines to the living room! OXOXOX) but was well worth it.

Megan's language continues to expand and she is now putting some 2-3 word combinations together. She is naming pictures in books, and this week has discovered how to move the cursor with the mouse on the computer, AND CLICK!!! without moving the mouse again, which opens up a whole new world of possible activities to her. She has a favorite video on you tube called the Tweenies Wheels on the Bus, and now she can click and replay it over and over!! Her teachers are thrilled with her progress and feel she is doing incredibly well with routines and concept development. She is rote counting sporadically through 15 or so, (not really with 1-1 correspondence), can name the letters A and M, is trying desperately to pronounce Megan correctly and can name most colors. Wow, it's incredible progress in 6 months, even if English were her first langauge.

Matthew and Mary Alice both made it into the Middle School Geography Bee! Only the top 30 scoring students in the school (of about 800) are invited to participate. Last year, Matthew won the Bee and ended up making it to the State competition level. The contest will be the day before Thanksgiving. We are very proud of them. There are several sites with games for studying and one of them includes an interactive "find that state" game. I am embarrased to say that I have no idea where over half of our states are!!! I don't even know which half of the country some are in!! I really need to practice with these maps. I can do some things amazingly well, and that is simply not one of them. And my kid won last year, and yes... he's a biological one!!! Go figure.....

We are getting ready for our annual Thanksgiving Visit to my brother's house in Georgia. We have gone every year since Matthew was a baby. We are all so excited to have Megan join us this year!!! My mother comes from Florida, as well as my sister and her family (who live near us). We have so much fun together, but it goes by way too fast. My brother has a big house so we can all stay together and enjoy the weekend.

Here is a cute video of Megan doing a "magic trick" with a disappearing ice cube.