Funny Video

I’m a big fan of magic, puppets, and funny little hand tricks. This fits all of the above...

*and I needed something to post to try out my new fall color scheme on the blog!

Woodland Park Zoo

On a bit of a whim, we decided to take Kai and Shen to Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle on Tuesday. We had decided not to send Kai to school that day because his already long bus ride was going to be even longer due to a road construction project. A full day, “out of town” trip to the zoo seemed a bit over the top, but since I am beginning a new job next Monday (after 3 months of being out of work) this was also a bit of a celebratory treat, and a way to take advantage of the last of my “time off” to do something fun with the boys. Tuesday turned out to be a beautiful day in the middle of rainy streak we’ve been having lately, so we had a great day! We didn’t bring a stroller with us, and the boys had no problem keeping up. We ended up spending over 5 hours exploring the park and seeing all the animals before going home, all of us very, very tired!

"Dad, Tell Mommy about the blood coming out of the TV!"

Kai says, "Dad, Tell Mommy about the blood coming out of the TV!"

No, we weren’t watching Poltergeist or The Shining. We have been having problems with the television cable signal for the last couple weeks. It mostly affects the lower channels rendering any recordings off the major networks unwatchable. The PBS Kids recordings have still been okay so it hasn’t been an emergency.

I finally got around to calling Comcast to have them check it out. The guy that came to work on it was talking to me about the problem and was explaining that all the different devices we have stacked on top of one another: amplifier dvd player, vcr, Tivo box, cable modem, wireless router, Vonage box, stereo speakers - all these things can “BLEED” radio frequency signals. He talked about how signal interference can “BLEED” from one device to another, that bad cables can “BLEED” signals too, and that “BLEED-over” can affect your TV picture.

Even after Tina and I explained to Kai that the word “bleed” meant something different the way the cable-guy was using it and that their wasn’t any blood in the TV, Kai continued to insist the problem was blood. He then went on to pretend to be a cable-guy and acted out fixing an imaginary television. He was able to locate and successfully stop the blood from coming out of a number of components.

Family Day!

Today was the third anniversary of the day we met Kai in China. One of our family traditions over the last three years has been to dress Kai in the clothes he wore the day we met him. I’m not sure how many more years we’ll get to do this!

We still struggle a bit with what exactly to call this day, mostly we stick with family day, (as it isn’t the day we adopted him, it can’t be “Adoption Day”) but we use “Gotcha Day” too. Though some people don’t like the sound of that, but the boys love running up and grabbing us, or us grabbing them, or both, and all of us shouting “Gotcha” and hugging tight. We did this over and over while they squealed with laughter and begged to do it more!


Shen’s first Family Day anniversary was on August 5th and while we celebrated the day with him, we didn’t manage to get the photos of him in his outfit. So we did his photo today too. It was actually nice doing them both at the same time and the boys really enjoyed it. We were surprised at how well Shen fit in his clothes, but when we looked back at the photos of him from a year ago we saw that the outfit was much too big for him that day.


It’s amazing to see how much Kai’s feet have grown as well. While he can still squeeze into the clothes, there isn’t a chance of getting the shoes on!

Kai & Shen mugging for the camera

We made egg flower soup for dinner again this evening. That’s the second time this week, but it’s Kai’s favorite and it was his pick. We called the asian market to see if they had any mooncakes left over and fortunately they did. Kai has developed quite the taste for the lotus-seed paste filled ones, so we picked up a couple more to have for dessert. Since the day we met Kai was the first time we ever bought mooncakes (in Beijing) this seemed quite appropriate.

We finished the day by looking at the picture books we made for Kai and Shen about their adoption stories which they both love to read again and again.

Soccer

Kai and Shen got to play indoor soccer at the Sportsplex Tuesday morning. They have a 1-hour drop-in “Tot Soccer” program that consists of instructor lead games and activities, and lots of running and kicking. There were a number of other children there that Kai and Shen knew, they all had a great time as well as a good workout!

Moon Festival Fun

Moon Festival was Sunday. We celebrated by going to the Mei Hua Chinese School’s party on Saturday night. Kai and Shen made paper lanterns and a calligrapher wrote the Chinese characters for their names for them. There were a bunch of musical performances. A group of children sang a song called "Jasmine Flower" that Shen thought he knew and he was singing along.

On Sunday night we celebrated by having our friends the Gudmundsens over for a homemade Chinese dinner. We kept to a pretty simple menu: fried rice, egg flour soup and pot sticker dumplings. Cooking for 8 meant lots of chopping and mixing and some math for doubling recipes. Egg flower soup is very simple to make and is Kai’s absolute favorite food. The trick to fried rice is using day old rice so we had cooked up lots of jasmine rice the day before. We considered using packaged wrappers for the pot stickers, but in the end did the right thing and made our own. The dough is really simple and a little goes a long way. We made over 40 of them which was pretty labor intensive, but definitely worth it as these were the hit of the dinner!

After dinner we ate mooncakes. We bought fewer mooncakes this year because we’ve had too many in the past. I think they are something of an acquired taste if you haven’t had them before. They aren’t like a regular western cake, and their diminutive size does not convey the heavy richness inside. This is the fourth year we’ve celebrated Moon Festival and now I find myself looking forward to mooncakes. Kai and Shen both really like them too, so we probably could have done with a few more this year. We had a bunch of little ones with a sweet pineapple filling and two large lotus-seed ones with the duck egg yolk inside. Shen preferred the sweeter pineapple ones while Kai really loves the lotus-seed ones (these ones remind me of peanut butter bars). I was disappointed we couldn’t find any of the red bean paste ones locally this year, but there’s always next year.

After eating mooncake we waited for it to get dark then went outside and looked at the moon. We have had beautiful clear weather lately so it was warm and the moon was very, very bright. It was almost 9 o’clock before the moon cleared the trees around our house so the boys had to stay up pretty late to see it, then it was straight to bed!

Catch Up Blogging - or, "What We Did During Summer Vacation"

Okay, so I didn’t blog for a couple months. I have my excuses. But I had no idea how hard it would be to get started again. I thought habits were harder to break? So, this is going to be a catch up entry - sort of a Kitchen Sink post, as I throw a bunch of stuff in from over the summer. What follows is a great example of how selective editing can really improve your life, and that when the going gets tough, the tough go party...

We celebrated July 4th at my Sister Kris’ house. (Shen calls her “Uncle Kris”) Since my mom had all three of her children, their spouses, and all the grandkids there she insisted on getting a family portrait for her Christmas cards. 43 pictures were taken of the group with my camera and there wasn’t a good one in the bunch. When Mom was visiting last week she wanted to know why she hadn’t gotten a copy from us yet, so I showed her what I had. She agreed, it was not good. But, thank goodness for Photoshop! I was able to move heads around from 8 different pictures to produce this miracle shot - all of us looking at the camera with relatively pleasant expressions. A beautiful moment that never really happened...



We had Shen’s One Year Post Placement Interview with our social worker. Which also means we celebrated Shen’s Adoption Day. Here’s the photo we provided to prove he’s still alive and living happily with us. It looks pretty convincing, and I swear it isn’t Photoshopped...


We went to the Lynden Fair where we saw all the animals, ate fair food, heard live music and rode a bunch of kiddy rides...



We celebrated Ben’s 18th Birthday and Brittni’s 20th. Here’s a photo our neighbor Stephen snapped us singing Happy Birthday!


We played in the pool at Grandma’s Condo...




We went to Priest Lake with Aunt (uncle) Kris and Uncle Mark too.
We got to drive Uncle Mark’s Boat!


And go inner-tubing!


And build sandcastles!


We visited our friend Jasper and his parents, Pat and Paula at their beach house on Padilla Bay. Uncle Pat took us for a ride in the row boat...


Kai started school last week. Here’s a photo of him waiting for the bus with Gramma. I love the pensive look on his face, but he wasn’t really worried about school, just annoyed at having to pose for pictures.


Well, that almost gets us caught up! Now we can move on to current posting. I’m going to try hard to get back in the habit so I hope you follow along.

Visit from Gramma O

We had Gramma here with us for a visit the last few days which Kai and Shen thoroughly enjoyed! There’s nothing better than an extra grown-up around who is always willing to cuddle, or read stories, or fetch you snacks and drinks, or best of all to watch you show off! Gramma went out to parks with us, and on shopping trips and had a good time just hanging out and visiting. It was nice for Scott & Tina too, to have someone else to watch the boys while we got some bigger chores done around the house! When Gramma wasn’t doting on “The Littles” she was busy knitting custom mittens - a hot commodity in the “limb difference world”. We miss you already Gramma!