Strawberry Picking

Today was a busy day! I got up early and went in to work at 7:00 AM to do some networking stuff for a couple hours, then came home and mowed the lawn, then we went to the Northwest Chinese Cultural Society's annual summer picnic, and then we went berry picking. The boys are in the bathtub now and I'm having a little quiet time on my computer. We got some good pictures at the berry farm. It's just a little north of town and has a great view of Mt. Baker.







When I asked the boys to smile for me out in the berry field Kai told me this was his "cool face". I am reminded of Derek Zoolander's "Blue Steel".

WWU Outdoor Sculpture Collection

Shen's preschool scheduled an outing to Western Washington University's planetarium today. We took the boys a little early so we could explore the outdoor sculpture collection with them. Tina and I attended Western together so its campus and most of these sculptures were a big part of our daily lives "back in the day". It was really fun watching the boys get to experience them for the first time...

Alpha Beta Cube


and what's inside it...


The Rock Rings






Feats of Strength










Sky Viewing Sculpture


For Handel




The Fountain in Red Square


Log Ramps


The Man Who Used To Hunt Cougar For Bounty


Stadium Piece

Congratulations Ben - Class of 2009!

No More Training Wheels!

Shen has been working hard since Saturday on learning to ride his bike without training wheels. Tina and I have both been working with him and wondering how this was going to work exactly with only one hand. It is certainly an added challenge, but as you can see, Shen is up to it! When I got home from work today he told me he had a surprise for me and we had to go out to the cul-de-sac so he could show me. Here's some video we shot of him starting on Sunday, and ending this afternoon...

Barak Obama / Wild Things

The other night Shen started begging to see Barak Obama on TV. I'm not sure why exactly, I think he figured this was something Tina and I would want to watch so he would get the satisfaction of making the pick.

We don't usually let the boys watch the news, so I looked around on youtube to see if I could find a kid friendly clip of the president, and found this...



While boys were quite pleased with this pick, they complained they couldn't see the pictures, so I read the book to them again for bedtime.

While I was looking around on Youtube, I found this trailer for the upcoming movie. I hope it lives up to the preview!

Kai's New Bike is Very Cool!

Kai has been riding his bike without training wheels for about a year now. He loves riding his bike. He rides it around the backyard and on the deck and is always asking for Tina or me to take him out to the cul-de-sac in front to ride. We strongly believe that it is easier for children to start riding on small bikes so he has been riding a 12" bike for some time now, and it was clear that he was ready for something bigger. On Saturday we got him a new red bike with 16" wheels. I can't tell you how proud he is of this new bike. It has a kick-stand on it so when he's done riding it he can park it upright and stand back to admire it in all its shiny red glory.
It is such a fast bike he has named it "Lightning McQueen" after the character in the Disney movie Cars. He loves to ride it fast and lean into the turns. And if you ask him (heck, even if you don't ask him) he'll tell you his new bike is very cool!

Somebody Has Been Using My Camera!

Do you ever transfer the pictures from your digital camera onto your computer and find pictures you have no recollection of taking?

Now who could have taken these do you suppose?

Senior Prom

Ben and his girlfriend Kelly on their way out to Senior Prom.

Happy 21st Cameron!

Today is Cameron's 21st Birthday! We celebrated with him last night with a dinner of barbecued salmon and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Boy that shortcake looked like a fire hazard with all those candles on it! Here's a picture of our young man with his girlfriend Brittni!

Email From Kai's Nanny in China

One of the tragedies of foreign adoption is how hard it is to preserve connections to the people in the child's past. Sometimes it seems almost impossible. China does not encourage contact between families and the orphanages where their children used to live. There is no formal way to provide updates about the child or ask questions about the child's past. You receive your child, you say goodbye, go home and start a new life. But messy bits creep in. Things happened before we were a family. Some of these things we kind of know about. We have some cryptic notes translated from a very foreign language. How true are the bits we have? Are they translated correctly? Some of them seem more like oddly phrased questions than answers.

There is a woman who lives in China. She takes care of babies. I know of families in many different countries who think quite fondly of this woman. They believe she loved their children for them while they waited to adopt them. I believe this.

Though I have met her a couple times, I can't claim to really know her, but I have seen her cry when she said goodbye to a child she used to take care of. That child, Kai, now believes all the good things about this woman that many other people believe. He wishes to see her again someday. I have heard him make this wish many times: when he throws a coin in fountain, the last time he blew out birthday candles, it is a big wish.

We put out several efforts recently to get an email address for the orphanage in Baoding. Today an email came to Tina's in-box. the subject line read:

慧慧

That's Hui-Hui, Kai's Chinese name.

Awkward machine translation software has seemingly delivered her message to us through the old children's party game "telephone" where one child whispers a message to the next, and the message is repeated around the circle until at the end every one laughs at how the message has been garbled.

And so her message was whispered all the way from China and rendered into something of a cryptic but loving poem. She wrote...

Bright parents:
You are good!

I am bright Chinese Aunt Zang Jinyan,

I think in my heart's treasure bright,
she grew up
now goes to school.

She now the body?
Her hand has cured?
I want to see her near future life
according to with the physical condition.

This time the information which sends to you
are through the strong parents
knew that moreover strong
and the bright picture also had other child's picture to send.

In addition has several children also in your there,
did not know whether you can relate on, I think of them,
if has their relation method please to inform me,
thanks!

Wishes in advance
your health in here me,
is forever young.

Bright mother:  
Zang Jinyan

More Design Tweaks

I've modified the header graphic again. GoJee now has Chinese characters under his picture. They don't say "GoJee", but rather Da

Hóuzi, which means "Big Monkey". I used these characters on a t-shirt I made Shen for Christmas. I think it looks better, and I like having characters for GoJee.

Idle Parenting

TIna and I discovered a series of online columns from a new book that really strikes a chord with us. It's called "The Idle Parent"



You can click the picture above to see the web-page for the book on amazon.co.uk (it's not on the U.S. Amazon site yet).
The website for The Idle Parent is: http://idler.co.uk/news/the-idle-parent/ where you can read a number of great little essays and this manifesto:

THE MANIFESTO OF THE IDLE PARENT
We reject the idea that parenting requires hard work
We pledge to leave our children alone
We reject the rampant consumerism that invades children from the moment they are born
We read them poetry and fantastic stories without morals
We drink alcohol without guilt
We reject the inner Puritan
We don’t waste money on family days out and holidays
An idle parent is a thrifty parent
An idle parent is a creative parent
We lie in bed for as long as possible
We try not to interfere
We play in the fields and forests
We push them into the garden and shut the door so we can clean the house
We both work as little as possible, particularly when the kids are small
Time is more important than money
Happy mess is better than miserable tidiness
Down with school
We fill the house with music and merriment
We reject health and safety guidelines
We embrace responsibility
There are many paths
More play, less work

Poor Juno, Poor Poor Juno

No puppies for Juno. We had her spayed on Friday. This picture of her was Friday evening, We felt really sorry for her as she was pretty wiped out. I don't know if it was the pain or the meds but she was just plain listless. So we were quite amazed at how quickly she was back to her old naughty self.



This picture is of her in the backyard today chewing on some of the boys' sandbox toys. She was up in almost no time and back to zipping around like the crazy little puppy she is.

A Sunny Sunday

Today Tina and I worked in the yard. I took my blower out and got the cedar debris cleared off the roof and out of the gutters, tidied up the shed a bit, mowed the lawn for the first time this year and cleared out some of the landscaping in front. Tina got some flowers in and tidied up out back. The place looks really nice this time of year, especially when we get some nice sunny weather!

Kai and Shen spent hours in their sandbox today. I love the way a sandbox can keep boys this age so busy!



I took a break from yard-work for a bit in the afternoon and took Kai and Shen down to a nearby park on the lake. They wanted to sail the boats they made yesterday. Unfortunately the boats they made aren't really the sailing kind, but we have a great little classic toy boat that does actually sail perfectly! This is a little toy I bought for Cam and Ben when they were little. It's a beautiful toy and the local company that makes them is still in business. I looked them up online and was a little shocked at what this little boat costs these days - quite glad I bought it when I did!
It's amazing how well it sails...







We had the perfect gentle little wind and the boat sailed right off across the water. A gentle tug on the line and the boat turns and sails right back. The one problem with this beautiful little toy is that there really isn't anything for the kids to do with it. You hold the string, but not the same way you do with a kite. You basically just give it line till you want it to stop, and to bring the boat back in you just give a little tug to make the boat turn. Once it pivots around it tacks back to you on it's own, no pulling. consequently Kai and Shen lost interest pretty quickly and headed over to the playground...






I love it when they were these little caps!

Dirty Dan Days

We spent part of our Saturday down in Fairhaven at the Dirty Dan Harris Festival. Dan Harris was the founder of Fairhaven back in the late 1800's. It was a fun day.

Here's Shen wearing my bowler hat and sitting with the popular statue of Dirty Dan.





The boys got to make wooden boats




Kai looks pretty proud of his little ship.









Shen is equally proud...


finished with ice cream!