Long Time No Blog....

I know it's been a loooonnggg time. School has just kicked my butt this semester, I really haven't done much of anything else. But I'm going to try to do better about updating, even if it's just little things here and there.

So, here's something little.... I love the conversations that Cackie & I have in the car on the way from school to gymnastics. Sometimes the things that she comes out with just amaze me! Tonight she wanted to make sure that I knew that the salt in saltwater comes from the sand. Two seconds before that she was telling me how one of her friends had pulled her hair earlier in the day... random stuff, but I just love it.

One thing that she loves to talk about is how much she wants to go on an airplane again. I tell her that we don't have any airplane trips planned right now, but that Ill let her know when we do. Then she likes to talk about "when she goes on an airplane to get her baby".... She seems to think that all babies come from China and they all come home on airplanes. Gotta love the logic of a four year old!

Happy New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year!
This is the year of the Ox,.

According to Wikipedia... The Ox is the sign of prosperity through fortitude and hard work. This powerful sign is a born leader, being quite dependable and possessing an innate ability to achieve great things. As one might guess, such people are dependable, calm, and modest. Like their animal namesake, the Ox is unswervingly patient, tireless in their work, and capable of enduring any amount of hardship without complaint.

To celebrate the year of the Ox we had our Families with Children from China celebration two weeks ago. The kids had a great time and we got to officially introduce Owen to our FCC community.

The kids will wear their Chinese silks to school tomorrow and they are having a celebration at St. Jude that I'll be able to attend, but that's about all the celebrating that we'll do this year. We did make Chinese soup and spring rolls for dinner Saturday night, so I guess that counts, too.

Besides Chinese New Year we've been quite busy around here. My classes have started back and the marketing class that I'm taking this semester is quite intense and time consuming.

We had some unfortunate news a week or so ago when we found out that Michael would no longer be working for the engineering firm that he had been contracting with. He still has his firm, but with no new projects on the horizon the future is starting to look bleak. He's been working hard pursuing new projects and we're hopeful that everything will be all right.

The kids have been trying our nerves quite a bit. They are both going through phases of arguing and making bad choices. There have been a lot of bad choices around here and I'm starting to feel like a warden in my own home. Just today we caught them playing with water from the bathroom (again) and their activities have been severely limited all day. We're starting to see that this is a "downside" to having virtual twins. But, in the end we love them dearly and just try to explain to them h0w we want them to make good choices and love us. We just keep telling ourselves... this too shall pass.

Enjoy the pictures! I'll update as I can, but this is a VERY busy semester for me and my blogging time may be limited!

Another one of my favorite pictures

This is another one of my favorite pictures of the kids. I was trying to get them to pose in their silk Chinese jackets and this was what I got. Cackie just threw her arm around Owen's shoulders and grinned that sly grin of hers. The look on Owen's face cracks me up... it's a cross between "hey dude" and "wassup".

Don't they look cute together? They're practically inseperable and you can tell in this picture how much they really love each other.

Santa Picture

I almost forgot to post the picture we got of the kids with Santa. We went to the mall after church the Sunday before Christmas and despite not yet having any lunch the kids were in a great mood. I think the picture pretty much says it all...

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

OK, this is another “catch-up” post. We’ve been busy, busy, busy around here and I’m honestly glad that things will start to calm down now.
So, what have we been up to? Well, a few weeks before Christmas we had a very busy Saturday with Christmas activities. In the morning we had breakfast with Santa at St. Jude. This was Owen’s first experience with Santa and we were quite anxious to see how he would do. The breakfast wasn’t anything to write about, but the kids had a great time and we got a nice family photo with Santa. Owen did wonderfully and was soo excited to see Santa. It was a good morning for all of us.

Cackie & Michael having fun at Breakfast with Santa

Owen & Mommy having a great time, too!

The kids in the new Chili's Care Center at St. Jude

That evening we took the kids to an event called “Alpine Village” at a local church. Cackie loved it last year and this year was not a disappointment. Both kids and all our friends had a great time. After the village we went to dinner with some friends, it ended up being a very late night but we all had a great time.

Fun at Alpine Village

This is my FAVORITE picture!

They loved these rocking horses

After that busy Saturday we kept very busy until Christmas. The day after my birthday we hosted a holiday party for Michael's office. I took that day off and cleaned the house from top to bottom (well, I didn't do anything on the 3rd floor since it's just storage... but the first & second floors were spotless!) I was soo worn out by the time our guests arrived and by the end of the night my feet were killing me. We had a great time, though! There were two other kids who were a little older, but Cackie & Owen took to them right away. This was actually one of the best things that could have happened because the other kids LOVED being able to go outside and play with Bruno & Jackson. (We had 60+ degree weather that evening and it was quite pleasant). Cackie & Owen spent a lot of time out on the deck with the dogs too and it really helped Owen to overcome his fear of them! Since that night he has asked us numerous times if the dogs can come in the house and play! (Best Christmas present that Michael & I could have asked for!)

The next day we all went out shopping. It was quite an experience! The kids wore us out and we were glad to get home to take late naps.

Christmas was very exciting at our house. We were excited about Owen’s first Christmas and couldn’t wait to see him open his gifts. Michael’s Mom, stepdad and son Zack came over in the morning and we enjoyed brunch with my family and watched the kids open their presents from Santa. Just after noon the in-laws left and we started in on the rest of the pile under the tree, but it wasn’t long before the kids (and everyone else) started to show signs of needing a nap. So, that’s just what we did… we put the presents on hold and headed for rest. After nap we finished up the pile under the tree… just about the time the sun started to go down. It was a great day! We were all still in our pj’s and we were soo relaxed!

Putting out "reindeer food" on Christmas Eve

Opening their Christmas Eve PJs

the tree before we dove in

they like their new bean bag chairs

Barbies and Thomas, oh my!

That evening we snacked and watched Kung Fu Panda with the kids and then the adults enjoyed Wall-E after the kids were in bed. Unfortunately I had to work the next day, so I couldn’t stay up late, but Friday was an easy day at work.

On Friday evening we were lucky to get a visit from Robert and Aimee. Robert was a volunteer at Owen’s orphanage and would occasionally send me little updates about him while we were waiting. We got to have lunch with Robert when we were in Tianjin, so it was great to see him again and share Owen’s growth with him.

After we recovered from Christmas we started getting ready for our New Year’s Eve party. We had a great party with some of our FCC families. The kids enjoyed themselves playing on the 2nd floor and the adults got to sit and enjoy ourselves downstairs. I’ve come to enjoy these get-togethers so much because we have all become such great friends. All the kids stayed awake until midnight and it wasn’t until 2am that Michael & I climbed into bed. It was the perfect way to start the new year.

Since then we’ve taken time to relax and spend some time with the kids. This week things will start to pick up at work for me and I’ll start my next class the next week. Michael will start getting busy with home improvement projects and the kids keep us busy all the time, so it was nice to have this weekend to relax.

Happy New Year everyone! Here’s to a wonderful 2009!

Enjoying blackeyed peas on New Year's Day

Happy Birthday to Me!

This is what my crazy husband brought me today at work for my birthday! There are 36 in total, one for each year! You can't even see them all in this picture. I had to put them in a plastic recycle trashcan to get them all in water, lol! Needless to say... he surprised me! After he gave me the roses he took me to a great little Italian restaurant for a yummy lunch and tonight after Owen's gymnastics we are all going out for sushi and my favorite dessert... cheesecake tempura!

Now the only other thing I want for my birthday is for my daughter to behave. For a week now Cackie has gotten U's in conduct at schoool (unsatisfactory). We've tried everything in the book to get her to "use her listening ears" and improve her conduct, but nothing so far has worked. So today I used my birthday to lay a guilt trip on her.... I told her that the only thing I wanted for my birthday was for her to get an E (excellent) in conduct. I'll leave work in a few minutes and will hopefully be met with good news!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Cackie was well behaved and that Velcro Boy doesn't make another appearance at gymnastics!

Stay tuned...

Velcro Boy and Silly Girl

Back at the first of November we signed Owen up for gymnastics lessons. He enjoyed watching Cackie at her lessons for months and a couple of times he tried to sneak into class with her, so we figured it was time to get him involved in his own activities.


The only problem was that we wanted to have the kids in separate classes to eliminate fighting and give them each an opportunity for "alone time". Unfortuntately that meant that Owen would have to take lessons on Thursday nights at 5:30 and Cackie would continue her lessons on Tuesdays at 6:30.


Trying to get into a routine we planned things so that I would take the kids to their lessons and Michael would spend time with whichever one didn't have a lesson. This was working well until a few weeks ago when Cackie and I were about to leave the house and Owen attached himself to my leg and started crying. Michael freed me from Owen's grips so we could leave and says that within a few minutes Owen was fine.


Of course, this concerned Cackie and we had a long discussion in the car about Owen crying and how she didn't want him to cry, etc.


This happened a couple more times, but nothing big. Then last week Owen and I were at his lesson, he ran his 2 warmup laps around the track but when it was time to go off with his coach and take his lesson he suddenly became attached to my leg again.He started screaming "I want my Mommy" (this always freaks me out and makes me afraid that someone will think I'm abducting him). I begged and pleaded with him to calm down and go do his gymnastics, his coach even begged and pleaded with him but no luck. We went and got dressed despite the fact that I kept telling him that he was going home to go to bed. We had one brief minute where he wanted to go and join the class, but that was quickly over when he actually had to detach himself from my leg!

We went home and I didn't quite know what to do. I was worried that something was wrong, but he had really enjoyed the lessons before and couldn't figure out what happened. It was certainly becoming apparant that Owen needed some time away from Mommy, though.

So, this week when Cackie went to her lesson on Tuesday we made a big deal about her going to gymnastics and how much fun it was, etc. To help things even more I had Michael take Owen to his lesson last night. My not being there helped a lot! He enjoyed his lesson and was excited to show off his smiley face stamps to Cackie when he came home!


Since Michael & Owen were off at the gym together I took advantage of the opportunity to spend some time with Cackie. I picked her up from school and we headed out to do a little Christmas shopping and then to the dreaded grocery store.

On the way to the store I explained to her that we were looking for presents for other people and at first she didn't like that at all, but it didn't take long for her to understand how nice it was to give presents to other people. She very thoughtfully picked out a present for Owen and was very excited. It's something that she can enjoy as well, but she was adamant that Owen will really like it and she wanted him to have it.

I had a lot of fun out with her and I think she enjoyed it, too. At the grocery store she didn't want to get in the cart and tried to convince me that she's too big to ride in the seat. She's got a good point there, she almost doesn't fit in the seat anymore! But, I made her squeeze in because I didn't need to worry about her wandering off. As we were walking around she kept putting her hands on either side of my face, squeezing my cheeks and saying "OOH Mommy, you're soo CUTE!" It's really funny when she decides to get silly like that! We also had a good round of a game where we call each others names in silly voices back and forth. I'm sure the other shoppers didn't appreciate it, but we had a good time!

Tonight is Parent's Night Out at school, so the kids will have a little pajama party while Michael and I go out and get some shopping done.

Tomorrow will be a busy day for us... We have breakfast with Santa in the cafeteria at St. Jude (this will be Owen's first opportunity to see Santa) and then in the evening we're going with friends to a Christmas Village at a local church. Cackie loved it last year and we're all anxious to see if Owen enjoys it, too. I'm hoping to see more of Silly Girl this weekend and a little less of Velcro Boy!

I did it!

I did it! I walked 13.1 miles in 3:36!

Saturday was a GREAT day! It was sooo cold, but I got my butt out of bed and we all headed downtown to Autozone park to meet up with friends before the race.

This is Jennifer and I warming up at the ballpark.

The race officically started at 8AM, but it was a wave start, so I didn't actually get started until close to 8:25. Here's one of the groups heading out before me, there were nearly 14,000 people racing!

Here I am at the starting line, you can't tell but I was sooo cold!

I had my cellphone with me and was able to call Michael at different points during the race. He tried to meet up with me at mile 5, but the police had the roads blocked off and it made getting around town very difficult. They were able to meet up with me between miles 6 & 7 and I was soo happy to see them!

They were able to make their way around between miles 8 & 9 to see me again. Here's a great shot Michael got while they were waiting...

When they saw me here Cackie got very excited. She ran up to me and gave me a huge bear hug. Only problem was that my hips were starting to ache and if I stopped I wouldn't have been able to start again. I almost knocked poor Cackie over trying to get her detached from my legs!

The last 4 miles or so went pretty quickly for me. There was lots of traffic on the street and soo many people were out cheering the runners and walkers on. I was starting to hurt in my hips, but I had no doubt that I was going to finish. In fact, the last mile or so I was passing people who just couldn't keep up any longer.

Here I am just crossing the finish line.

Michael said I had this big smile on everytime he saw me.

The best part was getting to hug my kiddos when it was all over!

I finished just after noon and the kids were starving, so Michael took us out to lunch. After that we all took a much needed nap! I was lucky enough to get a massage appointment for that afternoon and that helped my recovery a lot! The rest of Saturday I did absolutely nothing, which is not like me at all. I was just too pooped and achy!

Sunday I was pretty sore, but I tried to keep moving as much as I could. Yesterday I didn't hurt much and today I'm hoping to get back out and do some walking!

The race was a lot of fun and I really hope to be able to do it again next year. It has me motiviated now to get back to exercising and maybe next year I'll be able to get an even better time!