A year already??

Well, this time last year we were freaking the eff out packing bags and getting ready to go to China. The whole thing still seems insane to me to be honest. Fly around the world to pick up a child you've only seen pictures, very few pictures, and have some documents that could, or could not be completely accurate. If you ever need to be involved in a process that is extremely long, stressful, and surreal, go through a Chinese adoption. Honestly you kind of feel like you are on drugs during the process. There are so many highs and lows that you wait for, and every step is a more stressful step/wait with a bigger rush when you hit your progression marks. I'll write up more about the adoption next week, as that will be our 1 year 'Gotcha Day' mark.

We have our social worker come out this week for our 1 year review, hoping that goes quickly. I think we get back some deposit from our adoption agency after that is all done, and money is always good to get!

Not much else going on, its started to get cold here finally, so a soup meal felt appropriate. Every so often I will ask the kids what they want for dinner, and the answer isn't fast food, or chicken nuggets. Last week they opted for soup. Matt loves Bacon Bean soup, and since mixing the contents of the can with a can of water are not what I consider cooking, I also made grilled cheese. I love to experiment with the kids to see what they will go for.

Here they are, awaiting the 'ok' to start eating. We had 3 different recipes we went with. 1st was regular bread buttered with cheese. 2nd, we went with that, plus almond/peanut butter. 3rd, we went with a cheese, apple, cinnamon and sugar combo. I just grilled them in the skillet for a few mins each to seal them up. Matt liked the regular one, and the apple one, but he kind of freaked out about the almond butter one. I tried it, it was pretty tasty, but he wouldn't touch it after the initial micro-bite. Ying liked the regular one, and I think after that she tried some of the apple one, but mainly focused on the soup. They were all 3 pretty good, but I'm sure my attempts to expose them to something a bit different were lost on my audience. At least it wasn't chicken nuggets, :P

*The* Long Update

So I've been putting off the update here for no good reason, but I need to do one now, because after the holidays crank up, I doubt I will get any in. So here we goooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Last post we had done the Disney on Ice thing, and that was just the pre-Disney treat. I didn't post when we were going on here, drives me crazy when people post things on blogs or facebook with specific times that they will be gone. "Please rob my house between these dates, k thanks!'

So we did Disney in October. This was Ying's first trip, and Matt's 2nd. We are Disney freaks, and go almost every year. We will be back next year in Oct/Nov more than likely, so come and join us! We stayed at the Beach Club Villas which I love. We go during the Epcot Food and Wine Festival, and you can walk from our resort to Epcot in about 5-10 minutes. Basically Epcot has several stands setup serving foods from different countries. Its a really awesome way to get to taste some foods you may not have the chance to try, or maybe you don't want to take the gamble on an entire meal that you may not like. The serving sizes are small, but sufficient to get a good taste. We went the same time last year, and didn't stop at any of the stands because we had a few toddlers with us, and I was totally kicking myself for it. So this year I made a point of it, and mapped out the countries I wanted to hit up. I got to try some escargot in France,  and it was really good, and New Zealand had an amazing lamb slider, but I think the lobster roll was my top pick. They also do desert and beer/wine/cocktails for most countries too, so I got to try lots of beer!

We flew in on a Sunday and just relaxed the first day for the most part. We had a decent size group that was assembling for this trip, so we basically hung out at the resort and got the room setup while we waited for the rest of our party to arrive. The first night there we had reservations at Chef Mickeys. We've done this meal before, its pretty nice. The food is a buffet, and the basic Disney characters come around to each table and do the meet and greet thing. Ying wasn't real sure about it intilally, but when she saw Mickey she yelled "MOUSE!!" and it was all over from there. She loved it! She got to see all the characters, and even started getting down from her chair and getting hugs and pictures taken on her own.





It was a good way to start the trip, and we were happy that she wasn't scared of the characters. She was definitely on Mickey Mouse overload the rest of the trip.

The next day we hit up the Magic Kingdom because we had breakfast reservations. Our reservations were before the park actually opened, which is awesome because you can get in and see the castle and Main street with VERY few people. So we walked in and got to see the castle, which Matt 'showed' to Ying. They were both very excited about it.


Our breakfast was at the Crystal Palace, and its a character meal with Winnie the Pooh and friends. The breakfast was actually pretty good, a buffet of course, but it had a very good variety to choose from. Although we don't watch much Winnie the pooh, the kids seemed to like it, and Ying was hopping down for hugs and pictures, while Matt had to be nudged a bit.


After breakfast, we wandered a bit, and ended up at the Haunted Mansion. I took Ying, and she totally flipped out the whole ride. "MAAAAA MAAAAA!!!" Apparently she isn't find of the dark rides, which constitutes about 80% of the kids rides, as most of them are a bit dark with the black lights. So after we properly traumatized her we hit up some of the more friendly rides. They both LOVE the Dumbo rides, and the flying carpets. Matt was tall enough this year that he could go on some of the 'big boy' rides, and boy did he. He rode Splash Mt, and Thunder Railroad, and Test Track. He saw Tower of Terror the first day we went to Hollywood Studios, and begged to go on it. We tried to explain to him what it was, and that it was a bit scary. He still wanted to go, and continued to ask about it, reciting the things we had told him about it, and that it was 'scary, but fun'. So we decided to let him go on it for the very last part of the trip. The last day we were there, we asked again, and he was still adamant about going on it. He got measured a couple of times to ensure he met the height requirements, and then we got on the ride. There wasn't much of a wait, just the walk up to the ride. I tried to explain to him that there was a little show/story before the ride, and that I would be with him in case he got scared. As soon as we went up and got dropped I was expecting him to panic a bit, but he just sat there, taking it in. He loved it, and was very excited that he finally got to do it.

We had a decent size group with us, so we didn't have a ton of dining reservations, but the few we had were pretty good. We did a princess breakfast in Epcot this year, opting out of the Cinderella castle breakfast. The princesses weren't so great t obe honest. We were all a bit underwhelmed, but the breakfast was pretty good.  We also got to eat at Le Cellier in Epcot. This place is amazing, its the Canada restaurant, and they have a cheddar cheese soup that is amazing. Its one of my favorite items to eat at the parks, but the place is almost impossible to get reservations at. Our good friend Erica managed to get a spot for us, randomly checking for availability, YAY! This was the night we decided to ditch our kids in the resorts play center. I was a little worried about dropping them off, but they gave us a pager, and we were within walking distance to get back should we need to. The meal was great, and we got back to the kids and they were still awake and eating a snack. They had the kids do some little crafts, and do some coloring. I was surprised that they didn't just leave them in the room to play with toys and not burn the place down.

We also did a Grand Gathering event, which is for larger parties of 10+ people. The food was pretty blah, but they had a little singing and dancing thing for the kids, and even had some characters come out too.


We did get a nice private viewing area for the fireworks show too, which I thought was pretty nice. The kids enjoyed the fireworks, and we didn't have to camp out an hour in advance to get a good spot.

A bad highlight of the trip was my knee.



It doesn't look so horrible here, but it was really pretty bad considering it started at a bug bite of some sort. I got to the point where I could barely walk on it because the wound was right over my joint, and REALLY swollen, and for a couple of nights I couldn't sleep because every time I would move I would wake up. The redness and swelling started moving down my leg to my ankle and I gave up and decided I needed to do something. We had a nurse in our party, and she basically said I needed to get some antibiotics. I ended up having a Doctor come out to the resort and meet me in the room. It wasn't cheap, but the service sent a Doctor out to the room at 10am one morning to take a look at me. It was actually pretty cool, he had a big case with him he brought in, that opened up like a tool box. It reminded me of the old west doctors who came in with their doctors bag. He hooked me up with some antibiotics pills that he prescribed right there in the room, as well as some bandages and ointment. It was really convenient and worth the price(~300 bucks), mainly because I didn't have to get a taxi to take me to an office or ER and wait for hours on end. I think money-wise I came out ahead. They also gave me all the paperwork to submit back to my insurance company to get reimbursed. Within 48 hours of taking the meds, I felt much much better, although I STILL have a band-aide on my knee, its almost all gone now.

Overall it was a pretty good trip, and our group had a good time. We even got to hookup with one of the families that we hungout with in China. It was REALLY awesome to get to see them and their son. Their son is younger, but he is also really small for his age like Ying. With our two toddlers, and their infant and toddler combination our schedules were hard to coordinate, since kids dictate that so heavily, but it was really cool to see another Henan kid again! It was strange being in China and finding another young family that were DVC(Disney Vacation Club) members. I told Robyn that it was odd how they have the same look about them. Yes, I know, both Chinese, but skin tones, and features are different based on region! :) They were also both cleft lip/palate babies, so it was interesting to compare notes on how they were doing.

Outside of the trip we are gearing up for the holidays. Halloween was good, and the kids got to dress up as Buzz and Jessie from Toy Story.

We only did a few houses, but they got more than enough candy. Our little town moved Halloween to Saturday, which in my opinion is stupid. We had a party that night, so we didn't participate anyways, but the next night, actual Halloween, we didn't have a single person come by. I was very surprised, and upset that I had an entire bucket of candy to get rid of.

We also start speech this week, FINALLY. We did several interviews and evaluations, and 2 months after we started she will finally get started. We are really pushing her to speak more, and try to put sentences together. She will attempt to cheat us many times, but we try to stay on her and make her use the words and sentences that she knows.

I think thats it, :) November will be busy and special for us. We are testing for a Chinese language certification in December, so I will be cramming Mandarin words and phrases for the next 3 weeks. I plan on failing, :( It will also mark our trip to China, and getting our little Ying monkey. We had Thanksgiving in China last year, which was REALLY REALLY strange to me. I'm going to try and get back on track as far as weekly updates go too. I had been avoiding this one because there was soooo much to put in, and I still skipped tons.

Disney appetizer and Dim Sum Sunday

We received an offer a couple months back from FedEx or our Visa card, I can't remember, but it was for Disney On Ice tickets. They were giving us a chance to 'BUY EARLY', which is funny, I fairly certain those shows don't sell out......ever. Anyways, I went ahead and confirmed with wifey and bought some tickets. We've never been to any type of kids show like this, and it would be a good pre-cursor to the D-world trip we will be taking in a few weeks. I hate Ticketmaster, and their website is pretty awful, but I ordered the tickets anyways. My wife hates it, but generally I pick things based on price. Highest price == BEST. So, thats what I bought, it said 'Rink-side' so I figured we'd go for that, and let the kids get a better view. We make our way downtown and get parked, its not too terribly busy, and we head into the Forum. We ask one of the ladies where our section is and she points us down a long stairway. We walk down and find the next lady, because we can't seem to find our seats. I initially thought we might be in the wrong section, but the usher flashed up down to her and took us down to the floor. When they said 'Rink Side' they weren't kidding. We literally sat on the floor, less than a foot from the ice. I was happy at this point, because I knew the characters would be right in our faces, and the kids would get a really good view. Matt was pretty mesmerized with it all, and enjoyed it. Ying on the other hand got scared during the first dance number, which was all the villains skating around. She started crying and wifey had to take her back behind our seats and let her calm down and talk to her a bit. After Minnie came out she was fine, so I'm hoping she won't freak out when we get to the parks and see the characters up close.  

Lighting wasn't so great, but you get the idea. She loved the ears, but they are kinda too big for her, :P

This weekend was pretty relaxed, and we hit up our new Chinese place for some Dim Sum. I wasn't sure how the kids would do with this, but they seemed to like it. Ying is pretty easy, if its not fried, she will likely try it out. She ate very well, and was asking for more things randomly. Waiters would run by with plates of things and ask if we wanted to try . We usually say yes, and our table its pretty full with random dishes by the time we leave. 

I was really surprised with Matt. The first thing they dropped off was some fried calamari. Usually when I get calamari is sort of like sliced rings, but these were pretty big, and appeared to be a small whole squid/octopus, or maybe it was just the tentacles. Either way, I told Matt what it was, and pulled off some of the batter so he could see the tentacles and suction cups. This is where being 3 years old kicks in, he basically said 'Oh, ok' and ate it. I was pretty amazed, as he is usually a bit picky. Now, it was fried and delicious, so I'm sure that helped, but he even asked for seconds. He did not care so much for the steamed dishes.

We sat right in front of the lobster/crab tank, so much of his meal was spent pointing at it and saying "Whats that in there daddy?"

Lastly, another 'being 3 years old' event. 

When she sleeps in her car seat, she always looks like a sniper has taken her out. This is her sleeping on her Disney Princess Something-that-makes-noise.

Mooncakes and Roombas

I'm a big geek, so of course I bought a Roomba a while back. Then I bought another one, :) For a really long time I didn't bother running them because toys were usually EVERYWHERE in the morning, or we didn't want to hear them whirring around. Lately we have kept up with the toy explosions, and everyday Matt asks to turn on the Roombas. The strange thing is, he is sort of terrified of them. He won't turn them on, and the floor turns to hot lava which he can't stay on, so he spends a lot of time on the couch or in a chair yelling at them to clean. Still, the last several days he has asked to turn them on. Ying couldn't care less, she will go over and unplug them and hit the start buttons and co-exists with them. They bump into her and she doesn't really pay any attention to them at all. Of course today as soon as we walk in the house "LETS TURN ON ROOMBA!". So as I write this, there are two of the guys running the downstairs gambit that is our house. They actually work for what I wanted them, which was dog hair that gathered along the perimeter of the rooms.

Last Friday we went to a new Chinese place for dinner. I mainly wanted to see if the had dim sum, which they do, but they only serve it until about 3:30pm. Real Chinese places have 2 menus. A menu for the Americans, which is all the general sweet and sour fried rice basics. In my opinion its usually pretty boring food for the most part. Most of the time you have to ask for the second menu, and if the place is REALLY hardcore, the menu is in Mandarin, in which case I'm screwed, :)  Anyways, we sat down, and I had on a t-shirt that I got in China that is a very well known propaganda poster-boy for Chinese communism. Oh yea, and we also had a Chinese kid with us. Either way they waiter brought us out both menus. I was pretty happy about it. The food was good, and wifey even ventured past 'chicken fried rice' and got Bacon/Raisin/Cucumber/Pineapple fried rice.

It was pretty interesting, and the kids seemed to like it ok. 

We also hit up the Asian market to get some moon cakes. This was the first time we were going to officially observe the Moon Festival, and we figured the kids would love to do it. We bought the cakes, which they had tons to choose from. I was surprised how nice looking the packaging and cakes were.

We went outside after dinner and let the kids take the box out and get it ready to eat. I wasn't sure Matt would go for the cakes, he is a little picky, and especially since Chinese 'deserts' are not really sweet compared to ours. We got them unwrapped, and as you can see they are pretty big. Packed full of calories too, per the label. Each cake was 6 servings at 202 calories each serving! They are quite heavy and dense. Both of the monkeys seemed to like them though.

They had a blast, it was dark, they had treats, and ran around acting goofy. Afterwards we went upstairs and got pajama'd and attempted to read Chang'e and Hou Yi, a cute traditional story about the moon. Neither of the, wanted to sit through it really, and it lacked in pictures, so we zipped through it and put them to bed. Maybe next year, :P

Lastly, because I can, here is a pre-school morning with daddy, its business casual day.

Note the pinky finger, its all about etiquette with pancake-on-a-stick. 

Crazy Kids

I know this will sound bias since I work at FedEx, but I LOVE to see our planes flying in the air. It just seems cool to me. Our complex is under a regular air route I guess because they are flying over all day. Thats my plug for work I suppose.

We may have a problem with stuffed animals. Part of that starts with Mom and Dad. I maintain its mainly Mom, and not me, but she will probably disagree. Matt and Ying both have a TON of these things. Matt always had a little bear blanket that he slept with as a baby/toddler. He used to require it to sleep, but not so much these days. He doesn't seem to have a clear favorite any longer, it fluctuates throughout the day. Usually the only one he 'needs' is the one single animal that is at the grandparents house or in the car. He keeps up with his inventory pretty well. Within the last couple of weeks he has started filling his bed at night with these critters. He used to wander into our room in the mornings with a few(2-5) friends that he had been sleeping with, but not any more. His entire entourage of plushie goodness has to come with him now.

The last few days the above is what rolls into our bedroom. Its a little creepy too, because the wheel has an eerie squeak when he is coming to our room. He was initially wanting to transplant them all into our bed to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, but we talked him into just leaving them in the party wagon. Ying usually just drags in her Minnie Mouse or her newly acquired Hello Kitty frog, Keroppi Hasunoue.


This:

This is the worlds greatest dog. My wife will be happy I said that. Kyla is EXTREMELY patient with the kids. She doesn't get enough attention from us any more, due to chasing the kids. The kids freaking love her though. The other dog, Mishka, simply comes inside and hides from them, as she is a little older, and doesn't want to deal with all the 'love' that the kids want to give her. The kids are constantly messing with Kyla. Matt loves to chase her around the house with the baby stroller, or the laundry basket. He falls down laughing hysterically when she is barking and takes the basket/stroller from him.  On top of all that, our yard guy, and pest control people are terrified of her because she has a very mean bark and is fairly protective of the house/yard area, although we've never seen her nip/bite anyone.

Yin and Yang AKA Matt and Ying

Our kids are crazy. There, I said it. Nothing in particular set that off, its just the case a lot of the time, :P

We had a good week, and a good holiday weekend. Friday night after Chinese class Matt specifically asked to go to Cracker Barrel. We have no idea why. We don't go there very often, and they don't have anything he LOVES to eat, not that we could think of. I tried to get him to wait until Saturday morning and told him we could do breakfast, but he was quite set on dinner. "No, lets go now." I didn't want to waste one of my 'eat terrible food' meals there, but he never asks for anything in the way of food, so we went. It was nice, he and sister were pretty good, and since I had blown my calorie count for the day we even went to Dairy Queen afterwards!(I sound like a woman, great)

Saturday we went to the Botanic Gardens for the first time, and both kids LOVED it. They have the typical flower/plant/tree areas of course, and the kids were ok with that, running around and having fun. There is a Japanese garden that has a big pond with Koi in it. They REALLY liked the fish, and when the fish see you come up to certain areas of the pond they will swarm because they think you have food. I was extremely worried that one of them would fall in. Well, let me clarify that. I was worried Ying would fall in, and I was worried Matt would simply get in on his own. The gardens also has an area called "The Big Backyard" which is several areas for the kids to play in. There were some slides, and some little play houses, and instruments to bang on, so of course the kids were all about it. There is even a little area by a pond that 'rains' every 30 minutes or so. Thunder and lightning noises play for a few seconds and then the misters and sprinklers spray for a couple of minutes. Matt was running around wild, and laid doing at one point, I guess to get the full impact of the rain. Ying had her ear plugs in, and was a little more cautious about it. She would get in for a second, and then run back out to the perimeter and watch. For dinner we left and hit up TGIF for dinner. The kids were absolutely exhausted, I LOVE when they look tired. There were some power naps taken on the way to Fridays, but when presented with food they were ready to go. Matt immediately was excied seeing where we were. He is like a little tour guide, pointing out EVERYTHING we drive past. "Thats Walgreens, the car wash place is over there, my doctor is over there." He has his mother's sense of direction, as I can barely find my way out of the neighborhood.

Here is how our meal worked, and pretty much, this is how EVERY meal works. Matt gets chicken strips, and Ying gets a hamburger. She hates fried foods. Matt won't try anything new, exclaiming "I don't like it!" before he even tastes it. Ying will try just about anything. Matt we have to ration his chicken to make sure he eats some vegetables or whatever side he has. Ying, we have to ration the vegetables and make her eat the protein. Robyn got a tomato and mozzarella side and Ying went crazy for that. We had to bargain bites of the burger for bites of tomato. Her meal came with oranges, but as soon as the guy brought them out I snagged them because thats all she would want. I suppose its kind of retarded, I feel like we are making her eat bad sometimes, because she would happily eat fruit/vegetables all day and never touch anything else.

As much as they are opposites on food, the same thing for sleeping. Ying will go to bed at 7:30pm every night if we put her down. Matt on the other hand stays up, and up, and up. Its driving is mad. Last night I told him he could come downstairs and watch Dr.Who with me while I did some treadmill time. He said "I don't like Dr. Who, lets watch netflix Blues Clues.", to which I told him that this was mommy and daddy tv time, and Dr. Who was the show. He laid on the couch with Robyn and went to sleep about 9pm, which is usually about as early as he turns in. The treadmill rhythm may have helped, or maybe the show was boring, but he went to sleep. Ying usually wakes up every day by 8am if we aren't getting up earlier. The strange thing about her, she still will not get out of her bed after naptime or in the morning. We aren't sure why, and its not due to the fact that she can't get out. If we open her door, she is all smiles, and "Hey!" and jumps right out. Even seeing us open the door doesn't have have anything to do with it, we open their doors when we wake up in the morning, and let them wake up on their own. Ying will usually come strolling in with her stuff cat, all smiles and "HEY!". Yesterday she was crying and I went in to get her and she was freaking out and point to her pants and saying "POTTY POTTY". She apparently had a very little accident and was upset, but she still wouldn't get out of her bed. Matt tends to sleep in, and will get up randomly and has no issues opening his door. This morning he came and got in bed with us at 5:30am, lol.

Random awesome thing

Robyn asked the kids which car they wanted to take this morning, and of course they picked the sports car. So when we left the neighborhood I floored it for them. They looked at each other and both started smiling and then cheering. It was awesome to see them looking at each other for confirmation that this was fun/exciting, lol.