Happy New Year!

It's been a while since the last post, because... well, things have been busy! So here goes a quick wrap-up of the past month. Grab a cup of coffee or tea and sit back... it's a doozy!

The girls making almond cookies for Christmas. These were way too delicious and none actually lasted until Christmas.

Lin showing off her cookie decorating skills

Ruby trying to break the record of silver balls on a single cookie

We had a very Merry Christmas!

Making homemade noodles with pesto for the girls. It should also be noted that we spent this evening at the ER after Ruby tumbled hard off her bed. Nothing was broken, but she was "high" in this picture with medication

Mongolian hotpot! It's kinda become a staple in our household

Ruby was proud of the veggie dip she created

Self portrait

Ruby going rollerskating for the first time

"The blind leading the blind," you could say!

Ruby definitely enjoyed her birthday skate!

Speaking of which, it's hard to believe she's 5 already

Can't go wrong with Hello Kitty, can you?

Okay, yes, we know... there's technically more than 5 candles, but Ruby wanted a ton of them!

Enjoying Ruby's pick for her birthday dinner... Wendy's!

She loves anything ballet, My Little Pony, playing dress up and... Deadly Animals! That's our special girl!!

In addition, we also celebrated her 4 year "Gotcha Day" anniversary on our purple couch

Here she is 4 years ago on the famous red couch inside the White Swan in Guangzhou

Here is the dinner Dave cooked for our annual Chinese New Year feast

Digging into the goodies

The girl in the blue qipao was also in Ruby's travel group

The girl in front of Lin was also from Shanghai and now lives nearby

I just love this pic of Ruby laughing it up on the couch.

Our friends recently welcomed their little girl home and we were excited they could join our New Year's feast

After dinner, we watched the Chinese New Year Celebration

Ruby onstage after the show... the Year of the Dragon has arrived!!

Programs and Belts

It's been a busy week around here! Ruby had her Preschool Holiday Program on Wednesday and Lin had her first Tae Kwon Do belt test on Friday. Both the girls did great!

Here are Ruby and some of her classmates, showing the assembled audience how they say the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of every school day. So cute! They all did great until they came to the word "indivisible" and then they all fell apart.

It was a tough decision for Ruby, which pretty dress she should wear. These are big decisions for a 4-year-old!

The performance was great, and Ruby was very sweet to her beloved friend Avi, who was suffering from stage fright and spent the first several minutes of the program in tears. It was everything a preschool holiday program should be!

(My favorite part, by far, was when Ruby spent almost an entire song picking her nose and then trying to wipe her "find" on her dress! Hysterical! Yep, that's MY daughter!!)

~~~~~~~~~~~

Next up was Lin with her first Tae Kwon Do test. It started off a little rocky when we got halfway there and Lin realized she left her white belt sitting on the kitchen counter! Uh oh! So it was a mad rush to drop Dave and Lin off and then run back home to get the belt. Then at the start of the testing she was asked to recite the meaning of her belt and she couldn't do it. This being our first Tae Kwon Do, too, we didn't know she had to memorize it word-for-word, so we didn't practice it with her. Oops! But from there on out it she did great!

First up: push-ups and sit-ups. Look at that tough girl! On her knuckles, even! One of the black-belts said that if there had been an award for push-ups Lin would have won it!

Here they are going through their forms.

Next up, sparring.

The most awesome part of the night: board-breaking! Lin broke both her boards (one punching, one kicking) on the first try! Way to go!!

And here she is getting her yellow belt!

Lin and her Tae Kwon Do Master. He intimidates the heck out of me, but he's got a great heart and the students all love him.

The best part of this evening was the board-breaking. It was awesome! What a rush -- I cheered for every student.  And Lin was recognized in front of the whole class as one of the best breakers! All the black-belt judges got to choose who was the best at each different part of the test and one of the judges picked Lin as the best breaker!

I'm so proud of my girls!

Great Blog

I have recently become a fan of Jen Hatmaker, a Christian author of several Bible study books, amazing blogger, and fellow adoptive mother. If you haven't heard of her, you'll love her. And if you have heard of her and you're wondering what rock I've been living under all this time, please forgive me, and welcome me at long last to the Jen Hatmaker fan club.

Anyway, yesterday I visited her blog and read her most recent post, dated November 2nd (so again, if you're wondering about that rock, the ground under which I call home, my apologies). Her post is really directed at family and friends of adoptive families, and guides readers as to what not to say to adoptive families pre- and post-adoption (or "After the Airport" as Jen calls it). It is filled with both laugh-out-loud humor and startlingly heartbreaking truths. I highly recommend it for anyone who is in any way a member of the adoption community.

You can find it here.

Read. Enjoy.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Coming Soon...

I promise I have new post coming soon... I am still here, nothing's happened, all is well. But I realize that it's been too long since my last post and I have some catch-up to do, so I will do a better blog post very soon.

Thanks so much for all the comments and emails from my last post, by the way! And yes, Ruby will be switching to ballet! We've got to get the details worked out, but the decision has been made. I'm still not totally convinced that Ruby actually wants to learn ballet... I think she just wants to wear the outfits. But, whatever. The cost is comparable, the class time is convenient... So there you go.

Happy Monday!

A Very Painful Decision

Ballet

or

Gymnastics?

(did I getcha? Hee hee)

Here's the deal -- Ruby has been taking gymnastics since she was 18 months old, which means she is currently in her fourth year of gymnastics classes. I just think gymnastics is so very cool and I would love to see Ruby keep going with it, at least through her elementary school years. And I personally don't have any interest in seeing her do a team sport like soccer, so I've never really presented that to her as an option. Gymnastics has been it.

But Ruby wants to be a ballerina. So. Bad. She begs us to take ballet classes. There is a dance studio where we go for gymnastics, so she sees classes there, plus a couple of the girls in her daycare take ballet. I have been putting her off whenever she mentions it, but she's starting to become really persistent.

Oh, how I do NOT want her to switch to ballet! In my opinion (my opinion) gymnastics teaches her balance, strength, coordination. It's a sport. And ballet for 4-year-olds is a bunch of 4-year-olds twirling around in their cute little tutus. Ruby can twirl around in a tutu at home.

I do think that Ruby's gymnastics class this year is just a repeat of everything she did last year, so it may very well be that she's bored. I am thinking about switching her class, which would put her back with the same teacher she had for the last two years. Or else maybe getting her into the 5-year-old class -- her birthday is in January, maybe she's ready to move up in her skill level.

But she wants ballet!!

So I need help. Please, someone tell me something I don't know about the value of ballet classes. Someone tell me whether I should let my 4-year-old make the decisions, or should I keep her in gymnastics because it's what I want for her (she likes her class and has fun there, so it's not like it's a battle to get her there). I need someone to be the rational voice for me, to make the pros-and-cons list for me.

Decisions, decisions... Oh, the drama!

Happy Halloween 2011!

Better late than never...

Heading out for Trick or Treating: Ruby as a fairy and Lin as Little Red Riding Hood

Unfortunately, we don't get trick-or-treaters at our house so we always go to this neighborhood to trick-or-treat. I asked one of the residents of this area how many kids came to his house Monday night and his estimate was 900 !! And our house, in a perfectly wonderful residential neighborhood, gets nobody. Makes no sense to me.

Dave and I are sporting "Last-Minute-No-Money Costumes" this year. We did a pretty darn good job, don't you think? Dave called his look "Backwards Dude" and I called mine "Good Morning!" I even wore my cruddy old slippers. The red around my mouth was supposed to be smeared lipstick, but I can see now that it looked more like zombie makeup. Oops. .

Our last trick-or-treat house... Grandma Linda's house. Here you can see the girls' costumes in all their glory.

The basket was my idea, but the red-checked cloth was borrowed from Ruby's play picnic set. Borrowed under extreme duress, I might add. Do you think Ruby will ever stop coveting everything Lin has/uses/borrows/eats/wears ... etc etc etc?

I couldn't resist posting this picture from Ruby's preschool Halloween party. What do you suppose Ruby is thinking here? The boy in the middle is the boy Ruby has informed me she plans to marry someday. They really are ridiculousy sweet together!

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween!

Pumpkins!