Grab the Tissues...

We have not pushed religion on Lin. We go to church on Sunday mornings. I know she understands why we go, she knows that we are Christian. But to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what is the best way to bring religion into her life, besides bringing her into church and hoping she picks something up through osmosis!

So I was utterly shocked with what she said last night. I was not in the room when the conversation started, so I'm not sure how Lin and Dave got on the topic of her birth parents. But when I walked in, she was saying that she sometimes is a little sad when she thinks about her birthparents (or "1-Mama" and "1-Baba" as we call them). But she said that she doesn't really think about them that much because she doesn't know what they look like.

And then she said that someday she will be old and she will die.. and she will wake up in Heaven... and she will recognize them there...

We have a winner!

Sorry to our competitors, but did you really think you had a chance against the culinary skills of Team China?! Ha ha... only kidding, kinda. Last weekend, our church had an international taste-off to help raise funds for youth projects. So naturally, we teamed up with another family with beautiful Chinese kids to represent China in the "friendly" competition... And we won the appetizer division!! Let's hear it for the champs! 

The day started early as Dave, Lin and my great friend Pam stuffed, folded and fried 150 pork dumplings.. the ultimate comfort food! Next up, Dave prepared one of his most requested dishes, Crispy Prawns with Honey Garlic Sauce.

As the gang frantically slaved away in the kitchen, our friend Alan got out the lanterns and banners and decorated our table.

Ruby and her best friend in the entire world, M, put on their qi paos to help sway votes with their cuteness. The only problem with that was the fact that the girls spent more time running around playing and sampling food from the competition than hanging out at our cooking station. Oh well, at least they were still advertising our booth.

Serving up our award-winning shrimp and dumplings! I lost count of the number of repeat visitors (chowhounds) we had at our table.

You know they're good when the chefs can't stop eating them! It was also great to see Lin walking around the fellowship hall by herself and sampling the food. She'd even bring plates of food back to our table for us to enjoy. Recipes available upon request...

Halloween Pictures

Playing in the leaves...

 Carving pumpkins...

 Ready for trick-or-treating...

Looking scary with Zombie-Dad... 

Halloween and Other Good Times

We had a great Halloween weekend! Both Saturday and Sunday were just beautiful; temperatures in the 50s and sun sun sun! We got everyone outside Saturday afternoon to rake leaves and do some fall lawn clean-up. I love cleaning up the yard in the fall, getting everything cut down and "put to bed" for winter. And then I love it when all the new flowers bloom in the spring. Now, if someone could just tell me the secret to keeping motivated to do all the maintenance work from mid-June to mid-September!

Anyway, back to our weekend. After raking leaves we headed inside to carve our pumpkins! Lin jumped right in without hesitation, drawing the face on her pumpkin and then carving it out. If you remember an earlier post, Lin is very confused as to why we're not eating the pumpkins, and she was still asking about it on Saturday. We told her, some people do, of course, but we're not planning on it (I've never cared for roasted pumpkin seeds...).

And then we headed out Sunday night for trick-or-treating! Ruby was a bat-ballerina and Lin was... well, the vampire teeth didn't work out, so Lin was just Lin-with-weird-makeup. She had a lot of fun with the makeup, especially seeing me and Dave getting all dolled-up as well (she made us promise that if she wore a costume, we would too). Dave was a zombie and I was... well, my vampire teeth didn't work out either, so I was just Lisa-with-weird-makeup.

We had a good time but overall, trick-or-treating was not quite the glorious experience I wanted it to be, unfortunately. After all the build-up and excitement from the last several weeks, Ruby decided to clam-up and be shy, pretty much refusing to let go of our hands or legs the whole time and barely able to whisper "trick or treat". Typical 3-year-old! And after about 3 houses, Lin decided that trick-or-treating was stupid and didn't want to do it anymore. Typical 13-year-old!

I was disappointed with her sudden switch in attitude and I told her, "This is Halloween! This is what Halloween is all about! It's a really big deal in America!" And finally she said to me (I'll paraphrase) "What if you were 13 years old and sent to live in China? And everyone was telling you that you had to do something but you didn't understand why, but everyone's telling you that it's a big deal in China and everyone in China is doing it. But you didn't understand it. How would you feel?"

Huh.

So I lightened-up on her, and then she lightened-up, and we all had a truly great time. I'll do a picture-post later today...

First Report Card

We went to parent/teacher conferences last night and got Lin's first report card.

drumroll please...

All A's and one B!!!!

Didn't I tell you she was smart?

Yup, all her teachers say Lin is doing just great in school. She works very hard, is attentive in class, and is overall a model student. (Of course, we knew all this already...) I'm actually more impressed with the one B on her report card than all the A's. The B is in science, where she's not getting extra ESL help every day. So that B, she really is earning on her own!

The one thing we've got to try and figure out is, she's occasionally getting to her classes late. It's not a huge problem, nor is it a daily occurance, but it's happening enough that it's been mentioned to us. Now, when we ask her about it directly, she says she's not late. When I ask her if she's forgetting things in her locker, she says no. So I'm afraid that she's just not understanding the concept of punctuality. We'll keep working on that one.

And speaking of school, I surely cannot neglect to mention Ruby! She's going on her first-ever school field trip today! They're going to a pumpkin patch and Ruby was funny last night while we were talking about it. The kids are going to the same place we go every year to get our pumpkins, a local landmark pumpkin farm owned by a man named Gene. We were just there two weeks ago. (See the "Happy Fall!" post below for pics...) So last night Ruby kept saying "Are we going to our pumpkin patch? Are we going to see our Gene?" Very sweet...

Tennis Lessons and Tough Conversations

Lin had her first tennis lesson Tuesday. She is taking lessons with two girls she met over the summer. Anna and Sophie are sisters -- Anna is 14 and in 8th grade, Sophie is 12 and in 6th grade. Unfortunately they do not go to the same middle school, so they are taking tennis together every week so that they keep in touch. Anna and Sophie are both such sweet girls and want very much to be Lin's friends. Of course, I was coerced into participating in the lessons as well, which Lin found to be quite amusing! I've always wanted to learn how to play tennis, so I'm looking forward to Lin and I learning together. Lin was really good, so much so that the coach didn't believe she had never played before. She's quite the athlete!

We've had some more light shed on what's going on at school with this other Chinese girl in Lin's class. Now she's gone so far as to tell other girls not to be friends with Lin, telling the other students that Lin is stupid. Apparently a group of girls invited Lin to eat lunch with them (yay!) and this other girl got mad (boo). Ah, middle school girls... Lin insists that she's fine, it doesn't bother her that this girl is being mean. When we talked about the "stupid" comment, Lin said it was okay because she knows she's smart. You sure are, my smart beautiful daughter!

Dave had an interesting conversation with Lin the other night, about money. It started with Lin asking about adoption, and whether Chinese families ever come to America to adopt American children. Then she started asking about the money involved in adoption. Dave quickly got the impression that Lin was essentially asking how much she "cost." Of course, Dave assured her that we did not pay for her. Yes, we bought plane tickets, yes we paid for our hotel stay. And yes, we gave the orphanage money. But Dave told her the money to the orphanage was for all the care they had given Lin for the last 10 years, and for all the children still there. Then Lin started talking about things we have bought for her since we've been home, like her iP*d and the tennis lessons. She began apologizing, saying that we've spent so much money on her but then sometimes she does something that makes us mad. Poor girl has so much on her mind!

Well, I called our social worker yesterday, just to talk about both the school situation and the money conversation, and how we should be handling them. She pointed out two things that caught her attention -- Lin's comment about how she knows she's smart and so it doesn't matter to her if kids are mean, and Lin worrying about us spending too much money on her. She said that these are exceptionally mature thoughts for Lin to have, and that it indicates that Lin had to be very self-sufficient, self-reliant, in the orphanage. She served as her own parent, telling everyone else "Don't worry about me, I'm doing just fine on my own."

And how many times have I said "She's doing great! She's so happy and well-adjusted! It's amazing!" And not to say that she's not any of these things, because she certainly is a very happy, wonderful girl! But maybe, just maybe, she is hurting and worrying. Maybe she's putting on a brave face -- "everything's fine, don't worry about me" -- to protect herself. How do we teach her that she doesn't need to take care of herself anymore?

Lots to think about...

Happy Fall!

Lin has been busy experiencing her first Midwestern Autumn! To say this is my favorite time of year would be the understatement of the century. I practically foam at the mouth when the weather turns cooler and everything starts to turn orange. I think Lin thought we were pretty crazy when we took her to the local pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins but she got through it with a smile on her face. She kept asking if we were going to eat them and when I told her no, they're for decorating our house, she looked at me like I'd lost my mind!

 

The girls were not terribly cooperative when I asked them to smile for me, the little smarty-pants! This picture and the following one are the best I could get.

We also took Lin to the greatest Haunted House in the Midwest, owned and operated by our great friends, Stu and Lori. We took Lin through the house in the afternoon, with the lights on, so that she would understand what it was all about. She agreed that she would go through, but only if I went along, too. (Even though Stu and Lori are two of the greatest people in the universe, I have sworn year after year that I will never go through their haunted house again, only to be dragged through yet again the next time. This year it was Lin's turn to insist that I go along...)

Stu and Lori gave Lin an award for having travelled the farthest to go through The Haunting! (And no, Lori does not actually look like that all the time... only during October!)

Lin with Creepy Devil Dude (he really is that tall!)

And one more sweet picture of Lin and Ruby. Lin is very patient with Ruby and even agrees to let Ruby share her iP*d, on occasion. As time goes on, Lin is really developing into a wonderful big sister, or, as they say in China, hao jie jie!

Lin HATES this picture, but I think it's too cute! If she sees that I've posted it, I'm dead meat!

I hope you're all having a wonderful Fall!