a date with Dad

Last night, Julia and Andy attended their first Father/Daughter Dance together. Actually, they spent much of their day together as Andy was off work, and Julia's class went on a morning field trip, so he met them there and signed her out for the rest of the afternoon. She is still a daddy's girl (you might remember that Andy was the only one allowed to hold her in China and that she sobbed and sobbed when she had the misfortune of sitting at the table with me while he filled his plate at the breakfast buffet) and had a great time last night. In fact, she called me on the way home to tell me that she won a Claire's "credit card" and has been driving us crazy for a trip to Claire's today.

Julia's first flowers from a man. Of course, they have to come from Dad (a hint to any dads who might be reading this blog).

When I tried to get a picture of the two of them together, she was pressed so tightly to his side that I couldn't see her, and she didn't want to move.

Now that's better.

Apparently, she couldn't get enough chocolate covered pretzels. They had a chocolate fountain, and I learned this morning that Julia does not like strawberries....she is her mother's daughter after all, and for the record, Savannah does not like them either.

The kindergarten girls....they clean up quite nicely, don't you think?

Andy said that they play a game every year where they stand hand in hand in a circle, and they have to pass through a hula hoop without breaking the chain. The dad next to him struggled with it and was amazed when Andy managed without any difficultly. Andy admitted that this was his seventh Father/Daughter dance, so he has had some practice.

Andy says that Savannah and Julia are two very different girls. Savannah enjoyed spending time with her friends when she attended the dance with Andy. Julia stayed by his side the whole time (I am guessing that Savannah probably did more of that in kindergarten). Julia wore him out as she insisted that he spin and spin and spin her, so he arrived at home with a headache...hmm, do you think we are too old to have such a young daughter?

Just for fun, I am posting the link to last year's post about the father/daughter dance. This year was a bit more smooth for us, but we did have one glitch in that Zach was supposed to meet a ride to a friend's house up at school, and Andy took him thinking he would be home in plenty of time to get ready for the dance. Thirty minutes after the scheduled arrival time, he learned the ride was not coming...ooops, so once again, we had just a small race to get to the dance on time.

http://lifewiththepages.blogspot.com/2009/02/father-daughter-dance-2009.html

100 days of school

Wyatt and Julia both celebrated 100 days of school last week. Wyatt had to cut 100 words out of newspapers and magazines and glue them on a big piece of construction paper. We made sure he could read every one of them, and it is so exciting to see his progress! Julia had special projects too, but I had to laugh at this assignment that she brought home.

I wish I had 100 books.
I wish I had 100 pieces of candy.
I wish I had 100 limos that are pink. (What? Where does she get this stuff?)
But I'd never want 100 pieces of garb. (I think she means garbage)

winter sports update

We have been quite busy this January. Of course, we are still facing the ups and downs of my mom's cancer diagnosis. At this point she is ready to start chemo this week. After four rounds of chemo, she will have scans again, and if the tumor has not grown, she will get to have surgery. We are only asking for prayer at this point and would love, love, love to see a miracle.

Julia and I enjoyed her first sleepover with her AHG troop. We had a good time, and the little girls were put to bed at 10:30, so I almost got a decent night of sleep. She has also been playing basketball, and you might just recognize her head coach. I have only seen one game, but she has scored in her last two games.
Because Andy is coaching basketball, I get to watch wrestling just about every Saturday. Zach is doing quite well, and as you can see when Wyatt comes along, the big boys get to play with Bakugan. Zach's friend Jesse is the funniest. At one point I turned around to find that he was listening to a story on Wyatt's Leapster Tag.

This is a picture of Zach's last round at the district tournament.

and it is a pin!! Zach takes the district title!

His team took second place and was awarded this trophy.

So we were off to regionals where Zach took 2nd place and then to the state duals which were yesterday. Zach pinned all three of his opponents yesterday, and I have it all on video, but I did not have the camera because...

...Julia had her first gymnastics meet, so Andy had the camera. Check out that hairdo. It is proof positive that Andy is a man (lol).

Julia got an 8.8 on the floor and 9s on the vault, beam, and bars. She probably would have done better on the floor routine if she had more time to learn it. Unfortunately, Julia missed one of her last practices because she has spent just about the entire month of January battling strep. Julia saw two rounds of antibiotics and has to return to the pediatrician tomorrow to make sure it is gone.

Julia walked away with four ribbons, a trophy and a really cool jersey style t-shirt, but best of all, she had a great time.

watching her grow

Shiloh marked her four month birthday on January 18th and went to the vet just three days before that. At her vet visit, she weighed 15 pounds...a five pound gain in just three weeks!!! I am so glad that I don't add another 33% to my weight every three weeks. It is like we can actually watch her grow, and while we are still trying to control some puppy behavior that is unacceptable, I do think that, someday, she will be a very good dog.

suffering

Recently I read an entry on a devotional blog about the upside down hope that we have. The entry came from Dayspring, and while I get e-mails from Dayspring that regularly direct me to the blogs, I never open them, but on this particular day, I opened the e-mail and read the blog entry. The entry was based on Romans 5:3-4--Not only so but we rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. The author's take on this verse is that in God's economy, we suffer first, persevere, build character and then have hope. However, in our economy, we typically hope first. For further reading on this, you can visit the blog at http://blog.dayspring.com/2009/12/a-different-kind-of-hope-part-three.html.

Right now my family is suffering and hearts are breaking as my mom undergoes health testing. I will not disclose the details of her tests and all that without permission, but she is having scans today to see if she can have surgery. Julia and I are home today as Julia is fighting strep again. Where two or more are gathered in His name, God promises to be present, so Julia and I prayed this morning for a scan that is miraculously, mysteriously, and divinely clean. Of course we didn't leave out Julia, Zach, and Andy in our prayer as they are all feeling rather yucky right now. I am asking everyone to pray for my mom and my family during this trying time. The good news is that God is granting my mom peace in these circumstances. On Saturday my family gathered at our church after services and had my mom anointed by the elders. It was a precious time together, and Mom has expressed again and again how grateful she was that everyone could be there. We all went out to dinner afterwards, and it was a very nice time. We do all know that God is still in the business of miracles. Simply reading some of the previous entries in this blog reveals that, so we suffer and try to persevere so that we might eventually cling to hope.

I can't help myself

Disclaimer: You know that we love the Chinese people.

I did not originally intend to post this as I was afraid that it would be taken as racist. However, since this is the family scrapbook, I cannot help myself.

Julia told me last night that she wanted to pray for me. I agreed to let her do so. For the record her prayer was very general, but I love to listen to Julia pray because she is thankful and expresses her hopes not as requests but as hopes. Her hopes are for safety and for good days usually. Anyway, when she finished her prayer, she stated that she wanted me to pray for her.

During my prayer, I requested that Julia's birth parents come to know Jesus and that Julia can meet them and know them in Heaven. When I finished praying, Julia asked who her China parents are. I responded that I have no idea. At this point Julia scrunched up her face and asked, "Are they Fun Kung?" I could not contain my laughter, so she continued by asking, "Is my dad Vong Kong?" I buried my face in my hands and had a good laugh. I have no idea where she gets this stuff.

Ringing in 2010

I haven't kept up with blogging over my holiday break that has included 9 or 10 hours of sleep a night - love it, so this post will be rather lengthy, but the pictures should outnumber the the words.

I will start with Christmas Eve which was spent at my parents' house. We had a relaxing and enjoyable evening after what was a whirlwind day at our house. We had served at church that afternoon and Andy had worked. The day escaped us quickly.

Gotcha!!! My dad does not allow people to take his picture. He absolutely hates it! He thought he was safe when the camera was in Julia's hands. The camera is almost as big as her. HaHa Little did he know what a budding photographer we have!
opening the gifts...Wyatt was beside himself awaiting the moment when the gifts would be opened. He had to wait for dinner and then birthday cake for Jesus. Julia was so cute when we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus as the song concluded, she announced "and Happy New Year!"

Mom, Jonathan and Tony

Savannah

Julia asked for Bendaroos and a Polly Pocket swim playset. Christmas Eve is the big time around here as my siblings and parents go all out for the kids. On Christmas morning they get their stockings and one gift from Santa along with two gifts from Andy and me. Sometimes Zach and Savannah splurge from their allowances and buy gifts as well.

Moving along to Christmas morning...Andy reads the Christmas story before opening gifts.

Christmas at our house was quiet and relaxing. We enjoyed a ham dinner which had been voted on by the entire family and played with new toys all day.

This year marks our second Christmas with Wyatt, and it is so funny how much he remembers last Christmas and how much he assumes our activities are traditions. Last year he visited Santa because his school held a breakfast with Santa. It is not normally our tradition to visit Santa, but as that was supposedly an annual event at his school, we had every intention of attending this year. However, they did not have the breakfast. I have no idea why not, so Wyatt was quite unhappy that we did not visit Santa. For a couple of years, we also made gingerbread houses. We skipped that this year as well, and Wyatt let me know about it.

We did do one thing differently though. I splurged and took Savannah, Wyatt, and Julia to a paint-your-own-pottery place and allowed them to paint ornaments. I love, love, love collecting ornaments especially ornaments with sentiment attached, and I thought these would be nice keepsakes. Because Zach and Savannah used to get ornaments in their stockings every year and they got ornaments from any place my mother or I travelled, they both have a nice collection. Julia's collection is on its way, but Wyatt's is rather sad, so I used this as an opportunity to help him out. We painted the ornaments the Monday before Christmas and picked them up the Tuesday after Christmas. Unfortunately, they never made it to the tree this year as we chucked another tradition. Normally, I take all of our Christmas decor down today (New Year's Day), but Shiloh and the tree kept going to war, and the tree was losing, so I took everything down earlier this week. We still have our wreaths hanging on the windows and doors, and our nativity is still out, but I am actually glad that everything else is put away and that I took this more gradually this year.

New Year's Eve at last!

We almost forgot on New Year's Eve that Julia had gymnastics, so she was a few minutes late. Oops! However, it was important that she attend this class because she is moving up to the developmental program, and this was her last class with our fave instructor, Miss Denise. Miss Denise expresses excitement for Julia. After all, it was her recommendation that got Julia to this point, but she also states that she will really miss Julia.

I am always amazed by how muscular Julia is. When we brought her home, I got the biggest kick out of the fat rolls on her legs. I had never had a child with fat rolls, and who knew I would get one from China? Those fat rolls are now all muscle. Amazing!

After gymnastics we went to my brother's house. (This happens to be our former house... a much loved house, I might add) to celebrate the new year. We played our version of Catch Phrase which is simply to pass the game around and have everyone guess the phrase from our clues. We don't keep score, but we have a lot of fun.

My sister in law, Danielle outdid herself. The food was unbelievable. Wow, oh Wow!!! My stomach is still full. I could not get enough. We had appetizers so there was no meal. A friend recently told her that she missed her calling as she is trying to get a job teaching middle school. I think Patrick is right. She may need to go into catering.

Savannah loves board games. Unfortunately, I do not. Here she is with Tara offering clues.

Joshua

Danielle and Tara

my three sisters -something is cracking them up

This is how Wyatt rang in the new year. He would not join us to watch the ball drop. He wanted to play on the Cartoon Network website. Wyatt told me that we had Cartoon Network before he joined the family, and that it is not fair to him that we no longer have it because it is the only place you can watch Bakugan. Cable got too pricey, so we switched to Netflix. Sorry Bud, but that isn't going to change.

Hello 2010!

Apparently Logan is too cool to smile.

Thoughts on 2010

2009 was a better year for us than 2008. We saw my brother get married, and we are all crazy about my new sister in law. It was a beautiful wedding with a nice vacation that followed immediately.

We did face heartache in 2008 as we also said goodbye to the dog that had been part of our family for 13 years. We lost her the same day as the wedding, and having the wedding was a very nice distraction.

I saw a colleague and friend suffer through a loss as her sister battled cancer and lost that battle just before Thanksgiving. So much suffering also occured in Zach's class.

For our family 2009 was a nice year. We were not struggling through the difficult school decisions of 2008. Everyone was settled and doing well in school. Wyatt really molded into our family, and he and Julia brought us many laughs. Financially, we also seem to be getting back on our feet though some changes such as giving up cable do seem to be permanent for this family.

2010 starts with uncertainty. I guess in reality all years do. We ended 2009 facing medical testing for my mom. On the Friday before Christmas, she went through a full day of diagnostic testing with good news coming to us on the Tuesday before Christmas as the pathology test came out negative. However, she returned for a needle biopsy on the Monday after Christmas, and they found cancer. Mom will now start the new year with major surgery followed by chemo. While more testing will probably follow, we are hopeful as the doctors believe they caught this early and her prognosis is good. Mom had major back surgery in 2009, so we hope 2010 will bring her a full restoration to health.

My resolution for the new year is to simply have a family over for dinner once a month. I will be honest that this will not start immediately as our kitchen table and chairs are badly in need of replacement, and we will have to await our tax return to address that. However, I have been in this cocoon since we adopted Wyatt, and it is lonely here. I have struggled to pull a workable schedule together to maintain our home, so we do lots of crisis cleaning. That probably won't change as our schedule varies from day to day The very disappointing part of this Christmas break is that we have not had any of the kids' friends over. Savannah really struggles with this as Zach has still been with his friends for wrestling. Therefore, I plan to have a family over each month for dinner and really try to connect with the people in our circles...especially the families of our children's best friends.

Andy and I started a monthly date night in September. We missed our December date, but if you count Christmas shopping, we got some time out together. We plan to pick that back up and would love to double date sometimes, so we may try that as well.

I also hope for myself and my entire family that we will continue to draw closer to God. That's really what it is all about. I may try and read a book or two as well. I am trying to read Heaven by Randy Alcorn right now. It is a great book, but it is huge and provokes so much thought that I have to take it in small doses.

Happy New Year Everyone! May you be richly blessed in 2010!