Wow! Its a Big Day ... For Many Reasons

The big news here today is that Josie lost her first tooth! Yee Ha! That tiny little tooth has been wobbling around in her gums for the past two weeks. She was out with her Dad having lunch, bit into a tortilla chip and chomped down on something a bit harder than a chip. She told her Dad, "I think my tooth fell out". Sure enough, it did!

After getting the phone call reporting the big news, I went upstairs to my desk to record the date in our "Josie File". It's an electronic file that I use to keep track of all the milestones of Josie's life. (Thankfully, kept on a separate computer than the one that crashed!) I made my entry and then noticed that Feb 20 is actually a big day for another reason... It was 6 years ago today that we entered a cold conference room on the 3rd floor of the Wuhan Mayflower Hotel and met Chong Si Li ... you all might know that precious girl by the name she was given the next day - Josephine Lily. This is all we knew of our daughter before walking into that conference room:

(From our referral report translation) ...
Chong Si Li, F., was born on March 18, 2005 (estimated). She was found abandoned by a staff person named Mao Guo Xiang from this institute, at the gate of the social welfare institute (# 384 Yanhe Road, Tiancheng Town, Chongyang County) on July 10, 2005. The baby was then dressed in a light blue envelope neck vest and a pair of blue baby pants, lying in a carton. Beside her, there was some baby clothes, a bag of formula, a bottle of cod-liver oil, and a milk bottle. Afterwards, the Daqiao police station issued the Abandon Baby Certificate and the Certificate of the Baby’s Biological Parents or any Guardians Not Being Found.

On the first day of her being taken into this Institute for nurturing, Si Li received a physical check-up and was found normal and healthy. Because she was born in Chong Yang County, and because we hoped that she would never forget her hometown, and hoped she would grow into a beautiful angel in the future, we gave her the last name ‘Chong’ and the first name ‘Si Li’.


I know a lot of adoptive families make a big celebration of "Family Day" or day that their child became a part of their family. We never have. We tell Josie stories all the time of how long we waited for her and how excited we were to receive our first photos of her. We tell her that the nice people in China called us and said, "Your daughter has been born!" And how we couldn't wait to get to China to hold her and thank the nannies who took such good care of her when she was a tiny baby.

I cannot believe it has been 6 years since that day. It feels like a lifetime ago. I was so incredibly scared. Josie was so upset and very sick. Maddie was so excited to finally be a 'Big Sister' and James just seemed so calm. Wow, what a day. I simply cannot image what all of our lives would have been like had Josie not become ours. She is so treasured by the entire family - her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and our friends who are family! We are blessed.

In A 'Holding Pattern'

First, I would like to wish everyone a Very Happy Chinese New Year! (Jan 23). Josie celebrated the Lunar New Year with her friend Katie. Katie's Mom, Jenny, is very active with the local Chinese Moms group. Jenny invites Josie to take part in nearly all their activities. We're lucky to have such wonderful neighbors!

James prefers the more 'Disney-fied' version of CNY. Josie and her Dad visited Disneyland and participated in all the CNY events offered. Photos by James:


Josie making a Chinese lantern


A dragon chain






Dragon Dance



The next few weeks will be torturous for all of us - Maddie is waiting to hear from the colleges she applied to. No matter how many times we tell her that the colleges don't mail acceptances until mid-March, she still runs to the mailbox everyday checking for those darn letters! Applying to college sure is different than when James & I applied... I'm quite upset by the whole process myself, so I can image what Maddie must be going through. Not fun.



Last weekend, we attended the LA Times Travel Show, held at the LA Convention Center. There were some awesome displays, events and demonstrations to see. There were booths representing countries that I never thought to visit, and booths from countries I can't wait to return to! I came away from the show vowing to take a proper visit back to Turkey and to finally visit Ecqudor, the home of dear Janina, the exchange student we hosted back in 2008.

One of our favorite demonstrations was by Chef Conor McClellan of the Rayanne House, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Given that 2012 marks the launch and destruction of the Belfast built Titanic, the Chef re-created two dinner entrees served aboard the ill-fated ship. How interesting! The first entree was Squab with a Champagne Saffron sauce and the second was a dessert. Here is the Chef working his magic:



The Taiwan Tourist Bureau had the largest display, complete with dancers and familiar Lunar New Year characters:





Today, we visited a local Farmer's Market in search of fresh strawberries - and we found a lot more! Incredible produce and locally produced artisan breads. There were also a few local artists and craftswomen displaying their wares. It was a great way to spend the morning with the girls! I'll only make quick mention of the near miracle it was to get Maddie out of bed before 11AM on a weekend morning :-)

Here's a bit of what we sampled:











And finally, for all you football fans - I'm going to try and insert a short movie below of my nephew, Jack, giving an exciting rundown of the Superbowl match -up. Jack gave the sports report at his school on Friday. I think he has a bright future in broadcasting!



Have a great Super Bowl weekend!

2012 - Off to a Great Start!

The first 3 weeks of the New Year have brought a bounty of goodness.

The photo above is one of the Christmas cookies we made while the girls were on Christmas break. I kept Josie and her girlfriends busy for a full week by having them first make the batter for the cookies. Two days of measuring, mixing and licking the beaters clean of the batter. A third day was spent baking all the cookies. The rest of time was spent decorating about 10 dozen sugar cookies and packing them up for family & friends. The girls were just thrilled to show off their accomplishments. I think they also finally understood the "It is better to give than receive" concept of the holidays!

The beginning of January also brought a bountiful harvest from my lemon tree in the backyard. It was the first thing I planted when we moved here. Although I did have a few lemons on the tree last year, this year was a bumper crop! So, what does one do when handed a bunch of lemons? Why, make lemonade of course! We have been enjoying fresh-squeezed lemonade these past few weeks and from the looks of it, we'll be enjoying it for months to come!

Here's my tree after I picked about a dozen lemons from it:



And here's Josie showing off a few of the bigger lemons we grew:





We hit the after Christmas sales in a big way. I had been eying a new sectional sofa for the family room since late August, watching the price go up and then down. When it went on sale again on December 26th, we grabbed it! We purchased it from Macys and they delivered it 3 days later. Excellent service from everyone we dealt with - especially the delivery guys who were so efficient and courteous.

We were thrilled to welcome my parents here in California on January 7th. We've been looking forward to their visit since we left their place at the beach in early August of last year. The girls are so happy to have their grandparents on hand to spoil them rotten. Josie made no secret of her love of Grandmom's pancakes, so she had them nearly every morning of my parents two week visit! James just loves my Mom's cooking, so he was in heaven the whole time, too. Maddie and her Pop are as thick as thieves, so she was more than happy to have him insisting on his kiss goodbye every morning before leaving for school. I just love having my parents close by to talk to and relax with... I miss being only a few hours drive from them.

My Mom and her constant companions (Casey & Carson) settled in nicely on the new sofa:



Carson picked his favorite spot for working on the iPad :-)



While my Dad was occupied with the NFL Playoff games, Mom and I took in a few of the local attractions. San Juan Capistrano is just a few minutes from our house, so we headed there. We walked around town and then toured the Mission SJC, which was just wonderful. It was the first time either of us had visited the Mission and we were really impressed with the historic content as well as the beautiful grounds. Here are a few photos of the Mission:






The Serra Chapel


My beautiful Mom!




The ruins of the first Mission built on the site







We were lucky enough to have another family member in town this past week. My brother-in-law Greg, husband of my older sister, Suzanne. He was in town for a trade show and was able to join us for dinner on Thursday - which also happened to be his birthday! Of course, we HAD to have a birthday cake for him and you can imagine my utter delight when I found out that his favorite kind of cake was LEMON!!! I made both the batter and the icing from scratch using my own freshly-picked lemons! It was Greg's first visit to our home here in CA. I'm glad we were able to share his birthday with him.


Josie helped her Godfather, Uncle Greg, blow out his candles!

Yesterday, James and I took my parents to walk the beach that is about 15 minutes from our house. Another beautiful day to take in the beautiful scenery. We were also hoping to catch a glimpse of the pod of Orcas that were spotted off the coast that morning. Didn't see any whales, but we did have a nice time:


Mom & Dad near Dana Point


Dad at the Ocean Institute


Mom& Dad just south of Laguna Beach

As I mentioned earlier, my Mom & Dad just love indulging the girls while they are visiting. Josie's only request (besides pancakes!) was having a Family Game Night. So, last night we had a marathon Monopoly game! Josie was the banker, James and I were a team, Pop & Grandmom were a team, and Nyra and Josie played as individuals. Surprisingly, the girls were really into it and the game lasted over two hours. Both the little ones started getting sleepy. It's no wonder - they had spent the earlier part of the day playing on the Wii that Santa brought for Christmas. Just Dance 3 is a mother's dream come true... they totally exhaust themselves and bedtime is a breeze!


Family Game Night


Josie and Nyra shakin' it with the Wii !

That brings me up to date with all the excitement going on here. I hope everyone has had a great start to the New Year! Drop a line and let me know how y'all are doing!

2011 - I'll Hardly Miss Ye !

I will begin my final post of the year with a bit of "Bah Humbug!" for 2011. By all accounts, including my own, this year was on track to be a great one. In reality, it actually was. However, the last 6 weeks of this year have brought me to my knees... I guess its true that "bad things happen in ______" (fill in your own number). My optimism, though tested, is intact. Just need to dig a bit deeper to reach it!


Time Capsule - Dislike!

So, I'll start this post kicking' it old style. The photo above, taken in July 2009, was my screen saver when we lived in Virginia. It shows a happy moment with some of my favorite people in the world. My Girlz, Pre School Posse Moms - Jamie, Sharon and Lori. Love these girls. But, in the time between then and now I've changed my screen saver about a dozen times.

Flash forward to Saturday afternoon, December 9, 2011. I am putting the finishing touches on the genealogy book I am creating. It is the culmination of 3 years of research. It contains over 100 images and about 20 pages of self written text. It describes just one branch of the four families I am descendant from. My goal is to have the book in Dublin by December 20th so my cousin Eileen can share it with our Irish relatives when she travels north to Donegal for the holidays.

At 4PM that Saturday my iMac crashed. It crashed bad. It was the first time that I ever had a Mac go kaput. I didn't worry too much though. We have the Mac Time Capsule - the small little box that sits next to my iMac backing up my hard drive once every hour. My biggest concern was that the book might be late getting to Ireland. I made my appointment at the Genius Bar for Monday afternoon confident that the problem would be resolved quickly and painlessly. I was partially correct. I had blown the hard drive. It was replaced within 24 hours. However, when I got the iMac home I couldn't get it to stay on long enough to even log in. After an hour on the phone with 800-SOS-APPLE, they recommended I return the computer to store to have someone take another look. The second look turned up a blown internal power supply which Apple kindly fixed at no cost because they missed it the first time around. Hooray! I get the computer back on December 17th Good As New!

Imagine my surprise - when I logged on and transferred the back-up files back on to my computer - to find the image of my three beautiful friends filling my 27" screen! It seems that the day I packed up my computer in Virginia for the move to California was the last day it actually backed up!! Seems that I didn't reconnect things properly when I set up the iMac in our new house. I lost EVERYTHING digital from August 1, 2009 to the present day. Every photo I had taken in the past two and a half years is gone. Every document I created - GONE! My Reunion 9 Genealogy program with the vital information for 183 of my relations - GONE! Worse part of the whole mess is that the wound was self-inflicted... James purchased a 500 GB portable hard drive for me over the summer and I never touched it! My pity party continues, but please don't feel obligated to join in. The bellyaching will end from this point forward.

Holiday Season

So, aside from my digital disaster, we managed to keep busy for the holiday season. We made the 7+ hour drive north to Sacramento to have Thanksgiving with James' family. Maddie stayed behind to share the holiday with her friend, Maddie E, and BF Israel. She missed an awesome dinner prepared by my sister-in-law Agnes! Josie had a great time learning how to play Wii Mario Bros. with her cousins.

December 10th James were up at 4AM to catch the lunar eclipse. I set up my tripod in the backyard and tried different lenses, settings, etc in an attempt to capture the event. Mixed results, but it was nice to be outside when all was quiet and dark.





We had teacher conferences at Josie's school in early December too. Just as we expected, Mrs. S confirmed that Josie is a stinkin' baby genius! Well, not a total genius - but she's doing just great. She's reading and getting 100% correct on her spelling tests. Math skill are great too. We're so proud of her!

Maddie received her first college acceptance letter - from the University of Alabama. It's not her first choice, but it gave her a much needed boost of confidence. In her words, "At least I know now that I'm actually going to college". The remaining schools she applied to won't send results until March. Fingers crossed she'll be accepted to a few of the East Coast schools she applied to... she applied to three California colleges to make her Dad happy, but has no intention of staying 'In-State'. Of course, it would save us a fortune if she did, but her college fund is ready.

Instead of buying Christmas gifts for Josie's friends here in the neighborhood, we treated the girls to a show - Disney on Ice: Toy Story III. We were able to get some pretty good tickets for an 11:30AM show at the Honda Center in Anaheim. The girls had a great time!









This year, Maddie and Josie decorated the Christmas tree completely on their own. It was nice to sit back and just offer suggestions. Of course, it was Josie asking for ornament placement advice... Maddie had it all under control. Once they were finished, Maddie declared it the best tree decorating job - EVER! Again, no surprise at Maddie's self congratulatory posturing! Our girl does not suffer from a lack of confidence - at least where tree trimming is concerned!





Oh! In case you were wondering... Why, yes, that is toilet paper on our tree! Josie and BFF Nyra decided to 'enhance' the tree by draping it with the toilet paper. "Mom, it looks like snow on the branches! Isn't it beautiful?!" I thought so! Josie can spend hour after hour looking at the ornaments and asking questions about each one... I love that about her.

So, here it is New Years Eve. It is a totally unnatural 78 degrees outside. Our daughters will both be going to parties tonight, so James and I will head out to an early movie. We'll wait for the girls to get home and (hopefully!) sleep in tomorrow morning.

I'll be happy to welcome a new year. This year brought great joys and sorrows. We were greatly blessed in 2011 - our children are strong and healthy; we live in a beautiful neighborhood where our little one can play safely; we enjoyed another summer of adventure in Europe; and added to our extended family by traveling to meet our Irish cousins. Much to be thankful for. We'll continue to pray and send healing thoughts to our loved ones who were struck with illness or suffered through hard times. It's our greatest hope that 2012 brings peace, good health and prosperity to one and all. Happy New Year!