Double Happiness!

Make new friends...

Several of us met at a local park yesterday.  Some of the faces were familiar and others were new.  It reminded me of a favorite poem I learned in grade school:

Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.

Silver friends were Stacey, Michelle, Mary-Mia and Lisa.  New gold friend was Kayce.  The girls had almost as much fun as I did but you might not think so if you try to read their expressions in the photo below!  Really, I think they were tired of posing so they endured the photo shoot as best they could!  Poor little suffering darlings!

Many thanks to Stacey's husband, Mark, for the photos since this mom totally forgot to bring her camera!

(click for larger view)

From back left:  Stacey, Michelle, Kayce,
Front:  Lisa, Mary-Mia, me.

Rock Stars

(The text reads) Michele and her lovely family came to visit us this week.  Tuesday, we were at Emma Prush Park/Farm and Wednesday we ate massive quantities of amazingly good Chinese food from our favorite restaurant.  The time difference between their eyelids and ours was three hours but they were amazingly good sports and stuck around much longer than we dared hope (but much less than we wanted!).

As we look at these photos, we can't help but wish that we lived much closer.  I know this isn't our last visit!

Buddalicious Blogger Buddy visit!

After nearly three years as Blogger Buddies, Michele and I finally got (at least some of) our kids together for a visit.  In the photo above, there's Maddy on the left, then Gwen, then Josie.  None of these three were in the picture (so to speak) when Michele and I first met in mid 2005.   It's amazing to think that our friendship has spanned so many life-changing events!   We've happily followed eachother's blogs for all these years so today was incredibly special. 

Gwen and Maddy have been watching the Buddalicious blog for a long time so they were excited that their friend Josie was actually going to come out of the computer and play with them at one of their favorite parks today!  They were equally excited about meeting Josie's big sister, Maddie, but she was feeling a little bit under the weather and missed out on the park.

The three charming 3 year olds held hands and skipped around.  I managed to get a video of this but I wasn't sure the video was working so I jiggled the camera too much and I'm afraid I'll make everyone sea-sick if they view it the results.  Bummer since it was incredibly cute!  You'll just have to take my word for it.  If I can get around to uploading the video and posting the link, I'll let you take your chances...

We're all looking forward to meeting Maddie and her daddy (James) tomorrow night for dinner at our house.  More pictures to come!  :)

Good wet fun at Almaden Lake

Gosh, that was fun!!

Maddy's QinZhou Cousin comes to visit!

Maddy was excited to put on her prettiest dress this morning!  She knew that it was a special day because Chloe and Pearl were coming to our house to visit.  And this visit was extra EXTRA special because Chloe is from the same city in China that Maddy is from:  QinZhou. 

This was the first time since leaving China that she would see another child from her SWI.  Of course, she didn't know about this particular detail (and, at this age, wouldn't have cared if she did know) but we knew so it was really fun to see the girls together.  We just wish they would have cooperated and actually SMILED for our cameras! :)

Thanks Lori and Pete for coming to visit!   We appreciated all of your travel advice and experience and hope we'll see you again really soon! 

Two Cuties from QinZhou!

Here are two little cuties from QinZhou (Maddy's SWI).  They're looking for a family.

You can find Kasey's information <here>.

You can find Sherry's information <here>. 

A request?

To post a comment on my blog, you have to enter some weird combination of difficult to read letters to prove that you really are a human and not a big fat spam machine.  Since I don't approve your comments before they post for the whole world to see, this is a necessary inconvenience that I have to impose upon you.  Sorry (really).

But I've noticed that many of my favorite blogs are screening comments AND using this word verification thing.  So here's my request:  If you're moderating the comments on your blog, can you please disable the word verification. 

My few remaining brain cells thank you! 

I almost didn't mention this

I wasn't going to blog about this but, in retrospect, it is sorta funny (and Gwen is NOT sick).  So here goes:

M3 called this morning and asked if we were heading to the mall for our usual romp in the germ-pit.  Even without the added enticement of a play date, we'd never miss our daily chance to partake of dried baby body fluids and share some fresh ones of our own.  And, of course, the play date just gave it so much more meaning!  Especially since Mommy hardly ever gets to talk to an adult during these recurring adventures (Mall Moms are snobs).

So, we rendezvoused with Mama Salsa about 10:15 and Maddy quickly settled into her self imposed role as Westgate Mall Toddler Play Yard Ambassador by welcoming the twins and trying to explain that they needed to take off their shoes, not leave the play area, etc.  Meanwhile, Gwen took advantage of the fact that I was being distracted by M3 to race to our stroller, retrieve a banana we'd just purchased, peel it naked, and shove the top 5 inches of the freshly exposed fruit into her greedy mouth. 

I was only about 5 seconds behind her and caught up in time to ask her if she was okay and offer my hand as her personal spitoon.  She nodded and grunted "I'm otay" and scurried off after a little girl who was stretching the neck opening of her angrily protesting little brother's shirt by dragging him around by it.  it's understandable why Gwen would surely want to participate in THAT fun!   

I settled onto the bench seat and glanced around for M3 and the babies but didn't find them before Gwen reappeared with a very disturbed look on her face and some banana colored spittle dripping down the front of her shirt.   Like any good mother, I stuck my bare hand under her chin and asked her if she wanted to spit out the banana.  She did and my hand quickly filled up to near overflowing with something the consistency of rice pudding.  But before I could properly dispose of my gooey gift, she heaved and VOMITED a half gallon of banana/Pediasure/Golden Grahams/godknowswhatelse right onto our feet and the floor between us.

Almost immediately, a crowd of toddlers gathered and some well meaning parents offered napkins while I stared at the mess -- and Gwen -- and my hand filled with goo -- and tried to decide what I needed to fix first.  I decided to empty my hand since it seemed like a no-brainer that two hands might come in handy for the rest of the tasks ahead.  So I told Gwen not to touch anything and leaped over the bench seats and ran to the trash can about 15 feet away.  Then I returned as fast as humanly possible and jumped back over the seats to find Gwen kneeling in the vomit trying to mop it up with the paper napkins the adults provided. 

Luckily, I carry a full box of tissues and a full container of Huggies baby wipes in the stroller (and antibacterial wipes in the diaper bag) so I got everything cleaned up but nobody was in the mood for a play date after that.  Gee, I can't imagine why!

And that's how our first mall play date with M3 went! 

18 month reunion

When we went to China in September 2005, our travel group included 38 families!  Most of them live in the Los Angeles area but there are a few up here where we live and we thought it would be fun to have a "mid-year" reunion up here.  So this was our 18 month reunion party, hosted it at our house, complete with a giant inflatable Blues Clues bouncy-bouncer!

There was too much fun (and pizza and Tsing Tao beer) to keep to just our travel group so we stretched the list of invitees to include some of our other local friends.   At some point, all of this becomes less about agencies and travel groups and more about our wonderful community of China adoption families.  I feel incredibly blessed to know so many truly amazing people (with darn cute kids!).

It was SO MUCH fun to have a yard full of 1 and 2 year olds!  We can't wait to do this again in July when we have a combined birthday party for Gwen and Maddy.

Click here to see LOTS more pictures of today's fun party!

Riding the dragon!

(I got the kit to create this awesome collage from A Foreign Life.  Thanks Mary-Ann!) 

We visited the San Jose Children's Discovery Museum today and met up with some friends.  From the left:  Salsa twins - Rose and Marie, Hohndel twins - Heike and Sarah, Gwen and Maddy, and handsome little Charlie leaping for joy!   Helen was also there but she was feeling a little bit camera shy.

It was pretty chaotic but the kids had a blast.  Good thing it was totally enclosed!  The sand table seemed to be a huge hit and Rose thought it was tasty too!

I'm convinced there's a bit of Mad Scientist in our Madeline.