Ron turns 40- January 11, 2012

Happy 40th to the love of my life! I look forward to spending the next 40 plus years with you! You are a wonderful husband and father! We appreciate all that you do for our family. We love you more than you know.

Sydney turns 8- December 24, 2011

When did this little cutie...

grow into this beautiful young lady?

It seems so unfair how quickly they grow up! For her birthday, she wanted to get her ears pierced.

She was so brave. It was done so quickly. She only let out a little "ouch". I loved the fact that she chose cross shaped earrings as her first.

Isn't she just beautiful?

She had her very first sleepover birthday party. Five friends attended and four of those spent the night. Her theme was "arts and crafts". They decorated the bottoms of socks with puffy paint, painted small treasure boxes, snowflake ornaments, and decorated their own goody bags with ribbons. They made their own individual pizzas for dinner and their own doughnuts for breakfast. Oh, the invitations were printed out on paper with colored handprints around the edge and we included a paintbrush in each one.
She looks happy. I would say it was a success. :)

Oh, btw, in lieu of gifts for herself, she requested monetary donations to go towards "adopting" animals from the WWF. She chose to adopt macaws and a great white

shark. Thank you to all of her friends for helping us celebrate!!!!

Christmas Time Fun

Here we are visiting with one of Santa's elves. It is clearly not the big guy himself. You can tell by looking at the white tennis shoes sticking out under the black. Our children look for such clues. They understand that Santa has helpers because he cannot be everywhere at once. We think we did get to visit with Santa himself later in the season though. :)

Although I miss the children being itty bitty, it is nice having helpers!

It was a real treat to meet Chinese author, Grace Lin. We bought several of her books to get autographed. Very nice lady!

Here he is. We think this is THE Santa. He has black boots AND his belt buckle says "Santa". What more proof do we need?! I do have to put here though that Santa did make Veronica cry(The pictures came first, obviously.). She was looking around and he asked her to look at him while talking. She is super sensitive; so, this sent her into tears. He was nice and asked if there was anything he could say to make it better. There was not. The damage was done. :(

Max had his first and possibly last Christmas band concert. He is doing so well learning to play the trumpet; but, he says he does not like it. Bummer! Both Ron and I were in the band and were hoping he would enjoy it too. I have to say I teared up at the concert. I am such a sap! Wouldn't our high school band director be proud? :)

I love this picture of Veronica singing at her Christmas program. She makes such an adorable Rudolph.

On Christmas morning, the children were greeted by Frosty who brought them their Christmas present from us.

Pumpkin Patch Fun- Our annual trip

New York City Get-Away!

In October of 2011, we took a trip to NYC. It was so much fun! We saw and did so much, such as...

The Museum of Natural History

The Statue of Liberty

a Memorial Park

beautiful cars

Chelsea Market (with the most delicious lemon and sugar crepes known to mankind!)

Duff (through a window)

FAO Schwarz (The girls got to have two nails painted each with polish pens.)

the famous "Big" piano

and high places (both the Empire State building and The Rock).

We are all looking forward to going back to New York in the future! There is so much to do.

Misc. Pictures from the Fall

Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures that I can share from the first day of school for Max and Sydney as they wear school uniforms. However, check out these first day of school cuties...

My brave hubby and sister decided to do a "Warrior Dash". This is an intense obstacle course. See if you can figure out which one is the before picture and which one is the after picture. I am so proud of them. They both finished!!!!

We had a great time at the local Chinese Moon Festival. The moon cakes were delicious and the children loved the lantern parade.

An Update

Wow, I really have missed being a part of bloggy world. I miss documenting all the big and all the little things going on in our everyday lives. I miss reading all the blogs that I used to follow. I miss my bloggy friends. It just got to the point where I felt that I could not just hop on and "jot" things down because I am soooooooo far behind. Let's catch up, shall we?


Ron has taken a new position within the same company. He seems to be enjoying it although it keeps him very, very busy.


Max is now a fifth grader and is having a terrific time. He has had so many interesting, fun, exciting projects. He had to dress as and do a report on a saint. He did not get the saint he was hoping for, St. Maximilian; but, he quickly realized that St. Francis Solano led an extremely interesting life. He learned so much! Then, in science, they were put in groups and were required to build rollercoasters that a marble could actually travel down and stop at the end. Besides those fun things, he has been learning to play the trumpet this year. He has been up and down with this, many mixed feelings. He "survived" the dreaded Christmas program. It was so neat to see our son playing in the band. Both Ron and I were in the band in school. So, it almost brought me to tears to see Max there playing. Plus, he was wearing a tie!!!! (What can I say? I am a sap!) It has been a very exciting school year thus far for him. Max is into Ninjago, sports cars, Captain America, and video games.


Sydney is in second grade. She was soooooooo very excited to get the teacher Max had had when he was in second grade. Sydney had prayed to get her. This had absolutely nothing to do with the other teacher whom we did not even know at the time. We just REALLY like this teacher. She had actually been one of our references during the adoption process. Unfortunately, she had to go on medical leave and will not be back the rest of the year. BUMMER! There were a few tears shed over this. :( Sydney is still doing well in school. We do look forward to some consistency starting after break when the long term sub takes over the class. Sydney was taking ballet for awhile, but has since decided it is not her thing. Sydney is into fashion and art.

Veronica is in Pre-K, NOT preschool. She will correct you over that one. :) She practically bounces into school. She recently had her Christmas program. During one of the songs, she started bouncing up and down. A few of her friends standing next to her joined her. Afterwards, I asked the teacher if they were suppose to be doing that during the song. She told me no that Veronica just happen to be adding her own enthusiasm to the song. Cracks me up! Then, the teacher proceeds to tell me that out of all our children (and she is/has worked with all four), Veronica is the most out-going!!!! What?! I would not have guessed her at all. I would have guessed Sydney. The way she was talking I started to get worried that maybe Veronica was misbehaving. Apparently, that is not the case at all (Thank God!). She is just not very shy there, I guess. LOL! The teacher said that she is very good at holding conversations with adults. I am so happy to hear that she is doing well. :) Outside of school, she is taking a combo class (ballet, tap, and tumbling) and loves it. I hope she continues with it. Veronica is into dogs and ladybugs. She loves Arthur on t.v.


Emerson started preschool this year. Wow, where do I start with this one? I guess I will leave it at that we had a rough start to the school year...not due to anything he did or did not do. The teacher (not the one I referred to with Veronica) was pretty judgemental after having spent just a little over 2 hours with him. We are so proud of him as he is totally proving her wrong just as we knew he would!!!! He does absolutely LOVE school. He practically runs into the place. He is still doing very well at speech and adores his teacher. She is wonderful!!!! He is BIG time into Frosty the Snowman right now. My step-father's parents gave him a stuffed Frosty for Christmas. Frosty tends to go everywhere with us now along with his favorite teddy.

As for me, same ol' , same ol...just as I like it. Although, we have added the craziness of the season to the everyday craziness. I thought I was doing good starting early with the shopping and baking. However, it got to the point that I felt like I was just struggling to keep up with things. I have to say I am finally "in a happy place". Things are getting finished day by day.

Please do not hold it against me that I am not adding pictures at this time. I will try to do that soon and I will try to be better about updating this blog of ours. :)