LINK TO OUR JOURNEY TO JILLIANA

LINK TO OUR JOURNEY TO JILLIANA
CLICK ON JILLIANA'S PHOTO TO FOLLOW OUR JOURNEY TO CHINA

Saturday, June 19, 2010

A little of this, And a little of that

The girls are loving school at home.  We are homeschooling Lily at present and doing a little with Emma and Meilynn also.  Emma and Meilynn will attend Kindergarten at the pre-school they attended this year.  Then we will make a decision the following year on whether to continue home educating or to send them to school.

This is Emma working on "Explode the Code" on-line.  It is an on-line program that I pay a subscription for all three of them.  It is still a little over Lily's head, but she wants to do what the girls are doing.

Here we are working on the numbers 1-100.  I made up a game where  I call out a number and they put a marker on the number.  I need to get some of those little partitions.  But for now the cereal boxes are working out.

Meilynn and Emma on the last day of pre-school.

Emma with Mrs. Schmidt.  She was a wonderful first teacher for the girls.


They just loved her.


They had a water day for the last day.
Playing with friends

Working on Father's Day cards for Daddy.  (Lily)
Meilynn

Emma

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Cuteisms!





Wearning her 4D glasses for the Bob The Builder Show.



I don't know what it is with Emma and the nipple thing.  You may remember the post where she wanted to know why she had a nipple in her mouth?  Well this time we went to Lego Land and we saw several shows. She was fascinated with one show in particular.   It was the story of a time machine and going back to Cleopatra times.  She was telling her Daddy about her time at Lego Land.  He asked her what she did and she said, "We saw a show called, Journey to the Lost Nipple".  Seriously I did not even remember the name of the show at the time.  I didn't know why she even came up with that name, until I dug the flyer with the shows out of the trash and saw it said, "Journey to the Lost Temple".


Lily in her glasses.  It was so funny watching her reach out and try to touch the things.
Love the look on Meilynn

I should go back and look a my pictures.  I think I took a picture of Emma here when she was a baby, and then when we got Meilynn, and now with Lily. (Oh, and I know exactly what you on in the adoption community are thinking about this picture!)

I did go back and I found this one of Emma.  I am still searching for the one of Emma and Meilynn.
The girls with "Princess Lily"


I don't know what it is about being down at the beach house, but there is always some sort of drawing where you shouldn't and then the clean-up!
We love to find new parks when we are down at the beach.  We took our scooters to this one.
Meilynn
Meilynn
Lily eating a peach.  She cannot get enough fruit.  She loves it.  I asked her if she had fruit in China and she told me, no.


Monday, June 14, 2010

Swimming after only 4 months

Message from Vicki:

Lily has learned so much in her 4 short months here. This is a video of Lily and then Emma swimming across the pool without floaties. She embraces every activity!

Click on a video below to watch it:

Lily and Emma swimming
Video Length 0:31
Click here to watch

Flip Video

To learn more about the Flip Video Camcorder, click here.

Lily opening her present from Lyla

Message from Vicki:

Lyla is Lily's best friend from the orphanage.

Click on a video below to watch it:

Lyla's present
Video Length 3:13
Click here to watch

Flip Video

To learn more about the Flip Video Camcorder, click here.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Hope is Fading

Vicki  shared this with you:
http://vimeo.com/12307403
Hope is Fading
A MUST SEE VIDEO!
About this video:
"This was my capstone Senior project at the University of Cincinnati. The animations were for a site that doesn't really exist, but would have promoted adoption."
Forward this email to your friends and family so that they can see it, too.
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LOVE,
vimeo

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Happy 7th Birthday Lily!

The birthday week started out with a trip to Legoland.  It is the perfect amusement park for children of this age.  It was the last day at the beach house and the girls had helped me clean the whole house so I surprised them with Legoland.


I love this fountain.  You jump on the spot in front of the instrument and that instrument plays while making a fountain.  When everyone is jumping you make a song together.  It is really fun just to watch people doing it.  You cannot help but go over and jump yourself.  So I am sure that someone caught me in their picture because I could not resist.  Look how high Lily is.  She is so athletic.
Our experience with the cars here was a lot better than our experience in China.   She was able to stay on the road!

Emma and Meilynn rode the smaller cars.


The girls love the jousting horses.  Especially because you get to go by yourself.

Lily thought it was fun.

Emma is an old pro.
Meilynn looks like she is barely hanging on.

The Lego figures are everywhere.

Lily trying her first taco.  At first she waved her hand, like take it away.  But after she heard her sisters, she decided to try it and found that she actually liked it.  Of course I made them with no spice at all just for her.


The highlight of the week was getting a present from her best friend and orphanage sister.  When we were in China we went back to the orphanage and brought her friend a present and visited with her.  We were so happy that Lyla came home just a week after Lily.  We have been able to remain in contact and the girls even tried talking on the phone to each other.  We are not sure if they really understood who they were talking to and where they were.  But we are working on a surprise that I cannot wait to share.


The tradition in our family is that the person who is having a birthday gets to lick the beaters.  Lily loved this idea and I have never seen the beaters come back as clean as they did with her.
I got this brilliant idea to make a cake using three different mixes.  But somehow I didn't even think about how exactly I might do that.  Emma detests chocolate so I have to always make cupcakes if I make chocolate.  I remembered that I had a huge pan from when I made Emma the "castle" cake so I thought I would just use that pan and then put Cinderella stuff on top.  I had this really bad cough and did not feel well and it was late by the time I got to the cake.  My sister was over helping me with the girls since I was not feeling well and Mike was out of town for a funeral.  So I start making the three cake mixes and then I realize that I had not thought this thing through at all.  At first I thought three people could pour their mix in at the same time since the mixes are thick, but then I realized that I did not have three adults to do this and that when I thought about it, it probably would not work.  So then I think I need some sort of divider.  I try everything in the kitchen and nothing fits.  Finally I come up with the idea of file folders.  So my sister holds two file folders while I quickly put the mix in.  It really worked and everyone was happy with the three choices; yellow, funfetti, and chocolate!

Lily on her birthday

I loved Meilynn's twirling pictures so much that I had Lily do it too!


I love these
Sweet Lily

Happy to be 7

It was 97 degrees and the sun was bright!



Emma looking at a flower

Sick Mommy with Lily (you can see a sad Emma in the background)  she has handled the two birthdays before hers as best as a 4 year old can, but sharing Mommy is not her favorite thing.

The Cinderella Cake


It did not take her long to figure out about birthdays
A little shy as we all sing to her



but oh so pleased
Loving it

blowing out the candels

She loves the cake!

Cinderella dress up

My sister helping her  with the unwrapping.  At one point she pushed her hand away.

Later with Daddy

We had a great day.  We had a bar-b-que and swimming.  I have a lot of video and I will try to put a little of it on.