Busy!

You can tell that we have been very busy since I have not posted in a long time. I have lots of ideas for blog posts, but I don't ever seem to have the time to write about them. Here is a glimpse of some of the activities that have kept us so busy recently.

The kids had "Crazy Hair" night at church.




Cole was too cool to make his hair look crazy, but Alex and Anna Grace had fun with their crazy hair.


Alex was awarded the "Art Award" at his school.

Each one of the activities teachers (art, music, and PE)gets to pick a student from each grade level to recognize per quarter, and Alex was chosen by the art teacher this time.


My mom and I have been busy sewing cute outfits for Anna Grace.

This is the adorable outfit that my mom made for her recently.



We took a trip to Stone Mountain Park. Anna Grace and I wanted to go to the Rice Festival, and the boys wanted to hike up the mountain.





We were having so much fun that we decided to stay for the Lazar Show.



Anna Grace had a blast dancing to the music on the lawn before the Lazar Show started.



Now, we are busy getting ready for Halloween. The boys' pumpkins are growing very slowly, so I think we will be making a trip to buy some Halloween pumpkins this weekend. We will also work on our costumes since the kids have to wear them to several different activities in the coming week.

Will we have pumpkins?

Cole and Alex decided in early July that they wanted to grow their own pumpkins for fall. They picked out several types of seeds, carefully hoed an area of our old garden, and planted their seeds all on their own. Since then, they have been watering and fertilizing their plants in hopes that their pumpkins would grow for Halloween.


Their plants have had beautiful yellow flowers for over a month, but they were getting discouraged that there have been no pumpkins... until last week when they noticed that some small pumpkins started to grow. The pumpkins seem to be growing very slowly, but Cole and Alex are still hoping that they will have a pile of homegrown pumpkins to fill the front porch for Halloween.


Secretly, I am getting worried that they will not be ready in time for Halloween. When I go to the grocery store and see huge pallets of pumpkins already for sale, I am wonder if Cole and Alex will have Thanksgiving pumpkins instead of Halloween pumpkins. I really hope my two little boys will not be too disappointed if we have to buy our pumpkins to make into Halloween jack-o-lanterns.



These are a few quick pictures I took of Anna Grace when she and I sneaked outside to get pumpkin pictures.

Autumn Moon Festival and the Hunt for Moon Cakes

One of Anna Grace's favorite books is Thanking the Moon: Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival.

She loves reading about how a Chinese family celebrates by eating a picnic under a full moon with brightly light Chinese lanterns.


The official date for the Chinese Moon Festival is today, but we celebrated over the weekend since Alex has soccer games on Monday nights.

Last year we celebrated while we watched football on TV, so we continued with the tradition this year. We ate our normal "football finger foods," but we added in some Chinese treats.


Before the football game started, Anna Grace and I drove to the large Asian grocery store about an hour away in search of Chinese moon cakes which, according the book, are eaten during the Moon Festival. Last year we settled for the Southern favorite "moon pies," but I am trying very hard to learn more about Chinese traditions and cultures, and I was determined to find real Chinese moon cakes.

After walking around the store for about 30 minutes without any luck, I started asking shoppers and employees if they knew what a moon cake was. My problem was that I do not read the Chinese labels, and I had no idea what I was looking for. The store is huge and has aisles and aisles of foods that I have never seen anywhere else. Who knew there were so many kinds of soy sauce? This place is nothing like Publix! I must have asked at least 10 people before someone in customer service finally pointed me in the right direction. We ended up finding what we were looking for before we headed home. During our search, we also found Anna Grace's favorite Chinese yogurt drinks, little cups of Chinese fruit "jello" that the boys love, Asian pears, and more of Anna Grace's favorite steamed buns.


Unfortunately after all of that work, no one except Anna Grace liked the moon cakes. It seems that there are different flavors of the filling in the centers and we ended up with a red bean paste filling- not exactly what we were expecting to find inside of a cake!!

Each time I go to the Asian grocery store we find a new adventure. It does not seem common for a white woman to be walking around the store with a beautiful Chinese girl. We get lots of stares!! During our search for moon cakes we were offered fish soup (not yummy!) and oyster balls and got shooed away from the Korean bakery section for asking about Chinese moon cakes.

The Unofficial End of Summer

Summer is not officially over, but the camper has been packed away and the pool towels have been washed and folded for possibly the last time this year. We spent our last weekend of summer camping in the mountains of North Carolina with family. Many months ago, we began planning to join our family for a big weekend of camping to end the summer. We met up with my cousin's and brother's families, and my aunt and grandmother drove to the campground each day.

The trip did not start out as easily as we had hoped. We left Friday evening after I got off of work, and just as it started to get dark and rain started to fall, we got a flat tire on our camper. Thankfully, we discovered the quickly leaking tire when Alex needed (another) potty break and we were able to find a parking lot and buy a jack before the tire was completely flat and the night was completely dark. Then, we made a wrong turn down a very dark and narrow dead end road and almost did not get the camper turned around. We finally made it to the campground just as it really started to rain heavily. Of course it stopped raining right after we got soaked setting up camp for the weekend! Other than a broken pipe that leaked water all over our carpet in our camper, the rest of the weekend was filled with the fun of camping- lots of kids, bike riding, fishing, water slides, roasting marshmallows...you get the picture!




The campground had plenty of things for the kids to do.

The boys enjoyed learning to paddle kayaks and everyone had a great time on the peddle boats.






One of the highlights of the weekend was supposed to be a fishing tournament. The campground advertises a stocked lake.

We brought a prize for the winning family in the fishing tournament in order to stir up some friendly competition.




The winner of the fishing tournament was.... drum roll please.... the fish!!! Not one person caught a fish all weekend. Not even Anna Grace who kept calling, "Here fishy, fishy, fishy!" Hmmm. Now that I think of it, that may be the reason that all of the fish were scared away...Regardless, the kids had fun trying and thankfully the prize could be divided among the 3 little boys who tried so hard to catch a fish.

A favorite of any camping trip is always the campfire and roasting marshmallows.

The campground had a big dance Saturday night in the pavilion, so in between rounds of dancing, the kids came back to the campsite to make s'mores.



This is the little frog that Anna Grace decided was sad because he needed to find his mommy. I was a little surprised that she would hold the frog since she usually does not want to get her fingers dirty.


Now that summer is unofficially over, we are ready for cooler weather, football, and fall leaves.

First Day of Preschool

Anna Grace has been beyond excited that she was going to get to start preschool. She is only going one morning a week, but she has been looking forward to this day for months!
Last night she was just sure that she was going to have a spelling test on her first day of 3 year old preschool, and she needed to do her "homework." I did let her practice writing her name a few times last night while the boys worked on their assignments.

Anna Grace insisted on wearing her backpack around the house all morning.


She was so excited to walk to her class like a big girl with her friend, Omi and play with another one of her best friends, Carly.



Anna Grace had a great day, but she does not quite know the rules of the playground and walked right into someone on the swings. She got knocked down and has a very scratched and swollen face now.



Poor baby. Right now she is watching her favorite movie, Angelina Ballerina with an ice pack on her face.

Back to School

School has officially started along with the busy schedule that will last the school year. Cole started 5th grade this year (his last year in elementary school), and Alex started 3rd grade. Cole was excited to see his friends while Alex was excited that he will begin the gifted program just like his big brother. He has talked about wanting to be in the gifted program since he was little, and he finally tested in at the end of last school year.


Both boys announced after the "Meet the Teacher" event that they were too old for me to walk them into their classrooms on the first day of school, and they could go by themselves. Part of me did agree with Cole when he said, "Seriously, Mommy. I am 10 years old. I can handle this!" But Alex is only 8. I wanted to cry when he said this. Finally, as I was tucking Alex into his bed on "back to school-eve" Alex said, "Mommy, I don't remember how to get to my classroom. Can you walk me in?" My outward reaction was a calm, "I will do what ever you need me to do for you." But, inside I was joyfully thinking, "Yes!!! He is not too big to be seen with his mommy after all!"


Anna Grace's first day of preschool is in two weeks. After listening to her brothers, she has decided that she is also too big for me to walk her to her classroom on the first day. She says, "I big. I do it all by myself. I not need you." Seriously. That is where I put my foot down! I will be taking a little time off of work to meet our sitter (who will normally drop her and pick her up from school) at the preschool so that I can take pictures of her first day. I just hope she does not get too disappointed when she realizes that the school bus will not be bringing her home!

Gifts for the orphanage

We have been busy gathering things to send in a package to Anna Grace's orphanage. We are able to read about some of the needs of the orphanage on their website, so we gathered some of those items along with a few cute things that were donated by one of the local stores in our area to include in our package.

Our box will include:
6 toddler and infant sized hats
2 infant girl outfits
2 infant boy outfits
18 pairs of girls' underwear
12 pairs of boys' underwear
9 pairs of girls' socks
6 pairs of boys' socks

I wrote a letter with an update to send to Anna Grace's orphanage back in June, but I had not sent it to them yet. Then we received an email in July from the orphanage requesting some updates and pictures. The nannies in the orphanage want to see how the adopted children are doing in their new homes. I was so happy to learn the email address of the director and have the chance to correspond with him. We are forever grateful for the director and his staff for preparing Anna Grace for adoption and allowing her to join our family. I hope that we will be able to continue our contact in the future.