New pics, a dance, and haircuts

I had a local photographer do some "school type" photos of the kids. They turned out great! Kali had her first dress up dance last night and she looked beautiful!
Today Kali and Kaci went to my hair stylist to get their hair cut.

Now we are readying the house for a slumber party that Kaci is having tonight.

Random pictures and thoughts

Not much has been happening this week. The kids were on spring break, but I had to work. So they didn't get to do much but hang out here.

Here are just some random pictures from the past week or so....

That's all!

Allergies

Allergies are really bad here this time of year. So, when do decide to get Kali retested? Yesterday. It is time to decide if she will get the shots or not.

She was tested for 80 different trees, grasses, pollens, molds, other inhalants and foods.

Pollens: all grasses, trees, weeds, corn. With corn pollen being the worst reaction. But trees and grasses are right up there.

Other inhalants: dust mites, cockroach dust (ew!, we don't have any of those)

Molds: Mild allergy, not much to worry about.

Foods: Mild allergy to egg yolk, wheat, soy, fish.

Others are bug bites and those registered really high too.

Maybe now that she has seen pictures and talked to the allergist she will take her medicine like she is supposed to. I am thinking camping outside at night is not going to be very good for her.

I would post pictures, but she asked me not to. So I will not. Sorry....


Bad allergy to Peanut and shellfish.

ICASP 2009

ICASP stands for Illiniois Adopted Chinese Sibling Program. It is a wonderful cultural day for our children. They are assigned Big Sibs and they spend the day with them learning and playing. This is our third year to participate. We have only missed one year so far. We try to make it a priority to attend. It is important to us that our children have this time since they don't have much interaction with other Asian Americans in our community. There aren't many in our community.

We took a few pics of the kids with their big Sibs. I would have taken more, but our workshops were so interesting!

We learned about Chinese/Mandarin linguistics and learned to speak some sentences with Dr. Jerome Packard. Mike Liu told us all about Chinese Fables and how they affected him as a young boy growing up in Shanghai after being born in New Hampshire. Dr. Ian Wang is the curator of the East Asian Gallery of the Spurlock Museum and he opened our eyes to Chinese Art Appreciation and meanings of the art we see. We enjoyed some very delicious Simple Chinese Snacks made by the students of TASC (Taiwanese American Student Club). Then we had the pleasure of hearing from two adopt adoptees who were adopted from Korea. Shane Carlin, and Susann Heft. Shane was recently a speaker at the KAAN conference held I believe he said in Chicago. Afterwards we were treated to photo ops of the group and of the song above in the video. Dr. Ian Wang told us something that really made sense. The Chinese believe that an education for their children and their Children's children is very important. Without an education you can not become anything. That is why they are so pressured to do well.

The children's portion included learning about the traditions of Chinese New year and other traditional stores. Chinese songs, mid autumn festival, dragon boat festival, geography and a game of jeopardy. In during all this they had a snack time and a scavenger hunt to find buildings in the area with their big sibs.

Springtime and trees

Boyd and I went out and purchased two new large trees for the yard. We purchased a burgundy red maple and a lavender silk crab apple. We have been wanting to replace the tree in front that was cut back last year and we were finally able to save up for it. We will miss the shade it provided this summer but hopefully the other tree will start giving out some shade next year. Boyd cut the tree down yesterday. It was a little hairy that at first when the tree was going to go the wrong way. Like on to the house!

We lucked out and it fell the way we wanted to and missed the azalea and the bleeding hearts and the house!

I was very glad that the tree missed the last three plants. O.k. so you can not tell the azalea is there. It is the picture that looks like sticks with a gnome... It leaves out really late

Spring school pics

The Elementary school sent home the spring school pics. They are pretty good. In the past they have been much better. The Junior high is using an awful bright tie die background to look like the 70's. We have decided to just call our local photographer to get better spring pictures to hang on the wall. They are looking grown up though. Kaci is 9 and Kole is 7.

Kitchen counter and sink makeover

It was time to do something with the harvest gold counter and the leaking faucet. So we picked out a sink for about $175 and our favorite faucet for $150. The counter top paint was $20. So for about $350 we have a make over on the kitchen counter sink and faucet!

Boyd did a great job!