Happy Thanksgiving!

Wordless Wednesday

Tagged...

I was tagged the other day by Kristen to share Eight Things About Me. Here’s the scoop - better late than never…


8 Favorite TV Shows

• The Amazing Race
• Cold Case
• Desperate Housewives
• Law & Order SVU
• CSI
• ER
• Survivor
• Ghost Whisperer

8 Things I Look Forward To

• Christmas
• Watching Survivor and The Amazing Race with Caleb when the other kids are in bed
• The annual gathering of my high school friends
• Running with Doug
• Brynn and Evan’s faces when I pick them up from preschool
• Putting on my pajamas
• Playdates
• Warm weather

8 Things on My Wish List

• A new camera
• Losing 15 pounds
• To win the lottery
• Healthy futures for my kids
• Less gray hair
• More patience
• When we can leave Nyah with a sitter without me worrying the entire time I am gone
• More time with friends

8 Things I Did Yesterday

• Tried a new workout
• Took Brynn to dance class
• Took Caleb to the doctor to find out what the bumps on his neck are (still don't know)
• Filled a prescription to see if it helps Caleb's neck
• Tried to get the boys' pictures for our Christmas card done
• Checked my email
• Vacuumed the house and put away laundry
• Dented the side of the van and the side of the house pulling in the garage (yes, we own a driving school but no, I do not teach!)

8 Favorite Restaurants

• The Melting Pot
• TGI Fridays
• Applebees
• Obrigados
• The Cheesecake Factory
• Maggie Moos (ice cream!)
• Cold Stone Creamery (ice cream!)
• Sweet Creations (local ice cream store)
  

8 People to Tag

I am supposed to tag eight people but while I read a zillion blogs, I don’t comment on very many and I feel funny hitting up strangers so here are a few friends who need to update their blogs (hint, hint) and/or I feel like I can pester. And I will not be insulted if you choose not to join in.

• Karen
• Sarah
• Meg
• Stacey
• Stephanie (who is getting ready to travel for her daughter!)
• Karen
• Sherrie
• Jody
  

Rules, Rules - here are the rules:'

1. Post the rules on your blog.

2. Answer all 8 of the six items listed.

3. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Catching up...

I'm a little behind on my blogging; thing have been busy, busy, busy here.

First, I realized I never wrote about my weekend with my friends from high school. We had a great time though as always it was WAY to short and this time the early race time and the late arrivals the night before wiped us out. Next year we are headed somewhere quiet and relaxing and doing nothing but what we do best... chatting! We missed you Shelly & Sue! My friends got me started on Facebook so now I have yet another site to check in on when the kids let me.

This past Friday night we had friends over and with 9 kids in the house, things were pretty wild. We had a dinner theater; pizza and brownies were followed by a kid produced & acted play and musical. Too funny. Those pictures are reserved for Wordless Wednesday.

Saturday the boys headed to the UVA game so Nyah, Brynn and I headed out for lunch and a bit of shopping. Nyah is fascinated by Christmas lights - yelling, screaming, and bouncing if we go by the section of the store that has the lighted lawn ornaments. It is so funny to see her get so giddy. Brynn informed me, after passing the only house in the neighborhood that has their holiday decorations up, that we are the only house without our decorations up and the day after Thanksgiving is just "so long away."

Today the kids helped Grandpa and Grandpa decorate their Christmas tree. I know that Grandma is there tonight unclumping the clumps and filling the bare patches and I promised I would give her 24 hours before we visited in case the kids remember where they placed the ornaments. Last year there were no issues; this year, with Nyah around, their tree has a few less ornaments and the landfill is a little fuller. The kids enjoyed the cookies and hot chocolate after their hard work. Brynn and Nyah lasted the longest. Evan was intense while he was at it - finding the perfect spot while still clutching the football in fear someone else would want it.

Thankful Thursday

I am thankful that 1 year ago yesterday we were blessed to find Wan Jin Pei on our agency's waiting child list, that we were chosen to be her family a few weeks later, and that she is home in our arms today.

Here she is in her referral picture (gotta love that hair!), at her first birthday with her foster sister Jin Jue (her parents will be bringing her home to CA early next month), on the day we met and adopted her, and pretty-in-purple this morning.

Wordless Wednesday

The finish line...

Well the race is over and we have our finisher’s medals.

The highlights:
~ I finished!

~The last mile was a steep downhill.

~ Hearing cheers from spectators I do not know but now love! What a motivator!

~ Hearing cheers from spectators I do know because it was fun to have your name yelled out.

~ I can walk today relatively free of pain (my thighs are a bit achy but that is all).

~ Realizing how great of an encourager Doug is when I just wanted to take a break and quit crawl walk.

~ Using my girl scouting techniques and adolescent locker room skills successfully to battle my clothes issues. I was wearing one of those tight, spandex-y long sleeve shirts under my t-shirt because I expected the weather to be cooler and realized after the first ½ mile I would need to take it off. Not wanting to stop at that point, I used the techniques mastered in early life to keep my parts private to remove the long-sleeve shirt without showing any extra skin. The guy next to me looked at me in amazement confusion.

~ No rain in spite of the 80% chance of t-storms.

~Winds that didn’t slow my shuffle and felt great against my sweaty skin (worth the tornado warning in my opinion).

~ Seeing so many people of all body shapes and athletic skills come together for a run and a good time.

~ Not feeling guilty about eating sweets the entire rest of the day and a few more today to top it all off.

The low points:
~ Miles 8, 9, & 10 stunk and made me regret not training harder. I irritated myself with my whining but couldn't help it.

~ Scrapping my “walk through the water stations plan” at the beginning of the race. I ended up doing that through the last three and I think it would have helped make miles 8-10 bearable if I had started sooner.

~ The humidity.

~ The heat.

~ Not making my time goal, which I thought was very realistic but obviously was not.

So overall, it was fun experience. While running, and then later while hobbling to the car, I swore I would stick to 10K races from now on, today I decided I would like to run another ½ marathon sometime. While I claim to not be competitive, I am with myself and I really want to try again to reach my goal time. But for now, I am going to cut back on my running and do more cross training for a couple of months until the weather gets warmer again and/or there are more daylight hours.

We came pretty close to my idea of surrounding the marathon winner at the end (the races finish in same spot) and getting in all his pictures... he ran his race 10 minutes faster than we ran ours but that race started 30 minutes later...

Some random pictures...

My boys will not leave Nyah alone. They are picking her up, wrestling with her, carrying her by her feet, etc. constantly. And if it is Evan, she hates it 90% of the time because he pretty much treats her like she is a bag of soccer balls (though she squeals for joy the loudest when she spots him after a nap).

If it is Price or Caleb, she is more tolerant. The picture below is not just a random hold. All the kids were in pretend mode. Can you guess what she is supposed to be and where Caleb was taking her? The answer is at the end of the post.

The girls and Evan have been pretend-playing more now that the weather is not as nice and we don't head outdoors as much. Wednesday the girls were feeding their babies, which are typically stuffed animals. Nyah gave the bear a sip...

And then helped herself...

And her was our latest experiment... Magic Rocks. They were a birthday gift for Evan. The box says for ages 10 & over. They should be for no age. The warning label is a mile long. I feared for my life as I read the warnings about the liquid I would need to pour into the container. The aluminum foil was recommended because in 5 seconds the mixture would eat away most surfaces. I'm not impressed. The kids were for 2 minutes. I have probably destroyed our plumbing disposing of all this.

Okay, did you guess? Nyah was a fish and Caleb was taking her to the fish market. And yes, they tried to throw her like the fish market scenes you see on tv...

Thankful Thursday...

I am thankful that I was able to laugh when I received a "Happy 40th Birthday!" card last week since I really only turned 39. Since I stress a lot about aging (which probably ages me faster), if it really had been my 40th I probably would have not been so giggly.

And I am very thankful that my high school girlfriends are headed here this weekend. Here is a picture of a picture of us back home from our first year of college. I keep this picture on my bedside table (when Nyah isn't carrying it around the house) in the same frame it was in when it was first taken. All but the girl (I can't say woman yet... it sounds too old for us!) on the bottom right (Michelle - Where Are You?) get together each year and it is always a fun, fun time!

Wordless Wednesday

Running update...

Here it is... the 1/2 marathon map for our first 13.1 mile run on Saturday.


Here is what I found out in my research today: the rank of difficulty is 1/10, the net change in elevation is -88ft (click on "Elevation Profile" above; it is pretty neat), and the last 1/2 mile is a glorious downhill run. Yeah! Now if only the rain will stay away...

I'm not feeling really confident in my goal to run the entire distance (only walking through the water stations) since our China trip and Nyah joining our family disrupted our training for over a month and I have not been able to run regularly since. But I am definitely getting more excited and I know that will help. Doug and I have survived, barely, one 12-mile run through our hilly neighborhood so I am hoping 13 on flatter land will not be much more difficult.

If there is not a blog update by Sunday evening (my high school girlfriends are coming to town so it won't be earlier), someone please use the above map to come find my body!

Car Talk, Part 1

We just might be the last American family without a single dvd player in our vehicles. That combined with the fact that we live almost an hour from shopping centers leads to many interesting conversations during the moments when the kids are not fighting with each other.

Doug and I spend lots of time answering questions like, "What does M-O-T-S-X spell?" and "What is 20 + 50 + 99?" Then sometimes, things are said that perhaps we should not laugh at as mature adults, but we do snicker when we know the kids aren't looking. Typically Evan is involved. The last two weeks have been full of these fun times.

For example (and if you are easily offended, skip over and if you are an English major, ignore the punctuation 'cause I tried hard):

Evan - "Mom, Price just hit me in the balls."
Me - "Evan!"
Doug - "Evan, how about 'hit me in the sack?'"
Me, looking disgusted, "No, how about, 'in the privates?'"
Evan - "Mom, Price just hit me in the cannolis."

So, while I am thrilled that Evan's preschool teachers tell me he has really come out of his shell these few weeks, because he has always been pretty quiet outside of our house and friend's houses, it also scares me! He has spent the majority of his life playing with older boys.

Then there was this conversation:

Evan - "Mom, there are two really bad words that begin with F."
Me, my mind preparing a lecture, - "And they are?"
Evan - "Fart and fat."

I am thankful for his innocence. I am thankful that his older brothers choose not to add to the conversation.

So this is titled Car Talk, Part 1 because I am sure more will come back to me or there will be new conversations to record so when I have the urge to spit out my tea, I can come back and reread my blog.

Happy Birthday Bro!

Ronnie (Does anyone even call you that anymore?? I can't stop!),

I thought in honor of your birthday (since I don't have any anymore though it was a lot of fun when we shared one) I would pull out a few pictures from many moons ago. Since we missed the digital age by just a mere few years and since my scanner is broken, these are pictures of pictures... which make them look FAR OLDER than they are! Really!

Interesting how I look older than you in both these pictures. Must be an optical illusion or something because that just can't be!

Hope you have an awesome day!

Thankful Thursday

I am thankful for warm fall days when we can head outside!

Some pictures from yesterday:

The thrill of victory...

The agony of defeat...

and the joy of pay-backs.

Is this a legal move?

A football puzzle.

But I want the ball!

Enjoying the concessions.

A post game picture... can you believe all of them are actually looking the right way? It caught me so off guard that I cut off Nyah's feet.

Today was the annual trek to the stream behind our house with the rotting pumpkins. The boys like to smash the pumpkins against the rocks... in fact, Evan talks about this year round and last year, wanted to go see if his pumpkin was still there 6 months later. I am sure we will venture there tomorrow to see the status of this year's pumpkin remains.

Weekend Madness

Wow. I think we turned the clocks back more than an hour because while my clock says 7pm, my body says midnight! We have a very busy weekend.

Soccer ended Saturday and the kids received their trophies. Caleb scored a goal today though I missed seeing it with two games to bounce between and only one me. I was so excited for him. He also apparently had a great save as goalie; it makes me too nervous to watch him play goalie so I am glad that was on Grandpa's watch. Price earned the team's Golden Ball award for his dedication (the coach even mentioned how he still came to practice while we were in China thanks to Grandma), positive attitude, and leadership. And Brynn played harder today than ever before and happily showed off her trophy, which is the whole reason she played soccer. Her trophy is now being held together with superglue since she dropped in getting out of the car at home. She still loves it... the trophy; I'm not sure about the soccer part.

Evan missed his last game to cheer on the Cavaliers in person. He was in a suite and was spoiled but on your birthday, that is how it should be. This was one of the cell-phone pictures I received...

Evan's birthday party was this afternoon and thankfully, the weather was nice so the day was full of food and outside activities. Snowcones in November... they were out of season but a big hit!

Yes, Brynn is still sporting part of her costume and no Uncle Darryl, she is a cat, not a Pl*yboy Bunny! And yes, Nyah let Nana hold her!

Evan had a ball with his friends. Thankfully, boys come clean... I am pretty sure there are quite a few of them in the 'hood this evening who are getting baths!

Nyah, with no nap so she could party hard, nodded off at dinner and was in bed at 6pm! I'm jealous!

Did I mention that Doug and I ran 12, yes 12, miles this morning?? Our half-marathon (our first!) is in two weeks so that was our last long run and it was looonnnnggg. It is hard for us to move right now. I am waiting not-so-patiently for the kids to go to bed so I can follow along!

Happy Birthday Evan!

I can't believe me surprise baby is 5!!! We look forward to many, many more years of all the fun, laughter, and energy you bring to the family. Enjoy your football game with your dad... go Hoos! We'll party tomorrow!