The Year of the Dragon and My Fail Confessed

Once a month I am going to try to post the pictures and write the stories that I didn't get a chance to include for the past month.

January brought the celebration of the Chinese New Year and we welcomed in the Year of the Dragon. We had a local dinner with other families who have adopted from China and as always that was fun. We live in such a rural area but there were 6 families at the dinner and several that could not attend. All eight of us also went to the Chinese New Year celebration in Richmond and had a great time watching the performances and seeing the items from vendors. The biggest hit was the parade. The highlight for me was when one of the vendors was talking to Brynn, in English. Brynn turned to me and said, "Chinese people are hard to understand."

Brynn's Girl Scout troop is learning about Taiwan for an upcoming event so they had a Chinese food tasting at the late January meeting. Brynn and I made wonton soup; she loved the soup and the celebration of her heritage.

January also was the end of our crazy school schedule. Caleb will now go to school five days a week... imagine that! One blessing out of the earthquake was Friday Fun days... when most of the 7th grade cross country runners would get together at a house for some fun, social time. There were about 5 girls and 3 boys that met regularly, give or take a few each week. For the final Friday we went bowling... a very creative version of it at that. And then there was the moment when Nyah was getting ready to bowl, ended up under that metal thing in the picture, and was hit in the head by the ball. Why is that not surprising?

Now that it is February, I am admitting defeat. I had such good intentions for our Christmas card this year. It was individual pictures so no stress with getting everyone to look good enough at the same moment. I took the first pictures in late October. They I delayed getting things together. I changed the card to a New Year's card and placed the order. They arrived December 24th. I printed the labels. And they have sat on my dining room table until today, when I moved them out of site. Too bad I put the year on them and the kids' ages, plus I am hoping Jessa might have more hair next year. So here it is, probably in the only form anyone will see it:

Tomorrow my baby turns one. It has been 365 days since I had more than 4 straight hours of sleep but I wouldn't trade it for anything. We did a cake smash a bit early last month at a time I knew Doug would be home so I would have help. Here is a little peek at the before/after. Yes, she liked it.

More tomorrow!