Where is my camera and Disneyland

I'm a little freaked out right now because I have yet to be able to find my nice Nikon camera. I had it last at Nick's Marine graduation and now I cant find it. I know we took it with us but not sure what happened from the car to the house. All the pictures of the graduation are on there and I would be crushed if I lost those pics as well as my nice camera. Anyway, this is my first day off this week so I will look everywhere and if and when I find it I will post all those awesome graduation pictures.

I wanted to do a quick update. We redid our stairs. Our home was built in 1994 so it has many of the lovely 90's furnishings. We have changed most everything but the stairs were one thing that we thought would be very expensive to change so had put it off but we checked into it recently and decided it was cheaper than we thought so we should go ahead and do it. We had the rails painted and the big room painted and then Kevin removed all the wood spindles and then replaced them with iron spindles we bought online. It ended up making a HUGE difference as our staircase is a very prominent feature in our house right when you walk in. It looks awesome. These are pictures I just had in my camera after the project was complete. They are not good pictures but gives you an idea of what it looks like.

This is the before. I searched for a good picture of the staircase but could not find one. This is a picture from my grandparents 75th wedding anniversary last November 1. You can see a little bit of the staircase but you get the idea-- honey wood- screaming 1990's

The bottom little caps were not on yet but you get the idea. There are little feet that go on the bottom of the spindle- they were not on yet in these pictures.

After the graduation last Friday, Kevin dropped Mia and I off at Disneyland on our way home and I met up with my sister to do Disney at night.


My dorky 11 year old-- he was acting like a total dork for these pictures!

Me and my boys

Me and my kids

Love this picture. I think Mia looks so darn funny! We are on the Peter Pan ride.

My little twerp!!


We had a nice time. Pray I find my camera as that would be quite a loss. Today I have Mia's 3 year old pictures-- a little delayed. I will post them when I get them back.

Happy # 3 Birthday Mia and Halloween!!

Since Mia's birthday is October 29, I have a sneaky suspicion that her birthday is often going to get lumped with our Halloween party but we will see. I have some great pictures from my pal Kim's son Nick's Marine Boot camp graduation but there are tons of pictures to go through so I will do that post a little later in the week. So this post is Mia's birthday party and Halloween. We did a little cake party on Mia's actual birthday but those pictures are on the other camera so I will post those later as well but we did her actual birthday party with a jumpy and big cake on Halloween. We usually have a little family get together so we just combined the two parties and it became a Halloween/ Mia party.

Our crew before we went out trick or treating.

This is a horrible picture but I had to show how busy our streets were this year. Remember that scene from ET when the streets were filled with people all dressed up -- that is how it was this year. We just get tons of trick or treaters- tons!! The streets were just full!!

Ethan, Tanner and Mark

Mia and Kaitlyn trick or treating

Kacy, Kas and Owen

On our stairs- the younger cousins- Nathan, Mia, Savannah and Haileyanna

Mia and her cool Dora cake - wow did she love it!!!

Getting ready to blow

Picking out the characters

Mommy cutting the cake with all my servers

Mia's big gift-- the Cool Costco Doll House-- gotta love Costco!!!



I will go through all the Graduation pics and get those posted ASAP. Have a great week-- I have a busy one--ugggg!!!

Piggies gone and Sunday, Bloody Sunday!

Well, we are almost all healthy and Kevin is the only one of us who did not catch the N1H1. We are all feeling better but the cough and headache is lingering. Kids are back in school and all is well but I must tell you about the calamity of errors that occurred on Sunday.

We had a busy weekend with a party on Friday night, an adult only Halloween party we love and look forward to on Saturday night and we were supposed to go to Disneyland on Sunday after church. Needless to say, everything was cancelled due to our unforeseen illness. Sunday we were all laying around like bumps on logs just trying to survive. Ethan and Owen were both feeling a lot better and were medicated so they were on the side yard playing hockey. They came in and Ethan wanted to re tape his hockey stick. I'm laying on the couch with Mia and Kevin is on the computer. All of a sudden we hear "oh no oh no-- it cant be--help help." When I hear that my stomach turns and my heart stops. Sure enough, I look in the kitchen and Ethan has his hand in the air, blood is everywhere and he is yelling. Being the wuss I am I sent Kevin into the war zone and sure enough, Ethan had literally chopped off the top of his thumb and it was flapped over-- holy cow it turns my stomach to type it--gross!! It was about mid thumb on the fleshy side cut in half but still attached. I never looked because I would have freaked but Kevin bandaged it and headed to Urgent Care (where he then spent the next 5 hours waiting for them to stitch the thumb back on). Turns out Ethan was attempting to cut the existing hockey tape off his stick with a very large and sharp Santuko kitchen knife-- always impressed with my sons well thought out plans-- holy cow!!! So Kevin and Ethan leave and I begin to clean up all the blood that has been spread everywhere. I finally finish the gruesome clean up and all of a sudden Mia comes running into the kitchen crying and she is literally covered in blood. It is all over her night gown, face, hands, mouth-- everywhere!! I'm freaking out because I cant tell where the blood is coming from but then I realize she was having her first bloody nose. My boys never had a bloody nose nor have Kevin or I so I have never had to deal with a bloody nose and the large volume of blood produced. I got the nose stopped and got her in the bath and then proceeded to then spend the next chunk of time cleaning up the blood from her nose. Holy cow was that a bloody morning-- As U2 put it-- Sunday, Bloody Sunday!!!

So we are fine now and back to work and school. Ethan, with his stitched up thumb, is at science camp up in the mountains for two nights until Friday with his 6th grade class. He was sooooooo excited this morning when I dropped him off with his suitcase and sleeping bag at school. Owen is good and looking forward to Grandparents day at school on Friday. Mia, Kev and I are looking forward to traveling to San Diego to see my blogger pal Kim's son Nick graduate from Marine Boot Camp on Friday-- Go Nick!!!

One more item-- guess who turns 3 tomorrow????? Yes you guessed it-- my little independent, never stops talking, strong willed girl-- Miss Mia June Fei!! October 29, 2006!! I am hoping to get some cute pictures of her tomorrow but not sure if that is going to happen so the birthday post may be delayed by a few days-- we will see. Here are a few pictures of Mia in her Sunday School Class a few weeks ago. I thought it was so cute the way they hold onto the rope- I had to take a picture of it!

Oink Oink!!!

Yes, as you can see from the title of this post that pigs are in the air. Our family is all sick right now with a wonderful case of swine flu-- ugggg!!! Owen woke up Wednesday morning with a high fever, cough and sore throat. He got worse on Thursday so I made him an appointment to see the Doctor on Friday. Friday morning all the kids work up sick with the same symptoms-- ugg!! We all went to the doctor and they did not test for N1H1 but they said that they fit the characteristics of N1H1 and that pretty much most kids who are sick with flu like symptoms right now have N1H1-- so that includes my 3 little piggies!! Anyway, we have been seeing fevers up in the 106.4 range which freaks me out but medicated they seem fine. The doctor did not prescribe tamaflu because she said the side effects are worse than the actual illness and since my kids are healthy they would just let it run its course-- fine with me. So I go and get all the over the counter motin and Tylenol Flu and all the lovely meds and get home and realize I feel horrible. Sure enough, I laid down and have been feeling horrible since. So Kev is the only survivor right now and I pray he keeps it at bay. Owen is feeling better this morning but Ethan, Mia and I are still not well at all. Pray we get better soon as I have a very busy week complete with driving to San Diego to see my blogger pal Kim's son Nick graduate from the Marine Corp Boot Camp. Kevin and I are sooooooo looking forward to that so we need to get better once and for all!!!

Hope all is well with you all!

TINK

My little Tinker Bell wanted to wear her costume her BFF Ava gave her. She put it on and wanted to wear her matching Tinker Bell clip that our good pal Kim gave her. As soon as she was in the costume she began to spin and leap and act like the "pwitty pwinsess" she is. Here are a few shots of her "modeling" session.

This picture cracks me up because I said to her that she had a smile just like the tinker bell on her shirt. She looked down and said "ya momma I do have a pwitty smile like Tinker Bell but I have pwitty black hair not yellow ones like her." Well said my little black haired Tink!! She then put her face down on her chest so she could smile like Tink.

Soooooo pwitty!!!!!!

Mickey's Trick and Treat with the Lucky Mommies

The Lucky Mommas went to the Mickey Trick or Treat on Friday night. It is a fun event where they close California Adventure to the public and you have to buy a separate ticket for the event. There is candy and more candy and more candy. The kids had such a great time and it was tons of fun seeing all the girls and their mommy's as well.

The boys brought their pal Carson to join in on the adventure.

The kids rode the Toy Story ride which is 3D so I had to get a picture with the glasses.

Posing for a group shot. There is Mia, Gracie and Becky. Kailee (who by the way is in a Gap online ad -- total little model- check her out on the baby Gap site) was there too but was not in the mood to model for a group shot.

Gracie and Becky



It is almost impossible to get a shot with everyone looking at the camera and smiling.

Another try

One shot of Kailee-- she was an adorable kitty cat for the event!!

Love that Gracie smile!

Beautiful Becky

The boys on the Ferris wheel-- on a sugar high!!

Cruise to Cabo

I just read about a family who needs to find a home for their adopted son. You really need to read about the situation but it is heartbreaking and this poor family is suffering but sadly, they must find a home for their son. Please read about this family and this 8 year old boy. Keep them in your prayers. http://watchingthewaters.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/family-needed/#comment-1397

Kevin and I had a great time on our alone cruise without kids. We had no plans to go on this short 4 night cruise until we saw the prices and then we couldn't turn it down. FYI-- if you live close to a port, you can get cruises for next to nothing. This 4 night cruise out of San Diego to Cabo was only $199 a person and that is everything included except drinks. It is almost cheaper going on a cruise than staying home :)

Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed doing literally nothing. We woke up late, ate, sat and read, ate, laid by the pool, ate, went to our room to nap or watch a movie, got ready for dinner, went to dinner, went to the club or went dancing or sit and talk. It was just what we needed as a couple-- time alone to just be together. If you think of it as marital therapy, it is actually a cheap therapy session :)

This was our Cabo day. We had to take the life boats to the shore because there is no pier for them to dock.

Cabo was about 95 degrees with about 95% humidity. We are southern California people and while we are use to hot hot weather, our weather is dry so the horrendous humidity got to us and all we felt like doing was sitting at a restaurant and relaxing. While eating out lunch a guy came up to the bar and ordered a beer and decided it was too expensive to he left. I asked if he worked on our boat and he said yes so we bought him a beer. He sat and chatted with us for a long time until his other friends from the boat walked by so they all came over as well and we bought them all a beer. They were great!! We had such fun drinking beer and margaritas and hearing about their home life. All of them were from Trinidad or St. Vincent Islands (English speaking islands around Jamaica-- I think). They were great and it was a perfect afternoon hanging out with some cool guys!

Pretty much an accurate description of what we did most of this cruise-- ate!! We were on a Royal Caribbean ship that had two fine dining restaurants other than the dining room. One was called "CHOPS" which was a steakhouse that gave Ruth Chris a run for its money. I had fillet and Kevin had lamb. It was 6 courses and just amazing!! The other restaurant was PORTAFINO which was Italian-- and it was no Olive Garden Italian (which by the way, I love Olive Garden). It was amazing food and the pictures of the skewer thing above and the shrimp thing were from Portafino. Amazing food and an amazing time.

OK, on another note I figured out an issue I have with regards to alcohol. I love a good Pomegranet martini before dinner and then maybe one with dinner. I never get loaded but I realized on this trip that if I have a martini (or any alcohol) before dinner, I totally get ill during dinner. Not like throwing up sick but nausea and stomach cramping sick. Totally strange. I tested the theory and after 2 nights of feeling sick I then tried not drinking before dinner and for 2 nights I was great. Interesting-- at least now I know.

Great trip, great time bonding with my hot hubby, great food, and a great relaxing time!!

Meatballs 3D~ Ducks~ KX85

We had a great trip away. Kevin and I went on a short cruise to Cabo San Lucas (4 night) and it was a wonderful time away from the kids. My sister was awesome and babysat the whole time-- so thanks tons Cass!! I will post pictures of that soon but right now I created a couple collages of things we have been up to.

First off we went to see Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs in 3D a couple weeks ago. The kids thought the glasses were totally cool. We were watching the boys friend Jeremiah over the weekend so he came too.

Next we went to a Ducks Hockey Preseason game with our friends. They have a box this year so it is so nice to be able to sit on the couch and get drinks out of the refrigerator and have room for Mia to run around. We had a blast and -- YIPEEEEE!!!! HOCKEY SEASON IS BACK!!!!!

The boys got motorcycles about a year ago and we have realized they have grown out of them. Kids bikes hold their value really well and Kevin takes awesome care of things so we decided to sell the bikes about a month ago and to keep our eyes open for good deals on the bikes we want for them. Ethan wants a KX85 and Owen a KX65. We have been looking for used bikes on CraigsList for about a month and late last night Kev found an amazing deal on a KX85 located right in our city for about $600 less than what it should have been. Needless to say we snatched it up quickly. Kevin picked the boys up from school today and took them to Ethan's football game which was an away game. After the game he called me when he was pulling into the driveway and we opened the garage door just as they pulled up. Owen already knew since it was not his bike (just so he didn't feel bad- we are still shopping for his) but Ethan was blown away and was just yelling-- no way, no way!!! He was so excited and it is a really cool bike with a lot of upgrades. We were stoked to get it!!

Catching up...

There are three seasons I decorate for. I decorate for fall with all the fall colors on the inside of our house and in the front patio area. I then decorate for Christmas and then after Christmas I put everything back to fall and then when it feels springy outside, I decorate for spring. It is a many hour process as I have to drag everything out from under the stairs (remember, we live in California where we do not have attics or basements so most homes lack storage) and then begin the long process of un-decorating from the previous season and then decorating for the new season. I don't hate the process but I do not like it. I am always on my own and then after the process is over, everything needs to be put back under the stairs and then a good cleaning must take place. Once decorated, I love it!!! I love each season but our home decor works best with fall. Our colors in our house are fallish and I adore the warm tones and the warm pumpkin type scents. Fall for us is cozy and I always love the beginning stages of our minimal fall cool down. Remember, we live in Southern CA and here we get hardly any fall-- usually just starts cooling down in November but we don't get really cold till February, so our fall is the holiday times. Anyway, this past weekend I was pulling out the vacuum from under the stairs and decided to jump into the fall decorating. It went pretty smooth as the boys were at my brothers farm with Kevin building a shed so it was only Mia and I so things went well. Now my home looks like a fall festival complete with pumpkins and all the fallish decor-- but it is still 95+ degrees outside. At least it looks and feels like fall in my air conditioned house.

Kevin and I are going away for a few days so I will be gone for a while. I have a ton of pictures to post but I'm on the wrong computer and don't have the energy to go out in my car to get my little computer to post the pics. I will try to do so before we leave on our trip. I have some cute Mia in her Halloween costume, some pictures of the kids together and some pictures from the Ducks Hockey game the other night. I will try to post soon.

All is going well around here. The kids are finally into their new schedule which is a full hour earlier than last years schedule so we are officially out the door by 7:15am--uggg!!! I think that makes us an early morning family-- never thought I would say those words. The boys are loving the private school. It amazes me how much both boys have grown in their relationship with the Lord. It is wonderful and the school nurtures it so beautifully. We started hockey tonight and Ethan still has a couple weeks left before Football is over so we have a crammed schedule for a couple weeks until hockey is their only sport (looking forward to that). The boys love love love hockey and are so excited to be starting again. Mia is great-- a pain much of the time-- but great. She is such a big personality in that tiny little body. She knows what she wants and will make sure you know what that is-- and if you don't give it to her-- she will protest for hours (don't worry, we don't give in). She is so smart and just learning away. Tonight she was actually rhyming cat and bat and hat. Rhyming is a pre reading skill--- wow!!! Anyway, we are all good. Sorry for the long boring post but I thought I would catch you up with what we are up to.

I will try to post before we leave on our little trip.

Lucky Mamma's Moon Festival Dinner

I feel so blessed to have a group of wonderful adoption moms to bond with. I am also thankful that we have a group of wonderful children from China that Mia will grow up with and be able to relate to. I also feel blessed that we have a group of supportive husbands and siblings that support our group. Our wonderful Lucky Mamma's Group celebrated the Autumn Moon Festival this weekend with a Chinese Dinner in Anaheim Hills. Thanks so much for all the other moms who planned this get together as I had the luxury of showing up and having everything arranged and perfect complete with golden pigs for the kids. We enjoyed being with the husbands, siblings and grandparents who attended this fun event and I know the kids had a blast!!

Part of our group.

Mia acting silly while eating her soup.

Becky, Gracie and Kailee playing



Mia displaying her golden pig

Ryan displaying his golden pig

Beautiful Kailee and Karen

The boys acting in typical fashion. Sorry there are not more pictures but I forgot to take more as the evening went on. We had a wonderful time-- Happy Autumn Moon Festival!!!