Family day at the AZ State Fair 10-21-09

I LOVE the fair! The yummy food, rides, games, petting zoos, crowds of people to watch, cover bands, you name it. I counted down for about two weeks before it finally came to town! It was finally our day to go and so we packed up the kids and went to spend the day. We had the best time! We filled our bellies and tried to make sure we saw and tried everything we could. Afterall this is probably our last fair for the next two years so we had to make it a good one.

Since I know if I wait until I can write about the fair I may never update the blog I will just show you our day in pictures. Enjoy!

Uhmmmm...Can someone tell me how to resize my pics? They are too big for the page and I have like 100 of them! Help!

Whoops! Time to update!

Okay let's give this blogging thing another go! I can't believe it has been almost a year since I last posted!

I guess I should start off with a quick update on us. Our move to Dalian is getting closer, and closer every day. We will be moving mid January 2010. Ken and I went on our house hunting trip a month ago and found a great home for our family. We also found a school for Mikayla and will be sending her full time when we move. We are very excited for her because the school speaks both English and Chinese equally during the day. We are really crossing our fingers that both kids pick up Chinese while we are there so I think this will help her out.

The kids are getting so big so quickly. Mikayla will be 3 in January and is one active little girl. Since we wanted to get her used to the idea of school before going to a new school in a new country where everyone is speaking a different language we enrolled her in preschool part time. She goes 3x a week and loves it! She is also in ballet, gymnastics, and goes to an imagination workshop. She is so in love with all of her activities. She loves to come home and show off what she learned every day. She is also in love with her two favorite shows Ni Hao Kai-Lan and Yo Gabba Gabba. The whole household knows the songs and dances to both shows very well.

Declan just turned 18 months and is still my little chubbers. He is in the 9oth % for both height and weight and is just a big boy! He is much more wiggly and active then his sister was at this age so he keeps me on my toes. His vocabulary has been exploding lately. He seems to learn new words every day and is a little parrot. He loves to follow and copy his sister at just about everything she does. They spend a lot of time getting into trouble with each other. I am excited for Declan because he is starting to show an interest in the different activities that Mikayla does so we are going to put him in Gymboree when we are in China. Then he will get to run, tumble, dance, and color.

Our move felt so far away that we kept thinking of everything we had to do as things that we had to do LATER. Well later is here now so we have been very busy. We have all become pin cushions and have been working on getting our international shots. The little ones also just applied for their passports. I didn't have a passport until I was an adult so it cracks me up that they are going to have them already. The other big thing we need to start doing is sorting our stuff! We have to figure out what to send to China, what to send to storage and what to sell, donate or toss. I know it is going to feel fantastic once it is done but the mere thought kind of spooks me. Wish me luck!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Just wanted to pop on and wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday! The kids and I stayed here at my parents house today. It was a yummy, relaxing day.

Here are a few pictures from the day:

Declan on his 1st Thanksgiving. He ate a smooshed up steamed sweet potato and loved it. He also got to pose with a chicken leg and tried to get it in his mouth the second it got placed in his hand! Poor little Declan...next year I promise!

Mikayla with her Thanksgiving Dinner. Her favorite were also the Sweet Potatoes.

Grandma and all her Grandbabies.

Cheesing with my babies

The munchkins:

His favorite way to lay-

Mikayla with her Toy Daddy brought her from China:

Declan almost crawling. He is mere days away!

Also sorry for the lack of posts lately. I am not able to get online very much. I have about a month and a half of pictures to post when I finally get home. =-)

We made it to China!

We arrived safe and sound in China.

We left San Francisco on Saturday at noon. Our flight was supposed to leave at 11 but we had a one hour delay (on the plane...oh no!). We were in the air about 13 hours and still managed to arrive to Beijing on time. The flight was a long one and it took a lot to keep us entertained while in the air. Ken and I managed to watch 4 of the movies they were showing. We saw Step Brothers, Wall-E, Swing Vote and Get Smart. Thankfully we were sitting next to a nice old cowboy who owned a Dairy Farm in CA who didn't mind getting up so we could walk around often. One of Ken's co-workers was on the same flight and was in a seat by the standing room area so we would walk over there and hang out for a while. I also read a ton on the flight and even had a chance to organize some pictures on the laptop.

We finally landed in Beijing and grabbed our bags and hurried off the plane. It felt sooo good to get off the plane and stretch and have a ton of room to move around. We went through Immigration next. It was funny standing in the line that said Foreigners for my first time ever. Once we got through to the other side we had to go collect our bags and make our transfer. There are a ton of stores in the Beijing airport. Gucci, Prada, Cartier, etc. I was relieved to see that in Beijing all of the signs have both Chinese and English so I didn't feel as lost as I thought I would. There is also still a lot of Olympic stuff around. We made our way over to our gate and laid down on some of the lounge chairs they had in the waiting area. There were only about 10 of the laying down chairs so it is good we got there early because we had a 4.5 hour wait and we got to nap for a good part of it. Our flight to Dalian was a pretty short one. It was only about 2 hours. The plane was a lot smaller then our first so we were all packed in there pretty tight. I think Ken and I were two of like three or four non-Asian people on the flight. Everyone was speaking Mandarin but thankfully they gave instructions in both languages when we took off.

We arrived in Dalian at about 10:00. We collected our bags and were met by the relocation people who drove us to our Hotel. It was pretty cold when we got here. It was about 33 degrees and they were shocked that Ken was not wearing a jacket. They gave us some pamphlets that had info on our tours and the city. We checked into our hotel and came upstairs to a very pretty room. We were so beat that we pretty much just tossed our bags on a table and went straight to bed. Our first full day in China is tomorrow and we have that day off from tours to recover from the trip. We are just going to wander the area and see what we see. =-)

Ken in his lounger:

Me after 16 hours of travel:

Me crashed out in Beijing:

Our pretty room:

October 17th - Out to eat with friends.

Mikayla, Declan and I went out to Sweet Tomato with our friends Amanda and Addison. Mikayla loved it because she got to try so many different things. She probably tasted about 20 different things! She also had her first ice cream cone and really seemed to enjoy it. Declan sat in a high chair for the first time. He liked sitting by the girls and kept trying to grab their trays and food.

October 16th - Bounce, Bounce, Bounce!!!

My friends and I heard about this place called Jumping Party from our baby board. We were dying to try it so we finally went and checked it out last week. It was so awesome! I don't know who had more fun...the kids or the mommies! After three hours we were all exhausted and felt like we had done a major workout. Here are some pics and movies of Mikayla, Autumn and Addison having a blast!



Mikayla, Autumn and Christina on the BIG slide:

Mikayla rides the big slide all by herself!

Mikayla in the mini jumper and slide:

Mommy and Mikayla being silly:

Yeah, I know its unflattering...but it was so fun!

Sibling Love:
Even Declan liked to bounce:

Mikayla with her lollypop. She loves dum dums!

Movies of the munchkins bouncing and Dancing:

October 13th - We finally feed Declan / Mikayla and Grandpa do art.

Since Declan is over 6 months and finally showing interest in eating we gave him cereal for the first time. He wasn't sure what was happening when I showed him the spoon but he figured it out very quickly! After he got his first taste he immediately started grabbing my hand and dragging it back to his mouth. I could not spoon the food fast enough for him he was so into it. He has since had sweet potatoes and will start on squash tomorrow. Yay for Declan!

Mikayla loves to do art. We try to do it daily. Lately she is working on using glue and stickers. Daddy and Mikayla made two glue collages. Mikayla had fun picking out the pictures and getting sticky with the glue. Afterwards Mikayla and Grandpa got to play with stickers. Mikayla liked to pile the stickers on top of each other.




Misc. Declan picture because I think its cute. =P