Good Christmas Reads

Do we not look totally charming and unposed here?

I have lots of Children's picture books. Having been a preschool teacher and Sunday School teacher for a few years, a momma for 20 and a homeschooling momma too, I have quite the collection of kids' books. Of course, Christmas being my favorite, I have a lot of Christmas choices.

The other day, Shek and I had packed up my book tote with all of our Christmas books to take to Sunday School. I grabbed that packed bag and told Jolie to pick out one or two to read before bedtime. I knew which one was her favorite last year, and I wondered if it would still be her pick this year, and it was.

Jolie's favorite is Mary Did You Know? Since it's a song, we sing it when we read it. 

Here she is singing her favorite book...Don't you love her makeup? She applied it herself!

  When I started to read, the big kids piled in the bed too asking for their favorites. I was touched to see my seventeen year old girl grab her childhood favorite and then my 11 year old grab his. I told Karl he should take our photo, but I rethought that because I really did not want a blog post with a photo of us in our pjs, or should I say me in my pjs. 

Family favs:

Shek's pick is Silver Packages by Cynthia Rylant

Karlie's Pick is The Legend of the Candy Cane by Lori Walburg

Jolie's pick is Mary did you Know by Mark Lowry

Mom's pick is Piper's Night before Christmas  by Mark Lowry(it rhymes)...but mom really likes them all.

So last night, we "posed" with our favorites. Some of our  favorites are pictured above. I don't know which is Zach's favorite. I am sure he has one, because he is all about those family traditions we do each year.

Shek loves Silver Packages. He loved trains as a little boy, maybe that's why this is his favorite.

Shek insisted that I post this photo. It really sums up how interested they were in posing for my blog post photos. 

Merry Christmas and Happy Reading y'all!

play dough

During our recent Thanksgiving Break, it's always my task to get up the decorations so that they're up and done with, and we can sit back and enjoy the Thanksgiving break with all the Decor done. BUT in the middle of all of the decoration boxes, and chaos, Baby Girl, wanted to make play dough. She loves play dough, it's her favorite toy in the world. AND wants me to purchase Kool-aid everytime we are in the store so that she can have some scented playdough.

She had to have us completely stop what we were doing to make the play dough, and I thought it might keep her occupied during my decoration mess. BUT I didn't have any of the magic ingredient, Kool-aid. Karlie had recently found a recipe for Jello playdough, so we thought we would give it a try. We had jello and the rest of the ingredients so we tried it out.

 I love my cookbook, the computer...

 mix the ingredients.

 add salt.

 Yep, you can add the jello.

 Stir it up

 Cook it up till it firms up 

Let it cool for 30 mins...

This jello playdough, smelled nice and had a great color, but it seemed to stick to us and make a mess. I might try it one more time, before totally giving up on the jello version of the recipe. I do like the vivid color it makes the dough. BUT we don't like how it sticks to us.

First time we saw your face 2 year anniversary

Can you believe it's been 2 years since we first laid eyes on our sweet referral photo of Jolie Elise FanWen? I remember going to bed on the 19th  knowing that we could possibly be matched by morning. Karl handed me the lap top the morning of the 20th and I scrolled the emails and found one from our agency "POSSIBLE MATCH" we opened it and saw 3 cute little photos. We immediately read the referral pages, and sent the YES email back  within moments. We then preceded with the next steps of letter of intent and then our journey became very real...SO to celebrate the event I grabbed the referral photo and told Jolie it was time to make a photo with the very first photo I saw of her. I said, "Look how much you've grown!" She says, Now I have hair!!! She is very proud that she can now have pony tails like Karlie...

What a cute first photo for us to see 

See how much she has grown, especially her hair? There is one other photo of her with a crew cut, so her hair is not actually shown the shortest it's been.

Happy Referral Day to us...So glad that GOD allows us the wonderful awesome opportunity to be your parents, sweet girl!

fountain fun

I loved this fountain and took several photos. I even messed around with the settings on my camera...I really don't know what I'm doing, but tried a few different things, and then edited it in picasa cause that's all I've got...yea, yea, pathetic i know, but it's all for fun.

I can still feel the spray.

Two of my cuties enjoyed the fountain too.

noodles, please

This past Saturday, Dad asked Jolie what she wanted for lunch. She said, "Noodles." Dad said,
"Chinese noodles or spaghetti Noodles!" Jolie said Spaghetti noodles...

So my sweet Chinese Princess has a side of Italian in her taste buds. She says all the time, "Spaghetti is my favorite."

Red White and Blue

Today is the 4th of July...and Shek came down bright and early dressed in his patriotic colors. I put him in charge of setting the table. He cut a few hydrangea to put on the table, and placed all the paper products in a pattern...and then smiled for the camera.

We had bbq grilled chicken, corn on the cob, broccoli salad, and hebrew beef hotdogs...and mom's new Healthy Homemade ice cream.

3 eggs separated

28 oz low fat sweetened condensed milk

12 oz fat free evaporated milk

2 Tablespoons vanilla extract

1 pinch salt

8 oz sucralose no calorie sweetener

16 cups plain unsweetened almond milk

 

instructions

separate eggs

beat egg whites until stiff.

add condensed milk, sucralose, evaporated milk, vanilla, salt. blend ingredients together.

Pour into freezer.  Add almond milk to fill line on freezer.  Freeze according to freezer directions.  My freezer is a 5 quart one so this recipe was designed for it.  If your freezer is smaller, adjustments to ingredients will be required.

Some friends of ours invited us over to swim in their pool while they were out of the town. When the kids heard the word POOL they were all in. So after lunch with the whole family minus Zach, (he's away leading worship at a church camp), we went swimming.

Karlie!

Jolie splashes!

Shek loves the floats!

 Laughter is the best medicine!

Woo hoo... I actually caught a jumpin' photo...

Dad teaches Jolie how to load the water gun and 

Splash her big brother.

We had a great 4th...hope you and yours are having fun and making sweet family memories.

Proud to be an American

I’m proud to be an American,

Where at least I know I'm free...

 Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,

God bless the USA.

*words from Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA

Photos are just fun with instagram..nothing fancy.

My doctor is a rockstar.

Today we headed to the Children's Hospital so that Jolie could have a little dental surgery completed under anesthesia.  I told her on the way that she was going to have that tooth fixed, the one that she points to all. the. time. and says, "It hurts, momma!" 

This is a iphone photo snapped on the way. Jolie does not really perk up until after 9 am. This photo was taken shortly after 8. She's not too thrilled about being up dressed complete with a hair bow and NO breakfast. BUT one can't have anything after midnight and she completely slept through her last chance for clear liquids at 730 am even though we started offering juice at 7 am.... We left earlier than we really needed to because you just never know about the traffic and parking at the hospital is pretty hairy too. On the way, the day surgery nurse called and asked if we could come sooner because there had been a cancellation, she was thrilled when I told her we were already on the way.

She sat in my lap in the waiting room for just a few mins. We arrived at 851. AND just as if an alarm sounded...at 9, she hopped down and went to play with the toys in the waiting area. BUT just in a few moments they called us back, and soon we were changing her into her gown, and she was taking the 'I don't care meds', she didn't like the taste and was holding it in her mouth.

WHERE's Jolie?

peek a boo...

someone is having fun

The last time she had surgery back in September for cleft palate repair...the "i don't care meds" had not completely kicked in and she was quite aware that she was being taken away from me...I. did. not. like.it one bit....but today...she was zonked out almost completely when they came to wheel her back. She was smiling and telling the nurse staff that she was from China. She was very excited to see a Chinese-American nurse as well...

When she got back to me, she wanted to be held and was excited about the apple juice and the purple band aids.  All the nurses bragged on what a great patient she was. Her doctor is a rock star, not because his last name is Bonjovi but because her surgery went by so smoothly and quickly. The first thing she asked for was Shek and then Karlie. She rode out in a wheel chair, but was sure to pause us by the gift shop telling us that she wanted the hello kitty pillow that she saw in the window. She has a hawk-eye for hello kitty stuff even when being half-zonked out on anesthesia meds. I told her we would get one at Target some time soon. 

I think the most traumatic thing of the whole ordeal was having to take out the hello kitty earrings and then putting them back in. She also doesn't like the funny feeling of the new filled teeth and has had me brush her teeth once and she has brushed them a second time. I think she thinks brushing will wipe away that funny feeling.

Baby girl was very hungry and gobbled down some wonton soup and fried rice...she is now relaxing in daddy's lap watching none other than Cinderella.

I am glad we are back home. We are praising the Lord that it went so smoothly ...thanks for the prayers.

Jolie turns 3

June 1st is Jolie's birthday celebration and we celebrated last night because big sis had oral surgery this morning. This is Jolie's 2nd birthday with us. A lot has changed in a year. Last year, she didn't get the whole birthday thing, but she has figured it out, and has actually been planning it for a while. SHE loves Cinderella, and insists that Cinderella is me. (SO funny) but hey that's the sweetest thing and if she wants to think her momma is Cinderella and a princess, I'll take that. SO when baby girl wanted a Cinderella birthday cake, I set out to find her one. AND do you know I could n't find a bakery that could make it? Publix could make their barbie one, but could not stick the Cinderella doll in it because it was not 'their' doll. I did the only thing I could do, I called my mom and we set out to make one ourselves. After a few mishaps in the process, we finally had a finished product. We discovered after 5 hours of baking this Cinderella cake, that The Cake Boss is not how God gifted us, but Jolie was pleased and that's what counted.

Jolie posing by the cake

Jolie singing happy birthday to me...

Jolie loved her cake..

Jolie said cinderella cake was yummy...I just think 5 hours of work and gone in 15 mins. LOL

 Jolie loves purple and butterflies..and has been wanting a necklace. Here's her purple butterfly necklace.

Happy Birthday, Jolie!!