Bragging on my husband!

Richard entered an iRule he wrote into a contest, and won an honorable mention! This is what the website says: "The following participants are recognized as honorable mention finalists. Each of these iRule entries were ranked as a top iRule by at least one of the contest judges."

Now, don't ask me what an iRule is, but I'm pretty proud of him! Congrats, Richard!

Feel better soon, Dad!

My dad had surgery on his shoulder yesterday, and is home recovering today. I hope you feel better soon, and I love you!

Gung Hay Fat Choy

It is Chinese New Year, and the year of the Pig begins. To celebrate, we took the girls out to a local Chinese buffet. Evie, who just learned the sign for "noodle", had fun eating lots of rice noodles and lo mein and signing "noodle" to everyone who looked at her!

These are the traditional Cantonese greetings for the new year. Evie is from a Cantonese-speaking area of China.
Sun Nin Fy Lok ~ Happy New Year!
Gung Hay Fat Choy ~ Wishing you Prosperity!

Just Random Stuff!

Evie is still having trouble with the sleeping thing. So, I bought some of the lavender bubble bath that is supposed to help make babies sleepy. Except, Evie is afraid of bubble bath. She will sit in the tub with her arms held above the water until someone swishes some of the bubbles away for her. Guess that one didn't work as planned, huh?

Loud Puppy's ear is broken, and no longer plays "do you ears hang low?" It is a terrible tragedy, and a new loud puppy may be in our future. If you don't know, this is a loud puppy:


It is loud, therefore the name loud puppy. But, Evie loves it. It sings all sorts of songs like "Itsy bitsy spider", which is Evie's favorite.

We got Evie a new book about Elmo's Valentine. There is a page that says "Monkeys love bananas", so we always say Monkeys love... and Evie says "na-na-nas!" At the end, it says that Elmo wants a kiss, so Evie kisses the Elmo on the back of the book.

Emily got lots of $$ for her birthday, and is waiting impatiently to go to the mall. I forsee a trip to Limited Too and Claire's in our future.

~*~*Happy Birthday, Emily!*~*~

Today is Emily's birthday. I can't believe she's 10 already! She should still be Evie's size...

She got lots of new clothes for her birthday, a flower and balloon bouquet, and a video game, and some coins to collect. I think this is the first year we didn't get her any toys.

She will have her party in a week or two, after she's all done with the bronchitis, and hopefully the weather will be a bit nicer.

Happy Birthday, Emily! We love you!

Look, Mom! We finally finished the nursery...

We were so rushed to get everything ready to go after our TA last summer that we just got the nursery painted (Friendly Frog green!) and the furniture in there. Well, after almost 6 months home, we finally got it finished! Yes, I am the slowest person on the face of the planet ~ just ask my husband (or my dad!) Lots of butterflies in the room ~ in China we were told that butterflies are fu, good luck for Chinese babies!

Two cute little wooden things I painted and put together for her walls:







The new curtains, and the birdhouses I bought last summer. I didn't know what I was going to do with them at the time. I think they match well!





Evie's bed, with the musical flowers and the 100 good wishes quilt made by her Nana. Evie has a thing about sheets ~ she likes to rip them off the bed, and throw them and most of the blankets out of the bed during naptime. She was only partly successful this day!





Evie's dresser, with the stash of cloth diapers (and the covers on top). You can also see her cd player (so we can listen to music before bed) and the vaporizer (because of the bronchitis). Her room is so tiny that I had to stand behind the crib to take this picture!







Evie and Muh in the new rocking chair:

Evie has been with us for six months!

She has grown and changed quite a bit. She has gained five pounds, and has now outgrown her 12 month sized clothes, and some of her 18 month sized clothes! She has hair now!

Here is Evie in August, 06:









Here is Evie now!

A Picture Post

I finally plugged the camera in and loaded all the pictures onto my computer, so here are a few from the past month or two.

The girls and their Nana and Papa, these were taken in December right before we drove them to the train station.














Sticker Pox! If you look close enough, there are even stickers all over the floor.














Look! Evie finally has enough hair for some pretties! Of course, she never leaves them in for longer than a minute or two.

Two girls with Bronchitis

blah. Em and Evie are both sick. I took them to the doctor, and they both have bronchitis. Em also has an ear infection. The doc couldn't see Evie's eardrums because of the wax, but she has been pulling at them, so probably has an infection, too. I currently have 3 big bottles of bubblegum pink amoxicillan sitting in my fridge ~ Em gets twice as much as Evie.

Poor Em always seems to get sick for her birthday (next Tuesday!). I guess we'll see how she's feeling before we decide on what to do about the party.

Added a new link!

Go check out Informed Adoption Advocates
(they can also be found over there on the right, under "links"!)

They are providing education and information to the international adoption community. They already have lots of useful information, and I'm sure they will have a lot more added in the future.