San Francisco - China Town

Ok so I did not get a chance yet to post about our trip to San Francisco, DH was there for school and I had some flier miles and joined him for the weekend, which also happened to be the same weekend as the Chinese New Year Parade in Chinatown SanFran.

Of course as it was not cold and snowy enough here this had to be the weekend of lots of rain and wind chills in San Francisco…. Go figure……lol…. In turn this limited us as to what we where able to do.
Due to the winds no ferries went to Alcatraz and who wants to walk the Golden Gate Bridge with 40mph + /hour winds. … Not I :-) We did get on the Cable Car for a ride up the hill and back down on the other side then walked back to China Town lol…..

To make a long story short we ended up spending most of Saturday in China Town, which was no kidding almost like being back in China. …. It was a lot of fun, we scrimmaged thru tons of the stores, mostly Asian people around us and most did not understand us if we asked questions as they did not speak any English unless younger ones where around, even more people in town for the celebration later that day and on top of it rain lots of rain…… We stopped at a tea store sat down for tea tasting, went to a bakery and had some very yummmyyyyy pastries……. Ate Dim Sum …… it was soo much fun…..lol… ok call me crazy but I loved every minute of it.

Later we watched most of the Parade, which was noted to be one of the top 10 international parades outside of Asia, however, the rain turned it into a rather chilly and wet event…. We where soaked by the time the parade was almost over 2 hours later that evening… the costumes where pretty neat the kids seemed to have lots of fun… there are a large number of Immersion Schools in San Francisco and all oft them had their little dragon costumes and floats.

Unfortunately a lot of our pictures due to the weather did not turn out … very disappointing but an experience nevertheless.

March 2008

Birthday Party

Hmm I guess it has been some time since I updated the blog, time flies and we have been so busy, seems as though this move is dragging on and I can’t wait for spring and the move into the new house so that life can start to settle into its “normal” pattern for us again. This has been such a long and snowy winter for us and the kids are constantly sick passing the cold back and forth and brining them home from daycare and school.

In between we have a weekend day here and there to just relax….lol…. ok it was a nice thought. We been either snowed in or down with colds but did get out this past weekend for Samuel’s 6th Birthday party.
We went to Appleton, to meet with my sister and Uncle David, Cousins Natascha, Nick and Nathan and took along some of Samuel’s friends from school to celebrate. We all had a lot of fun. Sorry to say that due to the weather Grandpa and Grandma could not make it down to celebrate.

Sarah was a bit intimidated by all the kids and the commotion at Chuckee’s understandably since we for the most part try to keep a low profile after all though it seems longer we only have been home for about 10 months and we try to have as much of a routine and consistency amongst this move as possible. Sarah does great at daycare though and has lots of friends that are dear to her.
Unfortunately due to the weather and driving conditions we had to miss out on the NewFCC CNY celebration in Green Bay this past weekend, which was highly disappointing.

Hopefully I will have some time later to post pictures of the kids.

The Spring Festival

The oldest and most important festival in China is the Spring Festival, which marks a new year on the lunar calendar. The Spring Festival represents the desire for a new life. It's called the Spring Festival because it marks the beginning of spring and the end of winter.

Throughout history, the Spring Festival had different names at different times. By far the most popular name is 'Yuan Dan', which means 'beginning' and 'morning', implying the beginning of a new spring and a new year. In the past the actual time of the Spring Festival also varied. During the Han Dynasty the beginning of spring was the Spring Festival, but during the Northern and Southern Dynasty, the entire spring was viewed as the Spring Festival. After 1949, it was decided that January 1st on the solar calendar would be 'Yuan Dan' and January 1st on the lunar calendar would be the Spring Festival.

Cousin Taya

So we are into the new year now – New Years Eve and Day was pretty low key for us, we just stayed at home we barely made it to midnight…… lol …..

The kids are doing great Sarah continues to do so well – she wants to be so independent and I guess in some ways that’s ok but I like to keep her like this for a while longer when she likes to cuddle up and lets me help her with things. Tuesday of next week it will be 9 months since she was put into my arms and when I look at her I can barely remember what it was like before, much like being in labor not long after that its all but a blur and the wait we went through seems to be a distant memory.

She loves to play tea time in her little kitchen and mimic me when I cook she is such a big helper she event tries to help Sam in the mornings as he gets geared up to go on the school bus its very cute to watch her.

I have a hunch her growing streak may be on a slow down now she is starting to turn down food or not finish all her food totally ok and nice to see that she is feeling comfortable enough to do so. I noticed the other day that she will need to get out of that crib soon little jitter bug is just getting too big for it.

Next weekend we are going back to get the rest of our items out of the house and it will be finally listed – hopefully we won’t sit on it too long as we did find a house that we would really really like to buy.

We are looking forward to meeting some other FCC families in the Fox Valley / Green Bay are to celebrate the Chinese New Year as well as Samuel’s 6th Birthday coming up in about 4 weeks here. Afterwards Daddy will be off to San Francisco for a few days for school and I will join him for the weekend just as they will have the Chinese New Years Parade there that weekend. It is supposed to be one of the top 10 international festival events / parades I am very excited to have a chance to see it; perhaps one day with Sarah as well. The kids will get to spend that weekend with their grandparents in the UP it will be the first time that we will spend time away from Sarah overnight but having her brothers with her will hopefully help and she certainly did seem to take really well to her grandpa over the xmass holiday.

.."Boy this Holiday Stuff can be exhausting"..

We hope everyone had a wonderful xmass holiday. Just checking in posting a few pictures more updates will come later :-) Happy Holidays and to all a Happy New Year!!

Visiting Aunt Rosie's xmass weekend and the kids are jamming away:

At Grandpas House in the UP:

Sarah, Cousin Taya and Grandpa

About the Kids…….

Steven seems to settle in and make friends - he says he loves the variety on the new schools lunch menu lol….gee good lol… he does not talk much but seems to be ok with the move now and I am sure he will be making new friends very easily. Having to share his room with his little brother is a big change for the two but they will manage for a while until we find a house, not too long I hope. He does complain about having to get up an hour earlier to get on the bus but hey nothing is perfect right, at least now he can ride the buss where at the old school he had to bike or walk.

Samuel is being his energizer bunny self - still the very picky eater he can be and like his sister back and forth fighting the cold season. He is not to keen on the longer bus ride to school but does very well with the change he went thru in school and already knows most of the teachers. He is very excited to be able to spend xmass break at Grandpa's house and was also very excited to be able to go xmass shopping in Green Bay with him and the rest of the family.
Sarah is doing remarkably well at her new daycare, I think the switch was fairly easy for her as the daily routines etc are quite similar to those of what she is used to. She is ok with her new room now.. Hey she has two closets lol…and these days is being just a tad testy about things just to see how far she can get sometimes which to me appears to be a sign that she is quite comfortable with where she is.

Her appetite is starting to slow down and she actually will refuse certain items now so that’s ok. She got her first experience of snow and unfortunately in the middle of the move my camera was nowhere to be found. It was funny to watch her as she really did not know what to do with all that white stuff but she knew she did not want to be let go on her own for a while, she did not like being stuck in 8 inches of snow….

…….. And as we where in Green Bay yesterday we got her ears pierced……lol…… we had them do both at the same time as I knew if they do one there was no way they would get the other one in…… about 5 min and some tears later she was fine and seems to have almost forgotten about them except when one of us would say "Pretty girl" she would tilt her head, pull her hair to the side and show her ears off …. It was so cute.
So that’s it for my update for now, hopefully I can get some time to get pictures of my phone to post as well.
Ciao!!