we got our.....

LOA! Which for those not in the trenches of the adoption world stands for: Letter of Acceptance. Which is a pretty exciting deal. It means that the Chinese government has given us permission to adopt this little guy:

He is a 22-month-old little boy with albinism. His name is Jude ________________(insert middle Chinese name that we are still debating). We have a Chinese name that we are 90% decided upon.

I know the next obvious question is: when will we finalize everything? And then, when will we be back in the US so that we can introduce you to our new son? We should finalize everything in about 4 months (probably about March). Then we plan to return to the US in late May or early June.

Rejoice with us! After many long months, we are excited to be moving forward. We are now waiting on our I-800 approval (US immigration approval). I will keep you posted!

Playing hooky (aka Field Trip)

Due to a variety of circumstances, we did not travel back to the US this summer. And it was crazy-hot here in Suzhou. I think we spent well over a month with our temperatures above 100 every. stinking. day. Seriously, beastly hot. We spent a lot of time at the pool, which was a great help. But with our fair skin, we can only be out so long before we start looking lobster-like. So we often would go to the pool for a couple of hours and then we would come home, shower, and school for a bit. Can you believe that we started school at the end of July?

But now that our weather is absolutely beautiful, we are reaping the benefits of starting early. All week I had been pondering taking the day off on Friday. The weather promised to be good so Friday I declared it to be an adventure day and that no school would happen that day. I gave the kids two options at breakfast (a garden or a boat ride), we voted, and set off for exploring.

Since we were going to be taking the bus, we waited a bit to let all the commuters get to work. And then ended up waiting forever at the bus stop for our bus to come. The sign in the background tells how many stops away each bus is. When we got to the stop, it said our bus was 23 stops away. After waiting a couple of minutes with no changes, we realized that it was not working correctly. Though we did have to wait longer than normal, I think that it felt even longer because we are used to counting on the signs. J is making the face not because of the long wait, but due to the fact that I was taking his picture.

Suzhou is famous for its gardens. There are many scattered about the city. Gardens that were once private residences are now for the public to view. In each garden, there are many windows such as this one with various designs on them. I have heard that within the same garden no two windows are the same, so that each one gives you a unique view into the garden.

Another distinction of Suzhou's gardens are the rock formations. They make caves, tunnels, and paths to climb and explore. We went to Lion's Forest Garden (though a smaller garden, it is our personal favorite because it has so many rock formations). I am not sure if we first called them this or if I read about it in a book, but we refer to these formations as rockeries.

Josh and Tori also found seats and perches within the rockeries. J called this one his throne.

Not to be outdone, T also found a throne. Have you noticed her outfit? Though the scarf only made it midway through the day, she was stylin'.

As we walked to the garden, we were scoping out places for lunch. This one was decided upon due to its wagon wheel table and benches. Though I forgot to take a picture, parts of the floor were glass with fish tanks in the floor. I loved that we had a plan of which garden, but other than that, we were going to roll with the day.

My city explorers. Ready and willing to walk (and walk and walk). Each with bag packed for what might be needed. Someday we are going to move back to the US and have a van and drive everywhere and I wonder if we will find it strange or wonderful. But for now, we are public transportation mavens.

I think over the next month or so, we are going to take advantage of our early start and our beautiful weather and do some more exploring of our interesting city.

truly, we are alive....

Though the blog has sat rather dormant, our lives of course have not. Though I am making no promises of how often I will blog, let's hope it is more often than once every 3 months.

But during my silence, some little girl turned 8. Does anyone else find that crazy?! That our Little Peanut, Tori, is growing up? I measure our China-years in comparison to her age (she was 2.5 when we moved to China). Tori, our wild and sweet girl, you add so much to our family. I love your sassiness and spunk (even when it drives me a little crazy). Your heart for others is so big that you have taught me to carry change ALWAYS because one never knows when you might see someone in need. And I love how it breaks your heart and you can never walk away without doing something. I love your daring and creativity.

Even at 3, you had such confidence. Rather appropriate that one of the first things you learned to say in Chinese was: 我自己做！(which essentially means: I'll do it all by myself!)

You are fearless. I picture you taking on the world with exactly that expression.

I love your joy and the beauty that I see shining from within you.

Happy birthday, Sweet T!

a week of breakfast

One of the biggest daily changes for us with our move was that we didn't have breakfast provided every morning. Yes, you read that correctly. In our old neighborhood as part of our club membership, we got breakfast at the clubhouse each morning. So with our move, I needed to figure out breakfast each day. This would again be one of those times where all those convenience foods that we take for granted in the US (breakfast cereals, english muffins, bagels, just to name a few) are not as readily available here. Often if they are available, it is just too pricey to be a long-term solution. Think around $10/box for cereal!

After a couple months of trial and error, I have figured out our weekly breakfast menu.

Monday
This is the day that I take off. We eat leftovers from the weekend or have cereal (meaning oatmeal or granola).

Tuesday
Muffins and smoothies. Originally, this was just a muffin morning. But I soon found out that muffins alone or even smoothies alone were not enough to keep my hungry troops going all morning long. As everyone has their favorites, I alternate between banana, peanut butter, and morning glory muffins.

Wednesday
Honey Oatmeal bread with peanut butter. Or cream cheese. Or jam. Really even just plain because it is so good.

Thursday
Fruit bars and smoothies.

My personal favorite is a green smoothie with strawberries and spinach.

Friday

English muffins. The batter is super-easy and made the night before. Left to rise on the counter and cooked in the morning. My kids may never go back to store-bought.

Saturday

Pancakes. This has to be my favorite morning because Andy cooks up a batch of Daddy's Special Pancakes. Never mind that he uses my recipe, he has a way of making them amazing each time. Maybe because he reads and follows the recipe and I just do it as I remember it. But he has earned the title of calling these his own.

Sunday

Cinnamon rolls and scrambled eggs.

While there are some variations, these are our staples. What about you? What is your favorite family breakfast?

gadgets

I will admit: I am a foodie. I love everything about food: making it, eating it, having others over to eat it. So it should come as no surprise that my kitchen in the US had every possible gadget. Everything from a KitchenAide mixer to an ice cream maker (and everything in between). But when we moved to China, I didn't bring ANY of them with me. For several years of living here, I still really had no fun kitchen toys. But slowly, I have built up a small stock of them. However, what I have here is quite different from in the US.

new gadgets that have shown up since living in Asia....

Rice Maker
This is probably one that I don't need to explain. We do live in the land of rice. In fact, our rice cooker came with our apartment.

Yogurt maker
We love yogurt. But yogurt here is really different. It is really sweet and more like a drink than a spoonable treat. We have come around to the drinkable kind, but I was still not a fan of all the added sugar. And so we make our own. It is ridiculously easy, and oh-so-good.

Electric teakettle
This was one that I was skeptical of, but we use it daily. Hot water for tea in just a minute. Not surprisingly, we drink a lot of tea!

But what has also surprised me is how I enjoy more things without all of the gadgets. Maybe because I know that one day, I will have to move/get rid of all that I accumulate here. I particularly enjoy making bread by hand. And recently, I have gotten brave and tried making some fun new things . . . like bagels and English muffins.

DIY: washing the windows

After being in our apartment for a couple weeks, we noticed some things that needed to be fixed. I contacted our agent to get these things done. One of these items was washing our big windows in the living room. Our agent said that it was too dangerous to wash the outside of the windows (keep in mind that we live on the 16th floor). We asked around, but all our friends living here said that it had been taken care of by their agency. Huh.

A couple weeks later, it was still bothering Andy so he decided to take matters into his own hands. And I was worried. The 16th floor, remember?!

He headed to B&Q for supplies. B&Q is China's version of Home Depot. Strangely enough, their logo is quite similar.

But I should not have been (too) worried.... he had a plan. Is anyone who knows my husband surprised by this? Mind you, I was still worried.

This was the part that worried me.

And this would be why as you see just how high we are.

But the end result was amazing. The photograph does not do it justice, but the top window was cleaned and the bottom one was not.

random money

When we moved, in one of the drawers in our bedroom we found an envelope of random money. Hmm, this could be a sign that you are an expat... your spare change is not just in one currency. Here is a sampling of all the paper money that we found:

Can you identify all the countries represented?

We also found coins from several other countries. Often as you are preparing to leave a country, you have just a bit of money left. You try and plan to get just what you need. But no matter how you plan, there is just a bit leftover. And then it is not always practical to change just a little bit of money. And so, the random money envelope is born.

In case you are wondering, the money is from: (starting from the top left) China, Japan, Hong Kong, India, England, Malaysia, and the US.

Pinewood Derby

And just like that, March is almost gone. It has been a month of busyness and settling into our new routines.

One of the highlights for Josh was the Pinewood Derby. Can you believe it? Even here in China, a key part of the Boy Scout experience is building and participating in the Pinewood Derby!

Andy and Josh worked hard together to build the car.

Of course, J choose to paint it green, his favorite color. As we lack a garage or any other space to work on this inside, they went outside to spray paint it. In fact, if you walk through our neighborhood you can see a faint outline of where the paint went off the paper.

After a couple of weeks of working on it, finally it was. . .

RACE DAY!

J's is the all green one. The very plain green one.

He is standing with his friend, Jakob, anxiously watching the results.

But race after race, he either won or was second in all four of the heats. He was close to going on to the Regionals with the Shanghai winners. Apparently what we lacked in style we made up for in speed.

[As a side note, the Pinewood Derby was held in Shanghai, the Shanghai pack raced in the morning, our Suzhou pack raced in the afternoon, then after our races the top 4 from each of the two pack raced to determine the Regional Winner]

But he did win 1st in his den! Well done, J!

As this was our first Pinewood Derby, we were just hoping not to finish last. A friend of ours [Dave] who has helped his sons through multiple years of Derbies gave Andy some pointers to help out. Much to our surprise, our car did really well. Unfortunately, Dave's sons didn't fare as well. And I have a feeling that we won't get any help from Dave next year!

one month without....

refined sugar.

This has been coming for a while. I have been pondering this but just have lacked the motivation to do it. A friend here recently did a 10-day cleanse and inspired me. As I was out to lunch yesterday, one of the ladies asked why I was going to do this. Was it for health reasons? For Lent? A fast? And the honest answer is none of these.

I just really like sugar. And for me, my great weaknesses are cokes and chocolate. For a while, I would have just one coke a week. Then a couple times. And now I have one almost every day. It has become something of an addiction. So I think I just need to step back. Since once you have some sugar, you often crave more, I have decided to cut out all refined sugar. My hope is that by putting this out there I can be accountable for the entire month. Not sure if I will continue it for longer. Let me make it through this month first!

new house, new rules

As I was typing this, Becca came up and read the title, and inserted her two cents:

"Well, it's not a house, we live in an apartment."
True, but that didn't flow as well. 

"And our rules are not all different, just a little bit."
[I'm rolling my eyes now...] Yes, my literal daughter, let me have a bit of literary freedom here.

Anyway, we are all moved in (except for a few random boxes on the balcony that we won't mention) and we are loving everything about our new place. We love the convenience -- just a few bus/subway stops away from many of our activities. We love the layout. I love having our whole space on one level. We love how warm it is! Not that you really want to know this.... but I haven't worn long underwear or tights under my clothes in weeks. I know that come summer we will miss the pools of our old neighborhood, but we gained so much in our daily life that I am not complaining!

new house

The draped thing is the keyboard.

B's room. WARNING: Random stuff lurking in the background on the balcony.

J's room. And more random stuff. Eventually, the balcony is going to be like an extra room. But for now, it is just storage.

master bedroom

T's room. Lumpiness is what happens when 7 year olds make their own bed. 

And the room that sold me on this place....

our homeschooling room

new rules
A move is always a good time to instill some new disciplines (for everyone, not just the kids). One that we are all adhering to is that we each make our bed every morning. This may seem like a no-brainer, but when you have house help sometimes these things get overlooked and then it is not the kids doing it, but our ayi. We are also being much more disciplined about keeping our rooms in order. I must confess, that at the old house I was guilty of this one. We had a desk in our bedroom that was completely unusable as a desk. In fact, it was unrecognizable as a desk! Papers and just general stuff gathered on top. I stacked clothes on the chair. Andy [rightly] asked me how I could get on the kids about keeping their rooms clean when I had the desk mess. Ouch! But right, so to avoid temptation, there is no desk in our bedroom.

And while some of the pictures are dark, it is really that I was too lazy to get out the real camera. Our house is so sunny and bright, one of the many reasons I was drawn to it. Maybe I be less lazy soon and post better pictures. Maybe, making no promises.

what I'm cooking

Actually this first one, I was teaching B how to cook. She has been asking for me to teach her to cook. I often have these grand ideas but my follow-through can be lacking. I have been wanting to work with each of the kids on cooking. I think this is one that will be postponed until after the move. Then I hope to have each child help me with dinner once a week. And then after I have taught Becca some meals, I hope that she can take over cooking one night a week.

We started with chicken tenders. (And these are her hands cutting up the meat).

Assembling all of the ingredients.

I had hoped to get a picture of the after, but we were hungry and ate them too quickly!

If you are interested, here is the recipe:

Baked Chicken Tenders
1-2 pounds of chicken breast or tenders
1 1/2 cups of flour
Salt and pepper
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup of milk
2 cups of Panko breadcrumbs

Cut the chicken into strips. Mix the flour with the salt and pepper and place in a shallow bowl. Beat the eggs and add in the milk. Put the breadcrumbs in a shallow bowl. Dredge the chicken in the flour, dip in the egg mixture, and then coat with the breadcrumbs. Place on a lightly greased cookie sheet and bake at 400˚F for 15 minutes or until done.

Then today, after much begging (on the kids' part) I am making crock-pot applesauce. Which is super-easy. And I am wondering why I have not made this before?!

Crock-pot Applesauce
6-7 apples, peeled and quartered
1/3 cup of apple cider vinegar (you can even use apple juice or just water)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Orange peel
1 Tablespoon lemon or orange juice (if you look below, I just used a whole orange and then took it out before I blended)

Combine all the ingredients in a crock-pot and cook on low for 4-5 hours. If you want a chunkier applesauce mash with a potato masher (or fork) or for a smoother applesauce, blend in food processor or blender. So good and if you notice, no extra sugar!

moving

After almost 5 years in our current house, we are moving. Nothing drastic like our last move. Instead, we are just moving to the other side of the city. We have talked about it on and off for the last year. With our transition to homeschooling, we are spending so much more time on the other side of the city. And unfortunately, it can take over an hour (each way) to commute there. Our decision was moved up when earlier this month we were without water for 5 days. Which is annoying, but we managed. But our landlord refused to pay to have it fixed. And this was the thing that pushed us over the edge. A few days after the water incident, I began looking at places. Found one within a week, we signed the lease yesterday and we move in next Thursday. No moss growing on us! When we decide something, watch out!

So homeschooling is taking a backseat. And the kids are learning important things like. . .

How to pack a box well.

And the importance of thinning things out. This is their pile of 不要了 (things they no longer want). I have been really proud of how they have on their own decided to get rid of a lot of things.

homeschool mother's journal: [january.11.2013]

In my life this week. . .

This has been an eventful week. . . we were without hot water for 5 days. We finally got over the stomach flu that has been plaguing our house since New Year's eve. After talking about it for awhile, we finally made a decision to start looking for a new place to live. I spent an afternoon looking at apartments. And somehow we home schooled in the midst of all of this!

In our home school this week. . .

We started on Ancient Egypt in our history. I found a great lapbook (for FREE*) that Josh will complete and Becca has decided that she will do a presentation on the computer. I feel good about the way we are doing our history. As we listen to Story of the World, we decide on topics that we think are important to learn and study. The kids then decide what media that they want to use: make a speech/presentation, lapbook, create a poster, ....  the way they present the material is up to them. And this is going outside the box for me! I am a planner and like to have everything decided. But I was realizing that my prescribed method (especially when I am making the two of them do things the same way), was not working. And honestly, it was a little too much like "school." When B asked if she could do something other than a lapbook one time, I let her choose. Never too old to learn from your kids!

*Here is the link to the lapbook J and I will be using from homeschoolshare.com: Ancient Egypt

Things I'm working on. . .

I am starting to purge and thinking about packing. I am sure over the next couple of weeks we will be doing just a little less schooling and I will be enlisting my helpers to pack. As we are moving from a house to an apartment, we are also needing to eliminate some of our stuff. Isn't it amazing how much stuff you accumulate over time?!

I'm grateful for. . .

Good Health! We started the new year with T getting sick (**ahem, can you spot the euphanism for vomiting?) just after midnight. She then proceeded to get sick many, many more times the rest of the night. Keep in mind that we were on vacation. She was feeling better by lunch that day and was even able to enjoy a little bit of time on the beach that afternoon. We traveled home the next day and thankfully all of us were healthy. The following day Josh was sick. A few days later Becca and I were not feeling well. Andy is the only one to have escaped this nastiness. But I am thankful that we are all feeling better now.