Today is our 11th wedding anniversary so my sister is house sitting our house and watching the girls. Susan and I are getting away for a Saturday evening to the San Francisco bay area. Though we will miss the girls, it’s nice to get away once in a while. A chance to eat in a grown up restaurant and sleep in.
On May 3, I was chosen by the board to be the Chief Financial Officer and a Board Member of Families with Children from China (FCC), Northern California chapter. So you’ll be seeing me and my family at more FCC events for the next few years.
I spent the afternoon going through pictures of Emily and Megan from 2008 on my computer hard drive and ordering prints on kodakgallery.com
An annual routine of mine is to gather a set of 30 pictures of Emily and a set of 30 pictures of Megan from the previous calendar year, place each set into a small photo album (the type you can buy for $4 at Walgreens), and mail the two photo albums to their orphanages. My goal every year is to do this each January for pictures from the just completed calendar year. This year I am three months late.
Emily and Megan are from different orphanages in different parts of the country (Jiangxi and Guangdong).
At this point, I don’t expect anyone from Emily’s orphanage to remember Emily (adopted 6 years ago) and I’m not sure if anyone from Megan’s orphanage still remembers Megan (adopted 2 years ago).
However, if in the very remote chance there is someone in China who still remembers Emily or Megan, I send these photo albums each year. Also, when we met the orphanage workers in China for Emily and Megan’s adoptions, in both instances, they did ask us to send them updated photos. I figure annually sending them updated photos is the least we can do to show them our appreciation.
Click on the picture above for more school pictures of Emily.
NPR’s Talk of the Nation: “Why Did You Opt For An International Adoption?”:
Link
(30 minute radio program)
Pictures from Easter 2009 are now online. We went up to my in-laws house in the San Francisco bay area for Easter dinner.
Here are Megan’s latest school pictures. Click on the picture above for more.
Sunday was unexpectedly not rainy so the family hopped into the car, stopped off for breakfast at Bella Bru, and headed for Fairytale Town.
Click on the picture above for pictures from the day. Today, there was a special event at Fairytale Town and there was Taiko (Japanese) drumming.
At the start of the year, we enrolled Megan in a hip hop/tap dance class on Saturdays. She attended during the month of January but we found that she was still too young to pay attention during the entire hour long class so we have pulled her out and will try again this summer. Emily, on the other hand, is continuing to go to hip hop dance class. Emily has been attending continuously since the age of 3 and participates in dance shows at least twice a year.
Megan had her 3 year old birthday party on February 7.
The party was attended by 19 adults and 10 children. We fed everyone lunch (pizzas, sandwiches, fruits, veggies, chips), opened presents, and fed everyone again cake and ice cream. Before the party, Susan managed to snag for free an indoor bounce house that fit into our living room. So there were kids playing with toys upstairs in Megan’s and Emily’s bedrooms and there were kids downstairs in the bounce house.
The girls have been talking about going to the snow. From here, it’s about a 3 hour drive. Neither of the girls have seen the snow. If we go, we’ll all need snow clothes since no one in the family has been to the snow in years. So we’ll need boots, thick jackets, etc. for everyone. At this point, if we went today, we’d be in jeans, cotton socks, athletic shoes, and medium weight jackets. Fortunately, it’s still snowing in the mountains so we still have time before the spring weather comes.
I wrote too soon about going to the FCC party. Emily has had a fever off and on since last Saturday. She still has it. I’ve stayed home three days this week to watch her. She went to the doctor yesterday and the doctor said that she just has a virus that has been going around. Now, Megan has a fever. Both have a cough. So we’ll probably be staying in this weekend.