I HERE!! I'M HERE!! HONEST! Just soo busy!
Right now I'm cooking up a STORM. We are having another couple over tomorrow night for NEW YEARS, and I want to be ready!

This is my "menu"...lots of finger foods...
Tell me what you think!
Lumpia, which are Filipino egg rolls,

Puff pastry stuffed with :
smoked oysters and goat cheddar
Prosciutto and Parmesan Cheese
Almond stuffed Olives

Filo wrapped fig and goat feta
Portabello mushrooms marinaded in balsamic vinegar and oregano grilled with goat feta

Lamb Curry served with bread and then

a Chocolate Roll filled with strawberry gelato, covered in chocolate then just before serving, covered with in meringue, baked then light on fire. (Like a Baked Alaska - different shape, more layers),
and of course booze: We have lots bottles of red wine, some harder stuff, (I doubt that we'll get into that) and Champagne for the midnight toast.

I bought some non-alcoholic stuff for the girls! You know what is funny, my girls will eat everything I put out, so I have to make enough not just for the adults but for the kiddies too. God forbid that they go for the cheap chips and dip!! ohhh nooooo!!! The portabello mushrooms are a favorite of the kids, and I spent a FORTUNE and bought every last one at the market on Saturday! LOL

I think it will be a lot of fun! I am looking forward to just relaxing, drinking, eating and laughing!

I have lots of pictures of Christmas that I'll post later in the week!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!

ok, You NEED to go and take a look at these beautiful necklaces!!!! Her daughter is adopted from the same area as Lily! Chongqing, China!
50% of the proceeds go to help children around the world!

I've been busy, busy, busy!!!
I'm working on a huge calendar project for a gift for my Dad, using my "skills" at Fotofusion! (cough, cough)
He is a sample of what I've done so far. Every month will have a collage of pictures, and on each person's birthday, a picture of them!

Oh yeah...
If anyone knows how to put music to my blog.. ahem..Heather, could you show me? I found some cool Chinese Christmas music and I thought it might be fun (and annoying) to have it playing during the holidays! We've been playing the CD everyday and it just cracks us up!!

Oh Christmas Tree is right!! What a time we had chopping down our tree this year!
The kids had a blast, although it was cold, they didn't seem to mind.
We picked 2 trees, one for upstairs (the living room, the fancy tree) and one for downstairs (the playroom, the "kid friendly" tree)! The smaller tree fit into the truck no problem! The larger tree had to be tied to the top of the Envoy.
While Frank tied and secured the tree, the rest of the family went into the cottage at the U-Pick and had hot chocolate and cookies! YUM!
The drive home took about 20mins, driving slowwwww... Well about 18 mins into the drive, Lily starts to scream from the back seat, "TREEE TREEEE TREEEEE IN WINDOW!!!" I take a look the tree has come untied and off the roof and is now hanging down on the side of the truck. We are about 3 mins from home, on a busy busy bridge with loads of traffic, and we can't stop!!
Frank opens the sunroof, grabs the rope, and holds the tree onto the trunk of the tree with one hand and drives with the other, while all the girls scream, (cause that is what we do best in emergency situations!) LOL
We made it home, tree intact, and Lily only slightly scarred! Both are now up and decorated and it smells like Christmas in my house! Gotta love it!

I'm either being slack or a coward, but I haven't even attempted to take this years Christmas card pictures!!
Last years photo shoot took forever, with about 100 pics, and we still ended up with crappy picture!
Here are some out takes!!
Go on over to Loving Lydia to check out other Christmas photo out takes!

This weeks photo challenge, over at Loving Lydia, was hair! Now you would think that with 3 girls I would be a PRO at doing hair, well, truth be told I'm not. I can braid, do pony tails, curl and french braids (sorta), but that about does it for my hairdressing skills! Thank god the 2 older girls can now do their own hair, but Miss Lily, HATES having her hair done! I have to chase her around with the brush and corner her to get a half a** pony tail in her hair, that only lasts 15 mins! Whew!
So I've decided to not only put up pictures, but also a video that I took this afternoon.


** Because I knew that I would be posting this, and I really didn't need her hair up, I was much *nicer* than usually! I normally wouldn't "ask" if she was going to let me put her hair up.

Her hair is such a challenge! It starts from about the middle of her head, and hangs straight down, all forward. She has no real part, and lots of short hair that is still growing under the longer hair, so you can never get it all in a barrette or a pony tail!
Sigh......

*Hairs* to you!

This is Abigail's birthday invitation!! You'll have to click on it to get a better picture. I love the "Call if there are any allergies to food or insects!"
Those are meal worms in the background! We're going to have such gross games, I've been psyching the girls out all weekend. Telling them not to clean the cat litter, as I need the poop for the scoop the poop game!

We've had a very busy weekend, I took a judging course on Friday night, the older girls had a gymnastics competition which started on Saturday morning 7:30am, we were there all day and into the evening, and on Sunday morning I helped judge for a few hours.
We got home, changed and hopped into the truck to cut down our Christmas tree!
What an adventure that was, one that needs its very own post!
As soon as I get the pictures off the camera, I'll post them, but I'll leave you with one tidbit...
We ended up having to hold the tree onto the truck through the sunroof........

SANTA LILY

Can you find Lily in all this mess of teddy bears?

Frank put her to bed, and let her take every stuffed animal known to mankind into her crib!!
Mommy isn't so nice! LOL
She awoke to only 5 small (very small) animals with her!

Ohhh....my... You have to check out this book, it is read by Amy Tan and it brought tears to my eyes.
I sent an e-mail to Frank (with the link) asking for the book for Christmas!! He had to laugh, I told him that I cried when I read it, and he asked "are you sure you want things to make you cry right now??"
Mothers Bridge of Love
Ok, so I've been a little teary..LOL

Actually, I find that every time I sit down to blog, I start to get teary eyed!! I'm not even sure why. Yesterday was the 1 month anniversary of Mom's death. Man this SUCKS!!
......ahhhh....inhale deeply.......
That is why I haven't been updating much.


So I've decided that the next few post will be happy, posts, videos, etc...
HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMN IT!!!

The New York Times is running an article all about personal experiences with international adoption, either written by an adult adoptee or by adoptive parents. There are some very touching and beautiful stories.

http://relativechoices.blogs.nytimes.com/

I've been trying to get things back to normal, caught up and running smoothly again.
Last week I devoted a ton of time to the kids, catching up on homework, nice meals, gymnastic training.. I'm glad I did that. The girls seem to be doing alright, Lily is less whiny and clingy, but still sticks close to me and the older girls had some sad / hard moments during the week, but much less and they are both able to openly talk about Mom with happy thoughts and memories, and not tears.
Like I keep saying.... One foot in front of the other...
This weekend I baked a pile of pies... I think 9 or 10 apple pies. I had left over apples from apple picking and they weren't going to last another week. As I mixed the fat into the flour I suddenly took to crying, as I instantly had a memory of mom holding my hands, teaching me how to cut the fat and flour together, then again as I rolled out my crust, always from the inside out, I felt her hands pressing on top of mine, holding the rolling pin. Sigh... I think those pies might have a little extra salt from my tears.
Has anyone read "Like Water for Chocolate'?
When she bakes as she is crying all her feelings go into the food, and as people eat at the feast, they experience her feelings? Well, hopefully people won't cry when they eat my pies! LOL I will admit however, that the crust was the best I've ever made, nice and light, tender, and flaky!
Thanks Mom.

Mmmm...blueberry cake...

Thank you to everyone who sent their condolences in the comments, e-mails, phone calls and cards! Every one of them meant so much to me.
About 5 hours after mom passed, a nice lady came by the house and dropped off super, and the food didn't stop arriving for days!!! Incredible stews, Chicken Fricot, sandwiches and pasta, and cakes... At the time, you would never cook yourself up a meal, let alone for 13 grandchildren, 4 children and their spouses and our dad... Your just too... well... "mindless" for lack of a better word, your in robot mode. But having the food all prepared, available whenever you got around to eating was an absolute godsend! Thank you to everyone!!!

My sister went home today to Arizona, and I spent the day wandering around my house, washing floors and baking. I am looking forward to the weekend to relax, drink wine and get ready for Monday, and to get things back to a regular routine.

One of the cakes that was dropped off at the house was a fabulous Blueberry Coffee Cake.
Whenever we saw her, my siblings and I would rush over to her, and say "ohh, YOU made the cake??? It was sooo good, it made us feel so much better"!! She ended up making 3 cakes for us!! LOL
I just have to share the recipe:

Awesome Blueberry Coffee Cake

1 Cup Sugar

1/2 Cup Veg Oil

1/4 Cup Orange Juice

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
Cinnamon
brown sugar
Preheat oven to 350.
Mix sugar, oil, orange juice and eggs together in a bowl and beat well.

Mix the flour and baking powder, and add to the wet mixture.
Gently stir in the blueberries.

Pour into a greased tube pan.
Mix cinnamon with the brown sugar, and sprinkle generously over top of the cake. (I use about 1 tbsp of cinnamon to 4 tbsp of brown sugar, but its up to your own tastes).
Bake for 50 mins.

First some pictures of my little helper..

Awesome Blueberry Cake!!!

oh, and by the way.. anyone who is coming over tomorrow for playgroup...
can you guess what your having with your coffee?
:)

Check this out.....

The paper did an article on Mom!!!

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/search/article/118084

Here are the girls on their way out for some "Trick or Treating"!
They thought of the costumes themselves....
A washer, a dryer, a box of Tide and the load of laundry, (or static cling). LOL
"The laundry" sat in a laundry basket that was pulled by my DH! Very Cute!

For more great photos check out... loving lydia

I'm very saddened to say that my wonderful Mom, passed away on Wednesday, October 24th, after a long illness with cancer.
My whole family was able to be at her side for days before her death, and she knew we were with her.
She passed with all of us at her side, at 8:33am, she took her last breathe, smiled and peacefully passed. We felt a great calmness within us as she passed,and we knew she was no longer suffering.
She went into pallative care just a week prior, and experienced no pain. Even when she could no longer talk to us, she still managed to make us smile and tease us!
She was a wonderful,giving and caring person!
We will miss her dearly.
http://www.kennebecasisfh.com/Obituaries/31628

The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman. It takes less than a minute to go to their site and click on "donating a mammogram" for free (pink window in the middle).

This doesn't cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate mammogram in exchange for advertising.

Here's the web site! Pass it along to people you know.

The Breast Cancer Web Page

2 years ago October 9th,
our daughter was placed in our arms..
she had just turned 1, 2 days earlier...
Happy Birthday Precious!
Happy Forever Family!

This weeks FFFF at Loving Lydia is a personality picture of your child. That one photo that says it all. Well, it was really hard to choose just one photo, so I made a layout for each child. (yes, I cheated)!!

BUT

if i HAD to choose 1 photo..
this would be it

Fast and furious and going by in a blur!
The wild one at the wheel, her side kick riding shot gun and safety girl in the back making sure seat belts are on and she can talk them out of jail!

We spent a great day at the park last weekend, I think it was our last warm day.
Fall is now in the air, crisp and windy!!
We went apple picking yesterday (pics to come) and I baked pumpkin cookies (today) from Bamboo Sprouts.

This weekend we celebrated the Mid Autumn Moon with a little party of our own. I had 14 children over, we made lanterns, lit them with flashlights, and carried them on dowels, they had hot chocolate while I read the story of Hui Yi and Chang E, the parents had wine, dumplings, rice and spring rolls, later we lit sparklers and paraded to their cars to go home! Whew, what a night. After everyone left, we realized that we forgot to open the mooncakes and have chinese tea! DUH!
So on Tuesday night, with the full moon is sight, we had a few friends over and had mooncakes and tea, and then champagne!

I've linked this page to Loving Lydia for the Friday Foto Challenge!
http://lovinglydia.typepad.com/loving_lydia/

Finger painting!!!
Gotta love it!

I got her to play with a big bowl of dish soap bubbles, to tidy up.

Not too much happening around here... Lily still has a bit of a cold, seems it has left her nose and went to her chest and sinuses. She was very clingy to mommy this past week, but seems to be in a better mood today! Whew!

We had another playgroup here last Thursday with Lily's "China Sister's" My photo's didn't turn out, but Andrea's did. I think I spent most of my time blowing Lily's nose! (It's even in one of the photos) LOL

We had a great time and Lily loves these get togethers. She asks for the girls all the time! I am glad we've decided to meet every week now.

**update**

My wonderful DH just came home with a Beautiful Bottle of Bordeaux !
I'm not sure who I love more right now....

him

or


him

You know your old when....

you bend down to pick up your daughter's book bag and put your back out!!

Yup! That is what I did this morning. How pathetic is that?


then being an idiot...I decided to bathe the dog, bent over in the tub, with Lily helping me!! DUH
So now, my back is in spasms....and I'm not happy!
I am going to either open a bottle of wine or a bottle of Gin, or a bottle of good narcotics! Heather...feel like sharing?? ;)

Well, not a hell of a lot happening here so I am going to follow the lead and spit stuff out..

• not only is my back out, the kids are sick! Sneezing..runny noses...coughing and a huge amount of whining! I was going to post a picture of Lily's runny nose, but she wouldn't let her nose get "runny" enough for a good picture! Lucky you! She will YELL "Nose running" before her nose actually runs! Very particular about NOT having a snotty nose!
  
• The girls had their first full week of school and homework and gymnastic training. They were real troopers, getting up without me nagging. We even had 15 mins to spare every morning before the bus arrived.
  
  
• Not sure if I told ya'll this before, but DH is now working out of town everyday again, gone at 6am, back in the evening around 7:30 - 8pm. He arrives home just in time to kiss the girls goodnight.
  I get the girls up, and off to school, do all the house work, have supper cooked before the kids come home, do homework with them, get them to the gym, drive back home, bathe Lily, clean up from supper, get luches made for the morning and get the kids off to bed! I swear it's like I'm in 1950! He has supper on the table, kids all clean, and a drink ready for him! well..ok, he has to re-heat supper, the kids are clean, but he puts them to bed, and he opens his own beer and puts some laundry away!
  It's a good thing he's good with the handy man stuff....or I would have to get rid of him. (you bunch of dirty minded people.. you thought I meant in bed !! ) tsk tsk! ;)
  Well, ok I did!
  So after having a full week of school etc.. I have to say that I am very proud of myself and of the girls! No break downs!! YEAH! Everybody happy!! YEAH!!
  
  
• now on a completely different topic.. I am thinking of having a Mid-Autumn Moon Festival "party". But I'm not quite sure what to do for it. Make lanterns, eat moon cake and have tea, and read the story of Chang E and Hou Yi, the Moon Goddess and her husband the God of the Sun.
  Any suggestions out there?? I think the party should take place when the moon is in the sky, but for most of us, the child that this holiday pertains to, would be in bed sleeping! LOL I would love to hear your suggestions.
  
  
• oh yeah, here is something else I did this week...Lily and I joined a child care exchange with 2 other mothers. So on Monday, I babysit their child, from 9am to 1pm and in exchange, I get free child care on Tuesday and Wednesday from 9 - 1pm. Cool eh?
  I went for coffee on Tuesday sans enfant and even went out for lunch! (Thanks Lu).
  Now I have to think of something for this Tuesday and Wednesday. Hmm...anyone want to meet for coffee?
  

Hanging out to dry...

How cute is this??

I can't believe that I managed to get (almost) all of her special bears in 1 wash! She didn't even have a fit, they must of smelled really bad! LOL

Impressions Photo Challenge!

This is the 2nd Photo Challenge I've participated in, you can go on over and visit Heather
Her pictures are beautiful, and Kris...oh my...I can only hope to take pictures 1/2 as good as you and I'll be forever happy!
So here goes my attempt:

RED

GREEN

BROWN

BLUE

PINK
(or brown, depending if you look at the mud)

PURPLE
(Lily helping me with purple)

YELLOW
(yes there are 2 butterflies, and yes they are fornicating)

BROWN

BLACK

WHITE

ORANGE
(stole this idea from Heather...I was getting desperate for an orange picture).

OK...OK......
I'm back!! I do have some great beach photos...We were lucky to have great company and great weather. Even though it rained on Friday, we still had a good time, playing Cranium with the kids and drinking wine. Ahhhh that's the life!

So first thing first....
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ISABELLE!!!!

We had Pecan Pie instead of birthday cake. (her favorite, her request)

Frank and the girls looking for "sea stuff"

I'm not sure if you can see the look on lily's face here, but she was so excited, hanging in Frank's arm being carried over the water!

This is my...Put the #$%&$ camera away and stop taking pictures of my ass, you ass.

What?? Are you trying to piss me off??

Chasing the Gulls... (I'm just out of the camera's view)
He is learning.....slowly....

Digging for treasures..