Here are just some of the items Angela and I are bringing to China with us!!

Lots of warm sleepers, cloth diapers, nursing pillows and jumpers!

6 more days and we're off!!!

Happy Valentine's Day

A blog post is WAYYY OVERDUE!

SOoooo sorry!!!

Wow.. time has flown by, and I really need to catch up.

where to start...

CHRISTMAS!
We had a wonderful christmas, we were able to spend it at home, and my dad came up to stay with us!
It seems all we did was eat, eat, drink wine and then eat some more!!

 We headed out and choose our "perfect" christmas tree!  As usual Frank let the girls drive the truck around!!

Getting ready for x-mas eve mass.   Frank still has yet to learn how to tie a tie!!

My most recent news is that I'm heading back to China, March 1st for 13 days!!!
I'll be going with another adoptive mom, Angela, Moya, Cathy and Ian (our camera guy)
Cathy is Gracie's mom, and I'm looking forward to meeting her.  We wil fixing up Gracie's Room First Hugs Program, replacing the matts, building shelving and fixing the window and heaters. (and whatever else that needs to be done)
We had a fundraiser today and raised 400$.

 Angela made an amazing Dragon Cake that was the hit of the fundraiser!!

 Shan Resturant donated dumplings, and pork on a stick, and Classic Touch donated all the tea!

Gracie’s Room is Growing and we need your help!

Due to delays in government funding and construction, XinXiang is not due to move into the new orphanage until October 2012.  

Until then we would like to make the current room as bright, colourful and warm as possible - just as you would want your own child’s nursery to be. We want Gracie’s Room to be a room that stimulates the children’s senses for proper development, a room where they can lie on their bellies on a soft, clean mat, exercising and developing their muscles, a room where they are discovering sights and sounds with nursery rhymes and colourful walls, all the while having a figure encouraging, loving them and helping them to grow!

The current Gracie’s Room is in desperate need of upgrades.  No improvements were put into this existing room as we were expecting to be in the new facility by October 2011.  We instead focused on staffing and immediate needs of the children.

As the transition is now delayed by a full year, we need to double our fund-raising efforts to maintain the childcare and to make improvements to the existing room.

To accomplish this Dianjiang Kids International is launching our biggest fund-raising event ever:

Growing Gracie’s Room

Gracie’s Room now has a wish list on Amazon.com

Vitamins, cleft lip/cleft palate bottles, sippy cups, toys and wall decals are just some of the items listed.  

Donations of baby quilts, hats, socks and mittens have already been offered!

Monetary donations will be used to replace the existing foam matts, repair broken windows and winterize the room.

Investments in growing the existing Gracie’s Room will be able to be moved over to the new building in 2012.

Please visit our link, do a little shopping and remember the children.

www.amazon.com/ 

Click on wishes and then type in Gracie’s Room. 

Or click on:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/registry.html?ie=UTF8&type=wishlist&id=1KWZVU5KMYKQK

Monetary donations may be made through our website at 

http://www.dianjiangkids.org/#!__donations

All items will be hand delivered to Gracie’s Room in March, 2012 by members of Dianjiang Kids board.

Thank you for all your support!

HALLOWEEN!

HALLOWEEN

Lily's Birthday Cake

 It's Lily's birthday today!  7 years old!  Man....where did the time go....

She is such a character.  She has recently starting playing with Bratz dolls and wearing dressing and getting her hair done.
For the past 3 years, it has been all about Star Wars and Droids, and light sabers, and knights and swords!!
sigh...
So today for her birthday cake she has asked for a princess cake, you know the one I mean.. You bake a big bowl cake, and stick a barbie in it, throw some frosting on it and voila Princess Cake.... easy peezy and cheap right???  Heck how much can a box of cake mix and a Barbie cost?  12$ at the most??

 Yeah right...

I wanted my "barbie" to have more of an Asian look to her..so I started to search for a Mulan doll...
After walking from one end of the mall to the other, (god forbid they put the toy store and the large deptmaent store next to each other)  I came up empty handed, and had wicked sore feet!
So back to the other end of the mall to look for any doll that doesn't have blonde hair and blue eyes! sigh..
Why did I decide to wear my high heel fancy boots today?
oh yeah... they make me look tall...
I don't look hot but I do look 2 inches taller and that makes me smile, and I can see over the Starbucks counter when I order my coffee!  That is worth the blisters.

After my $6.00 coffee fix, I managed to find something...that almost could pass for Asian.. at least it has dark hair!
I'm not a huge Barbie fan, my older daughters were never into that stuff so I really never paid attention to the price of them!

HOLY EXPENSIVE BATMAN!!
Geezz... 15$ later

So I cook up my upside down bowl cake for her dress, only to find out that the "usual" barbies used for these cakes actually have no LEGS!!  WHAT??

I ended up carving out a honking hole down the centre to fit my nice new expensive non-legless Barbie, using a fluted Champagne glass.

It is now 10 mins before supper and I need to get this cake done pronto!  I throw some store bought frosting, toss some sparkles at it and some gummies.... VOLIA!!  The dress is done is less than 5 mins!

I wrapped the doll in plastic wrap. (It looks like she is on a body wrap weight loss program!) and shoved her into the cake!  Only for her to fall right through... Those Barbies, legless or not, are pretty skinny!
Quick thinking in Abigail's part and we came up with this:

She's standing on a shot glass!!  

We served her on the a foil lined tray that was sprinkled with sparkles!  

Lily LOVED her! 

The cost??

$111.00

Here's the breakdown:

Doll: $15.00

Coffee: $6.00

Cake mix and frosting: $5.00

New top I found while looking for perfect Barbie: $25.00

Champagne (can't use a champagne glass without filling it.. gasp.. faux pas..) $30.00

Tequila (can't use a shot glass without filling it.. besides by this point I needed the drink) $30.00

Was it worth it???  

YOU TELL ME!

Plum Cake = YUM

This weekend I needed a quick recipe to use up the plums from our tree in the backyard.
I searched the web and came across this website:
Got No Milk and I made the Plum Cake.  WOW!  It was so good, and so easy to make!
Of course I didn't take any pictures, I was dealing with Lily and her strep throat, roast beef in the oven and some yorkshire puddings that decided not to work, and washing the kitchen floor!  All before our company arrived! whew!
I can't wait to really search the website for more recipes!  I'm tired of coming up with dairy free things for Frank and I'm starting to make the same things over and over again.  It's getting boring!
I'm pretty excited to find this site.

Front of the house is DONE!

We'll get to the sides next year..  too cold to paint now!

Check out the FAT Racoon that was eating our grapes last night!

We had been wondering what was breaking our trellis!

Finally First Day of School Pictures!!
but...the bus was coming and the the kids were rushing out of the yard, and I when I called them back into the yard to take thier pictures, in my house coat with my bedhead hair, they were NONE TOO IMPRESSED!