No Ordinary Family

Chloe has been in Gym since may and she loves it.  Right now it is a parent and me class and Jim and I take turns participating with her.  She is actually going really well.  The other night we were able to invite the Chloe's grandparents to come watch her show off.  The audience made all the other kids shy but Chloe turned into a show off, she didn't exactly do the routine but it was fun.

We had plans of spending our Chinese New Year with our local Chinese Adoption group at a local restaurant but instead we stayed home and indoors. This is why!   The get-together was canceled and we hope to be able to make in a few weeks. So instead of dressing in our Chinese silks to go play with some friends we dressed in Elmo and watched a little Winnie the Pooh, Chloe's newest love.   We also made Dragon cookies (for the year of the dragon) for our friends at daycare.  I think we forgot to take a picture of the finished product but we used a cat cookie cutter to make a dragon face and Daddy decorated each one differently.  They turned out really neat. Jim did some great posts with pictures from our trip to China last year.  If you don't follow his blog you might want to go over and take a look.  I am so happy to have had a personal photographer on that trip :)   planetruth

 Last year on a snowy day in Hunan. This year on a snowy day in Washington

One year ago today/tomorrow (the time change always confuses me) we were getting ready to be introduced to our daughter for the first time.  She had no idea what was going on.  She rode a train with a caregiver (not her normal nanny) and the director of her orphanage for the first time.  The changes in her little life were just beginning, as were the changes in ours.  It was a rough 2 weeks in China, getting to know each other but we survived and started our life together as a family of 3.  Our internet connection in Changsha was horrible so we didn't post many pictures so many of these may not have been on the blog previously. Nerves and excitement show more on my face than I ever knew.  Walking down the hall to meet Chloe! Our first moments. First family picture. And just like that we are back in our hotel room, suddenly a family of 3. Just a glimpse of the Joy that we will see again but not for weeks. Thank you Angie and ...

China is this place you should never visit unless you have a part of your heart that you do not mind filling up with whole other culture.  I miss China!  There are parts of the trip that I don't miss ie. screaming baby and sleepless nights on rock hard beds, but I still miss China so bad.  I want to take Chloe back several times! China is not a perfect country but who are we kidding have you seen the state of the nation lately if you think we are perfect you are living in a fantasy world.  I just love China, the people were great, the food was mostly great, and I hope to go back as soon as we can! I have been looking back at pictures all this week and remembering.  I can't believe it has been a year, can you?  I am sitting her blogging while this awesome little girl sits and plays with mister potato head and is laughing at the funny faces she is making.  And last year I was thousands of miles away in a country that was completely foreign...

One year ago Jim and I were packing to go to China, we are also coming up on Chinese New Year so I thought I would try some new recipes.  While in China we had some pork dumplings that were AMAZING! They had soup in them and I had them every chance I got.  I have been craving them ever since and I have not seen them anywhere.  So a year later the light  bulb goes off and I googled pork soup dumplings and this is what I find,  Steamy Kitchen !  Perfect but wait that is a lot to attempt in one dish!  So I thought I would start at the end and work my way to the soup dumplings, my biggest concern was the dough.  I have never done dough from scratch before and I was a bit intimidated.  So I thought before the big, yummy, soup dumplings which are apparently called Xiao Long Bao, I would use some egg roll filling that we had left over and just try the dough.   We didn't have a bamboo steamer so off the the kitchen store we went.  Not to sk...

I finally got Chloe to stay in one place while I caught her on video!  I put her in her crib!  I know, right?  I am a total genius!  She has learned the ABC song and you might need to speak Chloe to understand her completely but we think she has come along way.  This was her talking about 7 months ago! Love this kid she is the greatest! Can't wait to see what 2012 brings.

How the heck did that happen?  We had a busy but fun Christmas season, blogging has not been a priority but I will try to post a few pictures later but here is a couple to hold you over. We took Chloe to Red Robin this weekend for lunch and she was waiting for her "burbur and fies" She actually had chicken and fries because even though she asks for burburs she does not really like them. Here she is playing with her new Potato Head mustache.  She keeps us amused. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!