The Crazy Sock Sisters

 I love having all the kids home from school.  I relish everyday that we get to sleep late.  I love every game they make up and play together.  And, one of my true loves is seeing what the girls put together to wear.  My younger girls definitely have the Asian since of style, and it is so cute.  Sometimes, they can drag Noelle into it, so I have to take that opportunity to capture the spunky fun.

My sweet Hope.  She is so exotically beautiful.  I have Chinese people come out of the woodwork to talk to me about her.  They all want to know where she is from because she is so unusual, and what they consider to be an exotic beauty.  They want to touch her and stare at her eyes.  I have had tons of Chinese people tell me that she needs to go back to China and model.  They are always shocked that she was an orphan up until an year ago.  Now granted we do know that she was the model child for the orphanage as they put her in front of the camera anytime a newspaper reporter showed up, we just thought it was because she always smiled.  But now we know, that she was considered to be beautiful...after all, they all called her NaNa which means "beautiful."

LeeLee on the other hand captures the hearts of the Americans.  There is something about her that attracts the non Asian population.  She also knows how to reel people in with her spunky full of life personality.  We had a perfect example of the difference between the two girls at Lifeline's reunion.  Families who had adopted or were adopting kept coming up to me to tell me how beautiful LeeLee was. Several commented that when they dream of their daughter's face at night, they often dream of their child looking just like LeeLee.  At this reunion though, there were about 15 employees of China's Adoption Offices, one by one they each spotted Hope and came to touch her face, and ask lots of questions about her and where she was from.  LeeLee just kinda looked up with the what about me look, but they couldn't take their eyes off of Hope.  To me, they are both beautiful in their own special way.

And speaking of beauty....Noelle just radiates beauty.  Her beauty is such a natural peaceful beauty that comes from her heart and radiates to the outside.  She is such a blessing and such a patient and loving big sister.  She loves having sisters, and watching them do their music routines today makes me realize that I really missed out by not having a sister.  I hope the love that these three girls have for each other remains for a lifetime....it would make this momma's heart happy.

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Oh yes, I was that mother....I had the kids sleep in the basement, which is their preferred place to sleep.  I put crepe paper all over the door and told them that if anyone came up before normal wake up time, then I would personally go to their pile and take away a gift.  Three of the kids were really just casualties of LeeLee's previous behavior.  Since she woke us up at 1 a.m. and never went back to sleep last year, I decided drastic measures were in order.  It worked!  At 6 a.m., I heard a knock at the top of the stairs.  I was able to reply, "I'm coming, I have to go to the bathroom."  Then "I'm coming, I have to let the dogs out."  Then, "I'm coming, I need to get my camera ready" Then finally, "Hold on, let me see if Santa even decided to stop at our house."  Once I had confirmed that he had indeed made a stop, they ran through to the living room.....the best .89 cents I ever spent!

 Each child was tickled with what they got.  We don't do a big Christmas around here, because it just isn't really what I want it to be about, but it is nice to see the Christmas morning smiles.

Even Pippa had a present wrapped under the tree.  Noelle was blessed with a Kindle from Santa.  She is such an amazing reader, and I often can't get her to the library often enough....with the Kindle Santa gave her, she will be able to purchase books, and get them for the Kindle on loan from our library.  This excites me because she can do it all from here.

LeeLee loved that Santa sent her exactly what she asked for.  All she wanted was an elf you could touch.  She was thrilled to have gotten this sweet elf.  She loves Tina.

Hope wanted a dancing penguin, and she really does love this thing.  They have all had fun making up dance routines with the penguin.  It really warms my heart just for her to be here for Christmas morning. I am so happy that she gets to be a part of all the fun.  My heart every Christmas morning breaks for the thousands of children who are like Hope waiting desperately for the love of a family.  We had a special treat when we walked into church.  Our Chinese brothers and sisters got baptized on Christmas morning, as one of them started crying when she explained that yes, she believed in Jesus, my tears became uncontrollable.  Oh how I love China, how I love the people there, and oh how my heart aches for the children....the forgotten ones.  Happy Birthday Jesus...in our house I hope that we give you what you really want for Christmas, which is simply just us!

Sleepover Peace Party

I don't exactly know where my brain was when I told Noelle that I would throw her a slumber party of her closest friends.  I told her that she could invite four friends and that I would throw her a really cool peace party.  She invited a party hardy bunch, so we had lots of fun and a full night.  Since Paul was gone, I didn't get as many pictures of all the activities, but we stayed busy.  They painted peace paintings.  Then they made their own oreo cakesters similar to the snowmen, but with peace signs.  Then we had a hot chocolate bar and ice cream cake.

 Once we cleaned up from that, the girls made lip gloss...this was super fun!  Then we did fingernails.  We did a water marbling technique that makes the nails look tie dyed.  All toenails were then painted with a sparkly OPI color.  They were all so cute.  Noelle had picked out Mr. Popper's Penguins, so we all settled in to watch that.  Finally at 2 a.m. all was quiet in the house.

But only for four hours.  They were all up and ready for french toast early in the morning.  I will think long and hard before I agree to another slumber party.....but I do think she is worth it!

My Baby is 11!

Noelle wanted to eat catfish for her birthday, she we grabbed her best friend, her sister, and Tita, and headed to Moe's Original Barbecue downtown.  Noelle loved it, which thrilled me since I picked it.  I knew they had catfish, and I was just hoping she would like it.

They let her use a Sharpie marker and write on the tree in the middle of the restaurant.  They all wrote their names.

I can't believe she is 11.  She is such a blessing to me.  She is always my big helper, and she actually enjoys helping out around the house with the girls.  She often calls herself the good one, because she knows that she is my easiest child to parent.  However, I am fearing the emotional teen years.

And no, she doesn't look like me.  She looks JUST LIKE HER DADDY.  Unfortunately he had to be out of town, and missed her birthday.  Poor Hunter was sick, so he missed out too.

She opened up her presents from Tita there, and then wore her robe.  I want one of those, it is cute!  Happy Birthday precious girl.  I am proud to be your momma!

Making Birthday Snowmen

Noelle loves Pinterest almost as much as I do.  She wanted to make something different for her birthday, so we settled on covering oreo cakesters in white chocolate and adding embellishments to turn them into snowmen.

They were fun to make.  She was so proud of them and excited about taking them to school the next day to share with her friends.

Her friends loved them.  They were a big hit, so we decided to make a station at her birthday party where her sweet guests would make their own.

Oh Christmas Tree!

 We ventured out to a new Christmas tree farm this year since the one we have visited in previous years closed.  So, we headed out, in the search of the perfect tree.  I drove everyone crazy wanting to look at every tree before we picked the perfect one.  We always get an imperfect tree.  You know, the ones with two trunks, and the one's that lean, or the ones that are missing large chunks of limbs.  There is just something about them that says, pick me, pick me.  We have a great stand, so we can overcome most problems so that the ugly duckling can also be a Christmas tree.  We found our perfect ugly duckling.  I love how everyone is standing around watching Hunter cut it down.

 Paul finally jumped in and helped him at the end.

Then the four of them dragged the tree to the car.  It did turn out to be such a beautiful tree all decorated.

After dropping the tree off at home, we ran to Petco to hunt down Santa for a contest.  Unfortunately, we didn't win, but we did get lots of samples and toys for the dogs.  We love Petco......for the record, Annie didn't like it to much.  It made her a bit nervous, but Rags and Pippa felt fight at home.