Allyson's "Gotcha Day" #11

Two gotcha days in a row...whew! Allyson's gotcha day was the weekend following Claire's, so we've had our fair share of partying lately! lol
We were the host family for the Hubei girls this year. We were so blessed that all 5 families were able to attend this year, and were thrilled that everyone was healthy! (Last year, one of the dads in our group was hospitalized due to a stroke. Happy to report that he is doing great!)

Allyson just wanted to hang out with her travel group friends, so we didn't plan many activities. The kids swam in the pool, while the parents visited inside (with view of the pool of course). We did take the kids for a short outing for some neon bowling though, before our traditional Chinese dinner. It was such a nice, relaxing weekend!

Our 5 Hubei Beauties...our blessing Miss Allyson in the middle

Swimmin' and bowlin'

Allyson requested a fortune cookie cake. Our friend Dylan did a great job!

(he's only 16 years old)

Claire's "Gotcha Day" #8

We recently celebrated our sweet Claire's 8th "Gotcha Day"! We are so blessed to call this child our daughter!
This year's gotcha day weekend was hosted by Michelle D.'s family in OK. We were so happy that all five NanPing families were able to attend this year! The party began on Friday evening with dinner, and continued on through breakfast on Sunday. There was lots of playing, lots of photos taken, and lots of fun had by all. The group also went to a pottery store where the kids all chose a figurine to paint. The 5 NanPing girls chose cute little puppy dogs...they did a great job on them! I decided to make a memory plate using each of the girls' thumbprints. (picture to come as soon as I pick my plate up this weekend!) Thanks to the D family for hosting our group this year!

The 5 NanPing girls and a couple of siblings

Even the big siblings got in on the action!

Cross Country

Emily and Allyson are both on the school's cross-country team this year. During the team's first time-trial event (2 miles), both girls received medals for placing in the top ten! Way to run girls!

New Violin

When Allyson first began playing the violin in 6th grade, she had to start with a 1/2 size violin since she was so small. The other orchestra students all played full-sized violins. :-(
At the start of school this year, Allyson was THRILLED to have grown enough that she needed a new violin. Sooo, off to the music store we go to look at new musical instruments. After being measured, it was determined that she could graduate to a full-size instrument! We now have one very proud orchestra student! :-)

I didn't realize how small her first violin looked until seeing it next to the full-size unit.

Posing

A couple of newer pics of the kiddos. They weren't really in the mood for posing, but I convinced the kids to stay still long enough to take a few group photos. These aren't the greatest shots ever, but they'll end up in our scrapbooks at some point anyway. :-) Max is "THE" hardest child to get a good photo of...NOT a *poser* at all!

Bring Home Kasidi

Dear Bloggie Readers,
If you have time, I would love it if you would hop on over to Connie's blog (I'll put the button on my sidebar). Connie's family is hosting a wonderful fundraiser to help bring home Kasidi Joy from China.

9 Years Old...Really?

Miss Claire just celebrated her 9th birthday. Hard to believe!
She celebrated with a swim party (surprise, surprise), and a flip-flop cake.

Yes, the blog posts are short and to the point. My way of playing catch-up. I kinda like it this way too!

Go Team!

Emily had her first cheerleading event last week, during a fundraiser for our city's school sports teams. The cheer team performed a routine prior to a jr. high scrimmage game. They all did a wonderful job despite the blazing heat.

Back to School

Our annual tradition of taking a pic with school supplies:

Claire and her stash o' stuff for 4th grade

Emily and Allyson didn't have much of a supply list for jr. high (mainly just a few binders). All of the binders were plain, so the girls wanted to jazz them up a bit. (Photos of Emily are on a different camera.)

I must admit that I enjoy taking the kids shopping for school supplies, so it was a little bit of a downer to not shop for jr. high.

Allyson with her decorated binders

The jr. high school held a "locker day" where kids could decorate their lockers, practice combinations and tour the school. (Again, photos of Emily are on a different camera.)

Muscle Man

Max is still learning to swim (although he has NO fear of the water now). Max didn't love using the little inflatable arm rings, so we decided to give one of the padded swim suits a try. As soon as Max donned the suit, the rest of the family fell into fits of laughter. He looked like a mini "Arnold" with his buffed up muscles. :-) Here's our little muscle man showing off...

Silly Bands

Silly bands, silly bandz, crazy bandz...whatever the name, they are the latest "thing" in Claire's world! Claire is obsessed with these little rubber bands. She has around 200 of the bands in all shapes, sizes, and colors. I walked into the family room one day and saw that she had spread out some of her collection, so I decided to snap a pic. Just wish I was the person who had invented these!

She Sews!

In an effort to keep Claire away from the tv screen and be more productive with her time during the summer, I decided to teach her to sew. Her first project is a quilt! We went to the quilt store and Claire spent a good bit of time choosing just the right fabrics (greens, pinks & oranges). I bought a smaller sewing machine that has a speed limit on the foot pedal, and just let her go. She has been doing great, and hopes to have her quilt finished soon. (I'll post pics of her project when completed.)

Natalie & Leah Come to Visit

We were blessed to have two of the girls from Emily's travel group visit us this month. Emily and Natalie decided to make cookies one afternoon using a rainbow sugar cookie mix. It was such fun seeing the designs they came up with...and tasty too. The "Toms" cookie was made for their friend Leah, who arrived later (not sure why I don't have pics of her though).

*Edited* - found a pic of all 3 girls!

All the kiddos by the restaurant door

I've been MIA due to being incredibly BUSY. As usual, I'm going to attempt to catch-up on our bloggie happenings, but I'm sure I won't remember everything. :-)
During youth camp, I volunteered to care for a friends daughter so the friend could chaperone our youth group. This was all arranged "last minute" since the friend's babysitter was suddenly hospitalized.
As payment for taking over her duties, the babysitter insisted on taking us out for lunch one Sunday. We were treated to a lovely meal at Shogun, complete with our own entertaining chef. The kids loved the show and the food was delicious.

Youth Camp

Emily returned on Friday from church youth camp. In her words, camp week was "amazing" and "something we'll never forget". She took over 100 photos (good girl...trained her right!), and I'm posting some here. We heard that Chris Tomlin was performing during the evening worship services at camp, so we decided to surprise Emily with...our family! lol We drove to Branson on Thursday and first did a bit of shopping at the outlet mall. We hit a few good sales and made quite a haul for back-to-school. Randy had to practically drag me out of the Coach store (but in my defense, they *did* have a 20% off sale! LOL). Yeah, I know that isn't much of a discount in that store so I ended up being practical, put the purses down and walked out empty handed. :-) In the evening, I dropped Randy and Allyson off near the convention center so they could attend the camp worship service. The other two kiddos and I headed out for dinner and then back to the hotel and just vegged for awhile (with blizzards from DQ!). On Friday, we hit a couple more stores and then enjoyed a quick lunch @ Red Lobster before heading home (in time to meet the youth group buses). It was a quickie trip, but was still nice to get away for awhile.

The girls got matching airbrush tattoos! :-)

One way to remember the bible verses

Tie Dye

Here's the pic of the kids and their tie-dyed shirts. We were all pleasantly surprised that they turned out so well. This was such a fun and easy project, and we plan to make more shirts soon using other techniques.

Swim Parties R Us

Two more swim parties last week! Emily hosted five friends from school on Tuesday. The girls all seemed to have a great time. I was again honored to be able to photograph them (anyone with teenagers knows they aren't always willing subjects). ;-) When I began uploading pics, I had more than 50 pictures of them! Whew! I'm only posting a couple here though. ;-)

**+++**

On Thursday, we had several girls from the church youth group over, as well as a younger sibling. The youth group is getting ready for camp, so the girls decided to make matching tie-dye shirts. Having never done tie-dye before, I watched a YouTube video and we then set out to make swirly shirts. I think they all turned out great, and the girls will look cute in them! (photos to come later since Emily has them on her camera).

Hard work calls for more swimming, so that's where everyone ended up while they waited for the dye to "set".

Max's Gotcha Gifts

Just realized I missed posting the photo of Max and his gotcha day gifts on an earlier post.

One of the other moms made a super cute clipboard with a photo of the travel group. I made an ABC album modeled after one I saw on eBay, but with my own twist on it. I gave a set of the ABC transparencies to the other families so they can make a book for their kiddos. Max also received a couple of cute t-shirts, some fun toys, and an Asian ornament.

Allyson's 12th Birthday!

Our sweet Allyson celebrated her 12th birthday last week. As usual, her birthday fell during China Camp so we allowed her to choose a restaurant for a birthday dinner after camp. Her choice: The Cheesecake Factory. Smart girl. :-) She ordered pasta (no surprise), and a snickers cheesecake. Yummy!

Allyson also had a swim birthday party at home the day before we left for camp, and invited a few friends over. She received some really nice gifts from her friends, but the one thing she was truly hoping for came from mom and dad...a cell phone!! She also received a tiger phone case that she wanted. Apparently, she was the last child in the area to have a cell phone (or at least that is what has been reported). LOL

We ordered a flip-flop cake from a friend at church, but things don't always go as planned. Just hours before the party, we received a call stating that the friend was on his way to the ER with a collapsed lung. (We are happy to report that he is better now!)

The party must go on, so I headed to Wal-Mart and picked up a pre-decorated cake. It was cute and "girly" and tasted good. Claire was sad that Allyson didn't get the cake she wanted, so she begged to put some trick candles on the cake...sweet sister! lol I was so proud of Allyson for having a great attitude about the whole situation. She later told us it was "the best birthday ever"! :-)