Girl Scout Meet & Greet

 We had a meet and greet today for Girl Scouts.  Kenzie is going to be a Daisy Girl Scout this year and I am going to be a Troop Leader.  We have 16 girls in our troop and 4 leaders.  It's going to be a fun year!

 Dancing!

and having cake!  

We got to meet all but one of the girls in our troop today!

We can't wait to start our meetings!

International Day of Peace!

 Today was International Day of Peace.  So the kids got to wear clothes from their home countries to school today.

 My All-American girls!

 Kenzie & Mr.  E (the principal) 

 Yu-Dam, Kenzie, Maggie & Adithi

 "I am from America. In America I like to go to the beach and to the baseball game"

 Ms. McIsaac's class!

 Singing a song about peace!  It was very cute!

Kenzie with her "Peace Dove"

It was a lot of fun to celebrate how diverse her school is and to get to see where all the kids are from.  Her school has kids from 35 different countries.  

Our little gymnasts!

The girls have been doing gymnastics for a couple weeks now and they love it!  They finally got their uniforms this week!  They look so cute I had to share!

Fu Xing Park

 We walked to Fu Xing Park on Saturday September 8th to check it out.

 They had a pretty garden

 Sibling love!

 They also had a few rides at the park, so Gary took the girls while Ben & I watched!

 Ben having a snack!

We had a fun time at the park.  We stopped and got dinner at The Funky Chicken,  before we took the long walk home.  It was a fun day!

Happy 1st Birthday Benjamin!

 Ben turned 1 today!  It was very hard to get his picture since it is rare that he stills still anymore!  He is crawling all over and can pull himself up on everything.  He likes to walk along the furniture and holding someones hand, I don't think it will be long before he tries it on his own!

 Ben's favorite word right now is "go"!  Anytime someone is leaving he crawls toward the door saying "go, go"

 I thought this picture was funny!

 He is such a happy little boy!  He loves when people try to "get" him!

 Ben liked when we sang "Happy Birthday" to him in English & Mandarin!

 Hannah & I made cupcakes for Ben!  Even though he really didn't eat it, he just squished it!

 "Uh oh" that is what he said as he dropped the cupcake on the floor!

 We opened presents the next morning!  Ben actually ripped the presents open himself, until he got distracted by what was inside!

Ben had a great day!  I still can't believe he is already 1!  That year flew by!

1st day of Kindergarten

 Today was Kenzie's first day of Kindergarten.  She is getting so big, I still can't believe she is in Kindergarten already!  She was so excited for her first day!

 I got this idea off of Pinterest.  Here is how she writes her name.

 She is going to SCIS again this year.  

Her teacher this year is Ms. McIsaac and her Mandarin teacher is Ms. Albee.

Ms. McIsaac is from Michigan too, so Kenzie was pretty excited about that!  She is also a huge Tigers fan!

This is going to be a great year, can't wait to see how she grows and see how much she learns!

Back in China

We got back to China on Friday August 10, 2012.  I had to bring them back all by myself.  4 over sized suitcases, 1 over sized box, a double stroller, 3 carry on bags and 3 kids!  It went surprisingly good!  The kids slept most of the time.  I was able to get through security with no problem, with the help of a very nice security guard.  Then was able to get onto the plane with no problems, was offered help from a very nice lady that was also traveling alone with her 2 young kids.  The flight was long, but not too bad!  The only problem I had was when we got there and had to get our bags.  I couldn't find a cart, so I got all the bags off and was just kindof looking around like great now what am I going to do, when the same nice lady from the plane walked up and asked if she could help!  So she watched to kids while I searched for a cart!  Then we took the 3 carts, 1 stroller and 5 kids and we able to get out of there!  Luckily our husbands and drivers were waiting right there when we walked out the door!  I am so glad that she was there, it just proves that there are still good people out there willing to help!  We are still trying to get back on schedule with our sleep, but I think we are almost there!  

This was Ben at dinner on Saturday!  Poor baby fell asleep eating!