Halloween activities
we did lots of halloween stuff this year. It seems that fall activities are everywhere! One afternoon we dropped by the little event being put on by the local Henry's market. They had crafts, G was in heaven. Give the kid some markers, glue, paint and scissors and she is one happy camper.






















This is G's creation. We named him Jack.















We also went to the Irvine Regional Park pumpkin patch. Its really fun! G always enjoys it because she loves the train.





























































































G with her pumpkin of choice. I'm not sure what was so appealing about this particular gourd but she definitely wanted this one.












































We were fortunate to be invited to a halloween party given by Ryan's mom, Michelle. It was so cute! Party games, snacks, and a pinata! G loves pinatas. Its a good thing there were some other kids there to break it open though because if everyone had to depend on G's strength to get it done, it would never happen. She walks up and just barely taps the pinata with the stick. Hardly a tap can be heard. I think she thinks she's really whacking it too. So funny. She is really good at picking up the candy that falls. She's actually pretty quick at that part.

The group shot. G was in a snit... can you tell??

Even chick fil a had a little halloween thing. Here's G painting a pumpkin. To me it just looked like some slapped on paint but G was very, very deliberate. Check out that look of complete concentration.

There was a costume contest too. Can you believe that the girl in the Queen of Hearts costume standing next to G didn't win???

I'm not sure what's up with this expression but its so funny!

G getting ready to get her trick or treat on. She did so well this year. We'd been practicing the process a bit... knock, knock. "Trick or treat" in a big voice. Open bag and accept treat. "Thank you" In practice, she had it down.

She was a bit tentative at the first house but once she realized that the candy thing really did work out... she was hooked!!! She was great about using her big voice, always remembered her thank you's and then would go running off to the next house saying "let's do another one!!!" Adorable!

After we did the 12 or so houses on our street, we came back home and G passed out treats to the kids who came to the door. I'm not sure which part she enjoyed more. Every time the doorbell rang she'd jump up and say "goodness gracious gosh. kids!" Then she'd pop a treat into each bag. She seemed to take this job very seriously making sure that each kid received exactly one treat.

Tutu two year old continues...
I've been super lazy about posting. I have excellent intentions then, inevitably, fall asleep or do something else. We've been super busy with outings practically every weekend day. And, even though my purse camera is broken I've been doing a pretty good job taking pix.

Someone asked me the other day if I stopped doing the tutu pix. Uh, no. I just haven't posted them. So here's Sept and Oct. Sept was supposed to be a second attempt at Daddy and Georgie pix but Bobby ended up having to work at the last minute and my super great coupon was expiring so it ended up being G solo. Oct is our Halloween pic. As you can see we got another wearing out of our Cinderella princess outfit from WDW so that made me super happy! Georgie has become quite cooperative for pix. She even allows the photog to pose her a bit without freaking out from someone touching her or getting into her personal bubble. My little girl is growing up (anyone have any ideas on how to stop that process?) Just kidding. I know she has to get bigger. I just wish I could figure out a way to slow it down.

These are the september pix. I know, not a true tutu, just a bit of tulle. But, it will have to do.

I absolutely adore the first Cinderella photo. Truly, could she be any more beautiful???

Theater season has begun!

My first play this year was one of my absolute fav's, Phantom of the Opera!! I scored some awesome 10th row center seats at the Pantages and ended up going with my friend Candy. She found us an oh so Hollywood italian place to catch a pre play meal... scrumptious but pricey. The menu was all in italian! good thing the server was super helpful or we may have just ended up with bread :-) The food was great, the play was fantastic as always and the company was the best! We finished up the night with late night chocolate fondue in Pasadena. So so fun!

So I decided to give the children's theater in our town a try. G's young obviously but she has developed a pretty good attention span for movies and I thought might be ready for live theater. The local theater is really nice and the tix are super cheap so I figured even if it didn't work out --which I was pretty sure it would --we could just leave.
Georgiana's first play was Lily's Purple Plastic Purse and she loved it! She paid attention to the story and seemed pretty into it. There was one slightly scary part --not really but anything even remotely scary is scary for G -- but I just held her hand and told her it would be OK and then it was. After the play a few of the characters come out so they can take pix with the kids. Sadly, my purse camera is broken and I hadn't thought to bring my big camera so no pix :-( memories will just have to be good enough for this one I guess. We have tix for another play in the children's series in a few mos. Yeah, at only 33 mos G is officially a patron of the arts!

Princess Birthday Party
G attended the birthday party of one of the girls in our Happy Mommys china IA group this weekend. It was a princess party. My girl loves princesses so she was excited to go. I was happy because we got to get another wearing out of our WDW princess outfits!!!

The birthday girl Gracie turned 4. There was a tea party with tea (strawberry lemonade), super cute PB&J sandwiches cut into crown shapes, cheese slices, and chocolate dipped strawberries! G was in hog heaven cuz she loves to eat.

This is Gracie's mom, Tanya, pouring the "tea" for each little princess Georgie love, love, loves cheese!

Posing with Cindy. Poor G was looking right into the sun

At one point, Cinderella poured a little glitter in the kids' hands and told them it was magic dust. G was very concerned about losing hers. She kept looking at it to make sure it was still there and OK. Mean mommy admission: I never let G have frosting. I'm hoping to avoid her getting a worse sweet tooth than she already has so I've always scraped it off. This time, I didn't scrape. I just let her have at it. Georgie really enjoyed her cupcake!!!

Frosting face!

Happy Birthday Gracie!!!

Disney on Ice: Mickey's Magical Journey
To keep the Disney thing going... this past Sunday we went to another one of the Disney ice shows. I enjoyed this one more than the last for some reason. G liked it because she got to get a souvenir. We don't usually buy things when we go to these shows because its usually incredibly overpriced and the entertainment value of what they have available is pretty minimal. But they were having a promotion that included a mickey/minnie camera with each purchase. G was thrilled when we got to go up to the junk counter ... ahem souvenier table... and get something. She watched a great portion of the show through the lens of the disposable camera and every once in awhile snapped a picture of the ground or my shoes or whatever. Too funny! She loves to copy mommy and mommy takes lots of pix so she's fascinated by photography. So much so that I've been thinking about getting her a toddler friendly camera for christmas. Anyway... here's my one and only somewhat decent pic of G at the ice show. She's wearing one of her WDW outfits. Yeah!

Beauty and the Beast
is my all time favorite Disney movie. I've always been a Belle fan. And, I know its silly, but I get a little tear in my eye every time Beast presents Belle with the library. I first saw the movie about 19 yrs ago. I know because it happened to be Brett's very first movie seen in a theater. Since then I've seen it dozens of times and have most of the songs memorized! They were doing a special showing at El Capitan for the release of the new DVD package. (I'm not sure if they're showing it at other theaters or not??) Anyway, I thought it would be fun to take Georgie. This one was really fun because it was a sing along... all the songs included the lyrics sort of subtitled on the bottom of the screen and the audience was encouraged to sing. Of course, most of the kids in the audience were too little to really sing along but the moms, we were into it! So fun!

They had a breakfast with Belle at the soda fountain next door before the movie... cute! G and Bobby waiting to go in to breakfast. Each table had a rose. G loved it!

G's not quite tall enought to turn the handle of the penny smashers by herself... she loves to smash pennies though. What did they serve for breakfast? Mickey Mouse shaped waffles, of course!

This is G explaining to Belle that they'd met before, at WDW. Belle replied "ah yes, its lovely to see you again, princess"G loves princesses!

"When's the movie going to start???"

G loved wearing her princess dress! She also loves to look at pictures of herself. As I was posting this one she pointed and said "oooh, adorable!" Seriously, the kid cracks me up!

Two years ago... yesterday
was the first time we saw G's face. Referral day was September 29, 2008. Its funny because that day was so filled with emotion, at the time, it seemed like a blur. But now I remember it very clearly.

I went to work that morning not knowing for sure if our call would come that day or not. When I realized it was happening I rushed through my meeting and drove as quickly as possible back to my office to drop some things off. My intention was to go home and wait for the call. I'd only made it to my car when my cell rang, it was my agency. A few moments later I heard the words I'd been waiting years for... "you have a daughter" that's when I started to cry. They told me they'd email the pix and then I called Bobby and drove home. He still says he can't believe that I waited for him to get home before opening the email.

Seeing Georgie's picture for the first time was fantastic but so odd. Ta duh!!! this is your daughter. I know some people don't but I felt an immediate connection to her. If possible I would have jumped on a plane and flown to her that day. I wanted so badly to hold her and care for her. That day would come about 10 weeks later.

9/29/08... one of my all time best days EVER!

Referral pic, Georgiana about 7 mos old:
Georgiana today, 2 yrs, 9 mos:

CRUISE RECAP AND A HUGE SURPRISE
We had dinner in the dining room each night. It was a really nice way to come together at the end of the day and so enjoyable. We had a super nice waiter and asst waiter who fawned all over G and were so nice to her. The maitre d sang Frank Sinatra songs each night and the waiters would dance on the tables and sing... it was fun! The food was really good too.

They had a kids' menu with the typical kid fare ie chicken nuggets and pizza but I just couldn't stand the thought of feeding G stuff like that with all the super yummy things that were available. I did give her a choice but she always chose an adult meal, usually shrimp. That kid loves shrimp! Our waiters were always pretty surprised at how much food G would eat, usually about half an adult plate plus milk and always cookies for dessert.

G wanted me to take pix of her food one night. She's so funny!
G with our assistant waiter, Webert, (yes, that's spelled right) from Haiti. He was funny and very energetic. We'd sometimes see him at breakfast too and he's always say to Georgie "cookies?? cookies??" and G would laugh and laugh.
G with our head waiter, Babelito from the Phillipines. He was the exact opposite of Webert, calm and very polite. He made G origami animals each evening. G actually tried making her own a few times and she'd call them houses. They were actually pretty good attempts, symmetrically folded. I wish I'd taken a picture.

Our ship held about 2400 passengers so probably like 600-800 families/groups. Interestingly enough, there seemed to be 3 China IA families including ours. One family I never met but the other family I saw a few times. One evening after dinner I got the courage to ask the man if the little girl was his daughter and if she'd been born in China. He seemed slightly leery until I told him I had a daughter from China too. We ended up agreeing to meet for breakfast on our at sea day. What a nice family! Of course conversation turned to what province our kids were from... both Jiangxi... then I asked which SWI and when they replied Zhangshu I thought my mouth was going to fall open. That's where G was as well! Zhangshu is a very small SWI and only completes about 20 adoptions a year, worldwide. The chances that we would find ourselves on the same ship was completely shocking to me. What a small world. In fact, I'd actually talked online with the mom a time or two through our SWI yahoo group. Crazy.

Here's a pic of Jose and Brenda with their beautiful Mary Rose. Just like us, Jose and Brenda have two older sons. We had lots in common.

G and Mary Rose were actually in Zhangshu together for about a monthG was very entertaining to the other passengers. You could pretty much catch her song and dance act at any time day or night. She would walk down the halls of the ship or through the lobby singing her little songs and doing her little dances. This made her quite a celebrity on the ship to say the least.

G in one of the shops. She saw the microphone and got really excited! She sang and sang along with the music that was playing while I checked out the Tanzanite jewelry!On the staircase in the lobby with daddy. The lobby decoration reminded me of something you'd see in Vegas, in a good way.So cute!

The trip home kinda sucked. Several hours of layover and our connection in Dallas was over an hour late but we finally made it home. The only bad thing was having to get up early the next day and pack up Brett and Casey and drive them to school.

Overall, the whole vacation was awesome! I'd give it a 9.5 with the half point deduction for heat/humidity at WDW. I loved it so much, I'm already planning our next vacation!

Belize
September is hurricane season in the Caribbean. If you cruise during this period of time, you take a risk of weather trouble. We had little choice about when we could travel. It needed to coordinate with Brett and Casey's school schedule. There you go. I wasn't too worried about getting onto the ship but I was a bit concerned about getting into our ports. I thought that maybe we would be diverted or we'd hit lots of rain. Didn't happen in our first three ports. I wasn't sure how long our luck could hold out.

When we got on the tender it was POURING! Really bad. I thought, uh oh... luck just ran out. Bummer. Not sure if you can zipline and climb Mayan ruins in pouring down rain... but, we forged ahead, ever hopeful.

About 30 mins later, we were off the tender and checking in for the day's activities and bam.... the rain stopped and the sun came out!!!! Yeah for us!!!

I decided to split us up that day. Brett and Casey went on a combo cave tubing/ziplining trip and Bobby, G and I went to Altun Ha to see some of the ruins. As expected, I was much more enthused about the ruins than Bobby but he was a good sport. Which, was actually kind of tough because once it stopped raining OMG was it humid!!! Part of the experience was definitely the drive... 14 miles down a barely single, pothole filled road playing chicken with oncoming buses. Did I mention we were in a small 5 passenger vehicle? Surprisingly enough, our little car usually won the chicken game. I just closed my eyes.

The ruins themselves were pretty neat. We climbed the stairs to the top. They're only about 50 feet high but the steps were reminiscent of the Great Wall in China. I always find it fun to visit places that old. These particular ruins are said to have been first inhabited in 200 BC!

We had an interesting guide who told us all sorts of things about Belize that I found really surprising. For instance, there is a community of about 10,000 Russian Mennonites currently living in Belize. They migrated there in the 50s after making certain agreements with the Belizean government. The Mennonites brought in cash and educated Belize on agricultural methods. They pay taxes but don't have to serve the required military service of other Belizeans and accept no government benefits. They use horses and buggies and dress like the Amish!

Also, on our trip to the ruins we were stopped at a police checkpoint. I asked our guide what they were looking for. Drugs? Weapons? Imagine our confusion when our guide explained to us that they were trying to stop people from illegally importing non-Belizean beer, large bottles of soda (apparantly not available for sale in Belize) and other non-Belizean items like macaroni! We were told there are strong controls on these types of goods. Still doesn't make sense to me... a bunch of police standing in the road, stopping each and every car looking for noodles??

One final observation... on the way back to the ship, we had to pull the car over to the side of the road for about 10 mins while a "parade" went past. The parade consisted of 5 or 6 cars interspersed with about 150 school children (age 5, or so, thru teen) and wearing bright uniforms and carrying a few crudely created pro education/ pro Belize signs. We knew to pull over because walking down the middle of the street at the head of the group was a man motioning with his hands to the oncoming cars. Guide explanation? They just do that sometimes. Really??? Oh, and one of the kids was passing out candy to the pulled over drivers.

Anywho. Just like the other ports, I would like to return to Belize someday when we have more time to explore.

I gave Brett and Casey the water camera and begged them to take at least a few pix. They did!!!

Altun Ha

On top of the world

The main structure. That pink dot on top is ME!

Georgie doing her pose. Too cute!