One holiday down, one to go

***NOTE*** For some reason 11/7/2007 entry didn't post properly and I didn't notice. I have posted it now, so there are now two new posts.
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The month of November has been very interesting. We had a Pop Can/Bottle Drive as a fund raiser for the Korean Exchange Students Club. This is to help fund their two week trip to Korea in April. My job entailed driving a pick-up truck around while kids went door-to-door asking people to donate pop cans and bottles to their cause. We even roped Kirsten's Father into helping. He also drove a pick-up truck around.

We spent about six-hours on a Saturday and raised over $2000. There is a rumor that one or more of the bigger companies in the area may match the amount raised. That would be cool.

We are scheduled to do another pop can and bottle drive this coming Saturday.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we traveled down to see my Grandmother. She is 85 and the last living Grandparent that I have. It is a fairly long drive, so we stayed in a hotel on the way down and back. The girls really enjoyed it, because the hotel had a pool. I am not sure that they enjoyed the actual visit with Grandma, however.

Finally, we had all of Kirsten's Family over to our house for Thanksgiving. Everyone brought some portion of the meal, so we didn't have to provide everything. Everyone had a really good time and ate way too much (as usual).

As if our month wasn't busy enough, we spent most of our one free weekend decorating the girls room. This mostly involved painting it a nice shade of purple and hanging some new curtains. Kirsten also put up some cute stickers on the wall and the girls names. Now she just needs to get some appropriate bedding to make the room complete.


This is the family with my Grandma and her husband Bill. Patrick was not able to attend because of his Theater Recital.

Emily helping to paint her room.

Kaitlyn helping to paint her room. Unfortunately, we did not get any afterwards photos.


A couple of photos showing how their room looks now, except that it is not this clean generally.

I had to include this photo. We were decorating the Christmas Tree. Someone played with the beads and got them all tangled up. When we asked who did it, we got this "Blame Game" response. In reality, it was both girls, but mainly Emily.

The Holiday Season is upon us

***NOTE*** I wrote this on 11/7/2007. I don't know why it didn't post. I thought it had.
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Over the past couple of weeks, we have survived Halloween, had a very interesting week with and exchange student from Korea and a nice little visit with a family that adopted a girl from China with us when we got Kaitlyn.

Halloween was a lot of fun. The girls were able to trick-or-treat at Grandma Ma's place of business (a nursing home). Grandma had a very good time showing off her grand daughters and the residents enjoyed seeing all of the kids. After that, we got together with Kirsten's brother and his family and trick-or-treated downtown. Then we all met back at Trevor's house for a very nice meal. Finally, about 7:30 we made it back to our place and passed out candy for about an hour.

It was a very busy afternoon and evening. The girls enjoyed dressing up. Emily was a princess and Kaitlyn was a doggy. Unfortunately, I carried the camera the entire time and never got a single picture. In my defense, it is very difficult for one person to keep an eye on a 3 year old and a 4 year old, in a crowd of kids. I didn't really have time for much else.

Here are some pictures

Patrick and his neighbor Rubi with their Korean Exchange students. All of them loved playing foosball. They did it a lot.


Patrick's Korean Exchange Student (Min Soo). This was taken on the day that Min Soo left.

The girls with their new Chinese Outfits.

Kaitlyn and Natalia playing dress-up. They were adopted at the some time from the same orphanage. They had a great time playing together. We need to get together with her and her family more often.