A couple of nice photos

I know, three posts in less than a week. Quite a surprise, but I really wanted to put these two photos of our kids on here. These were taken during the cruise on one of the formal nights. We paid an extra $10 just to get them in their original digital format. I think they look very nice.

Winter Wonderland

We have more snow in our area than I can remember seeing, ever. Apparently there was more back in 1968 or 69, but I was only 3 or 4 and can't remember it. We currently have 15 inches of snow, which is a lot considering we are at the 200 ft level of Oregon. Oh, the Cascades get a lot more than this, but they are mountains. This is unusual for the valley floor.

Here are a couple of photos of our home and area.



Below is a little path I had to dig for our dog to get through to the bare area under the trampoline so she would go outside to do her business.

Back from another cruise

We have just returned from another cruise. This one was on the Carnival Legend and my parents went with us. Since the Legend makes port at Tampa, Florida, we arrived a day early and visited Busch Gardens Theme Park. Also, the itinerary for this cruise was a little different, we visited two new areas, Belize and Roatan Honduras, along with two of the standard ports, Grand Cayman and Cozumel Mexico.

Busch Gardens
The trip to Busch Gardens was a blast. They have some of the better roller coasters there. One of them hits 70 mph and starts by dropping you straight down. We always enjoy seeing he animals and they have a very nice area for the smaller children.




Grand Cayman
We spent the day on 7 Mile Beach. It was a warm day and I spent most of the time in the water. The girls had a good time playing in the water and digging in the sand. All in all, a nice relaxing day.




Cozumel, Mexico
At Cozumel, we tried out the all inclusive private beach "Nachi Cocom". It was much better than we expected. The food was fantastic, the drinks were plentiful (we drank a lot of virgin daiquiris). The fresh water pool was a lot of fun and the beach was excellent and nearly deserted. We got the girls hair braided here, which they loved.



Belize
In Belize, the weather had started to turn. The seas were rougher and all of the beach and snorkeling trips were canceled. We had already booked an inland tour however, so everything was fine. We went to a nice private ecological preserve. There was a beautiful pool there and we toured their excellent butterfly habitat. They also provided an decent meal of some traditional Belize foods. This consisted of a rice and bean dish (with some coconut), some spiced chicken, an interesting potato salad and several fruits including papaya and pineapple. It warmed up enough in the afternoon that the kids were able to partake of the pool, with its waterfalls and slide.



Roatan, Honduras
This is a gorgeous island. One of the most beautiful that I have ever been to. It is very green with lots of hills. They have 12 month growing season and we saw lots of fantastic looking produce. The weather was still acting up here. No rain, but lots of wind and rough seas. Again, the beach and snorkeling type tours were canceled, but again, we were lucky and had booked a horse back riding tour. This tour was excellent. We did not book it through the Carnival, but booked it ahead of time through the Roosmarie at www.barriodorcasranch.com. They took very good care of us and led us on a nice 90 minute tour of the West End of Roatan. It was very neat to ride the horses right through the quant little town. It was the highlight of our entire cruise.


The trip home was a little hairy. After 75 - 80 degree weather for an entire week, we returned to Oregon where it was 24 degrees. We had a nerve racking drive through the ice and snow, at midnight, to get home, but we made it. Here is a picture of the next morning.

New Links

There are two new links in my Links Section. Select these to read the adoption journey's for our two girls. During our trips, I sent back several emails to our friends to keep them informed. These two new links are basically those emails in cronological order, with a couple of extra things thrown in.

Halloween

The girls (mostly) had an excellent time for Halloween. First, in the early afternoon, they Trick-or-Treated at the Retirement Home where their grandmother works. They had a really good time there and enjoyed going around with Grandmama. Each had their pumpkin about 2/3 full of candy. Then we got together with Kirsten's brother and his family for some Trick-or-Treating at the local businesses. Again, pumpkins about 2/3 full. Finally, while Kirsten and Kaitlyn handed out candy at home, Emily and I Trick-or-Treated around the neighborhood. She had a fantastic time and filled her pumpkin so full, that we literally could not stuff in another piece of candy.

We have limited the amount of candy that the girls can eat. Generally no more than 2 pieces in a day, sometimes none at all. Now if I could stick to that limitation, things would be much better.

Here are a few recent pictures of the girls in their costumes.
Before:


After:


Here is a little video of Kaitlyn doing the dishes. She loves it. I wonder how long this will last.

Soccer

Emily just finished her first year of soccer. She really enjoyed it. We were surprised at how aggressive she was. It was an Under 6 team. The kids were all 4 and 5 years old. It was a lot of fun to watch. As you can see from the videos below, the field is much smaller than normal. The goals are much smaller and there is no goalie. There are only three people per team.

Most of the time, it looks like a Rugby Scrum. All six players grouped together trying to kick the ball at the same time. Every once in a while, there will be a break away. Emily had several of these. She scored several goals as well.

Here are a few videos of the games:

Camping

Every summer, we go camping with my wife's extended family. It is like a mini reunion. This was our seventh year and it was the best one ever. The weather was perfect. The girls are old enough that they don't need constant care. The food was fantastic, as usual. We all put on a pretty good spread.

It is always a very relaxing week. We tend to do a lot of eating and sleeping. However, we throw in several hikes and spend a considerable amount of time playing in the water down at the creek. All of the physical exertion allows us to eat more. :-)

Here are a few photos of our family during the week long camping trip.

My son and his cousins played a lot of commando type games in the forest. Here is Patrick trying to equip his Nerf Gun with some camouflage.

This is the whole motley crew on the last day of the camping trip.

The girls are starting to ride their bikes more. They still use training wheels, however, so the bikes didn't work out so well on the gravel roads.

The girls are eating dinner with their uncle. Barbecued chicken, cornbread and corn on the cob. Along with other fruits and veggies.

Emily helps clean up by doing the dishes.

Emily and Kaitlyn taking a break down by the creek. We spent every afternoon down at the creek playing in the water.

The girls enjoyed floating around on the alligator with Mom.

Quiet Time

Our girls do not take naps very often anymore. If they don't nap, they will go to bed around 7:30 or 8:00 PM and sleep until 6:00 AM or later. If they do have a nap, then it is generally not a good idea to put them to bed until 9:00 PM, otherwise they will lay there awake for a long time. While they are laying there awake, they will mostly spend their time trying to think up new excuses for getting out of bed.

Anyway, sometimes we as parents need a nap when they don't. So we have taken to doing the time honored tradition of "Quiet Time" periodically. They have to settle down in their rooms with books for a short period of time.

Sometimes we check on them after a little while and we will find something along the lines of the following picture. It is always so cute.

Dance Class

Our girls have been attending a small dance class at their day care. It is only an hour each week, so they don't learn a lot. They both enjoy it however and are always excited on the day that they get to take their dance stuff with them (leotards and ballet slippers).

Recently they had a 'Dance Recital'. One for the older girls and for the 3-year olds. They were very cute. Here a couple of short clips from the dancing.

Kaitlyn:


Emily:

Exchange student trip to South Korea

In April, I chaperoned a trip to South Korea for my son's Middle School. It was a two week long exchange where we lived with families there. It was very different from our Adoption trips to China in two important ways.

1) We did not have the added stress of adopting a child. We could just be ourselves and enjoy everything about Korea.

2) We stayed with the families instead of in hotels. We did what they did, ate what they ate, etc.

We had a great time and learned a lot. It was interesting to see the number of similarities (and differences) between Korea and China. Korea is much more modernized than China, but has several of the same traditions. I got the feeling sometimes that I was looking at China in 20 years.

Here is a short video presentation that I made for the school board an the local rotary club.

My inadvertent hiatus is over

Well, due to mostly laziness, I have not updated this blog in a very long time. I had initially decided that there was not much going on, so I was going to cut back to only one post per month. Now it is four months later and still no post. What a lazy git I am.

Still, only a couple of really important things (read "BLOG WORTHY") have happened over the last couple of months. The main one would be the two week trip to Korea that I took with Patrick back in April. I will post the highlights of that trip later.

Also, we tried out one of the Great Wolf Lodges. That was a lot of fun, but a more in depth review will also becoming later.

Mainly, I am just letting my loyal readers know that this BLOG will be coming back to life over the next week or so. Hopefully I haven't lost both of you permanently. :-)

back from the Cruise

We have been back form the cruise for a couple of days now. We are still trying to get back to West Coast time and some of us (mainly me) have been having trouble getting their "Land-legs" back. While it is nice to be back home, everyone missed the cruise. We are already thinking about when and where our next cruise will be.

Here are a few brief highlights of the trip:

We were able to board the ship early, around noon. We couldn't get into our rooms yet, but they had a large buffet available for everyone. So we started the cruise off by eating (a lot) and never stopped. The food was really good and they had a lot of variety. Like prime rib, mahi-mahi, roast duck, etc. Patrick and Emily really liked the roast duck.

The first full day, we stopped at Key West, Florida. We bummed around town for an hour waiting for our Glass Bottom Boat Tour. The wind was blowing pretty hard and the seas were pretty choppy. We went our a few miles to the reef. None of us had too much or problem with the trip, but there were several people that got sea-sick. It was pretty neat seeing all of the fish in their natural habitat.

The next day we went to Cozumel, Mexico. We took a taxi to the Chankanaab Park. You can swim with the Dolphins there, but it looked pretty hokey, especially when you consider the price of $150 per person. We had a great time there anyway. We snorkeled (saw lots of fish and some lobster), ate lunch at a fantastic authentic Mexican Restaurant and took a short walking tour seeing lots of Iguana.





The third day we were at Georgetown, Grand Cayman. Here we had a nice tour that included stops at Hell, the Turtle Farm, snorkeling on the reef and a visit to Sting Ray City. Sting Ray City was the most amazing part of the whole cruise. We are a few miles from the island, but the water is only 3 - 4 feet deep. There are sting rays everywhere. We were able to hand feed them and Patrick got seven years of good luck for kissing one. It was very exciting.







The fourth day we were at Montego Bay, Jamaica. This is the stop that always makes me the most nervous. I just never feel in control while there. We went to a place called Doctor's Cave Beach. It was very nice. You had to pay admission, but that eliminated all of the pushy vendors that you normally find on the free beaches. Things worked out pretty well, we had a great time there and got the girls hair braided in the Jamaican Style and I only had two people ask me if I wanted to get high.




The fifth day was a relaxing day on the ship. Patrick and I tried our hand at the rock climbing wall and then we lazed around the kiddy pool watching the girls swim.



Most days, Patrick would hand out at the Teen's Only club. Generally, we would go to bed around 10 PM and Patrick would generally arrive sometime around midnight. He had a really good time.

Finally, on the sixth day we traveled home. This didn't go so well, what with delayed flights and all. Basically, we were out of our rooms by 8:00 AM and didn't get home until 1:15 in the morning the next day. At one point, Patrick crawled under our seats and went to sleep.

Where did January go?

I have always found that January and February have always seemed to drag along. After the hustle and bustle of the Holidays, things just tend to slow down. All you have is short cold days and long colder nights that you count off waiting for the longer and warmer days of spring.

Not this year. Things have been much more busy. Both of the girls are taking swim lessons, twice a week. Patrick has his theater class and his Korea Class (for his trip to Korea in April). Also, we have been busy trying to get ready for our cruise in February. We are going on a six day cruise in the Western Caribbean. Yes, we are taking the kids as well. We have less than two weeks now until a week of fun in the sun.

Getting ready for the cruise involves a lot of shopping. We need to get all of the kids their summer wear a little early this year. I hope they don't out grow the stuff before the summer is over. Getting ready also involves a little exercise and a little dieting. Not that I am trying to look better, that will never happen. The dieting is more like a preemptive strike on the five pounds I plan to gain while on the cruise! :-)

Throw into that mix a week with another Korean Exchange Student and the month has passed more quickly than normal. Our exchange student is from Busan, Korea. I think that he enjoyed staying with us. I know that we enjoyed having him. He was a very polite and easy going young man.

He arrived on a Saturday and it took him most of the weekend to get over the jet lag. I only let him take a short nap on Saturday, but he still was up a lot of the night (which is normally his day). We let him sleep until almost noon the next day and after that, he was mostly on our time.

The Korean Exchange Students had field trips Monday - Thursday, but Friday was a free day with no school, so we took him to OMSI. He seemed to have really good time there with Patrick. We saw a movie in the Planetarium and Patrick and He toured the submarine. Here is a picture of the arch we built while we were there.


Below is a picture of our kids playing 'Monster'. This apparently involves crawling around on all fours while you are snarling and growling. After a while of this, you attack some poor village full of Barbies and pretend to eat them. Here, however, they are eating Cheerios like a monster would, on the floor.



Another interesting thing about this year is the weather. We have now had snow on six seperate occasions. As I write this, it is snowing yet again. We have never had more than an inch or two, and it always melts off in a couple of days. Here is a shot of the snow earlier in the year.

Holidays

We survived the Holidays. We are still here. It was a long week for us. Don't get me wrong, we really enjoyed everything (well almost) about the entire week. The bad thing was me being sick for most of it.

Anyway, our week started on Monday Morning, December 24th. Kirsten had to work till noon, but I and the kids met her parents for breakfast. It was a lot of fun and Grandma had a great time with the kids. Christmas Eve was very relaxing. We had home made clam chowder, as usual. Then played some games with the kids. Read them 'The Night Before Christmas' and got them in bed.


After they went to bed, 'Santa' spent a couple of hours putting together the girls bikes. 'Santa' always enjoys that part of Christmas. Here is what the kids saw the next morning.


The girls were very excited to find their bikes from Santa and Patrick is definitely enjoying his Guitar Hero III. A video game where you pretend to play a guitar. Who would have thought that would be a hit. Here is the girls on their bikes.


Around 11:00 My Parents and Kirsten's Parent showed up. We just hung out together eating, talking and watching it snow. That is right, it snowed all day long on Christmas, which is first for me in Oregon. Around 2:00 My Parents went home, while the rest of us went over to Kirsten's Brothers Place for dinner. All in all, a very enjoyable day.

Here is our annual Christmas Family Photo.


The next three days were busy working days, but I missed a bunch of it with my illness. Then on Saturday, My side of the family all met at My Parents to celebrate Christmas. We exchanged presents with my Parents. My sister and I got them digital photo frames. It was funny, but Mom and Dad got us digital photo frames also. I guess great minds think alike. :-)

Everyone had a really good time and My Nephews stayed and spent the night. We couldn't however, because the next day Kirsten's side of the family met at her Parents place to celebrate Christmas. Another day of laughing, eating, talking and fun. It was another perfect day and a great end to a great week.