What We've Done Lately

1) studied China, and studied China, and studied China. My children are seriously obsessed.

2) invited Aunt Amelia and her boyfriend Joshua to a China party at our house as Amelia taught English in China for a few months and has cool pictures and a cute little outfit.

3) made numerous paper lanterns and hung them up in the dining room.

4) called Aunt Amelia to remind her to bring her camera as she took a bunch of pictures of Christmas morning for me as my camera was dead.

5) figured out everyone's animal year in the Chinesese zodiac. We had three sheep as Timothy and I were born in the same year and then Miriam was also a sheep. Then we wrote each person's name and a few descriptive words at the top of a paper and drew/created the animal underneath. Lots of fluffy, cotton-ball sheep on our wall. And two dogs--but it was hard to tell what they were. At first, Cowen was FURIOUS that he was a rooster and not a horse. He pouted, he refused to participate, he whined. But then, I pulled out some feathers and some glue and all of a sudden being a rooster wasn't quite so terrible. I had Miriam get out her how to draw book (awesomeness) and I drew the best rooster of my life and Cowen colored it and glued on a plethora of feathers. It rocked.

6) had Miriam help me make gyoza's. Yum.

7) got everything ready to cook beef with broccoli and spicy braised prawns (the best shrimp dish in the world--you make it with Asian chili bean sauce). Cooked rice.

8) answered the phone. It was Amelia. She'd forgotten her camera at home and wanted to know if she should arrive on time or arrive late with camera in hand. I told her to get the camera.

9) starved and salivated in no particular order but with great refinement.

10) Amelia arrived.

11) Cooked beef with broccoli and spicy braised prawns.

12) Told Amelia to whip out her camera and take pictures of the festivities so I could post them on my blog.

13) Amelia took one picture and then her camera ran out of batteries. Hence, no pictures in this post.

14) Looked at pictures Amelia took while she was in China. Felt proud when the kids knew a lot about China and kept interrupting Amelia to tell her about the Great Wall of China and the Huns. And why Chinese people like the color red.

15) Laughed when Emeline was taking off her clothes to put on the Chinese outfit, only to get terrified and refuse to put it on when Aunt Amelia explained that in China, children have a hole in their pants so they don't have to pull their pants down to go potty. All my children backed away quickly from the bizarre holey pants. Best we could do after that was put the top on Eli (oh my goodness, he was so adorable as a red-headed Chinaman) and pass the hat from child to child. Except Emeline. She wanted nothing to do with any part of that outfit.

16) Moaned and groaned that I STILL couldn't blog about Christmas because I STILL couldn't get the pictures. Sigh. Double sigh.

17) Put children to bed.

18) Watched The Brother's Bloom with Amelia and Joshua. Liked it.


The end.