Landscaping Progress, Cute Kids

Our landscaping is coming right along! Here are some shots of the progress over the last couple of months. The plants have now been planted (the kids were a great help with that on a BEAUTIFUL day last week) and there are just a few more odds and ends to finish up.

We've been sick a lot this winter, most recently with a really bad flu...we're on the mend now, but Lauren and I have hacking coughs. Yuck! Here are some pictures from February:

Lauren, Ryan and I tried Bubble Tea at a Chinese New Year celebration. We really liked it, even the tapioca balls were fine! Not something I'd purposely eat on a regular basis, but not bad. We all enjoyed the big straws!

We had a great time at Isabel's 2nd birthday party at the Riverfront Carousel in Salem. Lots and lots of Merry-Go-Round rides!

Lauren and Ryan try it out.

New paver walkway, and the ground getting ready for sod.
Ready for the grass!
Sod being delivered.
Getting started.
Miss Lauren supervises the process.
Rolling out the sod.
One side all done.
Other side all done (and sprinklers!).
Beginning of the plant placement.
Plant placement in the front. Almost all the plants are in the ground now! (I haven't taken pictures yet, though.)

Happy Year of the Rat!

Here's a series of the cuties in their Chinese zodiac T-shirts (from ChinaSprout) on Thursday. We decorated the house with things we purchased in Taiwan and had our friends the Willards (who are waiting to adopt from China) over for dinner. (We also got together for CNY last year, right before we left for Taiwan, so we're hoping it will be an annual tradition.) It was very fun!

Quick Trips, Visitors, Parties

It's been a fun few weeks with overnight visitors, a couple birthday parties and a quick trip to southern Oregon to ring in Sarah's 2nd birthday. We have been having super crazy weather with lots of snow and school cancellations. Very unusual for these parts. Aidan started a Tiny Tumblers gymnastics class over at the university (right by our house) and recently completed a sticker chart (our first ever) for trying nine new foods. Pretty good work for our difficult eater. Lauren is her wild and crazy self, and her current favorite hobby is standing on the counter (with us standing right there, of course) and picking five or six different things to snack on. I am sneaking off on a little weekend getaway in a couple of weeks for some fun in CA with an incredible group of old friends--most of them from as far back as Happy Valley elementary school, some from junior high and some from high school. I feel like a real stinker for leaving but I know it's good to get away from time to time and this group of women was too great to resist.

Landscaping progress: paver walkway is done; lawn and plants on hold until warmer weather, probably about six more weeks.

Oh, how I love this picture of Lauren in her new rainboots, and only her new rainboots. The spot on her back/bottom is a birthmark.

Aidan and his friend Madeline from school enjoying ice cream cake after swimming at a joint birthday party for preschool classmates Naomi and Maddy. (Both turned three and both are from China.)

Our friend Colin at the party. Look how he wrote his own nametag--so cute!

Lauren woke up from a nap and wanted to sit with Aidan, who was watching (what else?) Mary Poppins.

Aidan shares his cars with Lauren for the first time (even saying "Lauren, come share my cars" in his sweet talking-to-a-baby voice). They were pretending the cars were chimney sweeps (a la Mary Poppins) and putting them through the trapdoor in the castle Santa brought them for Christmas.

It's always fun to bust out our hats from Snake Alley in Taiwan. It's almost a year already that Lauren has been home. I can't believe it. I am feeling so nostalgic reading blogs of people who are there right now (like Drew's parents) or about to travel and remembering our trip.

Our college friend Jennifer visited with her sweet dog, Denali. The kids loved feeding him individual pieces of his kibble.

Ryan and Lauren meet the goats at our friends' house in southern Oregon.

Sarah blows out her candle. I think Aidan was kind enough to wait for her to blow it out before getting started on his cupcake. He was probably so excited to eat a cupcake that didn't have spinach and blueberries snuck into it! (I've still been making a lot of recipes from Deceptively Delicious and The Sneaky Chef, mostly with great success.)

Little Astronauts

Our best friends from southern Oregon visited the weekend after Christmas. Besides poor Hannah getting a stomach bug late Saturday night, we had such a wonderful time, full of laughing and chaos. Jessica and I were even able to leave the kids with the dads on Saturday morning, and she came with me to my aerobics class and then we did some quick, super-fun shopping downtown. On Saturday afternoon, we visited the Science Factory in Eugene. Here are all the kids posing as astronauts. (Hannah is 4 3/4, Aidan is 4 1/2, Sarah is almost 2 and Lauren is almost 18 months in these pictures).

The kids loved running around this duck and banging on it...hope that was OK. :-)

Two Binkies & New Look

Thanks to digital scrapboooker extraordinaire Sarah from Journey to Taiwan for Hannah Claire for the lovely new look for our blog! Sarah worked very hard to create a fun, colorful design that we love, and, through her Blogovers with Love project, accepts donations for her blog designs and uses the proceeds to support two orphanages in Taiwan. Isn't she awesome?

Since we're not "Waiting for Lauren Ling" any more (thank goodness!), I changed the title.

Here is a picture of Lauren (18 months now!) putting two binkies in her mouth. She loves making us laugh. More pictures to come soon!

Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas and hope you all did, too! Santa brought Aidan and Lauren a castle to share (we'll see how that goes!), and Aidan got several car-related items, a guitar and some cymbals, a homemade sleeping bag and other cool stuff. Lauren got a new baby (small and easy for her to hold; she really likes her and says "uh-oh" every time her hat comes off, which is often), some cool clothes, a Rody ride-on toy, some rain boots and more.

Aidan puts out the treats on Christmas Eve. He wouldn't hear of the reindeer sharing one carrot! I made brownies from the book "Deceptively Delicious." Don't tell anyone, but they have carrot puree, spinach puree and whole-grain oat flour in them. They were quite tasty!

I was nervous about how the brownies would go over, so I got some whipped cream to sweeten the deal, so to speak. They loved it!

Surprisingly, I was the first one up this morning and got the coffee going and the cameras ready. Aidan got up a little before 7--here he is pointing at the presents.

Santa came! Left to right is Ryan's, Lauren's, my mom's, Aidan's and mine. We ordered Lauren's stocking online and had no idea it would be twice the size of everyone else's--I didn't think to check the dimensions!

Once Lauren got up and joined the party (with crazy bed head!) , Aidan helped her open the box with her new baby doll inside.

Aw...our baby with her new baby from China Sprout.

Lauren all dressed in her stylin' new coat from family friends that live in Italy, and her new rainboots from Bethie, and of course her binky.

We visited our old friends Margaret, Dan, Lily and Chase for lunch and had a great time. It was snowing at their house, and the boys scootered in the snow!

I love this action shot of Aidan in motion! He has gotten so good on his scooter since he got it last Christmas.

Recent pictures

Lauren at our friend Henry's 5th birthday party.


Lauren and Ryan at the party.

Aidan's pinata haul!

Our cuties together in the morning.

And with goofy faces.

Aidan helps the landscapers in our front yard, aka the muddy mud pit.

Lauren napping in the car while Ryan and Aidan got doughnuts after Aidan's soccer class.

Still here!

Whew! Just downloaded some pictures from my camera and the last time I took pictures was a few on 11/12...bad Mama! It has been so busy around here. The February 2008 issue of the magazine I work for just shipped to the printer, and we hosted Thanksgiving, which although small took a lot of preparation. It was very fun, though!

So, I took several pictures today to try and redeem myself. I bought Lauren the outfit in the pictures below more than a year ago (5 months before she came home), and she wore it for the first time today. She is so petite, this outfit is supposed to be 10-24 months (big range) and it's still too big for her, but I wanted to get the maximum use out of it. :-)

Everyone is doing well. She is really starting to talk a lot (just repeating what we say, mostly, although she does say "hi" and "bye" and a few other things on her own) and amazes us with everything she does--she is very observant! Aidan is starting to write really well and is beginning to sound out words. It is so neat to watch. He starts soccer on Saturday...we tried it about a year ago and it didn't go so well, so we're hoping he'll enjoy it more this time. He turns 4 1/2 on Saturday. Lauren turns 17 months on Sunday.

On the home front, we're getting our two front rooms painted next week (you can see the color stripe on the wall in the last picture below) and we're also getting our landscaping done. They're supposed to start next week, also. That should be our last big project after a year and a half of big projects!

Presenting Aidan the Bat and Lauren the Lamb

We had a really fun Halloween trick-or-treating in our neighborhood and handing out candy. Giving away the candy was Aidan's favorite part and he would become despondent when there was a lull in the trick-or-treaters. Somehow, neither of them ate any candy until today when Aidan had a little bag of plain M&Ms and Lauren tried a Kit Kat. Not too bad. The kids looked adorable in their costumes, even though neither of them would leave their cute hats on.

My friend Wendy made us these fairy wings and tutus, which we wore to Jazzercise class. It was really fun! Neither of us knew the other was going to wear a pink shirt.