MAYLIN2007

We met the Passey's (the family we traveled with to China) at a local Chinese restaurant last night to celebrate Chinese New Year, Maylin and McKenzie's b-day which are next weekend and a "can you believe we left for China 4 years ago" (Mar. 13) party! I had a friend make a large fortune cookie that was dipped in chocolate as the b-day cake. We had a great dinner. We sang to the girls. We talked lots. The girls opened their great gifts. Thanks Nate! The kids had an absolute blast. It took the girls some time to warm up to each other, it has been awhile, but then....they were just like BFFs. It was darling. Alex loved Yao Yao and begged for a little brother all the way home. We told him it wasn't gonna happen. The workers at the restaurant loved the kids and talked to them and played with them. It was cool. They wanted to know why none of them spoke Chinese. :) It was an awesome evening! I loved reminiscing about our trip. Sharing stories. Asking advice. Talking ov...

Maylin often says words that do not make sense, yet she will tell us that it is a word in Chinese or Spanish and then she will tell us the translation. Today, her word has been "los". Sometimes it has meant, "Put that in the microwave." Other times it has meant, "Please" and another time it meant "Can I have it?" It is cute, but sometimes it drives me wild because I can't figure out what she wants and often she wants me to try to guess the meaning. Really? I know she thinks I know everything, and I almost do;), but I don't know how to speak or interpret the gift of tongues. heh. We went to St. George, Utah for the weekend. I will post pictures soon.

I just finished getting ready for a Relief Society meeting at our church. I thought I looked pretty nice. Alex looked at me and said, "Hey, you look like a cowgirl. Well, that is until you get a closer look at the boots. They look like stripper boots." He took this picture and texted it to Austin and Jay who weren't home. He entitled the text, The cowgirl. At least he didn't mention stripper this time. Thanks. So I now head off to the church dressed as a cowgirl stripper.

Happy Valentine's Day to my friends and family. Today was a great day just for the sure fact that it was a little warmer! That was a bonus since we have been having bone chilling weather and Jay took me and the girls out to dinner! That is always a plus. Maylin had a party at her preschool. She made such a darling Valentine card box. She was so excited to go to school armed with her Valentines and her heart shaped brownies. When I picked her up the first thing she said was, "It was a great day, mom!" Awesome. I love to hear that. She was especially excited about the heart shaped straw a little boy in class gave her. She has a crush on him, most definately. Later we went to the kids' school to do Alex's class party. It turned out well. I did a Valentine bingo game. I know, not very original, but the other games I came up with were already taken by the other mothers. The kids had fun doing all the activities. After the party, Alex told me he spent lunch in the princ...

I have been a pretty serious exerciser since May. Before that I exercised about 3 times a week, but since then it is 5 to 6 days a week and it is pretty hard stuff. I sat at the same weight for over a year and finally decided I needed to change up my exercise, thus the change to 5-6 times. I hit a bit of a plateau again in January (last month) so I decided I needed to change things up once again. Last week and this week, I have tried some new forms of exercise. It has been so fun, BUT really hard. In fact, I have been so sore it has literally hurt to breathe. My muscles in my core were so sore it even hurt to wear my bra. (I did though, just in case you were wondering.) I still do Zumba once to twice a week! I love it and get such a work out and it is so, so fun! However, lately I have tried a Krank class. It is a 30 minute class where you just use your upper arms. Basically you are pedaling a bike with your arms. You burn about 269 calories during that time. Jay went and really liked ...

Since I blogged last, we have had a great few days! Austin took second place in the school science fair so he is moving on to state! He is so excited. The picture is with his friend Erik and his science teacher Mrs. Logan. She is amazing and has been so good to Austin.   Maylin's preschool also celebrated Chinese New Year. Maylin was so excited about it and asked if she could take something to her class. I arranged with her teacher that she bring the treat. We made little Chinese New Year bags for the class. They included chocolate, a Mandarin Orange and a fortune cookie. She was so excited to take them and reported back that her class thought they were great. Just this past week a little Chinese girl has joined her class. She is two and her parents are from Taiwan (mom) and the Dad is from mainland China. This little girl has latched on to Maylin like she was her second mama. She holds her hand, sits by her, follows her everywhere and likes to put her coat by Maylin's. The te...

Living with a 4 year old gives me the opportunity to feel lots of emotions during the day. Sometimes I feel joy, love, silliness, sadness, frustration, anger, disappointment, and sometimes I feel "good grief." I don't know what to call it but that. Its when all I know what to do is take a HUGE, DEEP breath and let it out.....That is the emotion of "good grief." For example: The other day Maylin made me laugh so hard when she said that one of her siblings was being "pafedic". I just had to smile. Where in the heck did she pick up the word pathetic? Do I say it? Hmmmmmm. Anyway, later after returning home from a field trip to the aquarium where they talked about squids and how early seaman thought the giant squid were sea monsters, she built the contraption in the below picture. Apparently, she was listening because she said it was a sea monster just like the ones they talked about at the "abwearium" and inside its belly was a family of batteri...