Slacker

Visiting Donna H in NYC to see the Xmas decorations on New Year's Eve day in snow and 12 degree wind chill. We look happy, but we're freezing. Dressed for Xmas eve family service and Xmas dinner.

What's in those stockings? (lots of candy as it turns out, Santa must have a major sweet tooth.)

Happy Birthday to Princess Lela. She's a big girl now.

One of many presents.

And I'm not even close to Gen X, sigh. Yep, days, weeks, even months have passed since my last post. Let's just say computer issues, work, school vacations, and holidays sort of over ran my life.
It's celebratory time for us. We started rolling before Xmas with parties, parties, parties. Then the big event itself. Santa comes to our house with stockings but takes all the presents to grandma’s house (she has a fireplace, we just have a furnace.) Xmas eve was family carol service at church (where the carols are numbered and you yell out your favorites - loudest numbers get sung.) Then a delicious dinner at Grandma's, mostly courtesy of Aunt Christy. The sleeping beauties didn’t rouse until after 8, so we didn’t commence present opening until almost 10, and went on to noon. Stuffed animals, books, DVDs and My Little Pony ruled the day.

We squeezed in a visit on New Year's Eve day to Donna H in NYC, wandering the freezing canyons of Manhattan to view the decorations in the big department store windows; Macy’s, Lord and Taylor, Saks and finished up at Rockefeller Center. I’ve just finally thawed out. School didn’t restart until January 5, so we had lots of hanging out time. Then they’re out again for MLK day, but that was a merely a segue to the first big event of 2009, Lela’s birthday.

Lela's 5th birthday was on January 20, and her Family day was on the 25, home 4 years. We had a family dinner and watched reruns of the Inauguration for party number one. Saturday the 24th we went into Flushing, NYC (The biggest Asian neighborhood in the US) with her Chinese class, had a tour and lunch at a Buddhist temple and then the kids performed their ribbon and fan dances at a local nursing home. Monday night we made a Lunar New Year's dinner at Grandma's (longevity noodles, shrimp, dumplings - all the favorites) and Lela declared we must address her by the Chinese name, Fu Qin (pronounced Chin) for the evening. Wow, how the time has flown and transformed a tiny baby girl, more like 6 month old than just turned one, to a confident, beautiful, sassy young lady. She's discovering her identity as Chinese and American and is proud of it. Happy Birthday and happy Family Day to my darling girl, and Happy Year of the Ox to all.

But more to come. We are now counting down to birthday celebration #5, the last and biggest. We had Chinese class (cupcakes), pre-k (another batch of cupcakes) Sunday School pre-k (even more cup cakes) and a family party (ice cream cake I did not make, puleeze.) Sunday afternoon, 15 little girls in princess gowns will be arriving to play, make candy necklaces, bash a pinata, eat, eat , eat and yes, decorate yet more cup cakes (one more batch to turn out and 3 pounds of icing in all shades of the rainbow per Lela's request. ) And a large and pricey princess ice cream cake.

I promise to post before March, computer willing and the kids don't get up.