July 2011

Sleepover. We don't have enough blankets and pillows mom.

Lela and Meiling got to conduct at a summer band concert

Swimming Summer

Da Girls

Entering Dutch Wonderland

The bathing beauties at friends hotel pool

Jet setters

They went on the flying swings about 15 times.

An Amish petting zoo

Culture Camp

Waiting for class at culture camp

Curious Cloudy

In July, the girls’ good friends, Meiling and Ian, arrived back from Shanghai, China to spend the summer with their grandma. We spent nearly every day with them, taking swimming lessons, playing and swimming at “grandma” Barbara’s pool. I took the girls to Dutch Wonderland with our good friends Denise and Bob and their daughter and another of the girls’ best buddies, Holly. Lela and Holly are adrenalin junkies, so were well matched and went on every ride as many times as possible - except the big roller coaster, as that required a consenting adult. Surrounding the park is beautiful Pennsylvania Dutch countryside of Lancaster. The girls attended a culture camp for Asian adoptees, mostly Chinese and Korean. Lots of big kids, which is good for them to see, and lots of their friends there, which made it fun. It was the hottest week of the year and we sweltered, especially during cooking class. The ice cream truck that arrived after lunch did a roaring business. We had a tragedy, when one of our formerly feral kittens, Cloudy, took a mysterious fall in the bath tub and died. He had just turned one. His obituary is at http://lianmakes4.blogspot.com/2011/07/goodby-cloudy.html We miss his feisty personality and peace making ability. After he was gone from the mix, the brothers, Simba and Rajah, started ganging up on our still mostly feral cat, Patch, forcing him to live under our bed. Now we have to lock the brothers in the kitchen at night so Patch gets some play time. Simba and Rajah were born in our house to their three-legged feral mom, Elsie, last July. With optimum nutrition they are now adult sized at about 15 pounds. Not fat, just HUGE. Another cat-astrope, in November, Elsie fell out the back door when I opened it and after a year and half in our house, instantly reverted to feral. We didn’t see her for 10 days and feared the worst, but now she is at least showing up to be fed on our back porch. But she runs from us if we try and approach her, sigh.