March!

I really can't believe that March has come and gone already.  We got home from Disney and I thought, "How am I ever going to fill up March with things to do?" But this past couple of days, I told Ine, "I have to blog about March yet, what exactly did we do?" and she said she didn't know.  I didn't think it could be any big deal, I thought of 2 things we did, but then as I went through my pictures for the month, I thought, "Holy Christmas, we've been so busy!  It's no wonder I don't remember!"

I'll start with the main things I do remember.  First of all, I roped Ine into teaching an origami class with me at Leah's school.  Remember how she taught us to make frogs at dinner one night?  Well, I found out there was an enrichment program at Leah's school and they needed teachers.  Since I'm passable at origami and Ine is GREAT at it, I thought it would be fun for us to teach it together.  They paid $100, so I offered Ine $50 if she would do it and she said yes.  We spent a lot of time before the class learning some new figures and practicing, and we taught the class for 4 weeks.  We had a great time!  We had 8 kids ranging in age from kindergarten to 3rd or 4th grade, and they were so fun.  On the last day we brought in all different Japanese snacks for the kids to try, and hilarity ensued.  They all decided they would probably starve if they had to live in Japan.  The organizers also gave Ine a little gift bag of candy in appreciation for her hard work.  I think it was really helpful to them that I brought my own assistant, as they were pretty short staffed.  To celebrate our great success as origami educators, I took Ine to Umi, a local Japanese restaurant for dinner.  She won't starve if she goes to Japan, but let's just say I don't see her eating much sushi.

We taught the kids to make paper hats

Ine taught the kids to make her famous frogs and then we had a frog race in the hallway

She couldn't decide what to have, so I ordered her a bento with 4 or 5 different dishes so she could try all different things.  It was very entertaining to watch.

We also had 2 events at Ine's school.  First was the winter sports awards.  I apologize that I don't have better pictures of the event itself, but Ine didn't think she was going to get anything so I didn't bring my camera.  The awards honor all the winter sports athletes, and included the swim team.  Each team was called up on stage, and each team member was recognized and awarded a certificate.  In addition to the swim team, the basketball teams were recognized (they are not co-ed, unlike swimming, so the boys and girls were recognized separately).  It was a really nice event, Ine and a boy from China were also recognized as being the international students on the team.  The kids were all dressed up nicely, and the coaches were really moved when talking about the students they coached this year.  They also recognized the most improved and the MVP.  It was pretty great.

Afterwards, the teams were sent to separate rooms and at least on the swim team, the seniors were recognized separately.  Ine got a gift bag with an FA blanket in it.  The kids had put together a slideshow of pictures from the season which was also fun to watch.  It really made me sad that swimming was over!

Afterwards, I got a picture of Ine with her coaches.  These ladies have worked so hard with all the kids, but I have been so pleased with Coach Wimble (on the right below) and how hard she has worked with Ine.  Ine is probably a stronger swimmer as a result of her participation, and the coach has been so great to continue to encourage her and allow her to swim after the season ended as well.

Also we attended the Senior Gift Dinner.  At FA each year, the senior class leaves a gift behind for the classes who are coming up.  The gift is announced at the dinner, and then the kids hit up their parents for cash to pay for it.  It was a fun evening, I got to meet some parents of other seniors and we had a nice Chinese dinner on FA's dime.

There wasn't much to take pictures of, but here is Ine eating dinner with her friends.

In other news, I'm sure we also had some snow days because I have a random picture of Ine and Leah baking.

Ine has become a great big sister to Leah.  Leah finally won the fingernail painting battle, but Ine also plays with her a lot more, tickles her, makes jokes with her, and occasionally they hang out in Ine's room.  This is a far cry from back in September when I said to Ine, "I take it you don't have much experience with small children." and Ine's deer-in-the-headlights face responded, "No!" 

For her part, Leah is so smitten, she recently got her hair done to look like Ine.

They are really so cute together.  I love both these girls!

We also had some fun times with my sister and her family this past month, as usual.  We had a day that was sunny, finally, and decently warm for March and spent the day at the National Zoo before having dinner at Judy's.  It was a fun day, kids were everywhere and we got to see the pandas.  I mean, the animals. :)

I also hosted a bra fitting party for my friends and Ine helped Judy decorate cupcakes to look like bras.  Ine sat by during the party, declining to be professionally fitted, and enjoyed the hilarity of us all going crazy over underwear.

Decorating 'bra cupcakes'

That evening we sent Leah and Dottie off to Wiggle Worms and started driving around trying to figure out what the three of us could do to have fun together.  We drove in circles around town for almost 2 hours, bombing in on my mom for a while, and just not really knowing what to do before we finally stopped at Peter Chang's for dinner.  Now that I'm writing this, it seems that we ate a lot of Asian cuisine this month!

Anyway, we laughed a lot that night.  It was really fun!  And as you can see, Ine brings out my sister's ability to make crazy faces!

We also went back to Riverside Dinner Theater to see 9 to 5 starring Sally Struthers of All in the Family fame.  I barely remember that show, but Sally makes a splash every time she comes back to F'burg, which she does once per year, so I thought it would be fun for Ine to see an Emmy Award winner in action.  The show was great, as was dinner.  We weren't able to meet Sally, but it was still a fun afternoon and we got all dressed up and looked pretty cute!

Towards the end of March, we also had a birthday party to go to.  Our little friend Fred down the street turned 4.  How is this possible!?  To put that into perspective, here is a picture of a newborn Fred with Penny:  He was literally hours old....

...And here is a picture of Fred now as Ine knows him, at his birthday party:

So we were invited to his 4th birthday party, which they held at the Fredericksburg Field House. The main draw is that for an hour, you get to jam  on one of the fields, and they put up inflatables.  Ine wasn't sure about being the only "grown up" in the inflatables, but they did look like fun, so I decided to take a crack at it.  Together, we first tackled the obstacle course.  It was hard, we kept getting knocked around, trapped, and I fell out of the stupid thing.  We were laughing so hard.  I think Ine and I had more fun than the kids did!  We also spent time on the inflatable slides, as seen in Fred's picture above.  At the end of playtime, Ine said she wanted to go down on her stomach face first, but she was scared, so I did it so she could see that it wasn't so bad.  Unfortunately, it was slightly terrifying and I screamed the whole way down, so she declined to follow my lead!

But it was so much fun. We had the best time.  I laughed so hard, and I was so exhausted by the time we were done.  It was hilarious.

And finally, at some point during the month, I took Leah and Ine to the Melting Pot for lunch because we were bored on a Saturday.  It was delicious, of course, took hours to eat, but most importantly it was fun.

So that was our March.  Of course, there was a lot of time spent on schoolwork, the weather improved and we were able to start taking walks around the neighborhood again, we've spent a lot of quiet nights doing puzzles and playing around on the computer, we started watching Fargo, all kinds of ways to fill up our hours...

My next blog will be about our Easter trip to New England.  We had three days in Rhode Island and Massachusetts--it was jam packed and I was exhausted when it was over, but we had a blast.  I have so many plans for the next 3 months.  I hope we have time for it all!

Non-Disney February

Of course, the big news in February is that we went to Disney World.  But we did a lot of other stuff too!  I wish I could remember it all.  Haha

February 1 was SuperBowl Sunday.  I regretted not having a party so Ine could really experience the SuperBowl the American way, but my sister and my friend Andy came over and we put the game on.

The game was between my team, the Patriots, and my sister and Andy's team, the Seahawks.  None of us is totally into football, so we mainly ate, pretended to watch the game, Judy tried to explain American football to Ine, and we watched the ads.  The ads were not very good this year.  Really underwhelming.  At halftime, we enjoyed the Katy Perry spectacle, which made Leah and my niece new Katy Perry fans, which is fun since my sister only listens to music from the 1940's.  I look forward to Dot and I torturing her for years to come.  Then they left, and we took a vote and decided to switch over to Downton Abbey.

We watched Downton for an hour and put the game back on.  It was the final moments of the game and it looked like Seattle was going to squeak it out, but at the last minute, well, we all know what happened...  So Ine got to see one of the craziest SuperBowl finishes there ever was.  You can tell in the below picture that she is so impressed by this entire thing.

The following weekend, there was a lot going on, and Ine had to make some tough choices.  She had not finished her last swim meet in a way that made her very happy, and her last swim meet of the season was scheduled on the same day as a mandatory AFS mid-stay orientation.  When she told her coach that she couldn't go to the swim meet, her coach was really disappointed, and Ine was too, since she really wanted to finish strong.  She asked me what to do.  I told her that she should call the AFS people and see what she could work out.  She was VERY nervous to do this, but I felt it was important that she solve her own problems, and a few minutes later, she came downstairs with a big smile on her face, and happily told me she had been excused from orientation to go swim.

Unfortunately I had to miss her swim meet because it was my nephew's 5th birthday!  So we went up for his party and then hopped in the car and drove back to F'burg like crazy hoping to see Ine swim.  As we were driving, she hadn't swum yet, but she was getting ready to, and ultimately we missed it.  That made me sad.  But we made it in time to see the end of season festivities and get some pictures.

I was really pleased for her that she got to participate and that it meant so much to her.  I think making the choice to do something on the community side versus the AFS side indicates a level of assimilation that is very important.  And I'm sad swim season is over, I had a lot of fun attending the meets.

The following week was busy for me, personally, as I had applied for a job, interviewed, and was accepted, but as a condition, I had to go to traffic school.  I had also started my school semester, and my mom got married on February 14th, and I was catering and caking.  So it was a crazy week.  On Valentine's morning, we woke up and got moving for the wedding.  I got both Ine and Leah chocolate hearts and a card and told them both how much I loved them and was glad they were here.  Then we had to quit the niceties and get to the clubhouse for the wedding.

The first challenge was getting the cake over to the place from my house.  I had Ine holding it on the way.  It was hard on the wrists, but she didn't drop the cake, which was pretty amazing, because even though the top layers were small, they were heavy.

Everyone was assigned a task for the wedding, and Ine's job was to be the photographer.  She has a lovely camera and enjoys taking pictures, and since the rest of us were cooking, moving furniture, running sound equipment, shooting video, and corralling children, we passed off photography on Ine. My mom later said that the pictures moved her to tears, so I think she did a great job!

 Here we all are at the wedding, my sister Judy, Ine, and me.  Ine is wearing a dress she described to me as being "three colors that aren't really colors". I like this picture.  Ine doesn't really feel like my daughter, she feels more like a sister to me, and my sister feels like Ine is her sister too, so this is more a representation of us with our new little sister than anything else :-)  Also you might remember back in January (I think) I said that Ine and I made the floral arrangements.  You can see them behind us.  So it was a great day, and fun to share an American wedding (atypical, but nice) with Ine!

In the US when it snows, the first thing
everyone does is buy bread.

That being said, it was soon time for the stupid snow season to start.  Here in Virginia, there is a LOT of freaking out when so much as a single snow flake flies, and sure enough, school started shutting down for days at a time.  Sometimes for rain, sometimes for snow, sometimes for the anticipation of weather.  You couldn't tell.  You just knew the girls wouldn't have school.  To give Ine's school credit, she had school more than Leah did.  But every day there was either a delay or a cancellation.  At first it was OK because Ine had homework to do and we could enjoy the novelty of the situation.  But after a point, it was ridiculous.  One of the snow days was bright and sunny and beautiful.  I asked Ine what she'd like to do, and her answer was basically, "Anything out of the house."  haha  I agreed!  So we got in the car and started driving, but then I suddenly just decided we should go up to DC and do a Smithsonian day.  So I asked Ine and Leah, "Would you rather see dinosaurs and jewels, dresses and shoes, or art?"  I suspect Ine was still rather traumatized from the Philadelphia trip's art museum visit because she said quickly and firmly "Not art."  So eventually we decided on dinosaurs and headed to the National Museum of Natural History.  We splurged on lunch and then discovered that the dinosaur exhibit is under renovation.  I was so bummed, I really wanted to see those dinosaurs!  So we talked to a lady at the information desk and she recommended a portion of the dinosaur exhibit upstairs near the insects.  We stopped in first at the butterfly exhibit.

Ine is not a great fan of insects, but butterflies are pretty tame, and she and Leah enjoyed seeing them.  They both held some sort of moth larva as well--that sucker was HUGE!

I do not like moths, but I like butterflies, so I focused my attention on them.  It made me happy.  I also touched the moth larva.  It had weird feet.  I was happy to give it to Ine.

After we left there, we found ourselves in a room where there were all kinds of insects.  I held a Madagascar hissing cockroach, but that was where Ine drew the line.  We also saw a 70-something bad a** woman of a volunteer holding a tarantula.  As Ine was fleeing that scene, she found a case containing a bird eating spider.  That grossed us both out, so we beat feet out of there and went into an adjacent room where we finally saw some fossils and dinosaur stuff.  YAY!  We got to watch some scientists sifting through dirt to find fossils and they waved to the girls, which was fun.  Afterwards, we went to see the Hope Diamond and gems.

When we'd had our fill of natural history, we headed over to the National Museum of American History and looked at the first ladies' gowns and some presidential stuff.  I got a few pictures of Ine and Leah with the gowns and one of Ine pretending to be president.

She looks very presidential, doesn't she?

On the way back, we stopped off at the Metro Cafe for a mid-afternoon snack.  We watched the ice skaters and Leah wanted to give it another try, but Ine and I both said no. haha  it hadn't gone well the first time, we weren't doing it again!

After that, Ine had a couple of more days of school and then we left for Florida!  I wished I had known they'd have the whole week before our trip off, I'd have planned something else somewhere warm for that week, but ultimately, we had fun together and that's all that matters.  Stay tuned for the details of our Disney adventure!

Pictures Say 1000 Words

I haven't posted anything in almost a month.  That is largely because we have had quiet times.  Everyone is back to school, and while we've been busy, it hasn't been with extraordinary trips, excitement, or zaniness.  But for the most part, the kids are supposed to adjust to every day life, and that is what Ine has been doing--participating in daily life.  Since there isn't a whole lot to say about these pictures, I will just post some photos of what we've been doing with short descriptions.  Pictures speak louder than words, right?

Ine decided one night to make Belgian pancakes for everyone, so I invited my sister, my friend Amber, and my friend Andy over to enjoy the pancakes.  This kind of stressed Ine out a bit, cooking for 5 children and 5 adults, and there was a lot of consultation with her mom about quantities and whatnot.  We had so much fun eating pancakes.  Ine did a great job!

Manning the stove

A finished pancake

 

Ine said her favorite way to eat the pancakes was to sprinkle sugar down the middle and roll them.

It turns out I'm not good at sprinkling sugar.  Andy had to help me do it right.

Andy and his pancake

Ine has continued to compete all season with her swim team, which is doubly impressive given that she battled bronchitis for a good part of December and January.  (She got to experience the American medical system, which she deemed 'very different'.)  The last 2 meets she was in I was able to post live to my Facebook so her parents could follow the races she was in.  That was so much fun!

Ine talking to her coach (in the blue shirt and brown shorts)

They made me a race timer, so I got to enjoy being a swimming official during 2 meets.

Ine and her teammates during an away meet at St. Michael's HS

Ine after completing one of her races

The swim team recognized the graduating seniors and gave them flowers.  My stupid finger is in the way.

Ine post-warm up and pre-competition

During her last home meet, Ine swam a 100 yard breast stroke.  It was close, but she actually beat the other competitor in her heat, the first time she came in first all season.  I was so excited I cried!

One night, I invited my mom and her fiance, Craig, to dinner.  We were sitting around after eating and Ine grabbed a cough drop wrapper and turned it into an origami frog.  She is quite good at origami, she made me several amazing pieces for Christmas.  Since I enjoy origami myself, I had some paper, so Ine taught all of us how to make little jumping frogs.  We got lots of giggles.

My mom and Craig making frogs

Ine and her frogs, plus she made a boat

Every time I tried to make my frog jump, he fell on his back and 'croaked'. Haha

Snow days... The kids have had two snow days so far in January.  Both have been for less than 1 inch of snow and kind of ridiculous.  But I love having the girls home with me, so I don't mind the snow days at all.

The first snow day, we made monster M&M cookies and we went to see Annie at the movies.  It was a pretty awesome day.  I taught the girls the fine art of sneaking food into the movie theater.

This week, they had Tuesday off.  Leah had a teacher work day at her school and Ine had a snow day at hers.  Ine had wanted to buy a new bathing suit, so we went all over, but she didn't find one she liked.  Eventually we took a break and had lunch together at Bravo's.  Leah and Ine had a grudge match at Tic Tac Toe.  Afterwards, we went bowling.  It turns out Ine loves bowling.  Leah has the patience for exactly 1 1/2 games, it has been that way all her life.  However, the bowling alley said it was cheaper if we played the flat rate of 2 hours unlimited, which is what we did.  Ine had never bowled away from the computer before, so once I showed her how, she took to it and really enjoyed it.  In fact, we wound up bowling 4 games!  She won the first two, then I surged ahead during the third, and so we decided to play the 4th to see if it was a fluke or I was really bad.  We wound up tying!  It was so fun, but man, I was tired and sore afterwards!

Here are some random pictures of the month that defy categorization...

Ine is fiercely proud of and protective of her fingernails.  She refuses to let Leah polish them.  Leah LOVES nail polish.  this is a tug of war.  So far, Ine is winning.  Leah thinks she is crazy.

We had another potato chip tasting, this time with Maple Bacon, Mild Green Mojo, and Buffalo Wing.  Meh.  No clear winners, but none of us liked the Maple Bacon.

Leah won Student of the Month at her elementary school.  To celebrate, we went to Sweet Frog for frozen yogurt.  I figured the place would be Ine's worst nightmare--too many choices to make about what kind of ice cream she wanted and what toppings.  It was slightly overwhelming, but she had fun and was happy that they had white chocolate as an option!

Downton Abbey Season 5 has finally come to America.  Every weekend I prepare English cuisine from the Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook.  It has been amazingly delicious, and we've had fun experimenting and picking recipes.  Ine isn't that into Downton Abbey, but she's a good sport about watching and eating with us.

So that is our January in pictures...  Tonight we have a science fair at Leah's elementary school, tomorrow there is only swim practice, and Saturday Ine has a swim meet, which I'm not going to.  Sunday is the Superbowl and Downton Abbey.  We keep busy.  Time is absolutely flying by.  Ine has been here 142 days and has about 150 days to go--I'm not totally sure of her departure date.  Pretty soon, the balance will shift and she'll have less time than she has put in.  That is hard to imagine!

I asked her parents to write a blog post for this blog, and so pretty soon I hope you will hear how it is from the sending parents' perspective to see what their feelings are about sending their child to live with strangers for a year.  Stay tuned!

Remember, it's never too soon to sign up to host an AFS student.  Go to AFSUSA.org and click "Host".  Follow the instructions and you can have a student yourself.  Each experience is so different, unique, interesting, hard, fun, and special.  You can be single, married, gay, straight, old, young, have children, not have children.  It's something you will never regret doing!