Catching up

Well, here is a slideshow of some of our pictures during our week long house hunt.
After house hunting all day, we did have time to spend with family and friends. We were able to spend some time at Leslie's sister's house and visit with her family. We were there on St. Patrick's day and also there for some egg decorating for Easter. We actually spent Easter at my Mom's house and as soon as my sister sends me those photos I will get them up.
On St. Patrick's day, Evelyn's cousins Kate and Aden threw and excellent Tea Party. This was the highlight of Ev's year! Kate and Aden made the food themselves, had labels all made and they were very gracious hosts (Aden I am wanting some more Brown Sugar Pie), there were swirly cookies, tea sandwiches, brown sugar pie and real tea with cream and sugar. It was so fun watching the three of them converse and eat. Then Jenny made a great Irish style meal that I ate until I needed to loosen my pants a bit. Aden and Kate were also very generous and let Ev color some of their Easter eggs with them. I loved watching and hearing those three play. Kate and Aden are great kids and they have alot of patience with Ev (even when she acted a bit nasty to them). We were also able to watch one of Aden's Aikido classes and that was alot of fun, I wanted to take some pictures of him during but I was afraid to interrupt the class (my digital doesn't have the best zoom), I will say that boy can roll like nobodies business.
Easter was then spent at my Mom's house. Between Ev and Brev, there was enough candy to send a diabetic person into a coma. They had fun though and we are 12 stepping Bean off the candy now. I did get Brevin some big boy underwear ( yes, that's the kind of Aunt I am) and he was adorable in them.
That's really it. The house hunt was a bust and we will try again after we pull out of here for the last time. For now though, we are going to try and enjoy our last days in Carolina....
A special thanks to Jenny and Jodi for putting is up and listening to our whining and groaning about the house hunting, and thanks for all of the advice, we needed it.

Back in Action

Well, we are back. Back home and back in blogger-land. I really don't like to announce that we are going to be away from the house for a period of time but, we had to go to Ohio for some house hunting time, so that explains the break.
We had what I would describe as, a terrible 10 day stretch of fruitless and tiring activity that left us all on the brink of insanity and ruin. Seriously. So, ok, that was fun.
We did not find a house. Well, we found one but the situation of the current owner was wierd and interfering and there were a couple of major repairs that would have needed to be done but no one was really cooperating with us for that to happen. This was very frustrating.
Other than house hunting we were able to visit with friends and family and have some fun evenings. We got to have St Patrick's Day at Leslie's sister's house with her family and then, Easter with my family. It was great to be around people for two consecutive holidays and this trip did give us a sense of what it will be like to be in Ohio near our families again.
I now have a clear picture of how much cat hair and scattered litter I clean up in a week's time and let me just say that my wages in no way compensate me for the high, sustained level of quality work that I do around here. In other news, we are completely out of anything vaguely resembling food or laundry soap or beverages...
I have some pictures that I will get loaded up later but for now, my daughter just asked her father if he was "starving just like she was" so I am off to forage for grub and appease these grumbling crowds.

Oh, OK, One more.....

This is Bean and I during our morning commune. She was in a singing mood today and I was able to catch some on video. Not very interesting unless you are family or you just like to hear kids sing silly, half english/half chinese songs about donuts and pillows (at least I THINK that's what this one was about).

Blog ahead entries?

I will be out of the blogging world for a bit here shortly but, I didn't want to miss entries on a few things, so I blogged ahead. Read em as you like. I will be back soon enough.

Blog ahead entry #3- Happy Easter

Happy Easter! This is the girl with some Bunny ears on and let me say that she did not want this photo shoot, that may come across on some of her expressions, hey, at least I didn't add the one with her bawling her eyes out.
We wish you lots of jelly beans and no loosened fillings.

Blog ahead entry #2- Three Years

March 17th is not only for the Irish anymore, at least not in this house. This is the day, three years ago when I answered the most important phone call in my life.
I had worked a 12 hour shift the night before but my fellow nurses looked the other way as I crept out of the hospital a bit early to get home and be ready for The Call. At this point we had been waiting 8 months (I know that to the families waiting now, 8 months seems like a ridiculously short time but it was OUR wait and it was long), I had been following the rumor mill so I knew that we were getting the call and I was banking on not having to wait all day because we lived in Alaska and people always confuse the AK for Arkansas (see the agencies start making the calls at the East coast and march right across, so had they not gotten confused , I WOULD have waited all day but hey..)
I tried to lay down and rest some, knowing that it was my last chance to rest for quite sometime but that morning began my very long stretch of complete emotional wired-nes that lasted for say, oh three years now, but, I digress.
Soon enough the phone rang and I had my little paper with prepared questions and slots for the information they give you but when I heard those wonderful, magical words "You have a daughter", I completely forgot about my OCD paper and jotted things down all over the place. Then this voice began telling me things about this faceless little person that was going to change my world, "she was born in the Jiangxi Province, her name is Yi Fu Mei, she is small, she is healthy, we have 2 pictures..., she is 8and a half months old" I was shaking like a leaf. I think that I wasn't even breathing. I had waited so long for someone to give ma a chance to be a Mom that when the moment finally came, I went into a momentary, yet complete neurological shut down. That was ok with the girl form the agency, I think she's used to it. I kept saying "are you sure? are you sure? This one is mine, she is for me? She is ok? She'll be ok until I get there, right?" I was over the moon and suddenly terrified. The call ended with promises of an e-mail of the photos and I called Les home form work and yes, I did wait for him to look at her, I think.
We were blown away by that serious, round face, those dark eyes that betrayed nothing. I know that a parents emotions at this point can range from, no feelings of attachment to a complete attachment. I was the latter. One look at that face and I was her Mom, that was it, game over. It took me about a half a second to know in my heart that in all of the world, this girl was mine. No matter where she was born I would have found her, no matter what I had to do, she would come home with me. I tell Evelyn all of the time what a miracle it was that we found each other, some day she will understand how profound that is, for now, it's enough that Les and I know.
So yeah, she has been home with us for three years. I wouldn't trade a single minute of it, as a matter of fact, I would live them all over again and again and again.

Blog ahead entry #1-Happy St. Patricks Day

May the Luck of the Irish be with you today.

Happy Tuesday

Pirates of the Burbly Coast, yes, Billy even plays Pirates with Bean.






The Coastie

Can you find Billy Bones? He kept leading Bean into the "reeds" and then bushwhacking her.

Running and talking

Talking and running



"Happy Tuesday" is what the Bean says every Tues morning. She lives for Tuesdays.
Tuesday means story hour with Miss Mac, playing at the playground with a bunch of kids (from the local pre-school, they attend story hour as a group and then hit the playground), lunch out at a restaurant, a walk with her parents and playing in the yard.
Today was a better than average Tuesday. Papa went to Story Hour with us and he got to see Bean singing along with Miss Mac. Evelyn got stuck on the Sliding Pole inside the wooden Pirate Ship at the playground and caused a ruckus. After that she JUMPED off of the big kid swing when she saw another (older and bigger) girl do the same. Our local eateries are re-open after the winter close down and we were able to eat lunch where Bean gets her favorite garlic toast in the whole world. We came home and played in the yard. There was napping..... life was good.
Our weather here has been so nice. Sunny warm days with very light breezes and that fresh ocean smell all around. I swear today was one of those days when you think anything is possible. Meanwhile, the state we WANT to move back to? Oh yeah , that's covered in about 18 inches of snow!!!

Photo courtesy of Jake

The Best Kid in the World...is MINE!!!

Ok, I have had this raging headache for going on two weeks now and it has finally culminated in my brains slowly leaking out of my ears. Seriously, why is it necessary to breathe, that $#@% hurts, also my own voice bounces off of my brick solid sinuses and ricochets around my skull like a bullet on a mission. So I have been barely breathing for 3 days and also communicating with my three year old in a very limited range of grunts and sighs.



Why does Michal still have a headache? WHY hasn't she seen a doctor? Isn't she on a decongestant or something? Answers.... because she has the worst sinuses on the planet, because the ya-hoo doctors on this sand spit won't give her antibiotics until she is loosing her brains out of an orifice on her head and because they (decongestants) don't work and only prevent her from sleeping. However I am thinking that now at maximum suffering the Doctors will relent and give me antibiotics, that or they will see the Dark Side of the Moon, if ya know what I mean.
My kid is so great because.... I have been laid low by this and Les has (of COURSE) been on duty and it has been the two of us. This child has successfully entertained herself for 2 and a half days. She knows that I am sick, and she made me a get better basket all lined with pretty paper and stuffed with candy and her art work. Whenever I roll over in bed, she has exchanged the stuffed animals again so I get to visit with them all. Sometimes she is there in the bed, checking the heat on my hot compress and stroking my face gently. She has, uncomplainingly eaten frozen fish sticks and tater tots for two nights in a row. What more could a Mama ask for?
Today, I decided to repay her kindness and haul my carcass out of the house for her sake. We went to Subway for a late lunch ("Subways" is her new favorite place to eat), then off to the park to play for awhile and then home to meet up with Papa for the evening. Hey I even managed to get multi-syllabic on her tiny butt so I am feeling like a martyr and no one will ever full comprehend my sacrifice because there was air outside, lots of it, and sunshine and then people, and it all hurt so bad.
Off to the Quacks tomorrow because my child needs a Mama not a lump that moans and grunts.
I will state here that Les has been home every evening and plays all evening with Bean, then he cooks a dinner for his miserable wife( even though he eats at the station) and pretends to be interested when I describe the 55 ways in which my head experienced pain that day. He has also been taking the trash out, doing light cleaning and attempting to help my sorry self out with the huge mountain of laundry that has accumulated. So I also have the best husband in the world.
I guess that makes me the luckiest woman in the world?

Evelyn as Bunny

Happy Easter! This is the girl with some Bunny ears on and let me say that she did not want this photo shoot, that may come across on some of her expressions, hey, at least I didn't add the one with her bawling her eyes out.
We wish you lots of jelly beans and no loosened fillings.

Back in the Saddle

As you can see, the Dynamic Duo are back and at their adventures. Bean decided that Choppah should go out and have some fun in the swing. By the way, sweats pulled up over cowgirl boots is the new black.....

Headaches, Wind and Very Tall Tales

My head feels as if there is a huge green vice clamped around it and some giant is tightening it down.... yes, the old sinuses are flaring up. This is going on week two of a constant headache for me. Some days are worse than others. Today? Very bad indeed. I am on the verge of throwing up from the pain but I am fighting it because I know that it would make it hurt worse.
I said the following or something very similar in an email to my sister in law:
"It seems that as soon as my head started hurting, Evelyn suddenly developed a love of singing very long and non-sensical songs at the very tip top of her voice. I never knew that the voice of a three year old could penetrate steel in order to turn your ear drums to mush and cause excruciating pain in the frontal lobe while simultaneously being the cutest thing that you ever heard and leaving a part of you wishing that it would not stop".
Les came home from work to "batten down the hatches" so to speak. We are expecting at least 50 knot winds with possible tornadoes in the early morning hours. The wind has already picked up and we are listening to it blow through our trees, it sounds nice now but I know that if we were still in the beach box, that place would be shaking like a leaf. We are planning on moving Bean's mattress down to our room for the night just to be safe as she is upstairs in a room with alot of trees outside her windows. I don't plan on telling her the real reason why as I don't want her to stress every time the wind blows but, I have yet to think of a plausible cover story.
In other news, Bean has begun spinning tall tales and it just cracks me up. So far this week, she has been caught in a Mexican Ice Storm and her truck blown off the side of a mountain, she has flown thru the sky with birds and her arms got tired from the flapping, she has found a faerie in our yard that was dressed in a green bathing suit and had yellow hair and Ev taught her to say " Fu Mei", she has had a tiny vampire biting her feet, she has rescued her Papa when he was lost in a storm and had a wounded leg, there are other stories as well but, I think you get the picture.
Also she has been talking NON-STOP for three days. Les says that she is the only human that can speak on the inhale AND the exhale and that, obviously punctuation is highly overrated. No kidding! She was playing some sort of game wherein one of our bureaus was a car and she was going to Ohio to deliver chocolate to her Grandpa, but her baby had to go and so did the ginormous bag full of odds and ends. So she was experiencing some logistical trouble and she was constantly muttering and talking and fussing and grunting. When I asked her if she could maybe just play quietly and think in her head instead of talking (yes my head hurts that bad and well, she HAD been talking and singing for about 10 straight hours)----- She looked at me as if I had just turned green and sprouted another head and said " Well, NO, I NEED to talk!", man, if that doesn't sum it up.

My Husband

Leslie and I have been together 14 years- it's not our anniversary, by the way, I was just thinking about this man of mine..... It's hard for me to believe that many years have gone by, when there is still a part of me that can never quite get enough time with him. I was very lucky to find him at an early age, and then by some miracle I realized that I would be silly not to marry this fella, even if we were only 20 and 21. We have been through some adventures and rough patches that's for sure but the thing that amazes me is that I have never stopped LIKING him. He is smart, really smart (if a bit absent minded), funny, good looking, strong, kind and an all around great guy. He has been my strength during some very hard times, he has made me crazy at times (as I am sure that I have done the same to him), he makes me laugh, he stands by me, when I am nutso, he says "hey psycho chill out"- what more can a girl ask for?
I knew that I had it made that he was my friend and husband and that I was lucky beyond imagination to have him. That was until he became a father... He is absolutely a great father to Evelyn. He is patient and kind, he teaches her how to just have fun and get dirty, he doesn't let her get away with much but he does it in a firm and patient way. He always puts her first and he knows how to make her feel very special.
Thank you Leslie for just being you and being the kind of person that I am proud to know and have as a husband, after all of these years, I wouldn't change a thing. I have loved every single minute that I have had with you and I am not sure that I will ever have enough.

A Whole Bunch!

We have had a busy few days here, so I have some pics to post. I would have taken many more pictures than I did but Bean has been feeling the hate for the camera lately, so I have been trying to back off. It's hard though, I really enjoy taking pictures and I am sometimes desperate to catch all of those little moments and expressions. This past weekend we had a Bowling Night, it was a success again, fun was had by all and this time Bean was rolling that ball down the lane on her own. We had Sushi (I have a religious love for the stuff), and Evelyn slammed on some rice. It has been warm, so we have been outside for 2 days running, monitoring flowers and bugs, sighting the first mosquitoes of the year. So, here is your "whole bunch"....

A difficult combo, total cuteness AND camera aversion.



We go out for Sushi, Bean chows "Chinese Rice" and uses chopsticks to do it.




An askew shot of Bean enjoying Story Hour, one of the highlights of her week.


She likes to keep a close eye on the progress of our few Daffodils. We call that the "Imperious Finger", I just think it's funny to see that tiny finger pointing things out.


Here, she is, out in the warm weather, inspecting "flowers" and such.

A Conversation with Bean

Last night we were driving home, along a dark highway. The skies were clear and the stars were bright- fodder for the imagination....
After a few moments of quiet, Bean pipes up and says
"Mama, I have something to say."
M: Ok Bean what have you got?
B: WWWWEEEELLLLLL......
M: Yes?
B: What I want to do is to get on a big, shiny Rocket Ship with Mama, Papa and Bean and I want to go way up high and go to the stars. Doesn't that sound wunnerful?
M: (astounded) OH YES! Evelyn that does sound wonderful.
B: Mama if we got up there in our Rocket Ship would we fall right back down or would the wind keep us up there long enough to touch the stars?
M: Well, we would have to use our big rocket ship engines to get us up there but once we were up there, we could just use little engines to float, float, float up there with all of the stars.
B: Mama, I really want to do that, when can we do that?
M: We won't be able to do that for awhile, we don't have a rocket ship.
B: Oh. Well, Mama? Have you ever touched a star?
M: No I have never been able to, but it would be so great,I can just imagine it.
B: I have touched one, alot of stars!
M: You did? That's great! What did they feel like?
B: after a few seconds.....CHEESE!
M: Cheese?!?!?! (while laughing of course)
B: after much consideration...NO! Not cheese they feel like, you know that scratchy stuff on trees (bark), like that but they are a little bit hot and a little bit bright but you wouldn't need sunglassses.

That's my girl. She has a mind full of imagination and wonder and this mind can, I guess, just spontaneously figure out certain rudimentary concepts of the mechanisms of flight because, well, neither I, nor Les have ever talked about rocket ships versus earth bound flight with her. Actually I have never even talked about Outer Space with her, silly me, I was waiting until she has the concepts of different states and countries down before I talked about planets and galaxies. I think it's amazing how kids can just bust through the walls we put up around them, how we think they are only able to understand so little , when they actually understand so much. I guess I will pull out some of Leslie's Astronomy books and let her get a good look at some stars.

Just Bean