Before and After

House pictures ~ If you click on the pictures it will enlarge them.

This is before... The house was a creamy off white with turquoise (!) shutters. The trim was just a little lighter than the house color.

After... We had the house painted a brownish green (that's not the official color name), the shutters painted a dark bronze, new coach lights and plantation shutters put in. What a huge difference!!

A great blog to visit!

I found this website:
http://www.chinesestarfish.blogspot.com/

The author is a South African woman who decided to open an orphanage in China.

T

Anslee has started putting more and more words together. When I wake her up in the morning she says "night, night blankie" since she has to leave it in her crib. When we leave the house in the morning she says "bye, bye Buter" to our dog Buster. She has the cutest little voice!

Someone asked me this morning what Anslee was doing new. So I told her these things she is saying. Another person was standing next to us and said in a suprised tone "Is she saying that in English?". I responded that No, she is saying it in Chinese. She looked sad for me and said "Oh. Maybe she'll learn English one day". When she walked away we couldn't stop laughing. I guess I should tell her I was joking with her...

The article below is from Yahoo News. I have to say when we saw the Pandas in Chongqing, China they were so huge and cute that they looked fake. I kept thinking at any second the panda would reach up and take his huge head off and we would see it was a guy in a costume. Luckily for me I was able to resist the urge to jump in and pet him!


Panda bites man, man bites him back
Wed Sep 20, 7:41 AM ET
BEIJING - A drunken Chinese migrant worker jumped into a panda enclosure at the Beijing Zoo, was bitten by the bear and retaliated by chomping down on the animal's back, state media said Wednesday.
Zhang Xinyan, from the central province of Henan, drank four jugs of beer at a restaurant near the zoo before visiting Gu Gu the panda on Tuesday, the Beijing Morning Post said.
"He felt a sudden urge to touch the panda with his hand," and jumped into the enclosure, the newspaper said.
The panda, who was asleep, was startled and bit Zhang, 35, on the right leg, it said. Zhang got angry and kicked the panda, who then bit his other leg. A tussle ensued, the paper said.
"I bit the fellow in the back," Zhang was quoted as saying in the newspaper. "Its skin was quite thick."
Other tourists yelled for a zookeeper, who got the panda under control by spraying it with water, reports said. Zhang was hospitalized.
Newspaper photographs showed Zhang lying on a hospital bed with blood-soaked bandages and a seam of stitches running down his leg.
The Beijing Youth Daily quoted Zhang as saying that he had seen pandas on television and "they seemed to get along well with people."
"No one ever said they would bite people," Zhang said. "I just wanted to touch it. I was so dizzy from the beer. I don't remember much."
Ye Mingxia, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Zoo, confirmed the incident happened but would not give any details. She said Gu Gu was "healthy."
"We're not considering punishing him now," Ye said in a telephone interview. "He's suffered quite a bit of shock."

Anslee has a blast when Kayla comes over. Kayla's family was at our house for dinner one night. She kept fixing Anslee's hair different ways and putting her in different outfits. Anslee had a blast. I'm sure we'll be spending tons of $ on clothes and shoes when she is old enough to pick her outfits out!

I LOVE my preschool class this year. I have 7 boys and 7 girls. I have twin girls adopted from China. I also have many siblings of children I've had in past years. I know the parents really well and am friends with several of them.

There has been a few problems regarding the Asian twins. At the beginning of the school year one little girl didn't want to sit next to either of the twins because she said their skin was ugly. After talking to her parents, she now plays with them all the time. A little boy who plays with them told them the rhyme "Chinese, Japanese, Dirty Knees, Look at these" - complete with the motions... I talked with him and he had no idea that what he said wasn't nice. The parents of both of these children were mortified that their children said these things. I did the lesson with a red and green apple talking about how they look different on the outside but the same on the inside just like people look different on the outside but are the same on the inside and that God says we are all wonderfully made... Hopefully we won't have any more issues about this.

I dread the time something like this happens to Anslee. It will break my heart.
T

Sesame Street Live

We were invited to see the show with some friends. I debated going because Anlsee does not enjoy tv at all. We've turned on Sesame Street, Blues Clues, Teletubbies and even Barney (gasp!) but she won't watch any of them. I don't want her to love tv but if she could be entertained by it for five minutes, maybe I could unload the dishwasher without her trying to get in :-).

We decided to go and she LOVED it! She danced and laughed and clapped throughout the show. I was so suprised. It was hard to hold her because she was so excited and wanted to be with the characters on stage. She was adorable.


Anslee still won't watch tv, but she does get excited when she sees Elmo and Big Bird. During intermission they brought out Elmo balloons. Anslee didn't want one near her, but she loved watching them.
T

Eating lunch with Andrew

On Friday Anslee and I went to Andrew's school to meet him for lunch. Anslee loves going and Andrew loves showing everyone his little sister. Andrew enjoys buying the school lunch instead of bringing one from home, but I'm not sure he's eating much of it.

Notice Andrew's red hair? All the children dyed their hair for school that day. He looked hilarious.
Terri

Our backyard

We have a mom deer and her two babies living in our backyard. Keith put out some corn to get them closer to our house so we can watch them from our kitchen window. They usually come to feed around noon and then around 5 pm. We love watching them.

We were going to have our backyard all cleaned out and have mulch put down in the large wooded areas but now we hate to disrupt their habitat. I guess we'll wait until late winter to start clearing out the backyard.

August Moon Festival
by Bet Key Wong

The August Moon Festival or Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the most celebrated Chinese holidays. It is held on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month. Chinese families celebrate the end of the harvest season with a big feast. Unlike the American Thanksgiving dinner, the Chinese have mooncakes instead of grandma' apple pie. Friends and relatives also send mooncakes to each other as a way of giving thanks.

Chinese legends say that the moon is at its brightest and roundest on this day. Under this bright autumn moon, friendships are made and renewed. It is perfect for a romantic rendezvous. For many years, Chinese poets write about long lost lovers finding their way to each other on this special night.
The August Moon Festival is often called the Women's Festival. The moon symbolizes beauty and elegance. While Westerners worship the sun (yang or male) for its power, people in the Far East admire the moon. The moon is the 'yin' or female principle and it is a trusted friend.

In fact, many ancient August Moon folktales are about a moon maiden. On the 15th night of the 8th lunar moon, little children on earth can see a lady on the moon. On this magical occasion, children who make wishes to the Lady on the Moon will find their dreams come true.

Sorry I've been MIA. I started teaching preschool on Monday and by Tuesday I felt so sick. I thought it was a really bad cold but when I finally went to the doctor on Thursday I found out I had strep throat (which I've never had!), a sinus infection and double ear infections. No wonder I felt so bad. Since I didn't know that I had more than the most horrible cold ever, I did continue to go to school the entire week but I was careful to wash my hands constantly.

We had meet and greet the Friday before where all the children came to meet us and see their classroom. The Thursday that I went to the doctor one little girl went home with a fever and a sore throat and when another mom came at the end of the school day she said her daughter has had a horrible sore throat since the day of meet and greet. Hmmmm. Wonder where I caught this.

Here is an article that I found on blogging baby. It says that a classroom has more germs than a doctors office!

GERMS GO TO SCHOOL
Before I got married, I never got sick. No colds, no flu, not even a sniffle. Then I married a schoolteacher and now I get sick all the time. She doesn't get sick, she just brings the germs home to infect me. Turns out, she's got plenty left at school. A study from the University of Arizona shows that classrooms are the number one germiest workplace. Surfaces in classrooms have nearly twenty times more bacteria than those in lawyers' offices and seven times more than those in doctors' offices.
The discrepancy is most likely due to sick kids who really ought to be home in bed. According to a new survey released by the Clorox company, almost forty percent of parents admitted that they've sent a sick child to school at some time during the last year. Fourteen percent have sent a child to school with a temperature over 100 degrees. Interestingly, the survey also found that kids would rather get give up being sick than give up homework. The company is trying to do something about the problem by offering a free "Clean Up the Classroom" kit.
Although Clorox found that kids catch an average of eight colds per year and that teachers miss an average of 5.3 days each year due to being sick, they didn't note how many times the spouses of teachers get sick. I can tell you, however, that it's far too many.