Blessing Day

Steve blessed our little Li Ya today.  Grandma and Grandpa Z., the Earnests, the Fitzgeralds, and the Kimbles were all here for Li Ya's special day.   We somehow all got to church in time for the blessing, even though it was early.

Steve's voice was tender and full of love as he gave the blessing.   It was beautiful.  Li Ya is so very blessed to have so many who love her and are good examples to her.  After church, we gathered at our home for food and lots of conversation.   I wonder how many times "Durban," "South Africa," or "Swaziland" came up in our conversations.  Why?  Oh, just because Grandma and Grandpa Z. will be serving as the mission president couple for the South Africa Durban mission starting in July!  We're all super excited for them.  It was a happy happy day. 

Um, I love her.

Proud Mama and Papa

The blessing circle participants

Christine, Jon (aka the Mountaineer), and Annee and Darin's little Wally

Rachel and Mi Na

  

Annee and Wally (Why don't I have a picture of his twin, Eleanor?)

South Africa bound!

It's May!

I wonder if my next post will have "June" in the title.  Like I said before, March was pretty dismal, April was slightly better, and I have great hopes for May.

I spent most of April on my couch or in bed.  Steve's tax season ended, which was such a relief for our whole family.  I am proud of Steve for getting through another one, but can we really keep doing this forever?

My children gained a lot of independence in April, getting their own food and drink from the refrigerator.  Even Mi Na learned the art of scouring the floor and table for food left behind.  It wasn't always that bad.  Mornings were the best part of my day.  Though exhausted, I remained nausea-free until noon.  But when afternoon hit, I put Mi Na down for her nap, let Stephen watch a movie, and then slept until my alarm sounded and it was time to get Mei Li from the bus.  Then there was more movie-watching once Mei Li got home and Mi Na got up from her nap.  Then more couching for me.  I felt guilty that my kids were frying their brains with so much screen time.  That good-for-nothing mother of theirs.


Through all of this, I remained overwhelmingly grateful for my supportive, patient husband.  How could our little family have survived this last month if Steve were unwilling to feed, bathe, and put the kids to bed when he got home from work?   I probably would have just done what needed to be done, but I'm grateful that when he came home, I could just go to bed and rest easy knowing that our little ones were well taken care of.  I know it was probably hard on Steve, but he never told me so.

I hope it doesn't offend anyone if I speak of the first trimester of pregnancy as being difficult or trying.  I know that there are many who struggle with infertility and would gladly throw up for nine straight months if it meant they could conceive.  I am so very aware of that, and remain ever grateful for the blessings I have been given.

When I prayed for help, I sometimes felt a little guilty that I would ask for help with this trial/blessing, knowing that others have much harder trials to deal with.  But after I prayed, I never felt like Heavenly Father compared my trial to another's.  I felt simply that He loved me, I was His daughter, and He wanted to help me.  He did help me in small and simple ways.   Mi Na came to me a few times while I lay on the couch and asked, "Mama, a sick?"  Stephen prayed that I would get better, and Mei Li came to my bedside everyday to give me a hug and a kiss and tell me that I was the best mom in the world.  I didn't believe her, but it was nice to hear.


I felt a little different today, not great, but different.  I felt the urge to clean my house, but with no energy to do it.  That little change gave me hope that I will someday enjoy running our household again.  I took the kids outside for a bit in the late afternoon, which only happened once or twice in April.  And tonight, when Mei Li requested that I sing "Feed the Birds" before bed, I sang it more slowly, soothingly, and beautifully than I did the nights before.  I am grateful for these little changes in the way I feel.

We are indeed blessed and I am just going to continue to plug away, do what I can, and try not to feel guilty for not doing more.  Happy May to all!

This and that.

So I feel like I haven't been at my computer much.  Well, except for yesterday when I checked facebook and found out that my SIL, Annee, is having yet another set of twins!  Crazy, huh?

Mi Na has been sick for the last ten days with a urinary tract infection.  My mom knew what it was right away, based on her experience raising me.  Unfortunately, I trusted my pediatrician who initially didn't really have any idea of what it was and thought it might just go away, but then figured it out on our second visit.  My mother is basically right about everything, and I'm still getting used to it.

Today was the first day that Mi Na showed signs of her normal self.  I saw some smiles and she was less clingy, though not much less.  Her favorite place is still in her mother or father's arms.

It was in the sixties today.  Stephen rode his bike outside while Mi Na napped and Ie Ling watched him.  I tackled the laundry.  Ie Ling reported a funny story from the tot lot.  He got a little bored there, and asked Ie Ling, "Now what can I do?"  Ie Ling suggested that they play a different game or just talk about life.  He responded, "Let's talk about the old days."  Ha!

Mei Li has been going crazy writing notes to everyone.  My favorite note was this one:  "Dear too my bruthr.  You like (to play) hous and I do too."

We had a nice time this evening playing outside with neighbor friends.  I am so excited for SPRING!  I need to start thinking about sprouting some seeds inside soon.  I need to figure out what type of garden boxes to buy or build.  I need to purge my house of stuff!

I'm going to get ready for bed so Steve and I can watch Top Chef and eat Girl Scout cookies.  Good night!

Little Royalty

Mei Li is betrothed.  No, not to S, but to J.  J goes to our church and his mother, Marci, is my visiting teacher and my dear friend.  Although it's much too early for marriage talk, I admit that I'm secretly hopeful that this union will come to pass (at the appropriate time and place).  

Mei Li confessed once that when she and J were sitting next to each other, watching the fourth graders perform a dancing scene in their play, it made her want to talk about marriage.  (Oh help me.) 

On Fridays, I watch J and send him on the bus with Mei.   One Friday, on their way out the door to go to the bus stop, J turned to Mei Li and said, "My mom told me that I need to treat you like a princess." He said it with a look of earnestness and duty.  My heart melted.  I wished Marci was there so I could hug her and thank her for teaching her boys from a young age how to treat girls with respect.  

This experience impacted me so much that I started telling my children to treat each other like princesses and prince.  Whenever there is any conflict, I remind them.  Somehow, without any additional explanation, they know just how to alter their behavior to reflect love and respect for each other.  I hope they'll always remember how to do this, but my reminders alone won't be enough.

When I became a mother, I realized that the best thing I ever did for my children was to marry Steve.  Mei Li will feel her whole life what it is like to be treated like a princess from her father, and Stephen will have a wonderful example of what a real man should be like-kind, gentle, faithful, humble, and selfless.  My children think I love Steve a million kazillion drillion, which is a lot, but not quite enough to describe how deeply I love and respect him.

The beginning of this video made me cry.  I hope my children will understand, recognize, respect, and seek the kind of beauty Sister Dalton talks about in this video.

Goodbye Christmas and California dreamin'

I put the last lingering Christmas decoration, our dancing snowman, away today.  I really miss the way my mantle looked this Christmas.   Steve's Grandma Z knitted his and my stockings and Steve's sister, Sarah, knitted all of my children's stockings.  They are great treasures to us.  I added that mitten garland to my collection just this year and I am in love with it.   I haven't really blogged about any of our Christmas vacation, but I am sort of overwhelmed by how much there is to blog about.

California weather was amazing.  It was in the 70s every single day we were there.  It did make me wonder why we don't just live there, but I do really love the seasons in Virginia.  Even winter has its virtues.  

Several of us ran around the Rose Bowl the morning after Christmas.  It was wonderful.   Even after taking a break from running after the half marathon, Steve and I were able to run the three miles comfortably, which felt good.

Steve and I attended my 10-year high school reunion.  We had a really great time.  I felt so much love for everyone there and I was so happy to hear of everyone's successes.

I loved catching up with the school librarians and our old French teacher, who feel more like my favorite girlfriends than anything else.   Marc, my half-Chinese "brother" and fifth grade boyfriend was there.  Marc and I didn't really talk to each other much in fifth grade, we just held hands during the "couple's skate" on our elementary school's many field trips to Fiesta roller rink.  We were better friends in high school.

Vincent, my cheerful friend with the most infectious laugh, was there with his wonderful and completely-worthy-of-him girlfriend.  Steve enjoyed catching up with old coaches, teachers, and teammates.  None of my close girlfriends attended the reunion, which made me sad, but it is interesting and wonderful how ten years sort of removes old barriers between people.

We attended the all-school reunion afterwards, where I saw a few of my beloved fellow cheerleaders, Alex, Natalie, and Brooke.  I love those girls so much.

Brad and Ie Mei, Jeremy and Michiko, and Steve and I took our families to Santa Monica Pier just to walk around, and then we settled down on the sand to let the cousins play.  I really love this picture of my beautiful sister, Ie Mei:

It was a very dreamy day and it sufficiently tired out all the little ones.

My little sister got married on New Year's Eve and my sweet baby nephew, William, was blessed the day after in San Diego.  We were so happy to be able to participate in both events, but I am kicking myself for not having one single picture of that beautiful child on my iPod Touch.

We spent a couple of days with Zack and Ana in San Diego and made a morning trip to the beach, which turned out to be quite chilly.  Jack, Mei Li and Stephen played so well together.  What a blessing to have so many cousins to love and be loved by.

While in LA, the W cousins played at Lacey park several times.  It's such a pretty park.  We went once more on our last day in California.  Sadly, all the cousins were gone by then.

I'm pretty sure we'll never live in California again, but I'm just grateful it's a place we get to visit at least once a year. Now I just have to blog about Christmas Day before I can move on to present life.  I have this great sense of loss for the days I've neglected to write about.  I hate that.

Thanksgiving

It has been a crazy week!  I don't have a single picture from Thanksgiving Day.  I stayed up late the night before making a pumpkin pie and all other things that could be done a day in advance.  Steve let me sleep in, even though he was up late too.  I let him do that for me way too much.  How bratty of me.

He took the kids over to Ken and Rachel's house for some breakfast and football watching, while I stayed home and cooked.  It was kind of crazy and wonderful to be all alone in my house.  I downloaded an audio book to keep me company.  My selection was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I love it.

I chopped vegetables and roasted them in our electric roaster so I wouldn't take up valuable oven time.  They didn't caramelize properly.  After brining the turkey overnight, I patted it dry, coated the skin with oil, and stuffed it with aromatics.  I think it came out perfectly, but then we covered it with foil because we started an hour later than planned and the skin lost its crispness.  My gravy was too thin and my homemade pumpkin pie cracked wide open in the middle while cooling.  My heart broke a little bit over my failures.

But, we were with family, and that is nothing to be heart-broken about.  We are so blessed to live near Rachel and Ken, Christine, and the Earnest family.  Their culinary contributions were perfection.  We all stuffed ourselves.  Christine and her friend had to leave because Christine was working Black Friday at Anthropologie and had to be there at 5AM!  The rest of us adults sat in our living room after the kids went to bed and just talked.  It was lovely.

Annee and Darin stayed at our place with the sleeping children, while Steve and I went to a store at midnight to buy a washer and dryer:

  

Ha!  It was insane!  Luckily, there was a separate line for those buying appliances and the majority of the people were going for the TVs.  The ordeal only took us an hour and a half.  I'm pretty excited about our purchase.  It will be nice to have a washer that (hopefully) doesn't break every few months and actually cleans clothes.


My heart is filled with gratitude for my blessings.  I have too many to count, but I try to count them in prayer each day.  Perhaps I haven't yet faced hard enough trials to prove me wrong, but so far I've come to know that being grateful makes any stage of life a beautiful one.  

'Bout time we two were livin' out a lovely dream come true.

Friday afternoon: Leaf jumping, leaf throwing, and a little bit of leaf raking.

Friday night: Opening night for A Christmas Carol at Ford's Theatre.  So amazing.

Saturday: The raking of a billion leaves

Not pictured: A trip to Costco, a couple of trips to Home Depot, changing kitchen light fixtures(which kept us up until 3 AM), and watching The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band.


I had never seen that movie before, but I'm a huge fan.  Mei Li is the biggest fan.  She's been pretending that Joe Carder has been writing her love notes, and she gets embarrassed when I ask her about it.  I'm trying to act like it doesn't bug me.


I learned on Friday that a girl in Stephen's class wants to marry him because "he's cute and he likes my shoes."  He doesn't seem to notice that she like-likes him.


This week is going to be so busy and great.  Stephen's turning four, we've got family coming into town, and I'm going to make my first turkey.  Last week, I started panicking about all there is to do, but I calmed down when I remembered that it's all happy stress.


I'm not sure what young people envision their life to be after they are married and have kids, but I would guess they don't understand completely all the hard work that is involved.  But it's this hard, important, and happy work that has made our dreams come true.  I'm so grateful for all of it.


  

11/14

Grandma and Grandpa Z came to stay with us after the Richmond races.  They came with me to visit Mei Li's school during American Education Week on Monday.  Mei Li made pilgrim and Indian crafts during class with the help of Grandpa.  After, all the kids got up to sing several song for the parents and grandparents.  She was right in the middle singing loudly with a huge smile on her face.  There was a Thanksgiving slideshow presentation with the students' drawings and narrations.   Then there was a slideshow with pictures of the kids to a sappy country song that made me cry.

After the program, we went to the book fair, where I spent money on overpriced books.  Then we took a tour of the adorable Kinder Garden.

In the evening, we had dinner with Grandma and Grandpa Z, Rachel, Ken, and Christine at CPK.  Sadly, I have no pictures of all of this, but I wish I did.  We love being with family.

Sunday is for family.

This morning, we all woke up late.  Steve didn't have a meeting before church so we had a nice relaxing morning.  We made crepes for breakfast.

Then after all that relaxing, we rushed to get ready for 11:00 church, and were about five minutes late.  Blast.

I stayed late after church to try to troubleshoot the copier.  Of course, in the end, it wasn't me who fixed the copier.  It was my new co-librarian's husband.  But at least now I know some other tricks to make it work when there's an imaginary paper jam.

I made three different kinds of pizza for dinner: pepperoni, margherita, and pear/arugula.  After dinner, we discussed what we should do for the rest of the evening.  I suggested we go walk on the W&OD trail, but both Stephen and Mei Li shot that idea down quick.  Mei Li said, "but going to the field is a family tradition!"  She is right after all.

So we walked to the field, and this time we practiced some tricks.  It has been much too long since I last did a cartwheel or a roundoff.

 My cartwheel.

Stephen's cartwheel.

 Steve's.

 Mei Li's special dance.

Getting ready for a big group jump that I never successfully captured.

We played until it got dark, walked home, and put the kids to bed.

Part of today's Relief Society lesson was about keeping the Sabbath Day holy.  Aside from what we don't do on Sunday, like work or buy things, Sunday is a day for worship and family togetherness.  I'm deeply grateful for the gift of the Sabbath.  Keeping it holy keeps our family strong.

Apple Picking 10/5/11

 Michi took a day off from sightseeing last Wednesday, so we decided to go apple picking.  We had the best time.  Michi brought her awesome camera and took some pictures of the kids and me.  Then she asked me how I would feel if she took some pictures of just me.  This next picture sums up how I felt about that:

I could never be or desire to be a model.  Aside from the fact that I have short Asian legs, I feel pretty silly posing by myself, with no one to hug or hold.

Michiko did get some great shots to help us remember our really great day in the orchard.

 

I feel really blessed to have the sisters and sisters-in-law that I have.  I love how comfortable it feels for Michiko to come visit without my brother, Jeremy.  Or how I can go visit Annee in North Carolina without Steve.  With twenty-six (plus Sarah's one on the way) on Steve's side, and twenty-six on my side, we have so many people to love and be loved by.  It makes life kind of amazing.

Wednesday

I didn't drive to the school today after Mei Li got on the bus.  My car is broken.  

Mi Na went down for a nap right after we took Mei Li to the bus stop.  Stephen had a short quiet time and then I asked him to help me make pizza dough.  I'm really loving this recipe, by the way.  I resisted almost every urge to correct his helpfulness.  He loved watching the "tornado" in the mixer.

He wanted to watch TV after making the dough, but since he lost TV privileges for a week, we made a birthday card for someone special instead.  He sat on my lap and I helped him write the letters.  I love that boy, and I'm glad that Mei Li being at kindergarten has given us more one on one time together.

Mei Li had a frown getting off the bus.  She came straight to me and had me hold her.  Somehow, in the one mile between the school and home, she got sad.  Her brand new friend who is in her class and on her bus, decided to go to the back of the bus (against the rules for kindergarteners) with her older friends instead of sit next to Mei Li.  I consoled her, and she seemed to feel better.  Her smile returned as soon as she saw her neighbor friends playing outside.   I love her resiliency.

We were all ready to go to the swimming pool when I heard Mi Na say, "Da-ee."  Steve had come home early.  He got his suit on and we were about to leave when the ice cream truck rang its bell all the way down our street.  It wouldn't be summer without an ice cream truck treat, so we indulged Mei Li with an ice cream sandwich and Stephen with a cyclone popsicle.  Mei Li said, "Wow! Dad's home early, the ice cream truck came, and now we're going swimming!  This is turning out to be a great night after all!"

 

Mi Na and I stayed at the pool for half an hour and then we rushed home to make the pizza so it would be ready when the others got home.  Mei Li said I got the dough just right this time.

Tonight after the little ones were in bed, we did her homework and read a couple of books.  Then she asked if we could read from The Friend magazine.  We read several stories and after we were done, I told her that no matter what happens at school, she will come home to a house full of people who love her.  She said, "I know."  I'm glad she knows.

First day on the job.

Today was Mei's first day of kindergarten.  The morning was spent packing her backpack, repairing a tear in the dress I made especially for Mei's first day of school, and cleaning up after Mi Na's many messes.

Mei Li has been so excited for this day for a very long time.  I've been dreading it.  Consequently, she did had a better first day on the job than I did.  I melted down after she rode away on the bus, then again in the parking lot of her school as her bus passed my car, and then again after she walked into the school. Stephen said, "Are you crying?  Don't cry!  It's too princess-y." 

Once she was inside the school, I took Stephen's face in my hands, told him I loved him, and told him that he was the big boy now.  His face was serious and he nodded.

 

I took my big boy and my baby to the grocery store and they behaved like angels (mostly).

I played monster trucks with Stephen while Mi Na napped and then we waited for Mei at the bus stop.  She was the first one off the bus.

She was happy to see us.  She told me all about kindergarten, reported that a boy from church is in her class (hurray!), and then pretended with Stephen that the curb was a tightrope all the way back to the house.

I was sort of stressed out when the kindergarten papers flowed into the kitchen.  The kitchen wasn't clean.  Note to self: the kitchen HAS TO BE CLEAN when the school papers flow in.

The rest of the day was kind of crazy.  Stephen and Mi Na were super cranky and tired most of the day.  I felt pretty stressed with all of the crying and whining going on.  But Stephen and Mi Na are still little, and I anticipate this won't be the last of it.

We had family home evening when Steve came home.  It was a good ending to a very eventful day.  As disorganized and emotional as I was today, I was so comforted as we sat together on our living room couch, that we have a happy family and we all love each other so so much.  I have the best kids and the best husband.  (By the way, so do you.) My heart is filled with gratitude for each one of them.  Hopefully tomorrow is a little more organized and less stressful.  It's kindergarten, after all.