Some "new" Photos!

I just got these photos from our Bloom Inaugural Charity Golf Tournament, from April last year... Which was only 2 weeks after we got home with Mina. We had an amazing professional photograph who donated his talents and took a bunch of photos at the event. We have lots of great golf pics which we will soon be posting on our website (www.bloomproject.org)... but he actually took a bunch of my kids too!!! I can't believe how much Mina has changed in the past 6 months. And looking back, I can't believe how well she adjusted to our family and our chaos so quickly... These pictures are a gift! The bloom girls are in planning mode full swing for this years tournament... It is going to be bigger and better!! we are so excited.

I think this will always be my BABY picture of Mina. She had just come home and you can just see straight in those eyes... This melts my heart!

How come Grandpa is sitting all by himself at the Tournament Dinner? Dinner was great actually... Outback Steakhouse cooked it up right there. Yummy!



Honestly, this is Mina playing peek-a-boo with a large crowd,,, this just 2 weeks home.. girl is such a performer.. she loves attention. Too cute.


My girls, oh my heart is so proud of these kids it could burst...




This is my "GUY" look at those eyes... He has been asking me weekly about the next golf tournament. Boy worked all day, most of the time driving around on the golf cart. He had a blast.

We put Kobi to work selling Raffle tickets, she is really coming out of her shell this last year.



I can't imagine my life any other way, the more the merrier in my house. We are so blessed!

Complete Randomness

Here is a catch up kinda post!!! Lots of little fun photos and thoughts from the past week... Mina had her first true day of preschool,, our little social butterfly.







































Kobi & Jack had a great first week of soccer. They are surprising us with their mad skills!   We find every reason to celebrate around here...notice the Junk food theme? Mommy tip,,,if you want it.. buy a shallow cookie sheet like this one, then a roll of refrigerator cookie dough...press it in, bake it up, and write on it for any occasion.. I make these cookie cakes all the time.. for about any silly thing going on and the kids faces light up like you can't imagine...so easy..This one was for a great job in their first soccer game of the season...Anyhow  there will be tons more soccer photos to come.. I haven't even started my normal deluge of cute kid photos yet..  


 

Also this week we celebrated the Chinese "Moon Festival" , Yeah, another holiday in our family!!! So I stalked this little Asian supermarket in the area to get this Mooncakes that are shipped from China... Aren't the sooo pretty!!! So we were excited, printed the story of the moonfestival off the very dependable wikipedia & then went outside at dark, looked at the moon and ate these beautiful mooncakes...ummmm I think next year will will celebrate the Autumn Moon Festival with some good ol' Fashioned American Moon "Pies" ... I will save myself hours of stalking them down, a wad of cash, and the experience of eating some rather strange, and not so good mooncakes...

The other randomness for this post.... See the awesome cupcakes that Kobi & Papa made for their friends... Great Job! 

..Also Mina giving up and loving on Grandpa...Hey everyone else does, why does Mina give him such a hard time... 

We love our Grandpa around here.. 

Mina also chowin' some Mu Shu Pork, Leftovers from my B-day dinner with my hubby...Yummy! Good week over here at our house...

Bloom Get out & play day

So the Awesome "Bloom girls" and I spent Saturday spreading the word about our Charity organization.. There was a small family festival, and we had a booth where kids could come and plant their own "bloom".. It was fun to be out there,  trying to get our name out there a bit, and spreading the word about the big golf tournament coming up in April.. Last year us girls put the tournament on in record time...  I think we had about 4 months to get it put together & that is with me traveling to China & "E" adopting her sweet bundle within weeks of each other... It was nutty to say the least.  So this year we are excited to have a little experience under our belts and a lot more time to make it a fantastic event....  Other HUGE news from the bloom front... We found an orphanage in Haiti to partner with!!!   So while our main focus is helping out people in our area that are adopting, we also want to try to help children in impoverished countries where adoption is not as commonplace. We will be suppling them with beans and rice for near a full year.  We are also going to try to work with them to come up with a way we can set up a sponsorship program for the kids living in the orphanage...  They got by this last hurricane by the skin of their teeth.. The lady that runs the place seems like such an amazing soul.. She does so much for these kids, and never turns any child away...Which seems rare in a country where people are literally starving...  We have big hopes for serving this orphanage.  I am so lucky to be working on this project with the greatest girls in the whole world... We have fun, and hopefully we can make our little dream ...a HUGE success!!!  

Somebody Help Me!

Ok, so what does Mama do when she has her first one on one time with me in months????  We played outside for a bit & then it was like she couldn't resist... She just had to do it...  She couldn't just enjoy the day...She had to go and pull out that darn camera... I know I'm cute and all.. but why does she always subject me to this...It's just not fair....I can't help the fact that I am the cutest kid EVER!!! Someone please tell her to knock it off.  At least she gave me a lollipop for all my trouble!  

School Days

Ok so how is this for efficient blogging, 2 posts in 2 days.  Well here is some of the cuteness from the first day of school.  All 4 kiddos are in 4 different schools.  My father in law joked that he was going to get me the -Mom's taxi -license plate for the front of my car.."Don't you dare!!!" ... C started his sophomore year last week and he couldn't be more handsome... I miss him during the day,  he's my bud & my very own personal trainer, (he loves making me lift weights at the gym, and I try to weinnie (sp?) my way out of it, but it was fun all summer to have a workout buddy... I would homeschool him if he wasn't already 10 times smarter than me...  & he loves his little sis (Nice bed head, Mina)!  Our little girl also started Kindergarten last week, along with her entourage... she had 7 of us walking her in with video cameras and all.  Poor kid, can you tell she is like, "Alright guys, you can leave now, I have work to do and y'all are making a scence"  She got right down to business and she has been loving it..Check out her boots, I had figured she would have grown out of them over a totally flip-flop wearin' summer, but no,  her boots live on, she has kicked the whole fronts off the things, but they remain her favorite shoes ever.  I'm gonna have to have them bronzed or something.  She has grown up dramatically in the last week, amazing!  And today was the day for the little guys.  J.C. Started his last year of preschool today,  big stuff,  he has the same awesome teachers as his big sister did last year, so I am thrilled.  He will do great.  He will love having his own thing and not having Mina following him around to grab at whatever it is that he is holding at any given moment.   And last but not least Mina,,, it was actually her open house day the day the Mommies get to go and hang with the kids.  She had no use for me, really... Can you tell,  look at her photo,  It's like, "Let me in this place, NOW"  She is little miss social butterfly & loves to check out new  places and new faces.  She is not one for just hangin' low, for sure.  I hadn't planned on putting her in a preschool class, but she is going to LOVE it.. 2 days a week, for about 3 hours.   She is going full force these days, she is about 21 months old and is hitting the, do I dare say, "terrible two's" a bit early... She is a little octopus, she can get into more things than is possible with just 2 hands.... You gotta love this last photo of her in time out, just below her newest masterpiece!!! Oh, the joy of it all!!! Never a dull moment, and we wouldn't want it any other way!  

Labor Day Weekend

 So I have been called out for being a slacker/blogging Mama, yeah you know who you are!!!  Honestly the last few weeks have been a bit nutty around here.  I don't know what it is about that transition from summer to fall.  We have had some exciting stuff, 2 out of 4 kids started school this week, but I am saving that post so we can see all 4 first days at once.  We started our soccer season with a bang, Abui (grandma) fell and broke & dislocated her wrist and ended up needing surgery this week. Yikes.  This Labor day weekend was pretty fun though.  We didn't do anything extraordinary.  Hung around, hit the pool,  I did a practice Tri-athalon with some super fun chicks on Saturday EARLY morning. The real deal triathalon isn't for like 5 or 6 weeks but since it is our first one we did a practice run-through.  It was actually fun...Just what I need, really, another hugely time-sucking hobby.  I had promised my Bloom (check it out www.bloomproject.org) partner that I would only be focusing on my 4 kiddos & Bloom, I don't know how this triathalon thing snuck in there but I like it, it is my ME time. We have some really exciting thing happening over at Bloom, I can't wait to be able to talk & post about it... It is good stuff, the kind of good stuff that keeps you up at night... So exciting!!!! Anyhow, we also went to a Harvest Moon festival this weekend,  A chinese tradition that I have to admit I need to read up on a bit more before I explain it, but it was way cute to see Mina amongst a ton of other Asian cutie-pies.  We had fun, and Mina & her buddy Mia got to hang.   We also took possibly one of our last trips to our favorite neighborhood spot.  The "Swings" of our neighborhood will be taken down soon, we are NOT happy about that, it is our favorite thing about our 'hood.  But I guess the HOA is scared of the liability of the whole fun thing... Oh well, we made it into a photo op... check it out.. Thanks for checking on us!  See you soon!