Tubing and Valentines Day

This past weekend was a weekend I wanted to keep really busy.  February 13 is a day I am very superstitious about—a lot of things tend to go wrong for me on that day, not the least of which was my grandfather dying and I broke my leg!  So I was excited when some friends suggested we go tubing on the 12th, and I made plans to do some volunteer work on the morning of the 13th and choir practice started up again in the evening.  Plus Penny was super excited about Valentine’s Day, so I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what to do, since we don’t really do anything!

We met up with our friends Andy and Melissa at 10:30 on Saturday morning and headed out to Ski Liberty, a resort just across the Maryland border in Pennsylvania, near Gettysburg.  We had a good trip with a quick stop for lunch, but unfortunately there was quite a delay once we got to the resort so we had to sit around for 3 hours and wait.  We played games on various iPods and iPhones to pass the time until our lift tickets were good at 5pm.

Penny was absolutely terrified when we took her tubing at my father’s house, so I made darn sure she was going to go tubing when we got up to Liberty, but she swore she would, so she bundled up and we rented some boots for her and we headed up the mountain.

There were a TON of tubers that day (sounds like we were potatoes, doesn’t it?!) so there was a bit of a wait, and when it was finally Penny’s turn to go, she attempted to talk me into going first, but I wanted to catch video of her first run.  She carefully grilled the employees about what to do, and finally sat in the tube.  She demanded the “pusher” “WAIT!!!!” twice and finally just said “Bye!” to all of us and off she went.  She screamed the entire way down to run.  It was hilarious.   She waited for me down the bottom, as I was having a few second thoughts of my own.  It doesn’t appear that way, but it’s actually a VERY big hill, and a steep one, so you get going pretty fast! I felt confident when I saw Penny stop well short of the end, but when I went, I somehow got going so fast that I hit the wall at the end and bounced into the next lane and headed back up.  The guys were chasing me, I was attempting to flip myself out of the tube, wound up scraping both my knees and jamming the right one, but there was someone coming down as I was going up, so it was critical I get out of there!

Penny agreed to go again, this time because she wanted to videotape herself screaming her way down the hill, which she did and then watched over and over, laughing hysterically.  After the third run, she gave up on waiting for me to get to the top and just started meeting me back up at the top of the mountain.  (There was an escalator to ride back to the top after you hit bottom.)  She forced me to go first on our last run, at which point the slopes were turning to pure ice and despite all of us dragging our feet, we were shooting down like crazy.  I was knocking the employees down like bowling pins as well as hitting the walls, so I wasn’t too upset that it was time to be done, although we are considering going back before they close since it was so much fun!  Even Penny wants to go back, so that’s a good sign that she and snow have now made peace with each other!  (After our New York trip, she announced, “I am done with winter.”)

On Sunday, I was so tired and sore from our day on the mountain that I skipped my volunteer work and helped Penny make Valentine treats for some of her friends at the school.  She made Chex Mix Muddy Buddies (her absolute favorite thing we have made together so far!) and we made chocolate covered strawberries.  She got cute little gift boxes for her friends and we got sweet little cupcake papers and she filled one with Muddy Buddies and one with a strawberry and sealed them up.  It was a fun project, and a messy one, but she was pleased with the results!

Penny came to choir practice with me on Sunday and joined the choir I sing with.  (Stafford Regional Choral Society)  I think it’ll be a pretty cool thing that we sing together for a few months.  We will be performing in a concert in April together, so that’s awesome.  When we got home, she went up to bed after we had a marathon chat, and I decided to take some of the construction paper I had around for Leah, cut out hearts, write messages of the things we love about her on them, and place them all over the house.  It took about an hour to do 3 dozen hearts, and during that time, my legs fell asleep and I didn’t realize it until I stood up and promptly tipped over! :-D 

So, I started in the bathroom and taped a little poem to the bathroom mirror for her.  I figured she would surely see that one first thing, and I was right. 

In case you can’t read it, it says “Roses are red!  Carnations are pink!  You are awesome!  Is what we think!  Happy Valentine’s Day, Penny!  We love you!  The Chief, Cookies, & Leah”.  Yeah, I’m a master of originality!

I scattered other hearts around.  On our picture of her and Leah:

On the dishwasher, I stuck one that said, “you are a great helper”, on the mirror one that said “You are beautiful inside and out”, on the door she leaves through to go to school one that said “You are a well-respected and great student”, that kind of thing.

Now, little did I know that Penny was listening to my tape dispenser from her bed, and she thought I was up to something entirely different…  She vowed to stay in bed till morning, but when I woke up the next morning, every last heart was gone.  She did not miss a one on any of the floors of the house.   When she came home, she thanked me for putting the hearts up and said she loved them and had stuck them all to the door of her closet.  But she confided, “I thought one of them would say I didn’t have to go to school today!” which is why she was so determined to find every last heart.  She was so disappointed that she had to go to school on Valentine’s Day, poor thing!!!  But let’s face it, she’s had a ton of snow days!

Anyway, after we had a laugh about that, we went to Walmart to do some Valentine’s shopping.  Leah had already made Penny a card from a paper heart that she colored and put stickers on, but I decided to do a dinner time card exchange, so we got cards to and from each person.  Penny showed me the one she bought for us before she bought it, as well as the candy she bought us, but who cares about the surprise!!!  hehe  We also took the opportunity to try an ATM so Penny could get some money.  She has been pretty frugal with her money that she came with and hadn’t needed to use an ATM since she got here, so we were quite proud, but now things are getting a bit more expensive—she is taking the TOEFL and needed to reimburse us for the registration fee, she is taking an SAT prep class, there was a fee to join the choir, that kind of thing.  Her mom had made some money available to her, but she hadn’t had the time to go to an ATM in the past couple of weeks.  Happily the ATM at Walmart worked, so we were able to get her some money!  (we had heard at our orientation that some students have needed to visit 3 or 4 different ATMS before finding one to work, so I was happy that the first one we tried took her card!)

When we got home, we put a heart covered table cloth on the table and made a little centerpiece out of heart garland I got on sale.  She and Leah shared some strawberries and then I taught Penny how to make shrimp ceviche, which we had for dinner along with quesadillas.  When The Chief got home, we all sat around the table and shared our cards, reading them aloud and there was lots of “Awwwww!” moments.  We ate dinner and played Yahtzee and then Penny went upstairs to study.  It really was a lovely day, compared to Mike’s and my usual “go out to dinner” and send flowers and a card kind of day.  It’s interesting that trying to make the day somewhat special for Penny made it more meaningful for all of us.

So that brings the blog pretty much up to date for now.  We are working on squeezing in some extra trips, albeit short ones, to Savannah, Myrtle Beach, and NYC.  Penny desperately wants to go to NYC, she says it is everyone’s dream of America.  She has a day off on April 8th, so I was thinking it would be a good time to go until reality smacked me in the face and reminded me that it’s Leah’s 2nd birthday and we have lots of plans!  Fortunately I hadn’t booked anything!

 

(We did put the videos of Penny tubing on Facebook but she refuses to let me post the video to YouTube.  If you’d like to see the video, send me a friend request!)

Holiday Wrap Up

It’s hard to believe Christmas came and went so quickly!  We were so busy that we didn’t get a bunch of things done that we had hoped to accomplish, but we had an amazing holiday.

One of the things that happened is that right before Christmas, AFS asked host family bloggers to please submit a video explaining what our hosting experience meant to us.  We made a video and submitted it, but never dreamed AFS would use it as their Season’s Greetings message to potential host families.  You can check out the message that went out by clicking here.

We also took time while Penny had several days off from school due to snow to work on a gingerbread house kit together.  Leah was not very happy with the whole project, but Penny and I enjoyed putting it together.

Christmas Eve was spent at my sister, Judy’s, house.  It was the first time Penny had met her family, and she was very excited to meet her little cousins.  We had a traditionally Catholic seafood dinner, and spent several hours up there having a nice time.

Christmas Day dawned bright and clear.  Penny mistook my telling my mother that we would open presents between 7 and 8 as meaning in the evening, so she slept in till 9:00.  Leah, of course, was up bright and early.  We let her play with the Cozy Coupe car I spent all night constructing while she waited for NyNy to wake up and Nana and Grandpa Jim to arrive.  Finally Ny Ny woke up and we let the girls have their presents.  Penny did well.  Santa brought her a new camera (she desperately needed one!), a Nintendo DSi, and an iPod Shuffle among other things.  She got tons of clothes, games, DVD’s, CD’s, gift cards, and more.  I think all of us went a little bit overboard this year.  I read that most people this year were looking at Christmas shopping as a kind of “Oh screw it!” moment where we were all sick of being careful of our money and worrying about the economy, and that was certainly the case with our families.  In fact, Leah got bored of opening presents and it took her 2 days to finally finish.  One of the most sentimental gifts we gave Penny was a wall hanging (a dish towel, actually, but it is way too beautiful to be a towel!) of the Commonwealth of Virginia so she can always remember where her home in the USA is.  It included Fredericksburg on the map, and here she is finding where she lives in our beautiful Commonwealth.

For dinner, we had a traditional English dinner of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and the works, but Penny does not eat beef, so despite the fact I made her ham, it was a bit of slim pickings.  But part of her AFS experience is to learn and be respectful of our customs as well, and she did a good job.

The day after Christmas, my mother and Jim went home to Florida and although my father stayed an extra couple of days, he was soon on his way home too.  Because there was a bit of snow, he and I didn’t get to make our annual trip to the Ginter Gardens Winter Light Show in Richmond, but I took Penny and we enjoyed it a ton.  It was a cold night, although not as cold as some we have known!  It was a great chance for her to practice using her new camera and we were happy to see the results, including this picture which she snapped of the two of us while we were inside an igloo constructed of lights!

A couple of days and a grudge match of bowling later, we took Penny up to DC to see the ICE show at the Gaylord National.  I don’t even know how many tons of ice they use to construct a beautiful indoor wonderland made entire of ice sculptures, but it is quite beautiful to see.  This year’s theme was How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and the colors were amazing.  Penny was blown away by the artistry, as were we all.  She also enjoyed shooting down the 2 story ice slide!

Then it was time for New Year’s.  Our family is not big on New Year’s, although Penny says it is a big deal in Thailand.  Because we have the young one, we don’t have the luxury of really going out, so we showed her Dick Clark on TV, gave her sparkling cider, taught her the joys of my father’s homemade pizza, and waited for midnight to come.  Once it did, we heard fireworks outside, so we went out on the back porch, where we could see the fireworks going off from Old Town.  A bunch of neighbors were outside banging pots and pans and screaming and yelling, so we both yelled, “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” and a chorus of Happy New Years! were heard in return. 

Because my father’s family is of Eastern Orthodox descent, we also celebrate Epiphany as a holiday in our house.  It is traditionally celebrated by many cultures as the day the Three Wisemen or Three Kings arrived to bestow gifts on the baby Jesus and is celebrated on January 6th, also making it the 12th and final day of Christmas.  To celebrate, we started our morning with 3 gifts for each of the girls, one from each king.  Leah received a Magnadoodle, a cat that scoots around by itself, and a coloring book.  Penny received a guide to the TOEFL, tickets to see Hairspray, and charms for the necklace we gave her for her birthday.  Then it was really time to get ready, as the big celebration for 3 Kings is to put on a huge dinner for our close friends.  This year was no exception, we welcomed nearly 30 guests into our home and still managed to have a sit down dinner at a huge long table for everyone.  Penny helped a lot with doing the cooking, setting tables, and keeping Leah busy and out of trouble. 

We serve a mixture of traditional Russian and Polish foods, including kielbasa and pierogies, beef stroganoff, Russian black bread, Polish mushrooms, haluski, and more.  We were extremely happy that Penny invited several of her friends from school to the party and two of them, Charlie and Chrissy, actually came to celebrate with her!  They were really lovely girls. 

We gave all our guests bowls of Chex Muddy Buddies, Penny’s favorite snack (you can see all the bowls wrapped and ready up on the fireplace and cabinet behind the tables in the above picture).  Penny spent several hours the night before the party making the Chex mix for everyone, and then threatening to eat it herself! :-D  Many people devoured the Chex before they ever left the table.  It is definitely a crowd pleaser!

We spent the next couple of days cleaning up all the mess from the party and from Christmas itself.  Penny definitely experienced some sadness and upset over Christmas ending.  I think it was an amazing experience for her, and one she is not likely to get again, as in Thailand, Christmas is not celebrated.  Certainly she can come celebrate with us, but nothing compares to your first Christmas, and I have to say, it was cool sharing a teenager’s first Christmas, in contrast to my toddler who will probably only start to remember Christmas next year or the year after!

We also went and met my friend, Sarah, to go see the movie The King’s Speech.  Penny said she really didn’t understand what was going on, but later admitted she slept through the first part of it, so that probably had something to do with it!

It is now Martin Luther King Jr. weekend and we have been busy still. Penny has decided she would like to go to college in the US if possible, which means studying for the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), so we have had tutoring sessions in the evening for that, and studying for the SAT’s, which I don’t think I can really help her with.  She has a study guide for both tests and plans to take them this spring.

This weekend, she helped me organize a surprise party for Mike’s 37th birthday.  She suggested we have the party yesterday even though his birthday is next Friday, so he would be caught off guard.  Lo and behold, she was correct!  We organized a party at Joe’s Pizza, his favorite pizza place in Northern Virginia, and he was totally surprised!  It was a great moment for him and for me that I finally managed to pull it off. :)  She made plans with a couple of our friends to teach her some cooking and to teach them some cooking, so I’m happy that hopefully she will branch out a bit and do some things with some new people.

We have caught up on a lot of TV.  Penny has fallen totally, helplessly, and hopelessly in love with David Tutera of My Fair Wedding on We TV.  She has decided her goal in the US is to meet him.  If anyone has David Tutera connections, please, please let me know.  Otherwise, we’re going to have to write him cheesy fan mail and see if it works.  We caught up on Sister Wives on TLC, a show about a polygamist family in Utah, which caused Penny to assert “there are many strange people in America.”  Like this is news!!!  She has been exposed to Hoarders, Storage Wars, Billy the Exterminator, and Extreme Couponing.  She is convincing me to watch more and more movies.  We both loved Valentine’s Day, which we watched last night.

After Mike’s party, we sent Leah home with my friend Melissa and have enjoyed a quiet day today.  Penny helped me vacuum and clean up the house a good bit, which saved me a lot of time doing things that I hate doing, notably vacuuming!

Tonight we watched the Golden Globes together and ate lobsters.  She had never been presented with a whole lobster and told it was a meal in itself before, so I taught her how to use the lobster crackers to break open the shell and use a tiny fork to get the meat out.  She found it a fun and exciting experience, and of course, she LOVED the lobster.  I love this picture of her and her lobster, it looks to me like a heart!

We printed out our Golden Globe ballots and each filled in our best guesses as to who would win.  Neither one of us should be betting on this stuff—we both did terribly on the whole thing!!!!

We definitely have some hard times in our family, it is not all sunshine and roses.  We get cross with each other and there are times I am sure Penny is ready to go home and there are times we are ready for her to go home.  Shortly she will attend her mid-stay orientation with AFS and I think it will be good for all of us to stop and reflect on why we decided to embark on this journey together, what we can do to successfully conclude it, what goals we have in the meantime, and what our future as a family looks like, for the next 5 months and beyond.  She has several other exchange students and her liaison that she can turn to when times get tough, and I am so fortunate to have a support system of host moms around the country that I can talk to when I need an understanding ear!  (Thanks, ladies!)  Being a host family is just like being any other kind of family.  There are personalities, some days some people don’t get enough sleep, sometimes other people have a hard day at school or at work, and culturally speaking, we are coming from 2 drastically different ways of looking at life and dealing with problems.  We are doing the best we can, day in and day out. That’s the best we can ask for!!!

Before orientation, Penny, Leah, and I will be traveling to my dad’s next week for a 6 day weekend.  Dad is taking Penny to Canada for a day while I catch up with friends, and we will show her what a real snowfall looks like (he has several feet up in Northern New York).  We plan to go sledding, Penny will spend a half day at my old school doing a presentation about Thailand and seeing what a rural school district in America looks like, she will see the house I grew up in, she will see my hometown, and she will get to meet some of the best people I have ever known.  I’m excited to get up there and have some time away! :-D

Can It Be Nearly Christmas!?

December has flown by in an absolute whirlwind.  I seriously cannot believe how quickly the season has come and gone.  I’ve been so excited to share the holidays with Penny.  We had a TON of plans, but many of them didn’t come to fruition, just due to lack of time and of course there are times that you just can’t do everything.  Consequently,we missed the Fredericksburg Christmas parade, among other things!

I had suggested she take a sick day on the 9th so we could go to the National Tree Lighting (I know, bad momma!), but it turned out she had something crazy like 3 tests that day, so she went to school and we missed seeing the tree being lit.  On the 11th, we went up to my friends Paul and Kris’s house to attend their church’s annual Christmas pageant.  It was a beautiful 2 hour Christmas concert with scenes from the Christmas story acted out, plus my (*cough cough*) favorite liturgical dancing and a rather passionate sermon delivered from the pastor about accepting Jesus as our savior.  Penny handled it all rather diplomatically and we assured her in the car that we didn’t really feel that way about the hereafter, but she didn’t seem too concerned by it, so I’m not sure what she was thinking. 

After the program, we went back to Paul and Kris’s house and met with their friends for a big lasagna dinner.  They made Penny a special meatless lasagna while the rest of us feasted on beef, and I think she was pleased they made the effort.  She did a great job of dealing with their 3 spazzy dogs—we had to teach her not to scream and run away but to firmly say, “No!” and push them off, and by the end of the evening, she was a pro.  She also approached someone she didn’t know at the party and she struck up a conversation with them and I was very proud to watch her interaction with them.

After the party (sorry, we didn’t get any pictures!), we went down to see the National Christmas tree.   I did want her to see it and I had never been to see it myself, so I thought it was very exciting.  All I knew going to DC was that the tree was “somewhere near the White House” but once I got down there, I could see it shining brightly.  You literally can’t miss it.  I had to pull an illegal u-turn to get a parking spot, but we got an amazing parking space right outside the park and while Mike and Leah waited in the car, Penny and I went to see the tree.  I was very impressed by the whole thing.  They have a beautiful display set up down there with trees representing every single state in the country plus every US territory.  They have a Santa’s village, but the line was crazy and we didn’t wait.  There were hundreds of people down there looking at the tree and it was quite spectacular, particularly with the White House so close by.  I can say it definitely won’t be my last trip to see it!

This past week has been similarly busy.  I have been busy with choir rehearsals and Penny babysat for us while Mike and I finished up our Christmas shopping.  We’ve been busy wrapping gifts and Penny has helped too, although I think she was of the opinion that if she helped with the wrapping, she’d get a peek at her gifts.  Sorry, Penny, I wrapped yours first!  Monday, Penny stepped outside to discover a quarter inch of snow on the ground and she was so excited she even knelt down, touched it, and tasted it.  The neighbor was out there and looked at her like she was a little bit crazy, but she was so excited!  I promised her we’d get more before it was over and she’d probably be sick of it.  She was disappointed that she didn’t get a picture of it, but leave it to me, I knew she’d be in a rush and wouldn’t have taken a picture, so I took one for her.  She had to write a descriptive essay this week about her favorite winter, so she wrote about seeing snow for the first time and the fact that I took the picture and wrote “I laughed until I cried.  My mum always knows what I want.”  That touched my heart. :0D

Wednesday, we went to the tree lot at the local Catholic church and picked out our tree.

And yes, it was FREEZING out there.  When we got home, we put the tree in the stand and I conned her into watering it.  Then I dug out a craft kit of ornaments and Penny and I made ornaments to put on the tree.  It was a kit of bird cutouts that were adhesive and little tubes of glitter that you shook over them as you removed the adhesive coverings a bit at a time.  It was  fun project and definitely a good thing to do AFTER the wee one went to bed!

Thursday morning, I happened to get up early with Leah and checked Facebook to discover that Spotsy schools were closed, so I checked the SHS web page and discovered that even though it wasn’t snowing, Penny had been granted a snow day. I intercepted her just as she was about to leave and she couldn’t believe she had heard me correctly.  Then she said, “Should I be happy or not? I am already up and dressed!”  I told her to be happy, we’d have fun together.  So she decided to work on her homework for a while instead of going back to bed.  Once Leah was up and we were settled in downstairs, Penny came thundering down to announce that the snow had started.  She was positively giddy.  I told her to get her coat on and we’d go out to WalMart and grab supplies to bake cookies and do some things together.  When we got outside, it was like the world stopped.  Penny just stood in the falling flakes and gazed in wonder.  I was so happy about her childlike awe of the whole thing.  She said, “I feel like I’m in a movie!”  She went in and got her camera and I got mine and we had fun taking pictures and catching snowflakes. 

The little things about snow were the most impressive to her—how it stuck to her sneakers, how it got dirty near the road, how it turned to ice when it got clumped into a pile, catching flakes with her tongue.  It was ADORABLE!

We loaded up with supplies at Walmart and then came home and I taught Penny the Cherepon Method of putting lights on the tree.  She was of the misguided opinion that you just sort of put them on there in a swirly motion and that was that.  I corrected that misconception right away with my dad’s tried and true “push the lights in and pull them back out” method (which doesn’t sound like it makes a whole lot of sense until you see it in action!) and we wound up putting 600 lights on the tree.  I could probably have done another strand on there, but I was out of lights and didn’t feel like going back out, so we made do.  We were both sweating and tired afterwards, so we took a break and baked cookies in the afternoon while Leah was sleeping.  I had been sick for almost 2 weeks and by Thursday I was feeling absolutely miserable from pain, exhaustion, and just not feeling well, so when Penny and I sat down to play cards at 9:00, I started debating going to the local urgent care clinic.  Eventually I abandoned her and went over to the doctor and good thing, as I had a massive sinus infection, the second one I’ve had in 3 years.  (I know that doesn’t sound half bad, but in general I’m very healthy and this is not anything I encountered in the first 32 years of my life, so to suddenly get these infections SUCKS!)  The doctor told me not to go home but to go straight to the 24 hour pharmacy and get prescriptions, so I did, and consequently Penny was in bed before I got home.  But…

Friday, Penny had ANOTHER school day, so while Mike was at work, we got the house ready for company, since my best friend from college Joe was coming to spend the weekend and my dad was arriving on Saturday.  We also baked her beloved raspberry bars, which made her happy since we made 2 pans worth.  Joe and Mike took the early train and got in at 5:40 and Penny and I tried our hand at making stir fry together.  It came out pretty well!  After dinner, all of us went into the living room to decorate the tree.  Leah presented Penny with an ornament that says, “I’m the big sister” and that was the ceremonial first ornament on the tree, placed by Penny herself.  Then all of us got into the act, listening to Penny’s new favorite musical artist, Kenny G.  She says she loves jazz and the saxophone so when I was at CVS and saw he had a Christmas CD other than the Miracles CD I already had, I picked it up for her.  She loved it.

Saturday morning I had dress rehearsal for my concert all morning and when I got home, we ordered pizzas for lunch.  Penny spent much of Saturday in her room.  I think we had a lot of together-time and she just wanted to relax and listen to music, which was fine.  In the afternoon, Joe and I baked cookies while Leah slept and Michael hid out in his man cave.  My father arrived Saturday night, which was a lot of fun since Penny just adores him. 

Sunday was my big day, the day of my choir concert.  I was very excited as we had been rehearsing a lot and I was ready to sing, but as the time drew close, my dad, Penny, and Leah hadn’t arrived.  As we lined up to go, I still hadn’t seen them anywhere, so I was really relieved to see Penny come running out of the ladies’ room and wish me good luck.  She enjoyed the concert a lot and I enjoyed performing in it.  Afterwards a bunch of friends met me with flowers, which was a sweet surprise as well!

Afterwards, Dad, Michael, Penny, Leah, and I went home and had dinner, and then Penny, Mike, and I worked on a project for AFS.  They asked host family bloggers to make a video describing what hosting an AFS student meant to us, so we decided to include Penny in our video.  The only downer about the whole thing was that Leah was already in bed since it was so late, so she doesn’t appear at all.  However, if you’d like to see our video, you can do so at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J6I89QHym0  I am pretty pleased with the final result. :-D

Yesterday, for reasons known only to the county, Penny had a 2 hour delay, but still nearly missed the bus.  She still declines to wear her coat to school, but I’ve given up.  If she gets pneumonia, so be it.  I tried to make a lasagna for dinner, but it didn’t congeal in time, so we had lasagna soup and then I took Penny to school because she was performing in her second concert at school in the choir.  She was in the women’s choir and they sang 3 selections, a Russian song, a Japanese song, and Santa Claus is Coming to Town.  She did a great job and the choir sounded amazing!

  Today she had a full day of school (must have been hard after all those days off plus a delay!) and then when she got home, we had dinner and then she and I picked up Mike and we all headed over to the mall for the flash mob chorus I was participating in.  Penny needed some pants, so she picked up a new pair while we were at the mall too, which was great and she ran into a bunch of people she knew from school, which I think was great for her!  We came home and she has been studying for her government test.  Tomorrow she has early release and then she will be done with school until 2011!!!!  I can’t believe it!

Thursday evening we are going to a potluck party at her liaison’s house and Friday afternoon, we will go up to a family member’s house for dinner for Christmas Eve before the big event on Saturday.  Penny has decided to call home this weekend, so we told her that she can as long as it’s not during the big events on Saturday morning.  I’ll make a special Christmas post post-Christmas!  Until then, I wish you all a simply amazing Christmas with those you love!

Updates Long Overdue!

I am waaaaaaaaay overdue for updating this blog, and I do apologize.  It has been over a month, but my gosh, I can’t believe how busy we’ve been!

I am learning not to make plans any more.  We make plans and then everything changes.  We have planned to go back to DC since our first trip back in August and guess what?  We haven’t made it yet!  Sheesh!!!

November was an absolute whirlwind.  I honestly can’t believe it has been and gone, and I have no idea where it went!!!  The only thing that really stuck in my head when I sat down to write this update is our Thanksgiving vacation.  I looked back through our photos and I think perhaps it’s possible that I’ve even been too busy to take pictures!  I am extremely thankful that I had in mind to keep a paper journal for Penny.  I found an awesome journal at the local bookstore and every night with only one exception so far (the night we arrived at my mother’s house at 2AM), I have written in it daily.  I will make a bound photocopy of it before I give it to Penny at the end of the year.

Anyway, here’s what I can tell you for sure we did:

November 9, Penny performed in her first concert at school.  She sang with her choir class.  The class is divided into men and women and at the time, Penny was singing second soprano.  The women’s choir sang 3 or 4 songs and we proudly waved to her from our seats in the back of the auditorium—as close as we could get unfortunately by the time we got over there!  We were very grateful that our friend Sherry Harrison came to the concert to support Penny and afterwards we all gave her flowers and met her friend, Stephanie, for the first time.

 

November 11 was Veteran’s Day and we took Penny up to Ikea to meet up with my friend Emily.  Penny had never been to Ikea before, so we went over there and had lunch and wandered around.  Penny liked the chocolate cake a lot!

Somewhere in there, Penny also auditioned for the district choir.  She was not ultimately selected, but we were so proud of her for having the guts to even try.  Her choir teacher ultimately decided to move her to the alto section, where I think she is a lot more comfortable singing as well.  She is such a songbird.  She loves to sing here all the time and has music on a lot.  She has taken a particular shine to Wham! so if we hear that there is a resurgence in Wham!’s popularity in Thailand next year, George Michael can send me a cut of the royalties.

November also marks a major holiday in Thailand, that being Loy Krathong.  Loy Krathong is a festival in Thailand in which the Thai people create beautiful boats out of banana leaves and send them floating down the river hoping to have the sins of their year absolved.  You can read more about it by clicking here.  Penny decided to teach us how to make our own krathongs and we would float them here locally to celebrate her customs.  Penny had a lot of leftover tissue paper from her birthday paper, and cut it into strips to fashion a rough equivalent of the leaves that would typically be in a krathong.  She taught me the folding method, which I struggled with quite a bit at first, but after folding 40 or 50 of them, I quickly got the hang of it and we made a krathong for each member of the family.  I sent Penny’s mom a picture and she suggested we fill them with flowers as would be traditional, so on the day we were due to set them off, November 21, I went and picked up carnations at the local grocery store.  We filled them and sent them down the river at a local park here in Fredericksburg.  It was a very lovely moment.

 

My friend Jacalyn of Emerald Lens Photography came with us to take family photos for our Christmas cards and she photographed the occasion as well.  There are some pictures on her photo blog if you are interested.

Photo credit:  Jacalyn Stanley, EmeraldLens.info

On November 23rd, all our company began arriving for Thanksgiving.  My father was here and our best friends Mike and Lesley flew up from Atlanta.  We had an awesome Thanksgiving together and Penny enjoyed making a big meal with us and she really loved the turkey!  We put her to work in the kitchen and she was into everything up to her elbows, from making pie to making gravy to setting our table just beautifully.

 

Post-Thanksgiving we took our annual trip up to the Christmas Attic in Alexandria.  Afterwards, we started decorating the house for Christmas, most notably putting up Christmas lights, which Penny also enjoyed helping with.

  

(Yes, she was insane enough to be wearing shorts!)

Once everyone left and we took a deep breath, we started getting ready for Christmas.  I perform with a local choir, so I have been running back and forth to choir practice as well as my regular book club meeting.  Penny has had a ton of tests and papers and projects she’s had to do.  We got out all our decorations for Christmas except the tree, which we will put up the weekend of December 18th.  We have started baking cookies and we attended a free concert by the US Marine Corps Band at Wolf Trap Performing Arts Center.  Penny has never experienced cold weather like we have here in Virginia (and I have to say, it’s been an exceptionally cold winter so far!), so we talked her into buying a coat, explaining that her yellow sweatshirt was not going to cut it.  I had gotten Leah a little lamb hat to keep her warm and Penny fell madly in love with it and looked all over for a “cute” hat like that, but couldn’t find one.  Fortunately, I found one at JC Penney’s and bought it for her and we gave it to her as an early Christmas present.  She and Leah looked adorable at Wolf Trap.

After we had been there ten minutes, however, Penny exclaimed, “I have changed my mind about seeing snow!”

Penny also made a new friend in a missionary, Jon, who has just returned from a couple of years living in Thailand and was looking for someone to experience Thailand and Thai culture and language with as he adjusts to life back in the US.  They met up at the mall and spent a couple of hours together chatting and whatnot.  Penny also had an amazing time spending a night at her liaison’s house with 2 of the other exchange students.  They went to the theater to see Tangled in 3D, Penny’s first American cinematic experience.  Now she wants to find someone to go see Narnia with her, as she is a great fan of it.  Hopefully she will find a friend to go with her!

We have introduced Penny to the tradition of the Advent wreath and have been teaching her how to light a match and then she can light the candles.  (I was a regular firebird by the time I was 10, probably due to the Girl Scouts and their evil camping influence, so the idea she could be 18 and not know how to light a match struck me as very strange!)  We do a reading each week, which I think she feels a bit more relaxed about since it is not overly religious in tone. 

Penny also helped us with our traditional “stuffing of the Christmas cards”—something she cannot believe we did.  We mailed out 73 of our 74 cards so far, and she couldn’t believe that many Americans send out that quantity at the holidays.  I explained that Christmas is a time to remember and celebrate the love we have for our family and friends and that while it is time consuming, it is so nice to give and receive cards to those we love.  I don’t know if she was convinced or not, but she IS enjoying when we receive cards.  My mom sent her a special Christmas card to commemorate her trip to Disney and Penny was so touched!

 

She is now in the spirit of the whole present thing.  Last night she helped me wrap Leah’s presents, as well as gifts for my niece and nephew.  She snooped around a bit since there were a few presents for her in the pile downstairs, but she didn’t gather much from her reconnaissance.  Most of her presents are wrapped and stashed elsewhere because I suspect she is a bit of a spy, just like I was!  Patience, Penny, only 16 more days till you get your loot! :)

Of course, we have crammed in tons of Skip Bo and Yahtzee and yesterday Penny and I finally, finally, finally finished Super Mario Bros. for Wii.  Now we are trying to decide what to do to fill our time since we have been sweating that game for months!

This weekend we will have dinner with friends tomorrow evening, attend a Christmas pageant at my friend’s house on Saturday and hopefully take a quick trip into DC to have a peek at the national Christmas tree.  Sunday our neighbor has invited us to see her son in the church Christmas pageant.  We will also probably start baking serious quantities of cookies soon, which is something Penny is extremely excited about.  She will be performing in another choir concert on the 16th and she has offered to babysit Leah and the neighbor’s little boy so Lisa and I can go Christmas shopping this week and I can finish it off!  Then my friend Joe will arrive on the 17th for the weekend that will include putting up our tree, my concert, my father’s arrival, taking cookies to the neighbors, and last minute preparations before the big day.  I hope to sneak in a trip to the mall to get a picture with Santa Claus too.

Hopefully it won’t take me 6 weeks to update from Christmas and New Year!!!  It’s hard to believe we are coming up on 4 months since the kids arrived, and only 6 months of this wonderful experience left.  Impossible to believe!

The Rest of October

The rest of October is gone in an absolute blur.  I remember taking Penny and Leah to the mall for their photo shoot, and I more or less don’t remember a thing afterwards until I looked at the calendar today and saw a big, fat number 1 on it and thought, “Oh man, it’s November already!”

Penny did go to Homecoming with her friend JB and met up with some new friends at the dance itself.  She looked lovely in her dress and she had a very good time going, although I think she would have liked to have danced more than she did.  Her friend is not much of a dancer and she felt badly leaving him alone while she went to dance.  Still, they had a great time having dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings with JB’s cousin beforehand and then going the dance and coming home.  Penny looked beautiful and felt great in her new dress, so  I’d call the night a success!

  Another big event this month was that we went to Florida for my mother’s 60th birthday party.  We had been planning this for a while and we were all very excited about it.  My mom lives about 90 minutes south of Orlando, so a trip to Disney was definitely called for.  I left the little one with her father and grandmother and took Penny to DisneyWorld’s Magic Kingdom for the day.  It was a lot for her to take in and she was absolutely exhausted by 2:00 in the afternoon, but we managed to go on quiet rides then, like the Carousel of Progress, where she could take a little nap and get some rest.  We were laughing and joking with each other about daring ourselves to go on the “scary rides” like Space Mountain and Splash Mountain, but ultimately my host mom instinct kicked in and I decided that Penny was not going back to Thailand regretting the fact that she hadn’t done things.  I always tell her that she will regret the things she didn’t do much more than the things she did do.  So I did the rides too, even though I really didn’t want to.  But it was fun.  Space Mountain is probably better for me than other coasters, since it’s in the dark and you really can’t see what’s about to happen.  There’s no time to get scared.  Penny was screaming the whole time, and she informs me that I laughed.  We did every ride either of us wanted to and a few I’d never done before in all my trips to Disney and left by about 7:30PM.  It was a beautiful day and a lot of fun.

The next day was my mom’s party.  We had a beautiful time celebrating my mom and her special day.  We did a lot of decorating, we made centerpieces, we put together cookie trays, got cake, entertained my mom’s friends, and made a glorious mess.  My mom is a special lady, and has packed a ton of special into 60 years, so even though I gave her a big hug and she and I both burst into tears, it was a good kind of crying.  I hope she felt all the love in that room—I know we all did!

Monday, we took Penny for her first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean.  It was a beautiful day but the hurricanes were churning up the water pretty good, so the waves were very choppy.  She elected not to get into the water, but at least she got to see it.

All in all, Florida was a great time.  We came home exhausted, and grateful to be in our own beds, but very grateful to have had such a wonderful time and gotten to know so many people.

Then it was one week till Halloween!!!  Penny was very excited about Halloween and it is really her first big American holiday, so we were excited too.  I had great plans for trips to the pumpkin patch, baking cookies, etc. but the wheels came off our family bus for a while and most of our weekend was taken up with meetings with our AFS liaison and a good deal of sulking, screaming, crying, and door slamming.  I am happy to say that things are better now, but it was very stressful and consequently we didn’t get much done!  She did go to her friend Victoria’s party on Saturday night, though, which was great, since she was able to meet some more kids and have a good time.  She even told us not to wait up for her.  I sort of didn’t, I just waited up in my bed instead of waiting in the living room.

So we crammed it in yesterday.  When Penny got up, there was apple cider and donuts waiting for her.  We carved pumpkins together—something she’d never done before.  It was fun to hear her when I got the top off the first pumpkin and pulled up and the strings and seeds came with it.  She really cleaned out her pumpkin with gusto, though, and took to the spirit of the thing right away.

She carved her own design into her pumpkin and she was happy with it, even if one of the eyes fell apart on her!  I made Leah a little happy pumpkin and in the other pumpkins we had gotten, we used some Mr. Potato Head type pieces that they sold at Target a few years ago to make a pirate pumpkin and a diva pumpkin.  The were all nicely displayed on the front steps.

Costumes were cool too.  I let Penny have the ultimate say in what Leah would be this year, and she chose a pumpkin outfit we found on line.  Leah looked super-cute, I must say, even though I wanted to go with a pirate princess costume.  I’m happy with the pumpkin!  (My sister-in-law pointed out that Leah is going to start forming opinions about what she wants to be soon enough and I may not have another chance to dress her as a pumpkin, so I should strike while the iron is hot!)  Penny chose to wear her traditional Thai dress, something she had brought with her from home and has decided she will also wear to the prom.  She looked beautiful in it, it was a cream colored lace top and a gorgeously patterned golden skirt.  Michael and I wore our traditional Frankenstein and Witch hats that we got the first year we were married.  We cut a beautiful picture as a family.

I took the girls out trick-or-treating starting at about 6:30PM.  Penny kept asking what time it was and could we go yet and so we left as soon as we saw other kids coming out.  We went to all the neighbors up and down the street, but it was COLD!!!! and Penny was freezing in her outfit.  She had on a sweatshirt over it and at each house she would take it off before ringing the bell. 

Halloween is dying, at least in Fredericksburg.  It makes me sad—Halloween was such a special night when I was a kid, but I guess now people are scared about taking candy from strangers, so they take candy from strangers in church parking lots now.  Our neighbors had invited us out to their church for the “trunk and treat” where you go around to parked cars and accept candy from people’s trunks, so after we finished our block, I put the girls in the car and we drove over to Falmouth Baptist and picked up loot and hot dogs to boot!

On the way back, we stopped off at JB’s house, where the dog got loose and Penny ran in circles screaming with the dog barking and chasing her—it was some Halloween excitement!!!  Then we went to Mike’s radio buddy Jack’s, and then I told Penny I needed to get Leah home.  She said she wanted to keep going, so I gave her my cell phone and came home.  She was home about 15 minutes later, having gone to only 3 other houses before the cold got to her and she called it a night.

We all sat together at the table while she counted her loot.  She and Leah bagged 150 pieces of candy total, the top 3 of which were M&M’s, Butterfingers, and KitKats.  She was very excited by the gum she got—the kind in the red, yellow, and blue wrapper that turns rock hard in your mouth after about 5 minutes.  She apparently loves the stuff!  I’m going to go find her some today on sale.

Shortly afterwards, we perused our pictures and then it was bedtime.

So now it’s November and time to look ahead to the crazy season, which is getting underway. I can hardly believe it.  Penny has off tomorrow for election day, so we are going to DC for the day.  For Veteran’s Day, which I think she also has off and which Mike has off, we’re going to Richmond for the day.  Our best friends and my father are all coming for Thanksgiving, then we’re hoping to make a trip to NYC, and then it’ll be Christmas time!!!  Time for cookies and shopping and presents and trees and excitement.  Penny is simultaneously praying for and dreading snow.  We’ll see what happens!