One month home!

Today Sarah-Grace has been home for a month.  She's fitting into the family as if she were always here.  She gets along well with everyone most of the time.  She loves to give hugs and kisses and get piggy back rides.  She's slowly teaching us Chinese, but learning English even more quickly.  ("good idea!" and "spicy" are already part of her vocabulary.) She's helped cook over a fire, swum in our lake and the pool (and is already feeling much more comfortable in the water), gone fishing and out on the boats, visited out of state relatives, played volleyball. . .  Summer is here and all of us are enjoying it!  

We leave for the beach on Thursday, and we're looking forward to taking both her and Kai to the ocean for the first time.  It should be fun!

Knight of Betrayal

On Saturday, we had a very fun Medieval mystery costume party.  

On Friday night, the village of Stretton was invaded and burned to the ground.  The villagers fled in all directions.

Brave Gareth Thrompson rallied them to make a valiant effort against the attackers, and to attend to the wounded.

By Saturday evening, most of the villagers had gathered for safety at the Black Plowe, the one remaining structure in the village.

Children gathered to play, and tend cooking fires, while the adults discussed the events of the evening before.

Good father William prayed for the safety of the goodfolk of Stretton.

Food was foraged from the sacked village.

And cooking was begun.

When suddenly, Godwyn, the innkeepers son, came running across the bridge, warning to villagers of the approach of armed men.

That's when the plot thickened.  Sir Walter of Admound posed as a good guy, and claimed Gareth was really an outlaw, but by the end we determined that he was the one who ordered the sacking of the village and that Gareth was our hero all along, and the right people were freed from the dungeon and there was much rejoicing and eating of food.  Or something along those lines.

Sugar and Spice

The other day, my Dad said Sarah-Grace was, "sugar and spice and everything nice, with a little bit of puppy tails thrown in".  I think that's about accurate.

I'm enjoying being a big sister to a little sister.  In many ways she's a perfect match for the boys- she's rambunctious and playful and a bit on the wild side.  But, she definitely has her sugar-and-spice side too.  The other weekend we went to the drive-in and didn't get back until 11.  Sarah-Grace was NOT sleepy.  So, as we lay in bed, we played a game that went something like this:

Sarah-Grace: A-n-n-i-e   What?

me: Annie

Sarah-Grace: A-n-n  What?

me: Ann

Sarah-Grace: I - l-o-v-e-y-o-u    What?

Me: I love you!  

Sarah- Grace: Your turn!

Me:  I-l-o-v-e-y-o-u-S-a-r-a-h-G-r-a-c-e

Sarah-Grace: What?

me: I love you Sarah-Grace.

She kept it up for quite awhile.  It was so cute.  Eventually though, I was ready to sleep so I started spelling things like b-e-d-t-i-m-e  and g-o-o-d-n-i-g-h-t.    She ignored my not-so-subtle hints and kept spelling other things back at me.  I finally had to tell her what time it was.  Apparently she had no idea, because once I turned on the light and gave her her watch to look at so she would believe me, she quieted right down and went to sleep.

She thinks I speak Chinese.  It's so funny.  She actually told her English teachers I spoke Chinese, which was quite a compliment.  When I'm around and she's confused, she looks at me and demands, "Chinese!".  So, I stumble through some sort of approximation in my super-limited vocabulary and horrid pronunciation. (As in, my Chinese equivalent of "When Daniel is done vacuuming, you can vacuum the kitchen" became"you can, in the kitchen, with the thing Daniel has.  Daniel first, you second" but hey, it got the idea across.  And she was excited!  Who would have guessed it. She can vacuum whenever she wants. . .)  She kept asking for translations during the movie they were watching the other day.  That was a challenge.  When you have a vocabulary of roughly 300 words, how on earth do you explain that Davy Crocket was mad because another senator tried to get him out of town so they could vote on the Indian Act without his opposition?  It didn't help that Daniel and Kai weren't sure what was going on at that point either and kept asking for the simplified English version.  

A Picnic at the Park

Otherwise known as, if you take 138 photos, you're bound to get some good ones.