playing with Ya-ping on the tramp

 

helping wash the cars

 

talking on the phone

 

Our trip to the zoo

 

new pictures

With David back we have lots of new pictures on the computer. We hope you enjoy them.

To Adam

I read Rowan of Rin this week and loved it. Thanks Adam and Tammy for the suggestion. I went to Barnes and Noble to buy the series for my classroom. I will probably read the first one to the class and let the kids pick up the other ones themselves. Boys have an especially hard time finding books they like on a medium reading level and these should help a lot. I am just starting book two and will keep you posted.

Ya-ping's sister comes today for a 3 week stay. We are trying to get some of their stuff moved into the garage so that the house will look half-way decent. It is crazy trying to fit all of us and all of our stuff in one house. But, as hard as that is, it will be even harder to have them leave for Tennessee.

Home at last

David and Ya-ping finally got home Tuesday night. It is so nice having them back. Preston is having a pretty hard time adjusting to the time change. Three AM seems to be his wake up and play time, so his parents are also lacking on sleep. I am sure he'll get that worked out after a while. Preston loves being outside so we spent quite a bit of time out and about yesterday. We bought him a small basketball standard because he absolutely loves all things "ball". The hard part will be finding a place for the packing and organizing. We had put all of their stuff in the sun room, but when they went to Taiwan we put it in their bedroom because the sunroom gets too hot in the summer. Now we have to find a place and that is tough. I am working on cleaning the family room so they can have some space down here.

coming home

David, Ya-ping and Preston should be home tomorrow night! We are so excited to have them back. Ya-ping's sister will follow in a couple of weeks for a three week visit. It should be a fun summer, but it will be a sad and lonesome fall.

Allie's naughty words and daughters

Allie has had a "naughty word" obsession lately, which is both good and bad. In November, when we got Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, she copied Mike Teavee's statement of "it's stupid." We didn't want her to say that, so we suddenly had to become very careful about our word choices. We had to say "silly" instead of "stupid", and when somebody forgot, we had to correct him or her. One time someone said stupid and she corrected with silly! She and my mom's friend have mutual admiration, so Allie is frequently with her, but unfortunately she and her family often have colorful language. When my mom's friend (Jackie) swore, Allie copied her, and Jackie felt terrible. Allie learned another, even worse (and I mean really bad) word from Jackie's family and parroted the two words in our house. Luckily, after standing her in the corner, she no longer says these words. She now likes to say "dang it"--mostly just because it's a naughty word. At least it's better than what she said before.
She now is the naughty word sheriff. When she hears a naughty word, she recognizes it and reacts. When her mom was on the phone and said a word that wasn't as nice as it could be, she said to me (with her scolding voice and face), "You hear what mommy say? Crat?" That's not a misspelling; that's how she said it. Almost every day she asks me to watch Charlie Brown with her. When Charlie Brown says something like "You must think I'm stupid," she says something like "We don't say that word." She even reacts to perfectly normal words like "odd" or "rude". "Don't say that! That's a naughty word!" Not that we said anything really bad before, but it has made us watch our words.
We've also been teaching her about family relations, that she is a daughter, and now she keeps insisting, "I have daughters." When we tell her that she doesn't she says, "I have mothers." When we explain in detail how she is a daughter and a granddaughter, and has a mother and a grandmother, she keeps returning to "I have daughters." The other day she even said, "I have sixteen daughters!" I guess that means once again there are five generations in our family.