Monday, August 17, 2009

As the Summer Winds Down...........


Feeding the larkakeet with Kyle at GR Zoo (notice how far away Kyle is pushing himself!)



Playing at GR Zoo on the big ship wheel - Ahoy Mateys



Can you tell how warm it was (not) at the beach that day?!




Kyle and his giraffe friend





The boys at Millennium Park (in Michigan)






Kayaking with Uncle Mark & Paityn



The crew getting ready to set sail on the high seas



The boys and Paityn



Future Soccer Stars



Bowling with Paityn, Logan and Luke (who didn't want any pictures taken)



Hi all:

It's been a few weeks since our last posting, so I thought that I would update everyone on the last few weeks plus some new pictures. It's nice that we post pictures here, as we can usually never actually get them printed out in hard copies. We just fill the camera up, save them and move on! I have slowly begun the task of conquering Kyle's picture documentation of the last two years, but it's definitely a project!!

Anyway, two weeks ago, we headed to Michigan to see my parents and my brother and his family. The weather chose to be rainy and cool, but we had a great time anyway. The boys were able to meet their cousins: Luke, Logan and Paityn so they had a great time keeping busy. It was also very nice of the cousins to teach my boys how to wrestle - ha.ha. Charlie was only able to get away with us on the weekends, flying back and forth to Philadelphia during the week, but we managed to see and do lots of things including the Grand Rapids Zoo, where the boys hopped up on the camel ride and took off before Charlie even got his seat on the camel. They wanted no part of Daddy on their ride!! They did very well as the camel wobbled back and forth. They weren't as excited to feed and touch the stingrays or the larakeets but they liked watching Mom & Dad do that. We also had a nice bowling round with girls against boys (now, Paityn, remind me what your score was again?!!!) ; had visits to Binder Park Zoo (where Kyle fed the huge and friendly giraffes). Dylan is probably thinking to himself, what are these folks trying to do to me making me pet and ride all of these wild animals. This is not what I was used to in China!

We also went to Millennium Park (where the boys turned into aqua stars and thought it was funny to keep going deeper and deeper into the lake for me to chase them); and we had three visits to Uncle Mark & Aunt Avery's cottage where Uncle Mark and the kids took Dylan kayaking (who knew that he would LOVE kayaking Lake Michigan) and then super rafting behind a jet ski (both boys loved that, especially as Uncle Mark kicked up the gas several notches while trying to throw me off the raft!). Lastly, we saw the movie G-Force our last day there. It was interesting watching Dylan try and follow it (which he did) but he was probably wondering about what was going on since all of the language was in English! Then, Aunt Lisa had to smoke Paityn in Wii Tennis and Logan in Wii Bowling, after both assured her that they were the ultimate champions - Logan did get me in Wii Boxing. That one is a real work-out!

Now that we are home, every time that we ask Dylan if he wants to go to the Beach, he says "Uncle Mark and Avery." He really seemed to enjoy the water and sand.

Dylan had his first real full week of school last week, as we are finally getting back on schedule after such a crazy summer. He is slowly getting used to the entire routine, including the 5:30 a.m. wakeup. He always has a hard start when we initially drop him off, but then seems to really enjoy himself all day long. He already has lots of little friends that always say hi to him and one little one is always giving him hugs.

Dylan is very quickly picking up the English language and yesterday strung two words together "Mocha hungry" unprompted. That sounds like nothing, but for a little guy that only speaks Chinese and who only has English around him now, it was huge. He also has memorized and can hum the Thomas the Train tune along with any CD or book that is playing it. He has pretty much picked up his ABCs now and can do them almost to the end, when he will finish them up in Chinese. He also can count to 10 with skipping only 1 or 2 numbers, so there is no holding him back now.

Kyle has now advanced to the Roaring Rockets class, so he is very excited. He will start there next week. It may be a little bit of a tough transition for Dylan to have Kyle in a different room, but he will be close by in case they need a few reassuring visits. Kyle is also now concentrating very hard on his weight gain/height gain project. He needs to grow 1 inch and gain 1 lb. in order to move into a booster seat in the car, from his baby seat. EVERY day, he needs a weigh in and last night, he kept eating food telling us that he was going to get that extra pound on. It's very funny, but he is very serious about it! It will be nice to have one less baby seat in the car, since it is very tough to have any additional passengers with such big seats in the backseat right now.

We were in Ocean City this past weekend on Saturday for the day (with about 2000 other people). I honestly have never seen a beach or the water so crowded. It was wall to wall bodies - not my type of beach experience!!!! We did hit the Boardwalk in the evening for a few rides, so the boys enjoyed that. They are ones to never pass up amusement rides. I kept trying to get Kyle to go on the Double Shot with me (this massive Frogger type thing) but he just kept saying "no, not me - take Dylan!!"

We hope that everyone is having a super summer - enjoy the last few weeks!