Broadway Baby

Lin-Ley just finished four weeks at a drama camp. The first three weeks were spent on Disney's Cinderella. Lin-Ley was cast as Jaq the mouse. On the last two days of that camp they performed for the parents and other ticket holders.


Cinderella sings "A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes" to the mice.









Jaq combs his mousey whiskers.

















Time for Jaq's solo.

Cinderelly, Cinderelly
Night and day it's Cinderelly
Make the fire, fix the breakfast
Wash the dishes, do the mopping
And the sweeping and the dusting
They always keep her hopping
She goes around in circles
Till she's very, very dizzy
Still they holler
Keep a-busy Cinderelly!


























Then Fairy Godmother turned Jaq and the other mice into horses to pull the carriage.












There's Lin-Ley (behind Cinderella) playing a lady at the ball.


























Lin-Ley takes a final bow as Jaq.













The Cast.














Dallas surprised Lin-Ley with a bouquet of flowers after the performance.
















Somebody was jealous and needed a flower as well.


















The final week was "The Best of Broadway".













The girls sang "It's a Hard Knocks Life" from Annie.











Lin-Ley's solo in "Happiness" from You're a Good Man Charlie Brown.














There were other songs from Peter Pan, Mulan, The Music Man, Seussical the Musical, Annie Get Your Gun, Beauty and the Beast and the Wizard of Oz.

Lin-Ley loves that camp and why wouldn't she? It is the only the most expensive camp around!



Later that evening the drama continued at home. Lin-Ley took charge of the "show". She was the director and costume designer...

Lin-Ley's Purplicious Party

Although Lin-Ley had a birthday party in Louisiana (on her actual birth date - June 23rd) she still missed having a party with her friends here at home. After having her previous birthday parties at various locations such as Build-A-Bear, Chuck E. Cheese, etc. it bothered me greatly how much we were spending on these parties when all the children really wanted was to play together. (Ok - the prizes involved at the above mentioned places were certainly a big plus for the kids.)
This year we decided to have a Purplicious Party at our house. Lin-Ley's (current) favorite color is purple so we went with that theme. Guests were asked to wear something (or everything) purple. Sounded simple enough!
Lin-Ley invited eight girls and they all said "yes". I decided to turn this into more of a four hour play date and invited all parents to drop off their girls and pick them up later.

As the guests arrived they began their first purple craft - decorating purses with fabric paints and sparkles.






Lin-Ley takes a break to show Mary and Abby her worm collection (in the purple butterfly cage on the table).


Jordyn shows off her purple purse.


















After the purple purses it was game time. I had planned for two games but the girls did not want to stop! That would be because of the purple prize bowl. Everytime there was a game winner or winning team they were allowed to chose a purple bracelet or purple candy from the purple prize bowl. Everyone won at least two purple prizes.


While I began preparing lunch the girls settled down with their Barbie dolls to begin the Barbie Rapunzel movie.


During the movie I painted all of the girls' fingernails purple.









Half-way through the movie lunch was served. At Lin-Ley's request the menu was simply hot dogs, chips and purple Kool-Aid. To add a little extra flair I tinted the ranch dip a nice lavender color. The girls all turned up their noses at it!
That made me feel better about failing at the purple ketchup. Let me tell you how not to make purple ketchup... Ketchup is red already right? As we learned in art class: red+ blue = purple. Not when it comes to ketchup! I added blue food coloring to some ketchup and it turned bright green! Hmmm...


Back to the movie.


Time for purple cupcakes!








































































For the fourth year Lin-Ley has collected gifts for charity rather than gifts for herself. This is the third year that she has collected toys and treats for the Soldier Dogs (military service dogs serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and other locations) through the K-9 Support program. Last year, after turning in her birthday donations, Lin-Ley was recognized on their website and listed as a "friend" of K-9 Support. They even wrote a little paragraph about her titled "A very special donor". Check it out be clicking here:
K-9 Support website

Thanks to Emily, Isabel, Abby, Heven, Jordyn, Mary, Mercy and Rena for supporting the Soldier Dogs!

Purplicious!

The County Fair

Last year Dallas was in Iraq/Kuwait and could not take us to the County Fair. Although we went with some friends it was not the same without him. This year we were at the fair on opening day. That also happened to be Armed Forces day so the whole family received free admission.

We went right to the animals:

























The annual cow milking.







Shoes off and dive into the corn pit.






























Lin-Ley and Dallas tried their hands at a few games. Lin-Ley walked away with a gold fish!







On to the rides.






































Priceless!










P.S. Diamond (Lin-Ley's new fish) lasted one week...

P.S.S. Many have asked about Madeline the mouse. Well... Mommy (that's me) was totally disgusted by Madeline and for Lin-Ley the newness (is that a word?) of her pet mouse began wearing off on about the third day. So Mommy told Lin-Ley that Madeline could only live with us for two weeks and then she would have to go back to her mouse family because she would be missing them. And Dallas took things from there. Don't ask - don't tell...

6th Annual China Girl Reunion (+The 3 China Boys)

This weekend was our 6th annual reunion with our friends (now family) that we met while in China in 2003 during Lin-Ley's adoption. It was another love fest. We all see each other once a year and can always pick up right where we left off the previous visit.

It was to be a weekend of photos. I had extra camera batteries and the girls were more than happy (or perhaps simply accustomed to it) to pose for the many cameras. I managed to snap 206 photos in the span of 34 hours. The China Girl Paparazzi (CGP) was ready.

It was almost time to meet the first of our friends down in the hotel lobby.
Lin-Ley starts the day long photo shoot with a close-up.









Tru's close-up. Looks like someone just finished another cup of chocolate milk.




Before leaving for dinner the kids gathered at the hotel pose for the first group photo.

Tru, Mackenzie, Quinn, Lin-Ley, May and Claire





The China Girl Paparazzi has expanded. Julia takes a photo of me while I take her photo.









Dinner was fun and loud. The other restaurant patrons had surprise entertainment with their meals.


The Carbonis (with Lin-Ley) could not join us for the picnic on Saturday but they were kind enough to drive two hours (each way) to have dinner with us Friday night.








Quinn, May, Claire, Julia, Lana, Maria, Mia S., Lin-Ley, Mackenzie, and Tru.



The Spanos, also unable to make the picnic, joined us for dinner as well. Thanks to Nina for arranging dinner.











Saturday morning. Time for the picnic!

Unfortunately only six families made it this year. We are still trying to get all fourteen families together at one time. Maybe next year.


Tru, Lucy, Drew and Mackenzie

Thanks to everyone (especially the Greens and Wileys) who brought along activities for the kids.

The volleyball court and its sand pit are always a big hit.










May and Quinn were busy writing stories. Maybe they will someday write "Spicy Hunan Girls - The Movie".








"Look at me!"







Lin-Ley takes on Mr. Dean in a game of hockey. Knowing nothing about hockey she attempted to make up the rules as they went along.










It was time for the hula hoop contest:


Go May!

Go Drew!

Go Sara!

Go Lin-Ley!

Go Dallas??

All of the children in attendance (and all adopted from China - but not all at the same time):

Sara, Lucy, Drew, Claire, May, Quinn, Mackenzie, Lin-Ley and Tru.

The Spicy Hunan Girls. These are six of our fourteen girls adopted during our 2003 travel to China.

Sara, Drew, May, Quinn, Mackenzie and Lin-Ley.

Lined up by height.

We always have a birthday cake at the picnics to celebrate the girls' collective birthdays from the past year.

Lin-Ley happens to be the youngest of all of the girls. She turned 7 on June 23rd.

Happy 7th Birthday to our Spicy Hunan Girls!

Time to hit the beach. I took many photos at the beach but will only post a few. Most of the photos of the girls playing in the water also include the backsides of many parents. I did not think they would appreciate photos of their hineys on our blog.


Lin-Ley, Sara and Tru.

Hmmm... What did they tell us about Tru's knee and playing in the sand?













Oh yeah! Now I remember. "Try not to let the sand get into Tru's knee."

Oops!






Our Little Mermaid.





Time to get dressed again. The CGP will soon be in full force!



Tru, Mackenzie, Lucy, Drew, Lin-Ley and Sara make a Wiggle Rider Train.



The Moms.





The Dads.








Get those cameras ready. It is time for the family photos.



The Wileys (minus one).

We missed you Colleen.












The Braatens.














The Roarkes.










The Herpins.





The Greens.










The Taylors.














Right after the family photo shoot Tru was stung by a wasp. By that time it was around 6PM and he was exhausted. The wasp sting put him right over the edge and we had to call it a night and head back to the hotel.


Tru did not even make it out of the parking lot before he passed out (from exhaustion - not the sting). I had to pry open his mouth to insert a Benadryl for the wasp sting.

Lin-Ley only lasted about six more minutes.

After a 35 minute nap they were asking to go swimming in the hotel pool. And that's exactly what we did. We managed to squeeze in one more meal with families staying at our hotel.



We had an extra treat Sunday. For the first time in two years we saw Kari and Christopher. We met them in China on Tru's adoption trip. Our family was alone for the whole trip there and we finally met up with Kari and Chris in Guanzhou. We (the adults) were so happy to have each other there and quickly bonded. Kari had traveled alone because her husband, Ken, had stayed behind in the U.S. with their son Ben who had also recently been adopted from China.
Fortunatley they also live in New York so they agreed to drive almost 2 hours (each way) to meet us for a visit at our hotel and then lunch.


The China Boys!

Tru, Ben and Chris












Within a few minutes we caught Chris and Tru holding hands and checking out the electric door at the hotel entrace.
Ben and Lin-Ley seemed to hit it off right away and began reading the comics together.


It was time to check out of our hotel so we all headed up to our room with a luggage cart and four stow-aways.







One last photo before we have lunch and hit the road.

Tru, Lin-Ley, Ben and Chris.







What a whirlwind weekend! Can't wait to do it again next year!!!

Quote Of The Weekend

"Can we see the China Girls again?"

By: Tru (on our way home)