February 14 was Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year. They don't always fall on the same day. CNY is based on the phases of the moon, so it can fall anywhere from January to mid-February. We got up and headed to church that morning. Brooke got dressed up and wore her stylish boots. We've started letting her go to Sunday school by herself and she loves it.
After church we came home to attend to the dogs. Brooke got kisses from Daddy. When Olivia was a baby, we did a thing called "baby sandwhich" where we'd get on either side of her and kiss her cheeks at the same time. She endured it, but she never really enjoyed it. Brooke will actually request it! She is a snuggle baby.
After our break, we headed to Dynastic Buffet, a great Chinese buffet place. They had a special buffet for CNY and we absolutely gorged ourselves. Brooke went bonkers over the shrimp dumplings and won tons. Olivia ate a little of everything -hurrah!
We had planned to go to a CNY celebration on the other side of Atlanta Saturday, but with the snow, we decided it would be safer to stay home. By Sunday everything had melted, but we decided to just go next year when Brooke is older and can appreciate it more. We had a small celebration at China Tree on the 6th, but I forgot my camera, so no shots of it. The girls got matching necklaces as their CNY gift. It is a leather string with a small diamond shaped pendant with the symbol for "blessing" painted on it in Chinese characters. (Of course they were delivered late because of the snow.)
Mark got this leather jacket a couple years ago as a gift from the brewery (in the long-ago days of the generous Busch family). He declared he didn't like it and put it straight into the closet. I made him wear it this day and, surprise!, he decided it looked pretty good after all! Men.
The girls got their Valentine's cards from us and for each other. They each got a small art-kit gift. Aunt Carol, Uncle Dave & Ivey came by with a cookie-gift basket for them, also! How great!!! The girls loved it!
Since Olivia had "winter break" the next week, we went to the dentist for a cleaning. It turns out Olivia has two barely-lose teeth on the bottom front. The tooth fairy will be visiting soon!! Linda, the hygenist, warned us to start saving serious $$$$ for the orthodontist now. (Tiny, perfect baby teeth don't have enough room for big adult teeth. Sigh...)
It was Brooke's first time in the dentist's chair. She's seen me there before, and Olivia went first this day so she could watch. Brooke was very brave and did great!! No trouble at all! Two of her baby teeth are fused together on the bottom. And Aunt Carol discovered she is tongue-tied - the little membrane that connects your tongue to the bottom of your month runs all the way to the end of Brook's tongue instead of just connecting in the middle, so it's "tied down" to the floor of her mouth. Later we'll have the oral surgeon give it a snip unless it interferes with her speech before then.
All smiles at the dentist!!!
After the dentist we went bowling!!!! It was Brooke's first time at that, also! She didn't like all the noise at first, but after she got into the game, she became a true bowling fan! Olivia always loves bowling.
All smiles at the bowling alley!
Later, Daddy gave the dogs a pedicure. Then he turned his talents on Brooke. She didn't mind. She will never be a foot model. (He's covered in drywall dust. More on that later.)
I kept saying we'd make dumplings for Chinese New Year. I finally got around to it toward the end of the week. The girls were excited and ready to help. We all sat down at the table and I rolled out the dumpling dough one dumpling at a time, like they do in China (supposedly). The girls loaded them with filling and pinched them shut with Mark's help.
We used half the dough and my arms were aching from rolling out all those dumplings (yeah - I'm terribly out of shape). We quit for the night since it was (thankfully) bedtime. The next night I rolled out all the remaining dough at once and used a round cookie cutter to cut the individual dumpling wrappers. It worked SO much better, I'll never go back to the individual-roll-out method. The dumplings were delicious and we'll probably do them again soon. Brooke was over the moon about them, and I asked her if she made them with her China momma (foster mom) and she said yes. I'm not sure how accurate her memories are, but it's a nice thing to think.
For 2 days during the school break, we watched a couple kids from down the street for a few hours while their parents were at work and their older brother was at soccer practice. It was our first opportunity to spend any real time with them since they moved in and it was fun! Olivia went wild having company over. Jennifer is 6 and Jonathan is 7. They played like crazy and wore each other out. They are both adopted, as is their older brother. It's nice that that's a common thing on our street. Another neighbor has 2 adopted kids, but both of them are off to college now.
Brooke's new nails - ladybugs (the symbol for Chinese adoption)! Maybe when I go back to work, I can do kid's manicures! Ha! The economy would have to make a tremendous turn-around for that to work.
