Party Time!

Last weekend we celebrated Rae's birthday. She had some of her friends over and had a Dollie and Me Tea Party. Hannah set up a blanket with a places for the girl's dolls where they played with their dolls. There was a food fight between the dolls, but thankfully it is was with fake food.

 After all the girls arrived, the girls made fascinators to wear during the party. It was a lot of fun creating their own little hats. I was thankful to have help from the older siblings. The girls looked so cute in their fascinators. Rae was excited to open all of her presents, and she got more Legos and some clothing for her AG dolls. She was very thankful for all her gifts but could not wait to eat cake and ice cream. But before that - they decorated sugar cookies.  It is one of her favorite things, and they were for the girls to take home. 

Her cake this year was strawberry with strawberry cream cheese frosting.  She also designed it.  She wanted to draw butterflies on it, but it was going to be to difficult for her, so we came up with another option.  I had her draw butterflies on paper and I melted white chocolate and traced them on wax paper.  She added them all over her cake.  It was very cute and delicious and topped off with her favorite ice cream - mint chocolate chip. 

Rae had a wonderful birthday, but I think she was a little sad it was over.  It was a great 3 days celebrating her.  I am not sure if her favorite was her party or getting to stay up late on Friday watching movies with her sisters having a "sister sleep-over"

Doll Tea Party

The lovely ladies in their fascinators

Birthday Girl!

the cake

playing on the swing set

Thank you to all the girls who helped Rae celebrate her birthday.  She had a wonderful time, and we hope you did too.

The Love has Ended

This past week was the end of the girls 2013 tennis season. Emily was to have a game on Friday but was called on the count of rain. Both girls had 2 matches each though. Hubby and I had to split up to be able to see each girl play, so it made for a crazy week. Rae having a doctor appointment thru a little hiccup in the plans as well.

Monday, Hannah was hoping the varsity team would win to tie the school record for most wins, but they came up short in one match. Hannah had a great first year as a high school player. She got to play singles and doubles and is the top freshman on her team. She has worked hard to show her coaches she is willing to take on any challenge. She had some tough losses, but she finished with a great win against Lancaster JV 3rd singles player by winning 8-0. She was happy Pastor Troy was there to see her win. The JV team did a great job on the last match of the season with winning most of the matches. Her goal in the off-season is to learn to spin the ball, improve her serves, and make varsity next year. The past couple of spring seasons she has been able to play on the middle school boy's team, but this year she will not. We will looking at different options for her to better her game. Her ultimate goal is to beat her dad. She is not too far from it.

Emily had a great season as well. She had wins and losses as well in singles and doubles. Her game has really improved especially her serving. She will be the only 8th grader next year on the middle school team, so she is planning to work hard in the off-season to improve. She will hopefully get to play on the boy's middle school team this spring. Playing with the boys has really helped their games.

We are happy for life to have slowed for a little, and we can get ready for a little vacation coming up.  We will be able to eat more dinner at home together now. Rae is happy because she will be able to start playing tennis again.

getting ready to finish off the match

Asian Pear Time

Having a child from another country you learn about all kinds of new things. Frequently Rae has asked for me to buy pears, but usually they have not been in season or I would forget. I was recently with a friend who works for a local orchard and she informed me about Asian pears. I actually had never heard of them, but I did find them in the store and bought a couple of them for the little one. She loves them.

 The friend that works for the orchard told me that she always gets calls to when the Asian pears are ready to pick. So, I looked up on their website to see when they are ready and marked it on the calendar. This past Friday was the day. I heard they would go fast, so we headed out early to pick. Rae was so excited for just the two of us to go pick. We arrived with our bags, and she was determined to find the biggest pears she could find and reach.  It was little funny for myself to be in the minority there.  There were many there with large bags and wagons filled with these pears.  I was relieved to have gotten there early so we did not have to wait in the long line that had formed by the time we were finished.

It was fun picking the pears with Rae, and we have already decided to pick again next year.  I really liked the pears and trying to find some fun things to make with them.

looking for the right pear

Happy Birthday Little One!

Today we celebrate Rae's 8th birthday. She has come a long way and has been counting down the days till her birthday. Tuesday we had our family birthday meal which included going to see the Meatball movie as she calls it.  She had trouble deciding if she wanted spicy wings or spicy noodles.  Noodles won - PF Changs.

We will celebrate with some of her friends Saturday with a Dollie and Me Tea Party.  It is exciting to see her so happy about celebrating something that she has only been doing for now her second time.  I think last year she was still figuring it all out.  This morning she asked for heart shaped waffles, and we opened one of her presents.  This will be a 3 day celebration with tomorrow night the girls will have what they call "Sister Sleepover" when they sleep downstairs and watch movies and eat popcorn and snacks.  Different presents will be opened over these 3 days as well.

It is fun seeing her so excited.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRETTY GIRL!!!

Ok, that is just weird.

Couple of weeks ago, the little one had a several appointments with Children's - speech, neuro, and ophthalmologist. We rotate thru these doctors about every 3-6 months, so they fall usually within several days of each other. It makes for a crazy time especially when it is during tennis season. We thought her neuro visit would be routine, but it was determined the little episode she had this summer was in fact a seizure. Thankfully it was very mild and short compared to the last one, but it did mean that she did have to up her medicine. She has not had any seizures since she had been on the medicine, but it seems that the medication was keeping them from happening. This one broke thru the wall most likely because she was at the top threshold of her weight versus medication amount. This also meant the clock restarted for when she could come off the medication.

While we were dealing with this news, her platelet count had dropped earlier in the week - so we were monitoring that and hoping we were not going to have to get a treatment on top of an already crazy week.  She was to start getting her immunizations up to date, but now it was postponed again. As if this were not enough, we had the second follow-up visit with the eye doctor.  Thankfully her eyes are now almost perfectly aligned, but she is still seeing double.  We are hoping it is just her brain taking time to work around the damaged area to get to "normal". He is going to check the progress again in 3 months, but if it is not better she may have to get glasses fitted with prisms to help.  She usually doesn't complain about it, but I do find her closing one eye to block out the second image.

Here is the new wrinkle - sometime after her last eye surgery, an eyelash got into her eye and is now embedded in the eye membrane. YIKES!! It was not very comforting when the doctor said that is was only the SECOND time he had seen that. Thankfully she does not feel it. We have to watch it so it does not get infected or cause her problems.  Best case scenario is that it could dissolve, but if not he will have to surgically remove it. We do not want to have to do surgery again!

Even though all of this is going on, she is doing well in speech and is almost up to grade level.  She will see a reading specialist soon to check her progress and to see where she is.  She is excited that she has started her 3rd math book (MUS Beta) and continuing to work thru her phonics books in Explore the Code.  The big thing we work on is bringing up her vocabulary.  She knows and reads alot of words, but the meaning of those words are not always there.  It is fun seeing her unlock the code to reading words.

Add-in... Deuce... Add-out...

If you haven't guessed, we are in the full swing of tennis season. The older girls are on 2 different teams this year. Hannah is on Granville High School team and Emily on the middle school team. Thanks to the new ruling of the state legislature, Hannah did not have to take a class at the high school to be on the team. She is happy that she did know some of the girls from when they were all on the middle school team. It has been challenging for her working it into her school schedule, but she is working hard and loving playing tennis.

Practice started the beginning of August, but matches started a couple weeks ago. Hubby and I are  dividing our time between the 2 girl's matches, since most of the games are often the same time and at different locations. We switch who gets to see who and where.  One thing that does help is that Hannah has to ride the bus to the game with the team. Another thing that is new for us is when the team does not have a game, there is practice after school.  I am happy there are a couple of girls in our neighborhood that are on the team, so usually I just have to get her to the school for practice.

Both girls have had wins and loses in their matches this season.  They are both playing better than last year thanks to their tennis coach they have. The middle school team is smaller this year, so Emily is playing again in the top of the group again.  She usually gets to play 2 matches against the opponents playing singles and doubles.  Hannah is on the JV team, and they have a large team with 24 girls this year so she usually has to wait to play.  It reminds me of when she first started on the middle school team. She mostly has been playing doubles but is missing playing singles.

In the match, yesterday, the other team had 14 players so the our coaches chose a varsity line-up and a JV line-up - 7 and 7.  Hannah was wondering why her coach didn't ask her about doubles when she was going around.  When they announced the line-up for JV, Hannah was called as 3rd singles.  She was so excited! When I got the match, she ran and told me. I hated her dad was not there, but he was in Dublin with the Emily who was playing there. Hannah has been working hard to prove to the coaches she could do it, and she had finally gotten her chance. She was a little nervous, but she was up for the challenge.  The match started, and she had gotten behind.  Thanks to her conditioning, she was outlasting her opponent.  She came from behind and brought it to a tie-breaker. I was grateful for FaceTime so hubby watch the tie-breaker via phone. She was the last one on the court playing, but sadly she lost in the tie, but was happy how she played and knows what she need to fix. She was also happy the coaches gave her the chance to show them she could handle it. Hannah was the first freshman this year to get to play a singles match.

Hopefully, we will get some more good stories from the season.  We have a few more crazy weeks of matches all over the place.  So, if you need us, we will be either at the courts or in the car.

Lil' Farmer Tour

Last week Rae and I went on her first little kid only field trip. One of our local fruit farms was starting a new tour and needed some guinea pigs to see how the tour was going to work and to work out any bugs. The family that runs this farm are homeschoolers, so they reached out to our group for help. The tour is designed for K-2nd graders. Students learn where their food comes from when they ‘harvest’ their goods as they travel along the path of 12 interactive stations. “Milking the cow, collecting honey, gathering eggs, and digging potatoes are just a few of the activities they will experience. Once their work is done, they ‘sell’ their goods to the ‘market’ where they will collect Lynd Bucks used to ‘purchase’ a cup of cider. Then students go to the orchard and pick a 2 lb. bag of apples to take home! All students will receive a complimentary coloring activity book complete with Lynd Fruit Farm coupons to be redeemed during a future visit!

Rae and I had a lot fun going to the different stations and learning interesting facts. Rae's favorite was "fishing" for blue gill. I think it was a favorite of all the kiddos. She was hoping we would pick some apples, but they did not open the u-pick till the weekend. 

Learning about what they will be doing.

Picking pumpkins

Picking corn, but wishing it was real.

shearing the sheep

fishing for blue gill

taking her harvest to market

getting her coin for apple cider

yummy!