Mid-Autumn Moon Festival with Friends

We celebrated and early Mid-Autumn Moon Festival/TET with friends last night.  It’s been unseasonably hot here  so rather than the parents shivering as the kids played at the park when we first gathered together, we hung out on lawn chairs while the kids ran through the splash pad!  I’ll take 35o/90o weather in September every single time!!

We returned to the house to share a delicious Asian pot-luck dinner.  Oh my – so much delicious food!

Thanks to one of the dads not only did we get pictures of our amazing kids,

we also got a picture of the parents!  We have been getting together for the past 7 years to celebrate both Mid-Autumn Moon/TET and CNY so these families share a special bond and friendships.  Some of the mom’s met over 10 years ago when we used to get together at our bi-monthly Waiting Moms dinners!

After dinner the children made lanterns, some donned their traditional dress and then the lantern parade began.  I couldn’t find Hannah but then realized she wanted to be the caboose of the parade.  LOL – that’s my girl!

Not sure if this is a lantern parade or a pose for the camera!

I sometimes get teased about carrying a ‘real camera’ instead of just my phone but it’s times like this when it was pretty dark out that I’m thankful.  (Hoping to upgrade my iPhone 5 soon and I’m confident my phone picture taking will improve)

When we returned home the final event of the evening was listening to a Tet book from Vietnam.  The kids were amazing and you could hear a pin drop when the book was being read.

Thank you for organizing and hosting this wonderful event again this year Julia and Danny!  Many of these friendships we share are thanks to you and we appreciate all you do to organize this event each year!

First Day of Grade 3

It’s hard to believe that Hannah is already in Grade 3!  Wow….slow down time, slow down!!

Don’t you love that fancy sign!  Oye!!  I will admit to being a bit VERY distracted as the first day of school approached as we were preparing to go to Disney 3 days later – and Hurricane Irma was deciding to visit Disney too.   I was trying to pretend all was well when behind the scenes I had so much on my mind trying to make the best decisions for Hannah and I when at the time it was too early to decide anything.
Back to the first day of school…

Hannah and I were both excited when we’d found out the week before school started that Hannah would be back in the class with her same teacher from last year whom we both loved!   (And yes, along with forgetting the sign I also forgot to take a picture of Hannah with her teacher the first day.  Can you say
d-i-s-t-r-a-c-t-e-d???)

Hannah was also excited that one of her best friend’s from first grade was back in class with her!  Hannah and R.

Have a great year sweet girl!  You’re going to rock Grade 3!!!

New Disney Countdown–137 More Sleeps!!

Unfortunately I had to make the very difficult decision to cancel our Disney vacation last Thursday evening.  We were scheduled to leave for the airport in less than 12 hours and I’d held off making this decision as long as possible.  Hurricane Irma was still a frightening Category 5 and the word ‘catastrophic’ was in almost every newscasters vocabulary.  Nobody really knew where she would make land but since she was wider than the entire state of FL I knew it wouldn’t be a wise decision to continue with our trip.  While millions where trying to get out of FL, why would I take my daughter and willingly enter this frightening situation?

Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t the easy thing to do.  Poor Hannah cried and cried when I shared the news with her as I’d sheltered her from news and pictures of Irma so she was blindsided by my news.  Oh the tears….from both of us!

She was a trooper though and I know she handled the news better than Mommy!!  The following morning when we woke up and Irma had been downgraded to ‘only’ a Category 4 I was suddenly second guessing my decision.  (What was I thinking second guessing???  D’oh!!!)

When I took Hannah to school Friday morning and then continued on to work, over and over again teachers, friends and co-workers were thrilled to see us and expressed how thankful they were that we hadn’t gone.  Me too!

Anyway, Disney gave us a 100% refund for our trip and Southwest gave us a travel credit for 100% of our flight costs as they hadn’t actually cancelled our flight.

The great news is that Hannah and I have already rebooked our trip and will be heading to Disney late next January for an awesome Mommy-Daughter trip….without Irma!!

Thanks to all who have checked in after noticing our countdown in the sidebar.

I’ve never posted about our Disney Cruise from earlier this year so my new goal is to get a Disney fix by working on those posts soon.

Tea Party with Special Friends

Hannah and I have a treasured group of friends in our China Travel Group and we are blessed to have a second travel group from our agency that we met with as they were preparing to travel to China and they have invited us into their group too.

This summer to celebrate their Forever Family Day we were once again  invited to their gathering.  This year it was a precious Mother and Daughter tea!

Thank you so much for including us in your group get together Laura!  Hannah and I always enjoy the time we spend with you and the families in your group!  Such a treasured group of special friends!!

Summer Adventures

Hannah and I recently enjoyed a morning  of mini-golfing with Ange (Hannah’s wonderful daycare provider) and her boys.  We went to a new mini golf location and it was beautiful! 

After mini golfing we enjoyed lunch together then Hannah and I were off on the second part of our day of surprises – Tree Trekking!  The adventure started by getting all her gear on.

The place we went to had installed a kids course this year that was 3 – 6 feet off the ground and she loved it!!

Her favourite part (in spite of the look on her face) was the zip line that she got to do each time she went around the course.  In reality she was asking me to quickly take the picture so that she could go around the course again!

We’ve already decided that we’ll visit here again next year!  Hannah is hoping she’ll be 2” taller so that she can do the intermediate course.  Mommy’s not sure I’m ready for her to be 25’ up in the trees!

There is a second play place at the same location so after the tree trekking Hannah and I enjoyed time running though nets and treehouses in the sky!

We both enjoyed this as I went up in the nets and treehouses with her some before watching from the safety of a bench below.

I’m so thankful these places were recommended to me by my friend Tammy.  Thanks Tammy!  New summer traditions have been born!