everything you wanted to know, and more

So after a week of no blogging, this will be my attempt to shower you all with pictures and updates on every random facet of our lives, because I know you all want as many details about our lives as my mother does. So, here goes:

Samantha's birthday, in detail. Because again, I know you want details:

Being a mother meant that on the morning of June 17th, the first thing I thought about was the fact that my youngest daughter turned a year old, much to the disappointment of my husband, who should have had the first kind words and kisses of the day for his great work as a husband to me and a father to our two girls. The fact that I forgot to mention both of those things until after our afternoon festivities were over was quite the embarrassment to me; fortunately, he was forgiving!

Samantha's party was fun, though admittedly, not quite as fun as Emma's first birthday because so many of you were not there to share it with us. We were blessed to have several foreign friends and several local asian friends who shared the day with us, so it was unique in it's own right. I had made strawberry cupcakes with purple cream cheese icing for the "cake", and then a few other snacks - m&m brownies, chicken salad sandwiches, and then some fruit and cookies. I thought ahead and brought all of emma's leftover birthhday decorations from the states, so we had lots of "I'm 1!" things around the house. I hung balloons and streamers, and along with the 1 decorations, the house actually looked pretty party-ish.

Samantha was actually the receipent of my kind benevolence that day because I decided that, in spite of potential allergies to wheat and dairy, I'd go ahead and let her eat a cupcake. She was pretty hesitant at first, but after an initial warm up period, she was willing to eat the whole thing. That's definetely my daughter! Emma, of course, was delighted that on this special day she was allowed to have a cupcake AND a brownie!

For those of you at Emma's party, I did the same thing with signing the picture-frame mat; samantha's actually has a lot of character to hers because there's not only english written on hers! Our asian friends all wrote words of blessing on hers, so that will be a fun thing to have when she's older.

Since the party was at our house and josh and I were both occupied (last time celebrating a 1st birthday, we had only one child!), I have very few pictures of the actual party. These two were taken before the party, and are included to show you how cute samantha looked on her bday. She honestly looked just like a little birthday cake, good enough to eat! Her little shirt was crumpled pink eyelet material with a butterfly on it and a matching denim skirt. She's the cutest one year old I've seen in a while! (The fact that I seldom see other one year olds doesn't really need to be mentioned!)

And I was able to get this cute picture the day after her bday, while she was playing on the slide:

And, even though we asked people not to bring gifts, we still got a few. My house helper, who truly loves the girls, made some shirts for the two of them. Even though it's not typically the type of fashions I would usually dress them in, out of respect for her time and effort, I dressed them alike a few days after the party. So this cute picture was during their morning playtime, in the affectionately named "fishnet shirts":

and mantha by herself:

Emma News

Our morning asianese play times are still going really well for emma. One fun thing we've been doing is watching the dora asianese movies together, and then playing some games after the movie that emphasized different aspects of the show. Usually, I'll try to find all the items that were in dora's backpack, and then I'll put them in emma's backpack. After the movie, we'll all pull them out together and talk about what they do or what dora used them for. This particular day, dora had an umbrella in her backpack and Emma was just dying to open it.

Today was friday, typically not an asianese playday, so we fingerpainted! Even samantha got in on the action, but after she went down for her morning nap is when emma was really able to get dirty and have lots of fun with her fingers. She was excited and enjoyed the activity, but was very aware that her fingers and hands were dirty - a very common thread that comes up in her life. Is she going to be a neat freak? a girly girl? It seems possible...(but you'd never know it from this picture!)

And if I had a million dollars, I'd give it to emma when she wears this pretty pink dress because I think she's worth every penny of it (especially this day, when the curls in the back of her hair were like perfect bouncy spirals, just begging to be pulled!)

One afternoon while running errands, emma and I stopped at a little play park, and I had yet another reminder that emma is growing up - she used to be terrified of those little rope tunnels, but she navigated this one in a flash with no difficulty at all!

The Swimming Tradition

Today is friday, but sadly, we did not go swimming today. Josh and I were both feeling yuck today, but Josh has had really high fevers today and yesterday. Fortunately, emma didn't remember that today was swimming day, so we got off the hook, but tried to make up with fun evening activities for them. But, in honor of the friday tradition, here are swimming pictures from two weeks ago, when neither of the girls were too crazy about our new family tradition, especially mantha, who usually feels a little chilly and a little too far away from momma for comfort!


But once they were out of the pool, things were ok again! :) Other stuff

On the nights that it hasn't been too rainy or too hot (which havne't been TOO many, but that's ok) we try to get out and go for walks or do something fun. This night, we decided to take mantha out of her stroller and we were so surprised at how much fun she had galloping down the sidewalks! Emma, being big sister, held her hands every moment, you know, to "help her", even though sometimes it did more harm than help. But they had a super fun time chasing each other and playing together. (You can tell emma takes her job very seriously!)

Emma's obsession with shoes has now been officially passed on to samantha, who will try on every person's shoes that enters our house. her favorites include my "inside shoes" since she can get them on and off pretty easily:

And the last picture of the evenign comes courtesy of my fabulous little art/photo shop down the street. While on a mission one afternoon to find some framed art for my bare walls, I noticed this little place that sold art but also had pictures kind of like lasered into some wood. Actually, that's a pretty poor way to describe it, I just can't think of exactly the words to describe it. BUT, anyway, when I saw it, I finally had a flash of inspiration for my very bare, very long, very empty living room wall. I carefully selected my choices, and then took a little jump drive to said fab photo store, and voila! Take a look at my new (in my own opinion, very fabulous looking) living room wall (and also, my diligent husband working hard):

So if you made it to the end of this very long post, you shoudl have a reward of some kind, right? Based on her own self-confession, I know that my cousin seldom reads long posts...so, if you still reading, the reward is that you, dear readers, will be among the first to know that in just several months, my blog contain more than just pictures of emma and samantha. No, your mind is not playing tricks on you. It means what you think it means. Lord willing, we shall birth another child in the spring. That's our happy news! We were hoping it would work out to have another child at that time, but are so very aware that in spite of our best plans, it is God who creates and gives life, so we praise Him that He has chosen to give us yet another sweet child. We think I'm somewhere between 7 and 8 weeks along right now, so that puts a due date around Feb 15, just a week or so before Emma's 3rd birthday. Maybe you should read long posts more often, huh?!