Voting

Today was the big day.  I asked Luci if she wanted to come with me, to make sure that I voted for the one she wanted. 

Her response?

"You're going to vote for Mittens.  You won't vote for Obama because you don't like what he's doing to our country."

She listens.

John got his sticker--apparently his belly button voted, too.

There was a good crowd today!  Even though we already know who our state's Electors will vote for, it was good to see a good turnout.

This was from last week:  it was gorgeous, and I had to share!

And we have a Winner!!

JT participated on a BEST Robotics team this year.   The teams from different schools get a set of materials and have to build a robot to complete certain tasks.  JT went to training to learn CAD drawing with SolidWorks, a form of CAD that lets you draw in 3-D.  JT was in a group of homeschool students.

Well...JT did so well with his drawings that he earned third place with this competition!  There were eighteen teams participating.  I am so proud of JT, and so happy for him.

John was one of the adult mentors with JT's group.  Which means he showed up at the first meeting and ta-dah! he was signed up.  :) 

 JT's team out on the floor.  The object was to have the robot climb the metal pole and deposit balls into the plastic container at the top.  There were also 2-liter bottles that were to be moved from the top to the ground.  JT is not in this photo, but later on in the competition he did drive the robot and got two balls moved into the container.  I'm sure John went wild watching JT!  Unfortunately, the robot's arm locked and knocked the balls out.   Luci and I missed it--we were there for part of the morning and JT worked in the afternoon. 

There was a huge, noisy crowd.

Did I mention it was NOISY?

Creekside Technology's booth.  (JT's homeschool group)  The team also won first place for their t-shirt design and second place for marketing.  Great group of kids!

Some participants really got into the "robot" and "space" theme.

A good luck hug before competing.  This is my favorite picture.  Luci is stingy with her hugs!

My Eight Year Old

She looks so serious, doesn't she? 

Right after this was taken, I handed her a dollar of her birthday money to give at church today.  She said, "Yeah.  I'm giving this so I won't be totally selfish."

We all cracked up.

One Sunday Morning in Our Backyard

First Parade

This was Luci's first parade experience. We got up oh-so early to make it there by 8 a.m.

Curls before the parade, after an hour and a half drive to the site...

LOVE the coloring in Luci's hair! It's all natural, by the way.  I was very pleased that Luci's curls looked very good in comparison to the other girls'.  The only ones whose curls looked better were two who had wiglets.

The whole crew.

 Rain! It poured before the parade began. Luci and I prayed for the rain to stop so everyone could enjoy the parade. Guess what happened? The rain tapered off soon after our prayer, and the parade went on with good weather.

Huddling for warmth during the rain.  We had a nice area to stand in; we were not wet at all!

Luci and Lusiana.  They loved that their names are so similar.  Lusiana's mother calls her daughter "Lusi!"

What followed us:

Our great leader, Mrs. Branden

Don't look if you are faint of heart:

 Here is a little video showing Luci and her friends--be sure to notice the bouncy curls at the end!

Heard Today:

JT was watching his driver's ed DVD today.   One of the comments on the program was this:

"One of our goals is to produce drivers who are competent and confident."



Luci, who hears everything, looked at me out of the corners of her eyes and said,

"Yeah.  I don't think so."

Autumn

I am loving all the color this season brings!

Neighbor's goofy dog

Purple.  The leaves are actually purple!

Love that pop of orange on the hill behind our house.  John is working in the backyard today, improving our fire pit.  He's in the photo somewhere--bonus points if you find him!

And, these two squirrels having fun during lunch time in our "school house."

Curly Top!

We had some trouble getting Luci's curls for Irish dance class to stay in her hair.  Quite a bit of work, sleeping in rollers, and poof! all gone in less than an hour. Asian hair is extremely hard to curl, plus we have high humidity quite a bit of the time.  No wonder it didn't last.

Luci has wanted her hair curly for about a year now, so this seemed a good time to invest in a perm for her hair.  She asked for it, actually.  I was not wanting to do this; I was ready to shell out a bit of money for a hair piece (turns out they cost only a little more than a perm!) but Luci asked for the perm first.  So, here is how the experiment turned out:

Before the big day:  Luci had wet hair the night before and I braided it for her to sleep in--there is just a little wave as we started out to the "pretty parlor."

Mrs. Rita does our whole family's hair.  I'm sure she knows as much about us as John and I do (and after Luci's visit, she knows a lot more!).  Luci should never, ever be a spy.  She cannot keep her mouth shut.  She tells everything!

Poor Mrs.  Rita.  It took one hour and forty five minutes to curl Luci's hair!  Eighty-seven rollers!!  Luci talked the entire time.

 

Luci kept busy waiting for the timer to go off--here she is doing some school work.

Hurry up, timer!!

Final product!  

I love Luci's curls.  It really looks natural on her.  I did quite a bit of reading on perms and curling Asian hair.  The consensus was, "Don't perm!" because it is extremely hard to curl the straight, straight hair that most Asians have.  One blog post even said that perming or curling Asian hair was "going against nature" and that some Asians are very, very against doing this--sort of a slam against the race.  I did consider this thinking before Luci went in for her hair-do, but ultimately it is Luci's (and her parents', at least until she grows up) decision.  I'm sure there are any number of opinions on the topic.

We went out for Chinese food the next day.  Here Luci is showing off her chopstick prowess:

And, an up-do for dance class.  She loves the curl!  So do I.

Heard This Week

Digabytes:  how much memory is on Luci's iPod.  You probably refer to it as "gigabytes."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

John and I were discussing his travel schedule for October, and whether or not he'd be in town for Luci's birthday.

me:  Maybe we could have her party on a different day?

Luci:  You mean you'd pick my birthday?

me:  Yes.  We could have your party on a different day.

Luci:  I pick TOMORROW!!

My Beautiful Girl

Science for a Second Grader

This month we are studying plants.  Today's subject was leaves.

John's job was to take Luci into the yard and find some leaves for us to study.  We have this nifty microscope thingy that hooks up to the computer.  You can capture a picture of what you see through the microscope.  Here are some shots of the backs of a few of the leaves:

I'm sorry I can't recall which leaf is which--they were not labeled as John took them.  The fuzziness of the center photo amazes me.  The leaf did not look fuzzy at all.  The leaf on the bottom reminds me of flying over cities, seeing the neighborhoods below.  The stems look like freeways!

We talked about what leaves do (make food for the plant) and what happens when they quit making food,  turn colors, and then fall off of the trees.  Luci knew exactly what that part is called...Retirement!

Heard today:

We were eating pizza for supper.  The dinner I'd planned would not get done!  The chicken refused to cook.  I mean, the chicken in the oven did not get done in time...so John went to the gas station and brought home two pizzas.

Yes, the gas station!  (Reminds me of my parent's story of their first meal as a married couple, at the Snodgrass' Grade-A Esso Cafe.  Maybe it's a Southern thing, getting a meal at a gas station?)

The boys were teasing Luci while we ate.  Nothing new there.  But they were telling her that pizzas were pies.

No way!  Pizzas are not pies!

This went on for some time.

Then I said to Luci, "What about this?  (Pi)r^2?"  (pi *r squared)

Na-huh!!  They are round!!

Up the Creek

Last Saturday I drove John, Bryan and Luci to Iron City (pronounced Arn City around here) so Luci could have a FIRST.  She had her first canoe trip!

They had everything strapped in, and life vests on.  (Yes, Mom, I know I ended a sentence--and a phrase--with a preposition.)

Hey!  This looks like fun, says Luci.

Until later....

when they hit a rock and capsized.  Everyone went in the drink.  It was not very deep anywhere along their route, which helped me not worry so much. 

Luci told me some tales about their trip:

We didn't see any sharks or alligators!

When the canoe tipped over, I went to the shore and waited for Daddy and Bryan to fix the canoe. 

The camera got all wet!

I got to ski off the back of the canoe--I held on and Daddy and Bryan rowed.  Bryan called me "Anchor."

Tip on how to fix a camera that falls into Shoals Creek:  take out the batteries and the memory card.  Put the camera in a container a bit bigger than it is, and cover it with rice.  Wait about 4 days, then test out the camera.   Ta-Dah!  It worked again.

Gotcha Day!

This is Gotcha Day number SEVEN for us!  Wow, the years have flown.  Gotcha Day is what many call the day they met their adopted children.  I usually say "Family Day" instead, because "Gotcha Day" puts the emphasis on the parents' meeting their child instead of the child being enfolded into a family.  Family Day sort of spreads around the love, the feeling of "it's about all of us" and is not entirely from the parents' point of view.  Important to some.

Right now, "Family" Day is not important to Luci.  She wanted to call it "Gotcha" Day.  So we did.

We met Luci when she was just 9 1/2 months old.  Tiny, skinny, beautiful baby.  She did not cry much; now that I know her personality so well, I think she was taking it all in and waiting to see if she should cry about her new situation.  She's a quiet studier until she feels comfortable, and then--oh, then!  Then she talks non-stop!

If you look closely, you can see that her eyebrows are sort of in an "I'm not too sure yet" position.  That photo was taken in the Howard Johnson Hotel in Guiyang, Guizhou, China on August 14, 2005.  Don't laugh about us being in a Ho-Jo's; in China they are deluxe hotels!  JT was nine and missing his two front teeth.  Bryan was thirteen! 

So.  It is "Gotcha Day" at our house.  Luci had a lot of things that we "must do, Mommy!  It's my day!"  I think part of her frenzy over her day had something to do with the fact that every single one of us, except her, had birthdays, Mother's Day and Father's Day and wedding anniversary since mid-May.  She truly felt left out.

Things got so busy that I dubbed the day "Luci-Palooza Day."

First, we had to have a cake.  Rectangle, Mommy.  And 'nilla.  With pink icing. 

The cake must have 7 candles--but don't sing "Happy Gotcha Day to You!"  Just say, One, Two, Three! and I'll blow them out.

Lots of good food to eat with her new chopsticks!  We got the chopsticks while we were in China, so that made them more special.  What made them even special-er?  They are pink!  We had sweet and sour chicken over rice (don't be jealous of my super-fancy way to serve rice--straight out of the rice cooker with a plastic measuring cup so I won't scratch the cooker) and jiaozi!    They turned out so well that all fifty (yes, I said fifty!) were gone when supper was over.  Here's a recipe for jiaozi.  I cheated and bought the wrappers from the produce department of our grocery store.

Bryan made a special card for Luci, and JT wrote a cute story about her for her presents.  John and I gave her the chopsticks, plus the kids' names written in hanzi, the Chinese characters.  One of the boys, and I can't remember which one (that is a good thing because then I can't embarrass him too much!) asked how I got those.  Did you find them in China, with our names already on them, all packaged like that?  If you've been to China, you already know, but I'll inform the rest of y'all:  There are people everywhere with booths, and in stores, who will do calligraphy for you.  I had a man do these for us and he packaged them up so we could bring them home safely.  We'll get them framed and they will go in our "Hall of Fame" here at home.  (The man did not understand "J.T." so he wrote out "Jonathan" instead.)

After supper (dinner to you if you are not from the South), Luci had a list of things for us to do:

She dictated the first four; then decided she wanted to write them herself.  So I spelled for her as she wrote, until she got tired of that and sped things up by writing numbers 7 and 8 in her own phonetically fine writing.  (7. Watch Luci Videos and 8. Origami)

She told the boys they must stay with us and do all the things on her list.  I checked them off as we went.  I LOVE number 5!  LAUGH.   Luci taught us how to make a doggy face with Number 8, origami folding.  Number 2, "Kiss the baby," was a game we played in China.  I'd say, "Kiss the baby!" and we'd all lean in to kiss Luci on the noggin.  It was to get her used to us touching her, and getting up close and personal.  When we played this last night, she let the boys kiss her on the cheek!  She never does that on any normal day.

Number 7, "watch Luci videos," was sweet.  We'd watched all but one during the day, so video #1 (of us meeting her) was the only one left.  One of the girls in our adoption group was distraught and cried the whole time.  It was heartbreaking to hear and watch on the video, but honestly?  When we were there in the midst of getting our princess, I didn't hear her at all.  My focus was on Luci!

Luci's comment last night about that day and the one crying:  "It was a very commotional day."

So, what does a girl do when confronted with too much commotion (emotion)?

"I'm going to get some cake."

And she did.