January Little Things

The first three weeks of January were such a blur, I was sure that I had zero pictures and we had done zero fun things - but, looking at my camera roll only, you would have thought it was an easy, breezy, fun three weeks! Here is a little look of what we were up to! 

Back from New Zealand/Australia and strawberries were back in season! That made for one, super happy Everly Gracie! 

The first weekend back, the girls were ready to get back in their play date routine. Someone was super happy to be meeting friends at Starbucks.

Ok, ok... she tolerated a quick pit stop at Starbucks, because it meant she got to head to the blue ball playground with a family that we adore :). We literally spent allllll day there (11 - 7ish) before finally calling it quits.

On Sunday, we did some grocery shopping!

The girls started back to school! They were walking to the bus stop in the dark there for awhile!!

Wes is still making the girls their snack bags - both of their teachers have told us how much the girls enjoy their bags :).

One weekend, we found ourselves at Iron Pig followed by a quick visit to Luxelakes playground. Boooo poor air quality so we only stayed for a short time.

The girls wrecked the house. haha. Actually I sent this picture to my sister when I realized that the girls needed to interview for their school in the states and based on this current situation (both kids had been in time out prior to 8am and the house was a mess), we were surely going to nail the interview.

Met friends at the trampoline park!!! Can you find Emma? Hint. She's wearing a blue dress.

Hallelujah! The sun came out. I worked all morning, but when I got home, we hurried out to soak up some rays.

We only had an hour to enjoy the sunshine, because we were meeting a friend for bowling! This was the girls first time to go bowling!! We seriously had so much fun and the girls turned out to be quite good!

Much better than me ;).

Getting a group picture proved to be difficult ;).

Bus stop drop off with two happy girls.

Wes sent me this picture (they wanted to send it to Nonni) and when looking at it, it finally hit me - Emma was turning SEVEN soon! Doesn't she look so grown up here?!?!

So much school fun to be had getting ready for Chinese New Year!!!

Whoooooosh. My big meeting was finally over and how did we choose to relax? With a playdate at the trampoline park. Ha! Can you find Everly jumping there?

We ended with cotton candy to celebrate!

We spent the next day getting ready for Nonni to come! More on that to come soon. 

Checking In

Well, hello there! If anyone is still there? It's been awhile! We just spent three wonderful weeks with Nonni (here in China!). We went to Snowy Mountain, the Bamboo Sea, Chengdu Panda Research Base, Zigong and most importantly celebrated our Emma turning SEVEN!!! We had lots of time for puzzle making, book reading, game playing and snuggling. We hit up playgrounds and the trampoline park. There were sleepovers and Chinese New Year performances. I read an entire book (Where the Crawdads Sing - p.s. read it immediately, so good!). We celebrated Valentine's Day, had cupcakes with Emma's classroom and ended with a Unicorn arts and crafts party with her friends! It was a busy three weeks with our favorite (and might I add, most frequent) visitor!! Can't wait to catch you up soon! I have missed this little corner of the internet. 

December Little Things

Wowzers. Here we are in 2019. Day 24 of 2019 (the first three weeks of the year are always the craziest for me). Part of me feels like I have been in 2019 since September (since that is when we start working on 2019 financial plans at work) and part of me feels like how did we get here so quickly? Either way, 2018 was a growth year for our family. We traveled like crazy, made new friends and fell in love like with Chengdu ;). The air quality is bad right now, so ask me in a month and I might be back to loving it! Anyways, here is a look of what we were up to in December.

On December 2nd, we flew back from Thailand.

Then, Snowflake arrived at our house the following Monday.

Ev's Christmas program outfit came and we had one pretty happy Christmas tree on our hands.

And one girl who was less than pleased with her holiday concert costume ;).

We colored at Starbucks.

Visited our neighborhood Christmas tree.

And went to a princess birthday party!

Followed by a trampoline playdate...

where the moms left the girls with the dads and went and had fake eyelashes put on!

I went back to the trampoline park to pick up this gang and we found out they added a cotton candy machine much to the girls delight.

Emma wrote Nonni a convincing note ;). I mean, how could Nonni possibly say no to that!

The girls asked for a haircut (well Everly asked and Emma obliged).

Such a happy girl and so proud of her new cut.

We saw the Christmas tree at night.

The next day was concert day!! Emma turned her attitude around about the costume :) and they were so excited for Wes and I come watch them perform!

When we arrived, Emma's two besties were already there.

And we found a Christmas tree to take this cute picture!

Emma's class played the xylophone!

We had an eventful two weeks in New Zealand and Australia for Christmas and then it was back to Chengdu. The girls couldn't wait to see what Santa had brought them! I am not going to have a giant Christmas post this year because we kept it really low key. Snowflake hid Santa's presents and sent the girls on a scavenger hunt to look for them!

It was a magical, but super jet lagged morning :).

Growing crystals.

And for the last picture of 2018, we went to a kid friendly NYE party that Emma's besties family hosted and these two were so happy to be reunited!

Not to sound cheesy, but 2018 was a great year for us! We are pumped about 2019.