Kai was a monkey for Halloween this year. I wanted to modify this costume to make it into The Monkey King, but I didn't get a round tuit, so he was just a monkey. We invited ourselves over to our friends Heidi and Kim's so Kai could see his good buddy Mimi. Mimi was dressed as a beautiful ballerina and the two of them trick-or-treated a few houses together.

Our big treat this Halloween was getting to complete Kai's "re-adoption". That's right, we adopted him again! This wasn't "necessary" as our adoption in China is fully recognized here in the U.S. but there were a number of good reasons for us to take this extra step. Kai's name on all of our documents in China was recorded as his Chinese name, so his citizenship papers and Social Security Card show his name as Hui Dang, this let us officially change his name. It also let us get him a Washington State birth certificate with his new name. Another pressure we felt was due to the fact we had lost our original Chinese Adoption Decree while we were in Guangzhou!

The process was pretty easy once we got the documents assembled. We were lucky to get copies of these we could modify ourselves without having to hire a lawyer. The court staff was helpful and the judge was very friendly. Our "hearing" was a brief meeting in his chambers where he swore us in and then signed a couple documents with us. He had special pens with his name on them for signing documents and gave Kai the one we used.

Kai has been working hard on saying his new last name: "Ocheltree".

Blogging can really be addictive! Reading other blogs is what inspired me to start one myself. When we began the adoption process I began reading the blogs of others who were adopting from China; it was a good way to learn about what we were doing. I obsessed over the the travel blogs of families who were in China to receive their children. Now I mostly keep up with the same set of blogs - most of the families are home, some are still waiting, some are starting their second adoption, and some are in China right now!
How does anyone keep up with this many blogs? You have to use an "aggregator" like bloglines.com to do it. They are simple to setup and use, they let you organize the sites you want to follow and show you which have been updated so you don't have to check them all individually to see what's new. I had a problem figuring out how to put my active bloglines list on here, so I had been using another site which I didn't like as much, this meant that my list here wasn't current.
Well I fixed that problem so The Blogroll Page us up to date with the blogs I'm currently reading.

What do you think?

The Double Happiness "challenge" this week is a Any Photo With a Pumpkin. These are photos that were on the blog last year, but I really like them. I posted Kai's trip to the pumpkin farm already, so I wanted to feature Kai's brother Ben. Ben won't even know this is on here unless someone tells him, so I can put up just about anything about him. Ben's having a really good year at school so far, he is a high school sophomore. He also just recently started his first "real" job at the Sportsplex as a Skate-guard. He is going to get his license soon, and is greatly admired by his little brother Kai.
This is a picture of him carving our jack-o-lanterns last year. He's wearing the tye-die t-shirt his mom made him and his own hemp jewelry. The pumpkin designs are a peace sign and aum.

It's week two of the Double-Happiness photo challenge game. Donna's subject this week is "Reinterpretation of Classic Art". I'm really impressed with the entries so far. If I'm going to keep up I'm going to need some real photo editing software. Yes, I'm working on a Mac, but I work with the REALLY cheap editing software. I think I kind of lucked out this week. I snapped this pic of Kai and Tina this weekend at the pumpkin farm. Serendipity!

One of the reasons I had originally decided to stop updating Kai's blog was that we had come through a full year together and had completed a good number of "firsts". I didn't want to start posting a bunch of reruns, but this is actually a pretty interesting way to see how Kai has changed over the last year.

Last year we visited two farms with Kai, the first was "The Apple Farm" with the preschool class. This was one of our very first outings with Kai last year, we had only been home a few days with him. HERE'S A LINK to last year's entry on our Apple Farm Visit. And here are photos from this year's visit...

The other farm we like visiting in the fall is Stoney Ridge Farm. The apple farm Tina's preschool visits is a tiny little family farm. Stoney Ridge isn't a real big farm, but it focuses on tourism, it has much more of a carnival atmosphere. It's a great place to get a pumpkin and have a slice of apple pie with ice cream.
Again, HERE'S THE LINK to last year's visit. And here are photos from this year...

Gwen and Maddy's mom, our good friend Donna, has created a weekly "Photo Challenge" on their China Adoption Blog. I saw that it even got "The Other Scott" to update Cady's Blog, so I figured I should play too!

This week's subject is "Anticipation". I scrolled through the iPhoto library and came up with these from our trip to the Northwest Washington State Fair in Lynden back in August. The last photo shows what we were anticipating...

I was anxious about Moon Festival this year. It was important to me that we observe this holiday, but I'm not very good about the holiday thing. I procrastinate and don't plan well. But as our first official observation of Moon Festival, this year was a great success. First of all we had family visiting: Tina's dad and sister were here with us, which is great because the most important part of Moon Festival is being with familiy. Secondly,we were able to buy mooncakes a the local asian market; pretty good ones too. This was great because we had waited too long to order them online. And Thirdly, the moon came out in all its big, full, extra bright glory for us to gaze at! (That's a picture of it at the top that I I took with my cheapo camera.)

Our celebration began on Thursday afternoon when our friend Mei-mei stopped by for a visit on her way to Vancouver. She brought Kai a present and a moon cake in its own fancy little tin. (That's Mei-mei up above on the right giving Kai a hug.) On Friday night (the actual day of Moon Festival) we had a family dinner and ate mooncake together. We got the lotus seed paste ones without egg yolk. They aren't too sweet, but are very rich. They kind of reminded me of peanut butter cookies. No big fans of mooncake in our family yet, but it's growing on me. I actually enjoy a little piece of fruitcake once in a while too, so I think I could become a mooncake lover. Kai loves them. He doesn't eat them, as he still refuses to eat anything requiring chewing, but he gets quite excited when we get them out. Mainly because we put candles on them and let him blow them out. But hey, he loves mooncake! (just not for eating)

Then on Saturday night Tina and I took Kai and Tina's dad and sister down to the Village Green in Fairhaven for the Mei Hua Chinese School's Moon Festival celebration. The weather was great and a lot of people turned out, both Chinese-American families, and adoptive families. The program was sort of like a talent show with students and faculty perfoming music and dance, as well as some story telling and fun Moon Festival facts. Kai's good friend Mimi and her family were there too (that's her up on the left getting a big hug from Kai). Kai's still a little young to start at the school, but we plan on having him there next year. We feel very lucky to have this program here locally for Kai.

So Moon Festival was a big hit at our house. Even though it doesn't fall on the same day every year, we feel this is Kai's REAL Family Day with us. It was so special getting to receive him in China last year on Moon Festival, we plan on always marking this holiday as his special day!

--Oh, and I started blogging again.
Yeah, I know I said it was time to stop, but how can you not blog Moon Festival?!