Today was Moon Festival! We almost missed it. We knew it was the 25th, but it's pretty crazy around here lately, so we just realized this afternoon that today was the day. Fortunately the refrigerator was full of mooncakes, and though the sky has been cloudy all day today and we weren't able to see the moon tonight, we did have our whole family together for dinner. And since we had all of us together we finally got a photo of all four of the boys!

I had been disappointed with ourselves for not getting a photo of them all together sooner, but then I set to getting this picture. It took 20 shots to get this one.

Kai and Shen both really enjoyed the mooncakes. We brought some home from China with us, and our friends Paul and Mei-mei gave us a box from a bakery in Vancouver. I think the boys preferred the ones with lotus seed paste.

These are the boxes they came in... I love mooncake boxes

Here's a picture I took in the lobby of our hotel in Xi'an of the display of mooncakes they were selling...

We will be celebrating again this weekend at the event hosted by the local Chinese language school...

We haven't played Family Foto Fun Friday in a while, but today when I was checking out our friend Lydia's blog I saw the topic her mom, Lissa, had chosen was naps. Coincidentally, Tina had emailed me a photo at work today while she was home with the boys. Actually, in addition to the boys, she had our little friend Mimi over to play after pre-school today too. This is the first time Mimi has spent the afternoon at our house since Shen has been home. All three of the kids had a great time together, and Tina managed to get them all down for a nap at the same time!

As much fun as the three of them are, I'm sure you can imagine how pleased Tina was to have them all asleep at the same time! So this was nap time at our house today. If you'd like to see who else is playing FFFF this week be sure to CLICK HERE to check out all the entries over at the "Loving Lydia" blog.

Two years ago today, on September 18th, 2005, Tina and Cameron and Benjamin and I woke up in Beijing. We met Yang Baoshan (Bob) for the first time in the lobby of our hotel as we were checking out. He had arranged for a driver and a small van to take us on the two hour drive to the city of Baoding. We rode out to the southeastern edge of town, then down a narrow rode beside a cornfield where we came to the Baoding Social Welfare Institute. It was there that our lives and that of Dang Hui, now Kai Hui Ocheltree, merged forever.

A tradition we've assumed is to have Kai put on the clothes he came to us in and photograph him to see how much he's grown...

CLICK HERE to watch Kai's "Gotcha" Video

(Note: I made this video before YouTube was really the de-facto standard for embedding video in blogs, so it's in standard QuickTime format. It loads in a seperate pop-up window, is about 64 megs and has a running time of about 13.5 minutes. I know that's a bit long, so if you want to skip up to where we get Kai, it's a just past the halfway mark.)

I didn't have time to post these during our recent trip, but something most native English speakers/readers get a chuckle over while traveling in China and other parts of Asia are the "creative" English translations and slogans you see. Some of the examples aren't technically "wrong", but are still different enough to come off as not quite right, like this directional sign...


Other examples have some very odd spelling, that make you think the translator was a bit too confident in their skills to bother checking a dictionary. The following sign is posted in the river-front park on Shamian Island:

They've misspelled "and", yet they got "amerced" right, I had to look that up to see if it was a real English word!

The most amusing examples I caught on camera though were the T-shirts worn by the nursery school teachers we saw escorting their charges around Shamian island each morning. They would walk the children in a group hanging onto handles on a long rope...

Here's a detail of the printing on the shirts all the teachers were wearing one morning...

It's a little hard to read in the photo, but it says,

what's that?
GOLD DUST
verywhere!!!

The next day we saw them out again and the teachers were again all wearing matching T-shirts:

I'm hoping they got a good deal on the shirts, and that they aren't teaching the kids English.

I hate to admit it, but we lost more stuff in China. Tina forgot her purse at the "Cow and Bridge" Thai restaurant on Shamian Island. We searched the hotel unsuccessfully for a day before she remembered where it must be. She returned to the restaurant the next day, and when the waitress saw her come in, she ran and got Tina's purse for her. Another miraculous recovery.

But there was more stuff we lost too. From the way this post is sounding, it seems amazing that we made it home with both the boys. We don't actually know the extent of the remaining "lost stuff". We do know we're missing some toys that we brought from home, like a ViewMaster, and some other junk. More regrettably, we are also missing a number of souvenirs we bought in Baoding, a map of Baoding and some brochures from Kai's SWI. There's probably some other paper stuff which we can't remember. We're pretty sure it all got left in a cabinet under the TV in our hotel room in Xi'an. I actually called the hotel from home and asked about it, but they hadn't seen any of our stuff.

We had got the map because we wanted to use it to locate Kai's SWI on Google Earth. Fortunately, we actually managed to do this while we were in Baoding.So I have it marked! Do you have Google Earth on your computer? If not, why not? It has got to be one of the very coolest free computer programs of all time. You can fly to your house and view it through satellite imagery just by typing in your address. I love playing with Google Earth.

So here's the zoom in on Kai's old home (latitude: 38°50'40.43"N, longitude: 115°31'28.87"E)...





The image was captured on a hazy day (a hard day to miss in Baoding) but you can clearly see the buildings and the courtyards. The dark hexagonal shape with the white object in it is the fountain with the goldfish you can see in this picture...

Having this point of connection: a fuzzy little arial sattelite glimpse of this place is important to me. There are countless amazing places to explore and see through Google Earth, but this is one of the most important ones to me. We have Shen's old home located too, and I'll show that in the next post.

If you followed along on our adoption trip to get Shen, you probably remember my "Saga of The Lost Bag". If not you can check out Shen's Blog and scroll down to my August 4th entry. Anyway, the night before we left for China we had Chinese take-out for dinner. We always have Cameron and his girlfriend Brittni over for dinner on Sundays, and since we were busy with last minute packing we sent the kids to pick up the food. All of them went, Cam, Brittni, Ben & Kai. After dinner we opened our fortune cookies and read their contents.


We were amazed at how appropriate Kai's and Tina's were. Then Tina asked me, "So, what have you lost?" And since I couldn't think of anything I was missing at the time, I jokingly answered, "Maybe I haven't lost it yet."

I've updated the blog's color scheme a little, and shuffled the sidebar a bit. Here's some pictures of Kai and Shen we took last night. I have been bringing home prizes for boys who keep their pants dry all day. Shen has pretty much been accident free since we met him, and Kai was doing really well up until a week ago. So we decided to start offering rewards to motivate him. I didn't have time to pick up prizes yesterday, so I dug out one of my "treasure boxes" (I have tucked away odd junk and trinkets for years and have stashes of whacky stuff) and let them each choose a prize from the box. Neither of them chose the fake nose, but they had a good time modeling it for us.

Kai started attending Special Ed Preschool through our school district this week. Today was the first day he rode the bus to school. He was very pleased to have such a big adventure! We plan on having him go to this class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and keeping him in the co-op preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He qualified for the program because of some documented cognitive delays. We want him there for speech and language development, but the district won't qualify him for this because, according to the district's speech pathologist "legally" Kai would be classified as an ESL (English as a 2nd Language) student. I felt like saying to her that if it were a legal matter, maybe we should get a lawyer to discuss it, but since he got in, I'm going to behave for now. Kai is really enjoying it, and we really like his teacher. I can't believe how big he looks on that bus.

Does this look like a tough guy to you or what?
Actually this is Shen's "Play tough guy face". He flashed this for me while he was wielding a balloon sword. As you can see, he can be quite expressive! When he gives this look, every muscle in his body is tensed like a spring - and a second later he's all smiles. Quite the little showman.

Shen's 1 Month Anniversary

Shen is beginning to settle into our family. It's not always easy for him, or Kai, but you can tell he really wants to belong here. We call him our "Little Warrior" because he is one tough little guy. He has been through a lot in his short little life so far, and it is very clear that he is a survivor. But he's not just a little tough guy. He is very lovable and playful as well. He is self assured and wants to control his world, but he wants to conform to our rules too, and he is very eager to please us. The little photo albums we sent to him before we traveled are still prized possessions and he loves looking through them and pointing out "ma-ma" and "ba-ba" and "ge-ge".

He came to us fully potty-trained and sleeps through the night without a problem. He eats a wide variety of foods; loves fresh fruit and spicy stuff (salsa) too. He can dress himself. He talks quite a bit in Chinese, and has increased my Chinese vocabulary. He is also starting to use some English words as well: "all done" and "no" were his first new ones. People ask about the language development and how that works. It amazes me how easy it is to communicate with him. We have to point a lot and demonstrate things, but for the most part we just talk to him, and he manages to figure out what we're saying.

He likes playing with toys, and gets along with Kai really well. Kai likes playing with other children, so having a full-time, live-in playmate is great for him. We have the TV on MUCH less now that Shen is home. We have had a few small battles over toys and such, but it's all been well within reason for what you'd expect from a 3 and a 4 year old living together. Kai is having to learn to share Tina's and my attention and affection as well, and again, I'm not going to tell you it's been like a fairy-tale, but it hasn't been too bad so far. We make a point of giving each of the boys one-on-one time, and cuddle them together as much as we can.

While Shen loves to be held and touched, he challenges us more physically than Kai ever has. He has taken a few swats at us here and there, which we are always quick to correct him for. Sometimes, if we just grab his hand to avoid getting hit, he will grin really big - clearly pleased to have our attention because it is all just a big game to him. He is just playing, but it's a form of play we can't allow. Several times when he has swung at Kai we have firmly told him "Bu!" (no) and put him in a chair while we comforted Kai. This makes Shen cry, which I have to say I'm glad to see. His feelings get hurt when he is punished (even lightly) for inappropriate behavior and this means it will be very easy for him to learn to behave. After we see Kai is okay, we hold Shen and comfort him till he stops crying, so he knows that even when he misbehaves we still love him. And truly this behavior (which has never been out of control) has already diminished greatly.

He loves looking at books. At night when we read a story at bedtime, he wants to help hold the book. Even though he can't understand the English, he sits through the whole thing and clearly enjoys the experience. He takes turns with Kai putting the books away and turning the light out at night. Singing lullabies in bed to him at night is distracting to him, and while he likes it, he can't go to sleep easily when we do this yet, so after a few songs Kai is usually out, and we just say goodnight and let him go to sleep on his own.

When we received Shen he knew how to say "Wo ai ni" ("I love you" in Chinese) and to give kisses. It is very heartwarming to hear this and get the kisses, but we know they are not signs of deep feelings on his part yet. He is very affectionate and eager to please us, but he behaves this way with just about everyone he meets. He clearly favors us more and more, but true bonding and attachment still has a long way to go.

His pain threshold is very high. He takes bumps and falls in stride, he likes to have his owies kissed, but more for fun as opposed to milking it for sympathy. He rarely cries much due to physical injury. Today we took him for a blood-work but the technician couldn't hit his little tiny veins. Two different techs tried, I saw him get jabbed three times and watched as they dug around in his arm unsuccessfully. He fussed and fought as I held him tight, one tech bracing his arm, the other probing with the needle. They both commented on how strong he is, and when they finally gave up he had fought, but hadn't really cried at all.

It's amazing to see how far Shen has come in just one month. He is such a different little boy than Kai, but that a good thing, the two of them balance each other well, and Shen is a wonderful addition to our family!

So does it feel like 25 years? I don’t know. I can’t seem to tell anymore what a year feels like. I can tell you it feels right. I want to say today feels Important, significant, like a milestone. Because it is. And I know it is, but it doesn’t feel anymore important to me than any other day I wake up with Tina. Maybe the difference is the special nature of the number – 25 – it stands out so much: 5 squared, a quarter century – sounds so big it makes you stop and think. And for that I do really appreciate the date. We’ve had 25 years of marriage together. That’s a whole bunch of days. I can remember lots of them – special days, like when Cam and Ben were born, traveling to China to get Kai and Shen, walking on beaches in Oregon and Hawaii, and other days too where we just laid around the house and did nothing but enjoy one another. These highlights standout, and make me wonder a bit about all the other days, the really important ones, on which nothing amazing or wonderfully momentous happened other than the very important fact that we lived them together. And all those days – blurred together over 25 years have shaped who we now are, and have silently built our relationship. Our marriage. It is the single most important relationship in my life, and my only regret is that I have not always thought to hold each of our days together in my heart and mind with the true value that they carry. Our 25th Wedding Anniversary! It Is An Important Day! But every single day we wake up together is just as important to me. I’m glad that Big Anniversary Numbers like 25 come along and remind me of this very important fact. I am so thankful to Tina for marrying me 25 years ago, and for every single day we spend together.

Today I had the little boys to myself so Tina could have a little break. She has been with them full time since we've been home, so I was really glad to let her get a little time to herself. My plan: run them into the ground. They have actually been doing really well with each other again now. We had a few days where they were sort of working stuff out, but they are back to being thick as thieves. So I took them to fly kites. We had bought a couple little strings of paper kites from a street vendor in Xi'an where we saw people flying long trains of these in a plaza by the Drum Tower. We didn't get a chance to fly them in China, so today was the day. I took the boys down to a park by the water that's perfect for flying kites and we had a great time. The boys did really well with the kites and I was able to get some great video clips. I'd love to tell you we ended without getting them all tangled together, but I'm a horrible liar.