Trick or Treat!

10 years ago on Halloween our families were in China together, and we've spent every Halloween together since. 

Mushu with some 'tude!

"the red balloon"

From themed eating to trick or treating... 

to the great candy swap. It's a night we look forward to every year!

I love our candy collecting traditions!  

PacMan and M&Ms

What do PacMan and M&Ms have in common?  

Well, besides being two of the iconic things of my generation growing up, they were our family Halloween costumes for 2016.  

Usually for Halloween we just order pizza or scarf down leftovers before we go for candy collection, but this year I was feeling a bit guilty for not making a bigger deal over our October birthdays.  So I decided to surprise my kids with a fun themed dinner.  Veggie skeleton, sloppy joe Jack-o-Lantern pie and Mummy dogs were on the menu.

And of course our trick-or-treating friends were also on calendar!

Ky and Darbs have been dressing as a pair for several years now.  Darby's mom outdid herself with these adorable costumes!

As for me...well, we did a little "costume recycling" this year.  After all, we weren't even living in our own home for the months of October, November and most of December...

Thankfully four of our kids didn't mind the recycle, we had been in another neighborhood last year and so our friends in the Hollow didn't get to see our PacMan family in person.

Last year.

This year.

 Any questions?

Our team of seven kids took in an impressive haul of candy.

Could have been partly because our sweet neighbors were happy to see my crew and just kept handing over the good stuff.

When their energy levels finally gave out and we headed back to the house, there was the annual "great candy swap."

And rumor has it that Mama may have snitched one or two favorites.

I'll never tell...

Celebrating 8 years of "Caleb-ness" in our lives

Once upon a time there were two little boys who weren't fans of the camera.

Ky, Caleb, Darbs & Henry
 the infamous "red couch" at the White Swan Hotel, Guangzhou
november 2008

And then they grew up and became hams.

Caleb and Henry
hay bale tower, pumpkin farm in central NC
october 2016

Most kids get to celebrate birthdays.  Often with family and friends.  And some get to celebrate Forever Family days.  The really lucky ones get to celebrate Forever Family days with friends that are family.

The extra fun thing about this family is that we're tied to them not just once...  We traveled to the other side of the world with them on our first two adoption journeys and have shared those first days of shell shock together twice.

And while the oldest four consider their "China sibling" bonding a special gift, they are loving enough to share it with all the crew.

It's not just limited to the boys though...we parents have forged a tight bond as the Wonder twin powers activating would show.

While our families attend church together and we see each other somewhat frequently throughout the year, we have a special night in late October to celebrate when our boys became part of our lives and when we became even closer as families at the International Hotel in Guangzhou.

 Not sure exactly how it started, but we began going to a pumpkin patch/corn maze to have an evening of fun together.

To date we've visited several area farms and have our opinions of which has the best corn maze, which puts on the best hay ride, and which offers the best overall value for admission price.

We also can tell you that the blending of our two families provides the best entertainment no matter the farm.  Love the tradition.  Love the families.  Love these boys!

Caleb Lutao, you are a ray of sunshine in my world.  I'm forever grateful and humbled that one of my roles in life is to be your Mom.  May you never lose that spark of humor and that heart of gold...

Dumpling day

What to do when your Gotcha Day falls within days of Chinese New Year?

Call your local China sisters and make dozens of dumplings of course!

8 of the 9 kids 10 and under got in touch with their roots and made the main course of dinner for the rest of us.

It could be said that we had some 'dumpling sealing' issues...

Thankfully what was lacking in technique did not result in a lack in taste.  100 dumplings were made and all but 2 were eaten.  That would be because we also noshed on lettuce wraps, soy/ginger/garlic marinated chicken and Asian slaw.

We broke from the Chinese theme with dessert.  No fortune cookies Friday night.  It would have been really tough to write Happy Gotcha Day on those tiny cookies.  Besides, the cookie cake is somewhat of a tradition.  Here's a shot from the very first Forever Family Day celebration our families had together the year we moved here.

EEEK!  they were so very tiny!

It's just that now they have several more younger siblings to share that cookie with, so a cake becomes a necessary addition to the dessert menu.

These girls.  In a hot room in southern China nine years ago they went from orphans to treasured daughters within a two minute span.  Kylie is beyond blessed that she walks to school daily with one of her 'China sisters' and attends church weekly with another.  They share an unbreakable bond.

Speaking of bonds...

Sharing a delivery room that day created a pretty special one among the parents too.  I consider myself blessed to share life with these folks.  It was an evening filled with good food, laughter, conversation and the excited chatter of kids playing.

The only thing that could have made it better?  The presence of the other eight girls and their families...

getting our game on for Halloween

The family that games together...

As Halloween approached this year, I kept trying to figure out a family theme.  And one night at dinner it just hit me...we could be a PacMan family.  Figuring the at least a few of the kids would shoot me down, I offered my suggestion.  Much to my surprise they agreed...even if they didn't know exactly what PacMan was.  And I figure we don't have many more miles on the "let's dress for Halloween as a family" bus.

So after many a search on Pinterest we settled on our plan and Ian got to work creating our costumes.

Starting with the Mr. and Ms. of course...

And then we had five little ghosts.  At first there were only going to be four as Ky was going to continue her tradition of creating a two person costume with Darby.  But then she didn't want to be left out of the family theme, so they were both ghosts.  Our next thought to keep the M7 as true to PacMan as possible was to make Daniel a walking cornucopia of fruit ~ cherries, strawberry, orange, apple, melon ~ but then he didn't want to be different.

So five ghosts it was.  Guess that works though, Inky, Blinky, Pinky & Clyde from PacMan and then Sue from Ms. PacMan.

To help get us ready for the long walk ahead we had a quick game of PacMan tag.  I lost.
I'll blame it on the fact that there was no maze for the ghosts to follow and they forgot to leave me some power pellets.

Also for the record we (and by we I mean I) offered for Ian to make Henry a ghost costume as well.  But the force is strong in that one and he stayed true to his first thought for Halloween.

We walked through D & H's neighborhood for almost two hours, collecting mass amounts of candy.

And receiving many, many compliments on our costumes.  Mostly from the 30 and older crowd, but whatever.  Kids seemed to think that ghosts were cool even if they didn't know what they were from.

And then it was time for the infamous "candy sort and swap."  Those seven kids made out like bandits!  I think we'll still be noshing off their Halloween candy well into the summer.

{not a} seven year itch

When you start typing seven year into Google, the first suggestion is 'seven year itch.'  According to Wikipedia [the seven-year itch is a psychological term that suggests that happiness in a relationship declines after around year seven]...

But I beg to differ.

Yes, it took me a while to begin to figure out what having a boy meant.  Yes, there are days that I wonder what in the world he's thinking.  (So does he for that matter).

But this kid... Man I love him just a little bit more every day.

On October 26...one day early here in the US, but adjust for time differences and I guess it was almost exact in Wuhan...we got together with his 'China brother's' family to celebrate seven years of them being part of our families.  

SEVEN YEARS.

Back then these two were toddlers.  

We've visited several pumpkin farms over the years.  One we simply outgrew and another was damaged in the early fall monsoons.  So this year we tried a new farm.  

There was plenty to do from watching pig races to spinning swings...

...giant slides to king of the straw hill...

...giant jumping pillows to hamster wheel races...

...and hay rides to the pumpkin patch.

Included in our admission was one pumpkin per person.

So we searched.

And we hunted.

And we each came up with the perfect pumpkin.

What a great afternoon of celebration.  Happy seven years of being part of our family to Caleb LuTao!