Prom 2009

What a beautiful day for prom. It is more than 70 degrees! Toby was very excited about the prom this year. He spent more than 2 hrs in line to pick up the tuxedos yesterday. He was surprised that it took longer to pick up the flowers. It seems like the whole town is busy for their proms. Toby and his friends rented a pink limo!! Pink! Can you believe it. I am not too proud of photographing skills, but I do love these photos. I think Toby and Marie make a wonderful couple.
Have a great time and be safe!!
Needless to say, they will be party the whole night at a friend's house. I think I will have a sleepy boy home tomorrow. I hope to see him again in tuxedos on Sunday for Anna and Jenny's first communion!

More photos:

5K! Way to go Anna!!

Anna has been in training for running 5K! We signed her up for a program here called "girls on the run" through an organization called "women in transition". One of her teachers in school is a marathon runner. She is Anna's coach. Since beginning of March, she has been in training after school twice a week. On Monday, she brought home a certificate for being able to run 5K!! What a girl. In May she will have three races. One of them is the famous river bank run in Grand Rapids!
Way to go, Anna!! We are so proud of you. Jenny can't wait until she is in 3rd grade so she can do it too.
Stay tuned...

Chicago Reunion with Anhui Families

April 17th, 2009
We met again with the Wess' and the Migan's in Chicago. We were so sad that the Morgan-Jensen's did not make it. Anna kept saying "I have not seen Annie for more than a year!!". The weather was not good in Houston and their flight was canceled.

We had a great time as always. Cindy was a great hostess. Our family stayed at their house while the Migan's stayed in a very nice hotel nearby. We were invited as their guests for an afternoon swimming. Kids had a great time. I am amazed at how these girls can just get together and reconnect where they left off in an instance! they are true sisters/brothers!!

We hope to go camping in July with more of our Anhui families!


For more photos...

Good Luck, Toby and Team 107 at World FIRST Robotic Competition

Just said goodbye to the boys and their FIRST robotic team. They are riding a coach bus to Atlanta for their World FIRST robotic competition. This is the 4th year for Toby and 2nd year for Joshua working on their robotic team. This is actually the first year they both are fully immersed into it. In the past, they had always played not so important roles. This year, Toby takes on a lot leadership roles in designing and Joshua takes on the major role of programming. Thanks to their mentors, they both have matured so much. They spent 8 weeks to build the robot from November to January. During that time, Toby had so many things on his plate - the surgery, college application, scholarship applications...just to name a few. Despite these drawbacks, he spent countless nights working on his Autodesk design. He became the first student ever on his team to submit the design for Autodesk competition. You can tell we were thrilled to learn just today that his entry is selected as one of the 5 finalists to compete for the grand prize. Check it out (click here). It is amazing!!

Good luck Toby and Good Luck Team 107!! I wish I could be there watching and cheering for your team. We will be watching you via Nasa's live cast site...

Way to Go, Toby!

The college search and application season is finally over! What a wonderful experience. We are so thankful for everything Toby has accomplished in his first 18 years of his life. It was a journey. I remember how much he struggled to decide a major last fall. Now I am so glad to see how confident he is in what he wants to do. We all learn a lot in this process about college, but most importantly, we learn a lot about our Toby. What a gifted child. We are so proud of him!
He has decided to study Biomedical Engineering. So all the schools we applied are top university in Engineering. I was selfish not letting him to apply any schools in California because I just can't imagine him being so far away from home. I would miss him too much!!! Altogether he applied 8 schools. He was accepted into 6 of them including Johns Hopkins University, University of Michigan, Purdue University, Rose Holman, University of Minnesota and Michigan Technology University. Most of these schools offered him a good amount of scholarship. Deciding on which school to go did not come easy because they are all very good schools. In the end, University of Michigan becomes the winner! It offers an overall package that meets both our financial and his academic needs.
I am so excited and proud of him!

A Wonderful Weekend with the Szalai's

We traveled with the Szalai's together in January 2008 to China to adopt Jenny. They adopted John at the same time when we adopted Jenny. I guess we can say that they are our Jenny's travel group. We left our car in their house during our trip because they live very close to Detroit airport. Anna became very fond of Amy who was just the right size and age for Anna to care and play with. On our way home, they picked us up from the airport as they were home one day before us. We spent a lot time together in Hohhot and Guangzhou. Over the past year, Joanne and I had contacted each other occasionally via emails. This is the first time we finally got together since we were back from China.
I am so glad to see how much John had grown, how petite Amy still is and how sweet Sarah still is! We had a great time together this weekend. We did so many things together. The weather cooperated very well so we were able to go outside. We went to state parks and spent an evening in Aquatic Center. We just said goodbye to them. I know Amy, Sarah and John will have a nice nap on their way home. Anna and Jenny had already tug their blankets and dozed off in front of their TV!
I am hoping we will see them often in the future. I know we will!
We took 620 photos!! Here are some of them.

Updates and Robotics

I can't believe I have not written here for more than 2 months! Time flies and life does not pause for me. I can't even remember all what happened in the last two months. We finished the girls' swimming season in earlier February. Both Anna and Jenny did great job! Anna qualified for the "A" meet competition for both 25 yard free style and back stroke. In the final meet, she also lead her team to the meet champion for the 100 yards free style relay. She placed the 13rd place out of total 80 swimmers in the 25 free style. She finished the 25 yards in just 19 seconds!
Jenny did equally well for her first year competition considering she even did not know how to swim 12 months before. In her "B" meet conference, her relay team also won the championship. She was very excited about swimming and was a very competitive swimmer!
Toby recovered very well. I can't believe it was only 2 months ago he had the surgery. He only missed one week of school. He has been eating normal food on the 4th week. Sadly, he is so sick of smoothies. He has been busy with catching up on school work, job and Robotics. He is glad that he finally got his college applications out of his way. He is considering himself now a Wolverine - GoBlue, Toby!!
Both Toby and Joshua are on their school Robotic Team. For this year, they had to design and make a robot that carries a trailer and can throw balls on to another robot's trailer all in 6 weeks. Both boys are very active members of the team. Toby was glad that his initial design was put into work as the a part of the final product. Joshua became a lead programmer for the robot. Last weekend, they put their robot to work in their first competition at Kettering University. There were 40 some teams. Their team and robot placed 3rd place in their qualification runs. For each team, there are three driving members. Two of the members control the robot with remote controllers. The third member is a human thrower who throws the balls to the opposite alliance teams' trailers. Toby was elected as the human thrower. He did awesome job!! It was a good feeling as a parent to hear the audience chanting "Toby! Toby! Toby!".
It has happened many times before and it happened again last weekend. In such a major event like the Robotic Competition, we forgot to take our camera! Luckily some of their team members had uploaded some photos onto their face book page...so here I am, shameless stealing from them.
Two more competitions to go yet. So we have more chances to take more photos...
Here are the photos that I stole....

Too much to write

Too many things has happened since I posted last time right after Christmas. I don't know where to begin.
First of all, our vacation was wonderful despite the fact that we had that car adventure. We left our car in Stockbridge GA. We rented a car. There were many twists in renting the car. I thought I had the best of luck when I reserved the car online with Thrift Rental on the right when we stucked in GA. I could not believe it so I made a phone call and got someone on the phone to confirmed that I indeed had a reservation. The next day, Bert arranged to have the car towed to a tranmission place. I called one last time to make sure the car we were about to rent had a roof top rack because if not, we would have alot trouble to load everything. The lady I spoke on the phone confirmed that there was a roof top rack. I told her we were on our way. $40 cab ride later, we arrived the Thift Rental car outlet office to find out that she just rented OUR car out. She said they were over booked and they never honored reservation!!! I was about to blow up. Thanks to Bert who was much calmer than me. After many phone calls, we decided to walk over the high way to Enterprise rental office. Needless to say all their minivan was rented out as well. Luckily there was a car that was out of service becaus the back window did not close tightly. We were very thankful that office manager had remembered that car and offered it to us.
The rest of the vacation was wonderful. The house we rented was very nice. We had plenty room. The heated pool was actually hot (80-90F). We ate at least one meal at the house to save money. We were glad that the Meisers were with us for an afternoon and had a nice dinner with them at the Rain Forest Cafe in Downtown Disney. It would have been great if the Jensen-Morgan gang could make it. We had the Guarrs over for some pizza and beer one evening. It was great to see friends from Michigan! The parks open longer hours during the holiday season. We celebrated New Year eve and Bert's birthday at the Eport Center. The firework and laser show was awesome.
The trip back home was uneventful. We picked up our car on our way home. It had a rebuilt new transmission.
Back home, we dived right away into the girls swimming practices and meets. Both Anna and Jenny are doing great! Anna's best time for 25 yards free style was 19.90 seconds and is top swimmer in her age group. She qualified for A conferences on two events. Jenny is doing great as well. She did not know how to swim at all. Now less than one year later, she is on top her age group list too.
The biggest event now is Toby's jaw surgery. Othedontic work alone did not correct his overbite. Surgery was unavoidable. I had to say he was very brave. The surgery went very well. Dr. Lonergan did a great job. Thanks to his good health, his determination for a speedy recovery and his parents's care, now 5 days later, his swelling is nearly gone compeletely. His surgeon gave him a 10 on the scale of 1-10 on the recovery race. Unfortunately he will have to be on liquid diet for a while and still have to wear braces for another 9 months.
I just also realized that I had not said anything about Toby's college applications ont his blog. Toby had decided to study Biomedical Engineering. He has been accepted by three colleges, University of Michigan, Michigan Technology University and University of Minnesota. He also applied to Harvard, MIT, Rose Holman, Purdue and Johns Hopkins, but has not heard from these schools yet. I still can't believe that in a few months, he will be on his way to college already. It seems like yesterday that we were giving birth to him!

Christmas Adventures

Our Christmas started with many adventures. First, we got all these snow falls. Then we got rain and snow again. Everything happened so fast that we did not have much time or chance to clean them up. Our drive way has about 6 inches of ice!. Then with snow days and winter break, all the kids have no school, but mom and dad had to work even on Christmas Eve. Luckily, we have wonderful in house babysitters. Toby and Josh did great job taking care of Anna and Jenny. They did not just stay home with them. They actually took them to swim in Aquatic Center and take slight rides in the snow. On Christmas Eve, they took them to Christmas Mass. Initially, Sue and Bert decided to go to 10:30pm Mass because the Christmas Eve Mass was at 5 pm. Luckily, Bert's company left them go home earlier and Sue decided to leave a few minutes earlier as well so the whole family was able to attend the Mass together. We were all active involved in the Christmas Mass. Anna and Jenny was in the Christmas play. They are two of the kings (or, shall I say wisewomen). Toby was a server. Joshua took care of the sound board. Bert and I were Eucharistic Ministers. It was a beautiful mass. We were glad that we made it together as a family.
We would have had more time if we were going with the original plan of leaving on the 26th to Orlando. But at the last minute, we decided to leave on the 25th instead. We struggled to find a hotel room for one more night in/near Orlando because the house we rent would not be available until the 27th and it seemed that all the hotel rooms were booked out. We managed to find a place in Gainesville, Florida. Instead of traditional family dinner at home for Christmas, we had Chinese food instead to save time so we could get the last minute packing done and still keep our tradition of opening the presents on Christmas Eve.
On Christmas Day, we managed to get on the road 4 hours later than I have planned (2 hours later than Bert's plan - he was more realistic than I was). Once we got on the road, all the stress of packing and preparing were put behind us. Kids were wonderful. They all quickly started their movies and everyone was excited and ready to go. Not a bit of complaints. The driving was easy. No traffic! There was only one minor problem we soon discovered that there was no place to eat. Even McDonald's was closed on Christmas Day! At about 7 pm, we finally found a Hardie that was open. Little we knew, it took us 50 minutes of waiting to get just some burgers! There were simply too many people in that little place with only three people working there. I think that was the only place open, besides the Waffle House, in the entire stretch of I65 between Gary Indiana to Nashville Tennesse. Needless to say that the burgers were great. We completed our first stretch of the travel relatively easily.
Our real adventure started on the 2nd day of travel. Soon after we passed Atlanta, we stucked in a traffic jam. Crawling 2 hours at about 2 MPH. We got so bored and started to do statistics on license plates around us. We found out that there were at least 4 other Michiganers were in that jam together with us. Our car seemed getting heavier as we inched in longer in the jam. I suddenly realized that the car started to loose power. This had happened before when we stucked on I94 on our way to Chicago with our last Anhui family reuion. I soon pulled over to the side. Yes, there was. The transmission fluid leaked out under the car like a running facet! When this happened last time, we had it fixed and it had not leaked since. At this point, we realized that we must get off the high way. Luckily, the next exit was only a few yard away. We topped more transmission fluid - yes, luckily the extra transmission fluids we bought when we had the problem before were still in the car. Off we went, carefully, of course. We got to a gas station right off the exit ramp. Within minutes, Bert got on the phone with a mechanist, towing company and a Herz rental car company all at the same time and I had American Express road side service ready to take care of us too. The final vertics was that we must stay over night here in this town called Stockbridge, GA. We could drive only a few blocks with this broken car. Luckily, there was a Holiday Inn Express and Suite just across the high way. Unfortunately, there was a long line in the Holiday Express checking in counter with only one girl working there and more than 2 dozen travelers waiting to check in. I see no chance to know if they could give me a room or not soon. Taking a business card from the counter, I walked right back into the car and called the hotel reservation in their parking lot. I reserved two rooms in less than 5 minutes. I then went back in to wait in line while Bert and kids started to organize the car. Less than an hour later, we settled in our hotel rooms. We logged online and reserved a rental minivan. Meanwhile, Bert managed to have the car towed to a nearby transmission repair shop. We will find out tomorrow if we could have this car repaired before noon or we will take the rental car to Orlando and pick our car on our way bakc. Yes, we are determined to go.
We have more evening time now. We ordered pizza and played Yoker with the boys. We lost to them left and right:), but it is one of these happy moment we enjoy the most.
Did you realize how many times I have been saying luckily? Yes, considering the situation, if we were broken down in far away from an exit, we would be in lot more trouble. Looking back, we are so thankful for the watchful eyes from God. Everything happened could have been worse. But in the end, we are having a Christmas we would not forget. We are prepared for more adventures to come, but no matter what comes in our way, we will try to remember how fortunately we are to have each other. Kids have been wonderful and Bert and I are not fighting:). What else more do we need?:)
Good night, or shall I say Good morning? We hope to get good news tomorrow!

Proud of our kids!!

It is a long day. It is nearly 2 am. I am still up. I am kind of waiting the boys coming home, even though they said don't wait... They are at the cast party. Their school's theater performance this year was High School Musical. Joshua worked on the lighting and sound - the "tech" guy. Toby worked in the pit orchestra. We watched the play last night. It was fantastic! Jenny was off her seat all the time singing and dancing alone. If we did not hold her tight, she would have gone to the stage! She was very excited. Her favorite character was the boy on the basket ball team wearing a jersey#16. Don't ask me why. I think he is a freshman and a very good look freshman. It took us a while to find him because all Jenny could tell us was the boy with a number 16. We did not take our camera. I don't know how to download the photo from my camera yet. Needless to say, Jenny was excited to have a picture with him. Anna was excited too, but not as crazy as Jenny. The tickets were completely sold out. Today at dance, some parents complained that they could not get the tickets. It is the talk of the town!

Another talk of the town is the boys' high school football team is going to the playoff in Detroit for the division championship!! The boys will go with their friends to the game. I am not a football fan, but we think we will go too. It is too exciting to miss it!

Anna had her first reconciliation today. I think she is really getting into religion and truly understands what she is doing. We are holding Jenny back a year. Jenny's language is very good now, but religion is harder to understand, even for those who speak perfect English!

We also got Toby's SAT subject reports today. He scored a perfect score of 800 on Math!! Way to go, Toby. We are so proud of you!

Hope Toby and Joshua be home soon and safe!! I wish they were still little boys. They grow up too fast.

Update

It has been a while since I last time posted here. We have been so busy!
The girls are doing great. They keep us busy with all their activities. They have piano lessons every Thursday. Their piano teacher is my neighbor, Diane Windenmuller. It is so convenient just sending them over to Diane's house while I can stay home making dinner. The girls are also taking Dance lessons Swimming camp on Saturdays. The dance will last until the summer. The swim camp will finish in mid December. Before the camp is finished, they both will participate Holland Area Aquatic Club for competitive swimming. Anna did great job in her competition last year. Jenny has done so well in her swimming. As matter of fact, Jenny has been doing great in every aspect of her new life. She is speaking almost all English now. It is sad to see her forgetting her Chinese. I am doing everything I can, but I am afraid it is unavoidable. She is doing everything she can to fit in. Anna has been a very good big sister. These two girls are best of friends now. They are inseparable. They still sleep together in the same bed. There are two twin size beds in their room. One is used for playing and one is for sleeping. We just recently put them together as a bunk bed. That did not separate them. They now either sleep both on top or both on the bottom. I think they truly enjoying having each other.
The boys have their own activities that keep themselves busy. Toby is extremely busy this year. Besides college applications, he is also working very hard to keep up his good grades. He works two part time too at a local computer using 3D CAD software. He hopes to study biomedical engineering in college. Joshua is too busy to learn driving. He is still hooked on his apple computer and every move of Apple company and Steve Jobs. He hopes to study computer and electrical engineering when it is his turn to go to college.
Besides helping with the girls with their school work every evening, I have also been busy making sweaters. Since September, I have made 6 sweaters, two hats, two legs, two pairs of socks and two gloves. I have to thank the election for all of this. I watched a lot TV during the last two months because of elections. I can't simply sit there watching TV without doing something with my hands. That is when these needle work products produced. I promised myself that once the Thanksgiving is over, I will move onto organizing photos- something else to keep me busy and focused.

Bert is a good Dad and husband. He is doing everything around the house to keep the family in harmony:)

Here are some recent photos........

Jenny and Anna with our neighbor Amelia(September)

Anna and Jenny at the Crane Apple (September)
Apple Picking! (September)

On the way to pick some apples (September)

Family Fall Photo (November)

Halloween with friends (October)

Two cowgirls!

My Ballet Girls

Take a walk in the park

It was beautiful this Sunday. We took a walk in the Saugatuck state park. It was a nice walk for the whole family.

Long time no post

Wow, I can't believe it that I have not posted anything here for more than a month. A lot things have happened obviously. One thing for sure is that we have been very busy. The boys finally got home from their summer camp at the beginning of the August. They had great time there. They worked more than 12 hours a day and 6 days a week. They learned a lot on leadership. Most important of all, they made a lot of friends. They were kind of "home" sick after they came home because they missed their camp friends. They refer them as their 2nd family. In reality, I felt that this home is their 2nd family and camp was their first family.
I was looking forward for them to be home at last. I really missed them very much this summer. However, it did not take them long before they wanted to go on a trip again. Being home only less than three days, Toby got a call from a friend they met at the camp about an opportunity to go to the Boundary Water in Minnesota to attend boy scout Northern Tier Canoeing Trip. It typically requires more than 2 years of preparation and sign up ahead of time to attend such trip. Because someone had dropped off from their friend's troop, they were offered the opportunity. Within two days, they were off again for another week of camping and canoeing trip. They had another fun week.
On Labor Day weekend, our family finally spent time together for the first time this summer. We camped with some colleagues from Bert's work place. We had great time together as a family. A week later, we spent a day at Michigan Adventure for Sue's company's annual outing.
School started immediately after the Labor Day. Anna and Jenny are still in the same school this year. Anna is in 3rd grade and Jenny is in 2nd. This is Toby's last year of high school and work part time (CAD drawing job again). Besides keeping up with a lot school work, he has to finish his college application. Joshua is in his 2nd year in High School. Right now, he is deep involved in his new iPod. I am so jealous that my kids have better electronic gadgets than I. I really can't complain much because they have worked and saved the money on their own. I just wish they could share some of the responsibility for the college expenses.
The girls started their dance class last week. Very soon, they will have swim practice. We are busy, but I am happy that we are now back to a normal school year routine.

After a long day at the camp, Anna and Jenny watching TV before bedtime in the camper. This is one of their favorite thing during camping.

Toby with kids in the Bear Cave - This cave was full of bats. I was not too fan of these bats because they could not see and sometimes they just flew right into your face!

We did a lot tubing that weekend while we were camping. St Joseph river was very quiet. The weather was perfect and the water was beautiful. The girls loved tubing. This was Ann and Jenny on the tube together.

Toby on the tube. With the boys, we could drive faster on the boat. Our goal was always to throw them off the tube.

Toby was driving the boat. This was also the time that Joshua could drive. One day, both boys went out together for a spin. On the way without traffic, they were allowed to get a little wild.

Toby and Anna were on the same tube together. Anna was so excited to ride with Toby. This way, they could go a little faster without fear. Toby tried to teach Anna a few tricks too.

Bert drove the boat as fast as he could with curve and turns with a purpose to throw Toby off the Tube. It was tough, but he did it! This is the moment before Toby fell off the tube. It was fun!

We develop a sign language while we tube. Thumbs up means go faster and thumbs down means go slower. Normally the girls called for going faster and faster. It seemed we never going fast enough (without throwing them off the tube, that is). This was a few moment that they actually wanted us to go slow!

I took this photo while I was on another boat from one of Bert's colleagues. Joshua was the proud driver. The little boy was Zachari - John Smith's son. He is also Anna's best friend.

It was Joshua's turn. It was harder to throw him off.




Can you see Jenny's smile? She loved it when Joshua ride with her.


Up then, Anna and Jenny had been riding together all the time. Jenny was the first one who initiate the idea of riding by herself. Anna was afraid that Jenny would be afraid. Jenny, on the other hand, being so competitive, she absolutely wanted to show off. Here she was. Not only she was riding alone, she was showing off without holding the handle.

Don't know what Toby was talking about. It sure looked like that he was having fun. The boys also knew how to enjoy themselves by bathing in the sun.

After Jenny had her turn of riding alone, Anna just had to give it a try. She is just as competitive as her little sister. Not only she rode alone and did all the tricks Jenny did. She added some new tricks too like standing in the tube. It looked easy, but it was really hard as the water speeding under your feet.


Happy kids at Michigan Adventure (9/6/2008). It was hard to get all our four kids together. They actually listened and sat down and posted for us!!
Anna and Jenny met their friend Tacara from School at Michigan Adventure.
Jenny was not so sure about lot of the rides at Michigan Adventure. After going on the big sea dragon, she cried. Was a Joshua a big brother or not?

Did you see Jenny screaming? It took a while for her finally to get used to some of the rides. At the end, she could not have enough of them.


Jenny was not always happy after some of the rides.

She finally took a simple ride, but you could tell she was quite bored.

Joshua was being silly with a lens cover.

Fun on the water

Today is the 2nd time Jenny had been on the boat. The weather has not been very cooperative this year. So far, we only went out twice with our boat. Jenny was very excited the first time, but I did not have my camera with me. Last time we went to Lake Michigan. Anna and Jenny kept saying "faster, faster!". They loved the speed and joy of bounce over waves! Their command fits Dad's desire. Once getting in the boat, he acts like a teenager:). I am the only one who cries over speed.
Today we went to Lake Michigan again, but the waves were too high. We immediately turned around and spent most of the afternoon in the Macatawa Bay. It was quiet area. We could swimming and tubing. Anna and Jenny loved the excitement of tubing. They screamed with every bumps over the waves. There were times they bounced so hard that they kept bouncing onto each other. I suggested that they do separately. Anna immediately refused. She said she did not want Jenny to be afraid. She became a very protective sister. Last year, Anna had tubed with the boys. She went on a few times on her own. She knew how scary it might be if you fell off the tube.
We developed a sign language while tubing. Thumb up means to go faster, thumbs down means to go slower and cross arm means to stop. Most of the time they both asked for faster, but a few time, Jenny had her thumb down, but Anna had her thumb up. Jenny is still a beginner, but she surely enjoyed every bit of it!
We are having fun with the girls, but we miss the boys too. They both are at Gerber Boyscout Camp working as youth counselors. Joshua has been there for 6 weeks and Toby has been there for 3 weeks. They both will be there for another 2 weeks. Joshua is quite independent. He only came home twice. Toby has been home three times. This weekend, he was home for his friend, Drew Coffin's Court of Honor. They have been friends since elementary school.
We hope we can go more tubing again this year. We hope the boys will be home soon so we can go with them. It would be more fun to have them with the girls!