Emily's Birthday and Thanksgiving

Our princess turned five in November! With blink of an eye, five good years flew by! She's grown into a little girl with sweet personality, smart mind, and quiet spirit. She wanted to have a princess themed birthday party this year. I thought that fit her perfectly.

Daddy made her cinnamon sugar croissants for breakfast. She had them on the "You Are Special Today" plate.

 

 

She enjoyed celebrating her birthday with her cousins. Later on Gayla and Mary Ellen came by. They played and laughed until the dinner time.

 

 

We also took the kids to the Perot Museum for Emily's birthday. They had fun there.

 

 

 

We had the first HighPointe FriendSpeak Thanksgiving dinner the weekend before Thanksgiving. It had a great turnout. Over 80 people attended the dinner. Close to half were Chinese readers and their friends. As usual, we had a delicious meal, talked about the Thanksgiving history, watched the magic show, built the Thanksgiving tree, and had some door prizes. We ran out of time for the group game we had planned. But we all enjoyed every minute of it. More pictures at: https://friendspeak.shutterfly.com/pictures/1945
 

 I made these "Give Thanks" signs. I didn't try it before hand so there was a little problem. But some smart helpers quickly fixed them. Learned some lessons!

I was looking for a chalk board easle to write some scriptures on. But I didn't find any. So I made this chalk board art to display. Achieved the similar effect.

This center piece was David's favorite. I guess the two little pilgrims added some touch.

The hats were a little too filmsy. Learned some lessons here too.

This is the little Thanksgiving tree at our house.

On the same day, Our friend HM (from New Life Behavior International) brought two friends to visit us. One was from China. The other was from Singapore. We had a great visit hearing their stories.

 Grandpa came down for Thanksgiving. He bought all the grandkids the piggy banks to teach them some lessons on money. It was a big hit with the kids.

 

 

 

 

Amy fixed the Thanksgiving meal at her new house this year. It was a lot of work for her. We all had lots of delicious meal and great relaxing time on Thanksgiving day. The next day, we all went to downtown McKinney for the "Home for the Holiday" event. Emily's dancing school had performance there. She was "Frosty the Snow Man". There were so much to do there. We spent most of the day there.

Emily was waiting with other dancers for her turn to dance. Luckily the weather turned out beautiful that day.

After her dance, her two teachers from her school Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Delaughter came to tell her what great job she did. She was so happy to see her teachers.

We all took the train with Frosty the Snow Man (who was sitting on the last row)

We stopped at the Post Office station to write the letters to Santa.

The lady couldn't help laughing when she saw that all Emily wanted for Christmas were a ball and balloons.

Daddy sneaked in to see what Andy wanted (Ah, ball also?!)

Look! The real reindeers!

Icetube slide. Emily actually enjoyed it.

We stopped at our church friend's salsa shop. After numerous taste tests, we picked out one to bring home.

 

After a summer of abundant grass, the horses started coming to the fence again. One day they just ran to the fence when they heard the kids playing in the back yard. They remembered the kids' voices!

 

We had some fun at friends' house making the bouncing balls

 

Emily did her presentation on cows at school. She had such wonderful memories that she remembered all the six facts that I listed for her.

 

Andy is growing every day too! He had endless energy.

 On Chinese Grandma's birthday, he wanted to tell Grandma that he loved Grandma's dates from her farm.

 

Andy's handwriting is better and better every day. One night he was found writing on the shopping list. He wrote cutie oranges and bananas on it. He still swings back and forth with his right hand and left hand. See, he wrote with his right hand first and then switched to his left hand.

 

Here is the list he added (yogurt, cutie orange and banana)

 

 

He wrote his name on the shopping list too! We are so proud of his progress!

 

Since the garden is vacant now, we decided to bury the compost from our kitchen ten inch under the raised bed. The very next morning, we saw the kitchen scrambles were all over the back yard. Some wild animal definitely wanted to get to the buried food source. We guessed it was the armadillo (David and the kids saw one the other day on the street). David thought all kinds of ways trying to keep the animal out but nothing had worked. So this is what looked like: