Happy Chinese New Year

The first and second grade classes at Ben's school celebrated Chinese New Year with a Chinese assembly.  I took Hailey and Eliza with me.  We all enjoyed hearing the kids recite a story and sing Chinese songs.  After the kids were done preforming a Chinese Dragon came through the crowd and the kids loved that.  The assembly was about an hour and the students did about 15-20 minutes of it.  After they were done the principal got up and talked for the rest of the time about a trip she had made to China the previous year and showed her pictures.  Some of it was interesting, but as a parent I would have rather seen more of the kids! 

Ben loves learnning Chinese and is doing amazing.  He can count to any number, he knows lots of different songs, he know how to read and draw a lot of Chinese symbols.  I am so glad he is in this program it is such a great opportunity.  It is so crazy to think he will be fluent in Chinese by the time he is done with High School.  He still tells everyone he is going to China on his mission, and I hope he does!  What is even crazier is that Hailey will be learning Chinese in 2 years, I'll have 2 little Chinese talkers in my house!

Eliza's Family Birthday Party

Here is Hailey reading our 2010 blog book.  This is the reason I keep blogging!  My kids love reading stories about them, and I forget so quickly things we have done. 

Happy January/February Birthdays!  We had a combined Birthday party at our house for Nathan, Bri, and Eliza.  We played some silly games with the kids and had a great dinner and fabulous desserts.  Eliza loved her clothes that she got from my family.  After she put on her new swimsuit she was strutting all over the place.  Her other favorite outfit is her "rainbow bug" outfit.  She always requests to wear her rainbow bug pants and shirt. 

Dresser Refinished

This is a project that started last summer.  While Mike was gone at scout camp, I went shopping with my mom and sister.  We found this awesome dresser at the DI.  I have never refinished or painted or done anything to any furniture before.  I actually really like the dresser before and thought it had a lot of character.  I had no idea how to even start, so of course I googled it and got some ideas.  A couple of the drawers were broken on the inside, and originally I was just going to leave them broken.  But, I got motivated and fixed them all by myself!  We sanded it down and found some fun turquoise and green paint.  We mixed those together, and went crazy on the dresser.  I had my kids help and paint crazy turquoise all over.  Then I covered it with the turquoise/green mixture.  I was planning on doing a couple of solid layers of paint and then sanding some off for an antique look.  But, when we got done I liked that the wood had absorbed a lot of the paint, and I didn't end up sanding it at all.  We use this dresser every day, it holds our wii remotes and other great stuff.

My next project was my picture frames.  I saw a similar setup on pinterest and really liked it, so I thought I would change it up a little.  I got these frames and painted them all.  It was a bit tricky hanging them all so they were touching.  After a few tries, we ended up duct taping the backs of them all together and then hanging them on the wall.  I am so not a crafty or decorating person, so I was very proud of the outcome!