Finished!

After frantically finishing NaNoWriMo I rattled off a list of projects I needed to get done before Christmas. Today I completed my last task, a Christmas stocking for our youngest. Now with my shopping done too I can sit back, relax and just hang out with my hubby and the kids for the holidays. Sweet.

Stranded

Yep. We are. Stranded. We were heading home from our weekend Christmas celebration at my in-laws. We knew the last portion of highway heading north to our town was closed, so we drove inland to come in from the east. By the time we were about 40 minutes from home the other highway was closed. We are now camped out in a small motel in the middle of no where. But it's all good. The kids are using my hubby as a jungle gym and we are able to piggyback on someone's wireless internet connection. The plan is to watch Christmas shows and brew up some hot chocolate in the coffee maker. It's actually kind of fun.

Update: ('cause I'm bored and this is ceasing to be fun) The above map shows the road conditions in our part of the province. The black bolded highways have poor visibility. The little signs with diagonal lines mean that the road is closed. The conditions are far worse now than when we set out this afternoon from the in-laws. I hope this doesn't mean that we will be stuck here at the Bates Motel tomorrow. The latest reports are that the plows have been pulled off the roads in the three surrounding counties. This is not unusual for our part of the province, but it is for so early in the winter. And we are usually snug in our comfy little home snuggling with the kitties by the fire and sipping hot chocolate, not in a motel on the side of the road ... at least this will make for a good Christmas story in the years to come.

Mystery morsels ...

About three times a year we receive a package from China. The senders are our youngest daughter's former foster family (she spent weekends with them during the months leading up to our adoption). Today the Christmas parcel arrived. In keeping with their intent to help our daughter maintain a connection to her Chinese roots as well as to expose us to our daughter's birth culture, in addition to the usual toys and knicknacks the foster family sent us something inherently Chinese. In the past it has been such treasures as laquerware, miniature clay tea pots, jade trinkets. This time it was food. I'm not talking the delectable chocolate treats that graced our daughter's birthday package. This is the real deal and there's a box FULL of it. I could open a small food kiosk in the local mall, if we had one ... There are eight different things to choose from, some savory, some sweet. There are spicy crackers, peanut clusters, some sort of rice cakes, strawberry-flavoured biscuits, bags of small pecans, chowmein noodle squares (that look similar to rice krispie squares), little sausage thingies vacuum sealed in foil (that we absolutely will not be eating - they went past their best before date during shipping) and these:

I don't know what the heck these things are, these little gelatinous spheres that can't be identified as man made or natural. I considered they might be some sort of processed lychee fruit, but I can't be sure, so I'm thinking they will also be filed in the "will not be eating" category. Our oldest, who is not Chinese and definitely not a culinary adventurer, has thrown everything into the "will not be eating" category. Meanwhile her younger sister is going to town. It is obvious that these are familiar tastes to her and she is excited beyond excited to have a whole box of nummy snacks from home sitting in the kitchen, especially snacks that she doesn't have to compete with her sibling for.

Food wussiness aside, we are so thankful to have these generous people in our lives. It is the exception, not the rule in Chinese adoption to have contact with the foster family (it is usually discouraged). While I understand the reasons for it, it is unfortunate. This family, who now feel like part of our family, are a valuable link for our daughter to her past and her homeland.

update: We got brave. The weird gelatinous spheres are definitely man made. They are an outer tasteless section surrounding black grainy stuff that tastes somewhat like sesame oil. Not good. Even our youngest concurs.

Thought for the day ...

Actually, there are three of them. Today I received one of those friendship chain-letter email thingys. Usually I find them sucky and annoying and don't forward them on/return them (apparently not wanting to bother others with unwanted junk in their inbox makes me a bad friend). However, the one I read this morning had lots of great little motivational phrases and I actually made the effort to pass it on. Here are some of the words of wisdom contained therein:

My mind is like a parachute...it functions only when open.

The pursuit of happiness is the chase of a lifetime! It is never too late to become what I might have been.

If I lack the courage to start, I have already finished.

Christmas Cookie Casualty

My husband has a favorite saying, "it's amazing that the human race has survived so long. The young of the species are so helpless." This is often said in exasperation after one of our kids has done a bone-headed thing. This would be such a case. While assisting with Christmas cookie duty our oldest got injured. Baking would seem to be a pretty innocuous activity. Apparently not. No, she didn't get her finger caught in the mix-master. She burned herself. This seems like an obvious enough cooking injury, but the bizarre part is where. Get this, her chin! That's right, only my schmoopster would burn her pretty little chin while standing on her tippy-toes trying to sniff the fresh tray of cookies newly pulled from the oven. She is now sporting a nasty looking crusty red strip about an inch long across her chin. Fortunately she is very fairly complexed, so the scar probably won't be that obvious. I have made a mental note not to let her help carve the Christmas turkey.

Festive flicks ...

Now that my kiddies are feeling more themselves (both had bronchitis last week & one had a bonus ear infection) and I've had a chance to start my Christmas baking, I'm getting into the festive mood. I love this time of year! One of the things I really enjoy is sitting back and watching a favorite Christmas movie/show with my hubby & kids. This can be quite time consuming since we have lots of favorites in our house. Heavily in rotation are:

Elf - I'm not usually a big Will Farrell fan, but he was born to play this role. I love Buddy!

The Polar Express - Freaky, zombiesque eyes aside, the animation in this movie is fabulous as is the music. My kids have several dance routines they've made up to the soundtrack, which can be heard blasting from our stereo at any time of the year. I'm sure our neighbours are wondering if they're living next to a family of elves (insert Ray's short joke here ...)

The Grinch (the original cartoon, not the Jim Carey abomination of a movie), Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph - classic, classic, classic

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation - Chevy Chase at his best. Plus it's my mother's favorite, so every year I watch this in her honour.

White Christmas - It just wouldn't be Christmas without Bing and Rosemary crooning that classic tune ...

What is your favorite holiday flick?

Barbie wins smackdown against "bratty" rivals!

I don't like Bratz dolls. If you know me, this probably isn't news. As the mother of two little girls I think they send a horrible message to young kids. If you're unfamiliar with these diva dollies they have exaggeratedly large hips & lips, heavily made-up eyes and tend to sport provocative clothing that usually includes belly tops and mini-skirts (and really, I'm no prude). Whoever thought that it's healthy for five year olds to idealize little hoochie mammas with attitude needs a slap. The really sad part is people have bought into it. They are wildly popular with the line now including games, clothing, bedding, movies, Bratz Boyz and even Bratz Petz. Admittedly even we have one, though she is a sport version, tastefully dressed in soccer shorts and tee-shirt (it was a shameful, though highly successful bribe aimed at motivating our oldest to get over her fear of "getting kicked" during soccer).

Well after the holidays it seems that the these vinyl vixens will be disappearing from the market. Toy giant Mattel, maker of Barbie, the Bratz biggest rival, has recently won a copyright infringement lawsuit against MGA, the company that manufactures Bratz. The court case found that the designer of Bratz was still under contract with Mattel when the concept for the dolls was conceived. To that end, the judge ruled after the holidays all remaining Bratz must be recalled from retailers and MGA's moulds and other equipment for fabricating the dolls must be destroyed. Mattel has also been awarded 100 million dollars for breach of contract and copyright infringement.

While I would have preferred that Bratz were disappearing for more noble reasons I'll celebrate their demise regardless. No more will I have to endure hours of begging every birthday, Christmas, and shopping opportunity in between. I have explained for the last time why they are "inappropriate". Hallelujah!

Now if we could only get Barbie to work on that unhealthy body image ...

The sweetest sound ...

Our family is very verbal, especially my husband and our oldest daughter. They love to talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Which is great. I love it. Words and communication are an essential part of life for someone aspiring to write well.

Our youngest daughter loves to talk too. However, speech has been a big challenge for her. My youngest has a moderate/severe hearing loss. Her loss inhibits her ability to hear certain speech tones such as "s", "sh", hard sounds like "k", and the endings of words. This combined with the fact that her hearing loss went unaided until she was almost three (we adopted her at age 2 1/2) and English is her second language, she has had some significant obstacles to overcome with speech. That being said, she has made monumental strides and with a lot of hard work and the assistance of a kick ass speech therapist she is pretty much on target for a child of her age with both receptive and expressive language. Our biggest challenge now is teaching her the speech sounds that are missing from her repertoire.

Tonight while doing some "home work", for the heck of it I pulled out the flash cards of words ending in the "s" sound ... house, mouse, dice, kiss (we had put these away a few months ago because she simply couldn't produce the sound). Well I almost fell off my chair!

me: What's this? (while showing my baby a picture of Mickey Mouse)

R: mouSe!

I thought it must be a fluke so I tried again.

me: What's this? (displaying a picture of a school bus)

R: (jumping up and down excitedly) buS! I wan to ride on a hool buS!

We all jumped up and down excitedly. Then we did the only thing we could do. Celebrate with banana splits.