Birthday Celebrations

I haven't posted much in September because I haven't had anything very important to post about. It was a tough month with not knowing what to do about Leila and school, but now that we've made the decision to take her out of school, we are both much happier! And October is looking like it's going to be a great month!

 This year I didn't want to have to plan a party for Annika because I knew that we would be leaving for Shanghai the next day (we leave tonight! This is a quick break from packing). So I suggested that maybe I could bring cupcakes to school so her WHOLE class could celebrate with her, and she thought that was a GREAT idea. 
I had planned to buy cupcakes, but when I saw how expensive it would be for something that doesn't even taste good (baking is not the same as in 'the West'), I decided to first see if mini cupcakes would actually bake in our toaster oven. And it worked! I found the animal toppers at our grocery store. Annika was pleased, but I have promised that I will attempt the mermaid cake she had really wanted once we are back in Canada and I have a proper kitchen and oven and Superstore-to-buy-the-ingredients again. 

 Mr. N thought we should have the cupcakes in the chapel/lunch area during the pm recess, so Leila and I were hanging out while he brought them up. 

 Her classmates were very excited, and one of the boys had also brought lanterns for everyone since this weekend is the mid-Autumn lantern festival. 

 Such an excited birthday girl!

 I have heard a lot about this little character to Annie's right. She's always talking about "Matthew Tam" (there's another Matthew in her class) and poor Matthew Tam seems to always be getting into mischief. When I saw him, he said to me in an excited voice "I sit beside Annika!", and I was thinking "ahhh... I've heard about you". To me he seemed super cute and funny, but then again, I don't sit by him all day. HA! It was easy to spot the other notorious classmate because he was doing laps around the chapel. And then the next I saw of him he'd torn his lantern into something to wear on his head. Oh boy...

 Annika and Gigi

 After school Leila and I took the shuttle bus back with Annika (and I had the pleasure of sitting next to another hilarious kid), and we went up to Mike's classroom. Apparently his some of the girls in his class had heard that it was Annika's birthday (the EA in Annika's class has a daughter in Mike's class), so they made her some cards. So sweet! Mike was pretty attached to his class from last year and thought they were great kids, but he thinks that this year's class might be even better. I'm so glad he's found his niche- it sounds to me like his class has a pretty great teacher! 

 You will never regret doing the right thing. 

 Back at home, Annika opened her presents. 

 So happy to get the Lego set she was wanting. 

 And some more Lego to go with. 

 (This is what you gave her, Dad/Grandpa Erwin. We can show you next time we Skype.) 

 And then we went to Outback Steakhouse (Annika's favorite) to celebrate with the lovely Nadar family. Annika's friend Olivia had her sixth birthday two days earlier, so we thought it would be fun to celebrate together. The girls were so excited. 

 The boys. Olivia's father is the chaplain in the high school at CAIS. 

 The girls had fun switching shoes. 

The beautiful birthday girls. We had a great evening celebrating together. 

Time to get back to packing... and then off to Shanghai!

Six Years Old

 Happy Birthday, Annika! I can't believe I have a six-year old! Just like we did for Leila's birthday, we played the "favorite things" game, and here are some of her answers:

 Favorite food: pizza. But also ice cream and slurpees
Favorite treat: lollipops

 Favorite color: turquoise, magenta, green, pink and yellow
Favorite book: still remains "Julius, Baby of the World", a book by Kevin Henkes that Kerry P. gave to Annika on her first birthday (she grew into it!).

 Favorite thing to do in Hong Kong: Disneyland and Ocean Park
Favorite holiday (her idea): Christmas, Easter and Halloween

 Favorite subject in school: Art, and "when we get 'Golden Time'". 
Least favorite subject: math (they are doing subtracting up to 20 right now and she is finding it difficult)
Number of teeth lost: 5

 Favorite friends: Brigitta, Rachel, and Miyu
Favorite Bible story: Noah's ark

 Favorite restaurant: Ruby Tuesdays and Outback Steakhouse
Favorite movie: "Tangled' because it isn't scary

 Favorite TV show: Berenstain Bears
Least favorite sport: soccer. She does NOT enjoy playing soccer in PE. (too sweaty, too hard to score a goal) 
Sport she does like: swimming

 Favorite music: Animals- it's what puts her to sleep every night. She never even reaches the end of the album before she's in dreamland. 
Time that Annika leaves for school in the morning: 6:45 a.m. Totally crazy, but somehow she (and we) are managing. 

 What she misses most about Canada: the people- her grandparents, cousins and friends

 Countries this 6 year old has been to: Canada, USA, Mexico, Hong Kong, Macau, China and Indonesia. 

 Height: 48 inches. Looks like from her growth chart we have in her bedroom that she grew about four inches this last year. She's a tall girl, but surprisingly isn't the tallest in her class.
Weight: not sure, but somewhere in the 40-50 pound range, I think

Milestones from this year:

- learning to ride her bike this summer

- learning to read. She is starting to realize that she can read in her head (rather than read out loud to us) and will sit and read a book to herself.

- she can swim. I mentioned recently that she was starting to swim short distances, but she really can actually swim a decent distance in parts of the pool where she can't touch the bottom. It's her own type of doggy paddle, but for right now it works for her.

- starting to read/write/speak Mandarin. At a very very basic level, but still...

Happy 6th Birthday, Annika! You are a happy, adventurous, bright, and fun little girl. We love you so much! xoxo

Leila's turn...

Today was Leila's first day of school. Sort of funny that it took till Wednesday, September 5 for her to start when classes actually began at her school while we were still in Canada. 
The day we got back I went to go inquire since we hadn't paid and she didn't have her uniform or anything, and the head person said that there was no point in paying for August since we'd already missed so much, so why not come back at the beginning of September. Also, there is a subsidy program from the HK government which we strangely qualified for even though we are not permanent residents, but it was only valid until our visas from last year expired, so I needed to re-apply for the subsidy with copies of our updated visas and only return once we had the new documentation. 
This was a huge relief to me, as it meant we could get over our jet lag, have some play dates and get together with people and get Annika into her routine of going to school before getting Leila off to school. Can you tell I am not really that anxious to send my baby to school?? 

 The papers finally arrived on Friday afternoon, but I didn't want to let the school know immediately because I had to make a trip to the Chinese embassy on Monday to get our China visas for our upcoming Shanghai trip, and then Tuesday was the first day of my mom's group and I didn't feel right about being all the way over in the New Territories on Leila's first day of school. Again, can you tell I'm not feeling ready to send my baby to school??

So... Tuesday afternoon we picked up her uniform, which was very exciting for her, and finally today I brought her for her first day. 

She is so rebellious with the green shoes. Apparently she is supposed to wear white leather shoes with the dress, and then white runners with the PE uniform. Well... I don't know where to find white leather shoes and wanted to see what the other kids were wearing, and it's too bad they have that rule since she already has green, pink, brown and black shoes in the closet, just not white. And we already have runners that are white and blue. But I think that they are supposed to be completely white. I'm going to wait and see if they say anything before I go out and buy her shoes that she probably wouldn't wear anywhere but school. 

 Overall, Leila has been more anxious than actually excited about school, and we've been going into this thinking that it's a bit of a trial run anyway. It's not like it's mandatory when you're four... we'll just see how she does. This morning though, she was very excited. It's actually more English instruction than I initially thought. There is only one class of Cantonese each day. Most of the kids attending are from Muslim and Hindu background, outnumbering Chinese kids I would say. Leila's definitely the only Canadian in the bunch! She right away started playing with a little girl who was also four and also starting today. So cute!

 You can see the school windows above the businesses on the street level. The windows have colorful pictures. The whole place seems a bit ghetto to me. But it is inexpensive. HA!

So here she is in her run-down classroom. I don't actually really know how her day went. She said that she had fun, but she also said she cried for me four times. She was pretty excited about her backpack and little cup and face cloth that she got, though. Annika had a million questions for her, and she couldn't answer very many of them (ie. couldn't remember what her teacher's name was or who the kids in her class are). We'll see how tomorrow goes... 

And lastly, we have been using the pool a few times a week and Annika has really been loving it. She is actually starting to swim, and likes to go in parts of the pool where she can't touch the bottom and swim short distances from the edge of the pool to us. She usually ends up drinking half the pool and getting water up her nose, but it's not slowing her down! And grade one seems to be going well. She comes home every day saying that her day was good. It's still weird that Mike can't check in on her, and her teacher doesn't send out as much correspondence as her kindergarten teacher did, so we just have to go by her word that she seems happy and that things are going well. Taking the shuttle bus doesn't seem to be a big deal, so we are relieved that everything seems to have worked out!

Grade One!

  My beautiful grade one daughter

 We all walked to school together on this early Monday morning to see her off. 

 A good-bye kiss for her sister

 And then Leila and I were able to hop on the shuttle bus and visit the new campus and attend the parent assembly (otherwise we would have taxied it over there anyway). They were having fun singing "wheels on the bus". 

 Sitting in the assembly. The girl on her left is a familiar face from kindergarten. 

The row of grade one teachers and EA's. Annika's is second from the right, Mr N. He is from Northern Ireland, and apparently he's "really nice". :) There are actually quite a few men in the lower primary- two of the grade one teachers and two of the grade two, unlike upper primary which Mike is completely outnumbered as the only male. Fortunately Annie doesn't seem to mind even though she expected a lady. It sounds like her day went well. Such an answer to prayer! 

Winter Photo Shoot

This is Leila when she was awake for the Nicholas & Bears photoshoot. 
But when you ask a jet-lagged child to spend an entire day posing for pictures, there's no guarantee that she won't just fall fast asleep before it's over. 
Which is what happened... fast asleep with her up-do and in her pink boots and winter coat. Some other poor and likely tired little girl had to step in and model Leila's last two outfits. 
As she told my mom in summer, it was "hard work". 
Oh, and it was about 35 degrees outside, but they did have the A/C cranked inside for the little models. 
We survived... and I can't wait to see the catalogue. But I think this will be Leila's last shot at fame. At least while she's four. :)

summer highlights

 Well, our Alberta summer has come and gone and it couldn't have been better!

We traveled throughout Alberta visited many of Alberta's national and provincial parks and Lakes- Waterton, Kananaskis, Elk Island, Park Lake and Sylvain Lake

 The girls had an amazing time bonding with their cousins- they took swimming lessons together the first two weeks of July and had lots of time to play together at Grandma and Grandpa's.

We supported Alberta tourism with visits to Fort Edmonton Park, the Calgary Zoo, the Provincial Museum, the John Janzen Nature Centre, the Lethbridge Nature centre. 

 Annika learned to ride a bike! 

We spent a day at the Calgary Stampede including the evening chuck wagons and Grandstand show

 We got re-aquainted with these long-lost great friends and also got to spend many evenings hanging out with friends and leaving the girls with their grandparents.

the girls had some pretty great play-dates with their long lost buddies (and I had some great coffee times with their moms!)

We easily conquered jet lag and it somehow it shifted the girls' clocks so that their average wake-time was 8:00 (as opposed to six during these school year). It was heaven!

Auntie Rita and Uncle Steve took the girls for a night and put us up in a hotel. THANK-YOU!!! THAT WAS AWESOME!

We enjoyed the hospitality (mooched?!) off of many and slept in lots of different beds over the summer (Edmonton, Strathmore, Lethbridge, Calgary & High River)

The girls loved the cotton candy at the zoo, but we loved so many delicious BBQ'ed burgers and steaks! I was looking forward to summer BBQ's and it didn't disappoint! I think I may have gained a few pounds...

We were humbled and blessed by the hospitality and times we spent with our family and friends. It made it that much hard to say good-bye. We feel loved and are so thankful to have such special people in our lives!