A Tale of Two Girls

At a glance, you would expect that the pictures on the left might portray our 5 year old. I mean, she's young and may not be as capable of making her bed and that it might be more difficult for her to keep her desk organized.

However, upon closer examination, you will see the tell tale signs of Caitlyn in the pictures on the right. Her name above her desk for one. And the pandas on her bed for another.

I mentioned to Christian about posting these pictures some weeks ago but Christian didn't think that I should do it. But the situation has not improved much and I'm at my wits end with the mess. In all fairness, Emily has made her bed occasionally now and so I chose a day where her bed was not as much of a mess. Those are the days Emily calls her bed "her nest." And in all fairness to Caitlyn, her desk in the picture is a bit more cluttered than usual as we've given her use of Christian's little SE to play with for her diligence (mostly hoping to entice Emily to clean her desk so that she can take a turn with it).

Emily's desk is about normal. Notice the desk drawer on the floor? Most days, Emily does her homework on the floor because there is simply no room on her desk. The floor around her desk does not fare much better.

The novelty of the "treasure chest"wore off for Emily some months ago. She's not even trying anymore. It's not that Emily doesn't want anything out of the treasure chest...just not enough to change her slovenly ways. It still seems to get Caitlyn going still and except for a couple of weeks here and there, she usually gets to go to the treasure box.

We obviously need a new strategy for Emily. Any ideas?

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day sort of started a week earlier when Auntie Marian came by to deliver valentines to everyone.

Since Caitlyn missed out on Valentine's day last year because she was super sick, I tried to make Valentine's day super special for her this year. We did some Valentine's crafts over the weekend, worked on writing out valentines to her classmates and made Valentine's cookies for both the girls' class parties.

Of course, the actual Valentine's party at school was a major sugar fest. Especially in Caitlyn's class. Some of those parents are crazy! They had enough stuff for another party the next day!

We  usually try to get the girls something special for Valentines. This year we got them a few trinkets and balloons and had them waiting for them when they got home.

But one of their favorite Valentine's came unexpectedly from our neighbor, who brought them little heart shaped boxes of chocolates with little Valentine's bears attached. I didn't get a picture because the girls ripped into them too quickly!

Christian took the girls out to get me some flowering plants some time over the weekend and they surprised me with them on Valentine's morning. Emily picked out a primrose. Caitlyn picked out some daffodils. Christian, of course, got me another David Austin rose for my garden. I got one for our anniversary, one for Christmas, and now one for Valentines. I left most of my David Austin roses at our old house. We attempted to bring my favorite, but alas, it did not survive the transplant. So, I'm super excited about my new collection of David Austin roses!

CNY

Today is Chinese New Year. We celebrated this past weekend with my family. We did our traditional thing of getting together to make dumplings shaped like gold ingots. Unfortunately, it was hard this year to coordinate everyone's schedule so it was mainly just us and my mom making all the dumplings. My brother got there towards the end to help. It was a lot of work but I love it and look forward to it every year.

Unfortunately, it's a lot of work for my mom too and she is just getting too old and tired to do it all now and we will either have to step it up and do most of the work or it will quickly disappear as another lost tradition. Along with the dumplings, my mom made taro and daikon cake even before we got there.

That's not even including the big dinner which included beef, bbq pork, chicken, shrimp, fish and a couple different vegetables. There is some symbolism to all the different foods prepared for New Year's but I don't really know most of them. And believe it or not, when my dad still helped out, we had a lot of other kinds of dim sum and dishes too.

Now it's just my mom doing the cooking and although we did what we could to help out, she still did the bulk of it on her own and she was simply exhausted by the end of the night. If nothing changes next year, I'm afraid we are just going to end up at some chinese restaurant next year with the rest of the masses.

The good thing is that our girls are getting old enough to be of real help in making the dumplings now so  hopefully we can carry on the tradition nevertheless.