October - Stateside Reception

Early in October, I flew to Boston where Michele and Andrew's "Stateside Reception" was held. Due to cost constraints, Scott and the kids stayed at home.

Since many of the Chang side family members couldn't attend the official wedding in Scotland, this was an opportunity for them, along with Mom and Dad's friends to celebrate the occasion with a traditional Chinese Wedding Banquet.

We stayed in the "Plymouth Estate", which meant plenty of food and a feast the night before the banquet - several of us pitched to make dumplings, a traditional activity for our family.



Mom also made her famous Shrimp in Tomato sauce.


The Chinese banquet was held at Ocean City Restaurant in the heart of Chinatown and of course the main emphasis was FOOD.
One of my favorite things - shrimp chips!



The Double Lucky cake:


Family picture:

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Catching Up - September

Yes, I know this hasn't been updated for over two months, so I will play catch up.

September was very busy. In addition to getting acclimated with Hannah, Brian celebrated his 8th birthday - a sleepover party with six of his friends, here giving me their best Silly Pose (really, not too different from their Non-silly pose).



In order to wear them out, I took them rollerskating at Skateland for several hours. Not sure how effective it was, but they all did fall asleep around 11pm. I have now survived 3 sleepover parties - and the main difference between girls and boys is that when boy cry, they cry for a couple of minutes and then are OK. Not so much with girls. And at Brian's party, each boy had some sort of incident (mainly some physical altercation) that caused them to cry.

Scott and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary with a weekend trip to Chicago, where we attended the musical, Wicked. We stayed in the Hampton Inn, about 4 blocks from the Oriental Theatre.



We also walked around Millennium Park where the "Bean" sculpture resides. It is a fascinating piece of art. This is our reflection from belly of the Bean:



And I couldn't resist a self portrait from behind the lens of my camera:




More updates are coming shortly (I promise!!)

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New Member of the family

No, certainly not more children ;-).....

Since Scott is, well, "fixed" (and he recommends the procedure to all of his male friends who are done with having kids), it couldn't be more children. Plus having more children at our age would frankly kill us.

No, I succumbed to the numerous request from Erica and Brian and we adopted a new kitten. Her name is Hannah and she is a short haired tabby who looks much like Rascal, our other cat.



Speaking of Rascal, she doesn't quite like Hannah and we have to keep them separated from each other, but we see some signs of promise - they have been in the same room together and Rascal has managed NOT to hiss at Hannah. We are just taking it slow with the assimilation.

Apart from a couple of whiny evenings, Hannah has adjusted to living with us - she now curls up with us while we are watching TV and no longer jumps on top of the countertops. Erica and Brian really enjoy having a kitten who doesn't snub them (Rascal is just OLD and sleeps all day long).

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15th Anniversary!

Today is our 15th wedding anniversary!

Married on a beautiful fall day in Massachusetts.

Scott wrote up some Anniversary memories in the card he gave me:

1st Anniversary - Cruel denial of a golf outing - on the 11th! (Parkersburg, WV)
My response - it was our "Anniversary Weekend", and of course I didn't want him to be playing golf on Friday night!

5th Anniversary - Erica was only 3 months old - Evansville, IN (and he draws a cute picture of a little baby)

10th Anniversary - French Lick (and he draws a picture of us playing golf)

15th Anniversary - Chicago - Wicked (and he draws a very good picture of the Wicked Witch of the West)

20th - ??

25th - ??

Well, we haven't "done" the 15th Anniversary Wicked trip yet - that is this coming weekend and we are really looking forward to it.

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Quick summary of Scotland

The good:
Pretty nice weather (Wednesday was sunny and 70 degrees)
Absolutely gorgeous landscape and scenery
A beautiful bride and groom
A wonderful new branch of the Chang family
Kilts everywhere!

The bad:
Airline delays and more airline delays
Getting to see every terminal in the Newark Airport (never a good thing)
US Dollar exchange rate to the British pound and prices in Scotland

The ugly:
Narrow winding roads in Scotland
Our drive from Glasgow to Oban - Brian got sick in the car

But overall, it was a great experience and we really like Andrew and wish he and Michele a wonderful life together.

Now for some pictures:

On route to Dunstaffnage Castle, a hike along the Western coast of Scotland





We stayed at the Ganavan Sands Holiday park, in the cabins seen off in the distance to the right:


My sister and her family


On our hike, we encountered some sheep:


On the Isle of Kerrera:


The bride and groom - on the ferry ride to Mull


Another family picture at Glengorm Castle grounds, on the Isle of Mull:


Glengorm Castle, where the Reception was held. It is also a B&B and we were one of the lucky ones who stayed overnight.



Led by cousin Theo, all of the men and boys participate in traditional Scottish dancing. Brian stands out in this sea of kilts.


Another Castle, as seen on our ferry ride from Mull to Oban:

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Passports are en route! [FINALLY]

We applied for the kids' passports exactly 4 months ago, in preparation for what Scott refers to as "the wedding of the century" in Scotland. It is my youngest sister who is getting married, and as she lives in Denmark while her finance lives in London and grew up in Scotland (hence the venue for the wedding).

You would think that applying more than 20 weeks in advance of our departure date would give the US Passport Agency plenty of time to process our kids' passports. Heck, I accounted for a couple of weeks over the advertised "10-12" weeks and estimated that we would receive them in July. Note - if you go to the National Passport Website, it is still posted that "with routine passport service you should receive your passport within 10-12 weeks". Yeah. Right.

Originally, we hoped to receive the passports before we headed out east and into Canada. No such luck - going into Canada we were asked why we didn't have the kids' birth certificates and we had to explain about the passports, etc, etc. We could have been denied entry into Canada, but I guess they figured these two kids didn't pose too much risk and we were there to boost their economy.

I expected to arrive back home from that trip to have the passports waiting for us there. But no passports. Day after day, still no passports. And I started to get worried at the end of August. Starting to get nervous and making contingency plans. The people at the Nation Passport Information service won't even talk to you unless your departure date is within weeks. Personally, I don't like to leave anything unplanned two weeks out from a major trip, especially a little detail like a passport!

So I call the Passport Information service and all they can tell me is that the passports are "still in process" (like I can get than information off the website - thanks). They expedite the passports and let me know that "we'll do our best to get the passports to you before your trip, but there is no guarantee". Thanks again. That makes me feel confident. Especially since it's only been 16 weeks since we applied, and they can't give me any progressive details.

I finally called our US Congressman's office and they were able to track down the passports (they were in Portsmouth, NH) and they were shipped out today. Most importantly, they gave me a sense of confidence that we would be OK for the trip and I could stop stressing about it.

Now I have to get my bridesmaid dress hemmed and shoes for Erica. And think about packing. Oh, and register the kids for school. And wait for the heatwave to end so we can go outside again.

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A little Simpsons humor

One of the ladies at the Scrapbooking board that I frequent posted this cool link that transforms your picture into the world of the Simpsons. Yes, a marketing ploy, but I thought it was rather amusing and helped to lighten my evening.

I uploaded my avatar image and here is my transformation:



Try it! The link is www.simpsonizeme.com

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