HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO GRANDMA KAREN!! Today is my Mom’s 67th Birthday! Don’t know that she’s celebrating much (she still is recuperating from her foot surgery and has to get the pin that’s implanted in her toe removed one of these days)! She was in good spirits when I called her first thing this morning to wish her a Happy Birthday. She answered the phone with, “Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!” I’m still not completely sure what that means, but my sister started that tradition quite a while ago. When you start the month off by saying, “rabbit, rabbit, rabbit,” it’s supposed to bring you luck throughout the month (or something like that).
I’m amazed at how quickly the month of November flew by. Maybe that’s a good thing since we’re waiting anxiously for news on the twins! C’mon already!! I’m longing for the call from our agency saying that the boys are waiting for US!!!
That being said, I thought I’d catch up on all the major news in this one post (it’s a long one).
My sister and her family came into town from New Jersey early in the month to visit (Mike & Juli had to attend a wedding for Mike’s cousin). It was so great to see them and the kids! Michael and I even had babysitting duty while Mike & Juli went to the wedding.
Since we babysat for the kids on November 8th, Michael and I decided to take them out for Chinese food (our tradition to count down another month of waiting since our LID). We went to The Hunan Inn and asked Grandma Karen to meet us there. On the drive there, I taught the kids a few Mandarin words so that they could show their manners to our friends at Hunan. They picked it up pretty quickly!
When Grandma Karen arrived, we were already seated at out table and I encouraged Sela to greet her in Chinese. She yelled out, “Ni hao Grandma, ni hao!!” It was the funniest thing! Everyone in the restaurant dropped their forks and chopsticks and started laughing!! (That child is LOUD!!) I swear…I thought someone was going to choke on an egg roll! The owner came over and told Sela how good her Chinese was! It was the cutest thing! We proceeded to have a great meal and the kids did a good job. The only mess of the evening was made by Uncle Mike who spilled soy sauce all over the nice white tablecloth! Everyone was well behaved. I made the kids a double-decker cake so we headed home for dessert.
When we arrived back at our house, Aedan was fully enthralled with my computer - - he had to show me every Weird Al Yankovic video he could find on YouTube! LOL! Michael and I tried to show him what made those videos so funny - - the fact that they were parodies of original music videos. The concept seemed a little lost on him. He would have stayed online all night if I didn’t finally put the end to Weird Al.
Cassie is into playing card games, listening to the Jonas Brothers and just being a girly-girl. She wants to grow up so fast.
Sela was Sela. A laugh riot, practical joker and all around great kid. She amused herself by playing with some of her old toys that Juli brought us for our future child(ren).
Upon completing her cake (and getting chocolate icing all over my chairs), I told Sela it was time for bed. No arguments from her…she was tired and went to bed immediately. Juli and Mike got back early from the wedding and were surprised that she was asleep. They had to leave right away because they were heading back home to New Jersey early the next morning.
On the following Saturday, November 15th, we attended a concert at Chicago Symphony Hall with our Chinese American Culture Club to see Lang Lang.
Michael and I headed to the Tinley Park train station and took the train into the city. It was a really nice adventure. We couldn’t believe how packed the train was on a weekend!
Once we arrived in the city, we approached Federal Plaza which was packed with police cars, Secret Service cars (because that is where Barack Obama is headquartered) and Homeland Security cars. The place was a fortress (as it should be)! Interestingly enough, there was a huge gathering of gays & lesbians convening for a planned protest. I told Michael that we should walk through the middle of the gathering to get to our destination because it would be fun. Well…it was colorful, to say the least! Everyone was well behaved and orderly. When we got to the other side of the street, we met up with some of the people from our club who were also on their way to Orchestra Hall (including Mary Sodetz from our Mandarin class – she was the one who invited us to this event – and Debbie Duggan and her twin girls!).
The concert was very nice and intimate. Lang Lang was very talented - - he performed beautifully and also introduced four other talented Chinese musicians including a 14 year old girl who played piano. The show was just over 90 minutes.
Afterwards, we met at a little restaurant across the street for a quick bite to eat and then went our separate ways. Michael and I decided to walk over to Millennium Park to look around. The weather was cooperative – cool and brisk, but not too cold. We acted like tourists – we saw Cloud Gate (aka “The Bean”) and the ice skating rink. We listened to a street preacher. It was fun! As it started to get dark, we walked by the Art Institute on our way back to train station and made it just in time!! No sooner had we gotten aboard the train when it started to roll! Whew!
Last Thursday was Thanksgiving. I got lucky this year and didn’t have to cook. I was prepared to have Thanksgiving for my Mom and us, but we got a call from my Mom’s cousin, Donna Ozog, who was kind enough to invite us over to her house for a great meal. It’s always nice to get together with them. We got to see Ann Wirtz (Donna’s sister) and Aunt Dorothy (their Mom) who recently moved into a retirement home in Willowbrook (my old neighborhood). The evening was fun and the food was excellent (Michael Ozog prepared two turkey breasts on the grill – one was Cajun styled - - Yummy!).
The biggest thing I was looking forward to was a l-o-n-g weekend! Having four days off with my husband was exactly what the doctor ordered! I had the entire weekend planned – two days to complete decorating for the holidays and a day to rest. Yeah, right. Friday was a disaster! I couldn’t get started on the decorating because the base for my Christmas tree was looking far too much like a fire hazard because of frayed wiring. It made me very nervous. Michael was supposed to get it rewired this past year (really…anytime during the last year would have been sufficient!). Now that I needed it, I was in panic mode. I just didn’t feel that it was safe to use this year. Michael got in touch with his cousin, Fred, who is a Master of all things mechanical. He agreed to meet Michael the following day to fix my beloved tree stand that used to belong to my great-aunt, Katie Hillgoth.
In addition to the tree stand, I also discovered that our garbage disposal was broken. Geez…what else? It was just a crazy day and it put me behind a day. Not fun, so I did laundry (oh joy). Anyway…all’s well that ends well. By the time the weekend ended, I was almost caught up. I wanted to have my Mom over to celebrate her Birthday a day early, but it just wasn’t possible. We had our first measurable snow fall of the season and it took me about six hours to complete the tree (yup…I’ve got a LOT of ornaments!).
As we are now in the 2008 holiday home stretch, all I can do is pray that this will be the last holiday season without our child(ren). I still think about the twins every day and wonder when we will get that call! I would love nothing better than to have the best Christmas announcement to share with our families.
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