Extended Portland Layover

So I tried to make life easier for me by sending my fellow followers to Jason's blog to read about our Hawaii adventures. Several people called me out on it and I was even labeled cheater. BOO. Hahaha, so here I go, telling all about mine and dad's adventures. It actually started in Portland, OR, where we met up and had an extended layover with Michelle and Steve for a couple of days. We kept busy eating, shopping (Steve's most favorite part was visiting every grocery store in Tigard... riiiiiight), and seeing some cool things.... like the Japanese Gardens!

Hey Annie, you should go to Portland so you can see the Chinese and Japanese Gardens. Oh wait, you are! And you'll loooooove it!

Here's a view of Portland from the Japanese gardens.

We had some apples to use up and so I made these scrumptious apple muffins. Look at my face of happiness! They turned out marvelously.

We also put together some fabulous shushi, nothing super fancy although we did buy tuna loin ...yes, loin... to enlighten our taste buds and added avocado, cucumber, egg, and cream cheese.

And this is us being silly. Not just because we're weird, but we wanted to send Ethan a fun picture for the birthday card we sent him for his 7th birthday!

Hawaii is coming up next! I'll try real hard to make mine as interesting as Jason's and to use different pics too!

Recent Happenings

Well, I just got back from a trip to Hawaii with dad where we visited Jason and Heather and Ashlyn and Jax. Jason is doing such a lovely job posting our adventures that I'll just refer you to his blog and tell you about what I did before Hawaii!

The tumbling gym. We went there for a RAH activity. There's all sorts of things to do including but not limited to:

Trampoline
Rope Swing into the foam pit

Jump into the foam pit off springboardsSumo wrestling (i win!)

And while you may not find this as funny as I did, we had a Valentine's day date night where I had the participants make valentines for each other. This valentine was supposed to be to Scott. Made me laugh.

Chinese New Year RAH Style

You may think I'm a little behind on my post since Chinese New Year was January 26th, but if you did your homework, you would know that the new year is celebrated for the next 15 days after. So, I'm pretty much on track still.

At RAH we had a Chinese New Year activity, which I was in charge of probably because I'm Chinese or something. I gave a brief explanation about it, then I taught them how to say Gong Hay Fat Choy. I'm pretty sure my tones were off, but I don't think it really matters for them. Next I showed them lucky money and had them each come up by their animal groups and had them say Gong Hay Fat Choy before handing them their lucky money (a whoppin 50 cents and a fake 50 dollar bill). Not gonna lie, it was pretty adorable especially since most of them said it completely wrong or just mumbled something. They all still got their packets.

See, here I am giving them out.

Then I taught them how to use chopsticks and they practiced on marshmallows. So yes, some of them ended up stabbing the mallow instead but hey, whatever works right? Some of them took on the challenge to pick up pieces of candy and succeeded!

Next I gave them their animal year to color listed with the characteristics that are associated with the animal.

Here's all of them (55 people) holding up their finished product.

After, I taught them how to write Good Luck in Chinese. I taught them about stroke order and did a step by step demonstration while they followed along. Hopefully I did the strokes in the right order... I really just guessed what seemed logical, applying what I was taught in my very young childhood. Too bad my characters are incredibly boxy and not very flowy like they should be.

But they did a pretty good job following along. Ok, so not everyone's character looked like this persons, but for the most part, it went over well.

Then we did the dragon parade/lantern festival. We don't have a big dragon costume, but we did have this tiny accordian dragon you see pictured that led the parade. Everyone else carried a small lantern and paraded around the room following the dragon and to the tune of Chinese music I found at the library.

Look how happy they are!

I had them hang up their lanterns in our fake trees.

Looks pretty snazy huh?

This is what they ate for dinner.... I didn't plan the menu so I'm not sure what it all is, I didn't end up eating any of it, but it's Asian food... I did pass out those tangerines though because those are good luck!

Woot Woot!

Well, it finally happened. I am finally a permanent U.S. resident. It only took 12 and a half-ish years! But I'm very grateful that Heavenly Father has blessed me through the years with parents, school status, missionary status, and a job status, all of which has allowed me to legally stay in the U.S for this long before I am now on U.S resident status. Thanks to my family for supporting me and especially to those who participated in trips to the border so I could renew my visas and continue living here. Thanks to Jason for being born in the U.S (I guess we should thank mostly Heavenly Father and mom and dad for that one though...) so mom and dad could get their green cards and citizenship, which has allowed me to also receive the same blessings and privileges! I just wish mom were here to rejoice and celebrate with me and see all her hard work unfold to this! I'm sure she is and has though. Now just 5 more years till citizenship comes my way!

Also this weekend, I made this lovely chocolate cheesecake, recipe courtesty of Michelle, and it turned out amazing and delicious! The fresh raspberries were a nice touch!

PS. Happy Chinese New Year!!!!

For Mom

Dear Mom,

Happy Birthday!

I love you!

love, nancy baby

Michigan!

I spent the Christmas and New Year's holiday with Clarence, Annie, and family in Ann Arbor, MI. We had a splendid time, all of which passed rather quickly. Between the hospital visit and all the puking going on, we still managed to have a fun, noisy holiday filled with too much food, plenty of movies and not enough sleep.

In memory of mom. The sweater will now be retired while the hat made its debut and will continue a new tradition...

Here are the kids Christmas eve in their new pajamas. That extra baby in there is Laney Wilson, who she and her parents had Christmas dinner with us. That night, Isaac said the family prayer asking Heavenly Father to bless Santa to "come safely and bring as many presents as possible." He mentioned Santa 3 or 4 more times in the prayer and we did manage to get him to mention baby Jesus once too. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of Christmas. Mostly because Christmas ended in 10 minutes flat (the present opening part) after which I had to take a 2 hour nap because I was so tired. We successfully, then unsuccessfully talked to dad through the web cam, but due to an unfortunate power outage on his end, that got cut short too.

A couple of days after Christmas, Clarence and I took the boys to the children's museum where we pretty much had as much fun as the kids... possibly more.

When you ride this bike, the booth lights up next to it and you can see what your skeleton is doing while you're pedaling.

A couple of days after that, we took a trip up to Niagara Falls. I'd never been there so it was pretty cool. That was actually my first trip to Ontario as well.

Isaac was kinda being a stinker and never wanted to show his face for the camera. The falls were pretty cool, even though it's just a ginormous waterfall. But you have to experience it at least once in your life! We stayed overnight in Ontario and headed back the following afternoon. But not before stopping at the T&T Chinese store for hot pot food and duck, and then Costco to look for Dino-sours for Jason. Unfortunately they didn't have any...

...but you can find kids in large quantities. We got 4. hahaha.

On New Year's eve we played in the snow for a little bit. Clarence and mini Clarence also shoveled the driveway.

Clarence and Annie had friends over for New Years Eve, we played games and ate food and rang in the new year via the internet. I called dad to do the countdown with him and he said there were 15 seconds left till the ball dropped, while the internet was showing a minute left. Oh well, what does it even matter?

New Year's Day was my last full day there. Clarence hooked up his new speakers and Lilly and Isaac showed us their ballroom dancing skills while James rifled through the trash...

I already miss everyone! Thanks for a fantastic holiday!! But I guess we can't be in vacation mode forever.

Merry Christmas!! (almost)

Isn't this the coolest nativity you've ever seen? Well I think it is but I may be a little biased. Us Tangs made this natvity out of flour dough in 1986. I actually thought it was later than this but when I was in Maine, I found a paper my mom had written on when she donated the creche for the creche exhibit in Maine a few years back and she wrote made in 1986. Knowing how good of a journal keeper she was, I have no reason to doubt it's true.

I know that I made baby Jesus and the manger (with dad's help), mom made Mary, Andrew made the wise man with the red crown, Clarence made the one with the black crown and Jason made all the animals (I've always loved the "popcorn" sheep and the race horse). I can't remember what Michelle or dad made, but it's gotta be Joseph, the shepherd, or the third wise man . And someone must've made 2 or something. Later on (like in the last few years), Steve made the stable for the nativity and straw got added... for extra effect? I dunno, but I think it's pretty darn creative and has lasted so long!

I went to Andrew's house this morning to help make some potstickers and these little munchkins were there being extra cute. Above is the boy (Andersen) practicing his joystick coordination on the Wii, and down below is Michael, just 3.5 weeks old, finally showing me that he DOES have eyes!

Anyway, I'm off to Michigan on Tuesday for Christmas with Clarence, Annie and family so I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!