She *still* really likes congee

Now that we live in the middle of the Twin Cities, it's a lot easier to try new restaurants.  Last night we stopped at Que Nha on University Avenue.  A light-rail station is literally just outside their front door & this is exactly the kind of business that will get all sorts of traffic when the trains start running.  A family-run, family-friendly place ... clean, well-decorated, with fast service.  We'd told Wynn that they had congee on the menu, and that's all she wanted to talk about on our short drive there...

This serving bowl is about 2/3 of a gallon...  just beautiful; we haven't seen so much meat in a serving of congee anywhere else on our travels.  Really a lovely sight & smell to behold on a gray, windy, cold day like yesterday.

Wynn had three bowls - I had one as well - and we still had plenty left over for breakfast today!

Happy 7th Birthday!

It's really difficult to have a birthday right after Christmas and right before Chinese New Year.  But a girl's gotta get presents.  Thankfully she's genuinely grateful.  (We squirreled away the My Little Pony trainset...)

Cupcakes from ... Cupcake, on University Avenue.  They're mighty good.

I can't believe Wynn has been part of our lives for 5-1/2 years now.  But here she is, already becoming a Big Kid.

 

Post-Xmas Pictures 2012

Visited her grandparents in Burnsville today; on the way back we stopped by the airport to watch airplanes for a while, and she got her picture taken at one of the holiday displays they have there.

And we had lunch at Culver's in West St. Paul, next to Lowe's where we got paint to do our living room over Xmas break.  She's showing off her Oreo ice cream cake she got as part of her kids' meal!  (She needed a little help to finish it.)

Halloween Costume Parade!

Every Halloween, Yinghua Academy celebrates the holiday with a "literary character costume parade." Kids may dress up - but need to bring the book with the character they're portraying.

Wynn came as Pippi Longstockings - she fell in love with the character after seeing her in a play at the Children's Theater earlier this year!

Totally digging that NASA spacesuit...

Happy Hallo-wynn!

Yesterday we carved some of the pumpkins Wynn grew this summer into spooky jack-o-lanterns!  Orange lights on our front porch and the full moon rising up over the house make for a haunting scene!

 

The pumpkin on the right got chewed up somewhat by squirrels, so we incorporated the "scars" into its face for extra scariness!

Swimming - Wynn takes a dive!

Wynn was introduced to diving at her swim lesson yesterday morning!

Book recommendation: Home is a Roof Over a Pig

I recently finished reading an interesting new book, Home is a Roof Over a Pig, by Aminta Arrington.  She's also a blogger, a teacher, and an adoptive parent of a girl from China.

Instead of raising her youngest child through a "normal American life", however, she and her husband and their other two school-age siblings moved to China not long after the adoption.  It's an interesting twist on addressing the desire by adoptive parents to not let a child's birth culture slip away, and pretty gutsy.  The book is a fascinating read - I've posted a full review at weninchina.com -  and do recommend it especially for other families who are in the China adoption track.

Will we eventually move overseas?  Wynn's in a great school, and is getting lots of Chinese acculturation there.  (She doesn't even notice anymore when we're around Chinese families speaking Mandarin in places like IKEA ... it's completely normal to her.  Also, this happens a lot more now that we're living in the city...)  But, Yinghua only goes to 8th grade.  And Ann and I may want to do new things with our careers, too. (And jinkies, we just moved into this new house!) So, not today and not for a while. But it may happen, and this book gives us some insights into what that kind of transition might look like.