We finally made it to snow ver the winter holiday! One of my favorite memories of living in Oregon is Linda Dunn’s A frame cabin up in Rhodedendren. We took the the girls up there for their moment of snow which was awesome with those pink hats. Next year, we’ll ski. For now, we’ll build snowmen every chance we get!

Maddie Anna and the entire elementary school performed at a recent concert and this one was by far one of our favorites. We’ve put it on our Apple TV and every time I walk into the room, either Amelia or Maddie has put it on and they are singing along with The Unicorn Song all over again! It was extra special that Maddie was able to sing with Mrs. Tucker whom she had for Art last year.

I especially love the video that Julie Wild made to go alone with the song. She photoshopped each child into a picture that coincided with the words of the song. Watch for Maddie and the green alligator!

You may watch the video below or view it by clicking here.

Maddie's Letter to Santa

Last year Maddie wrote a letter to Santa for both herself and Amelia. The result was she got a very cool video message from him while we were vacationing in Thailand AND she got the one thing she asked for. She was inspired…

Yesterday she stayed him from school as she was feeling a bit under the weather and she took advantage of the time to be inspired again. She wrote a letter to Santa and as soon as her sister got home from school, she helped her sister write a letter.

Amelia's Letter to Santa

We’ll post everything to Santa this week. I’m pretty sure it will get there in time, but it remains to be seen if Maddie and Amelia will get the one gift the want from Santa. Okay… so Maddie wants two gifts...

The girl is growing up. When Andy leaves, Maddie has this way of…. getting instantly older. She cooks, she cleans, she helps Amelia with baths. Today we went to the dentist for a cleaning/sealant and not one complaint came out of her mouth. Amelia on the other hand… that’s a different blog post. Crazy kid.

We got home from the dentist and we decided to reward ourselves by making cookies and decorating them. Three dozen cookies later, the kitchen was only mildly destroyed. We ended up using this sugar cookie recipe because Maddie thought that it was cool that there was lemon in it: http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/dessert/recipe-best-cutout-sugar-cookies-038629 and then we used two different types of icing...

There is a running joke in our family. Mom can’t cook. Freaks mom out. So…. when dad leaves, mom agonizes over dinner. However, Maddie is stepping up to the task. We found some recipes online and she took charge. I started the marinade for the pork chops in the morning, but she took it from there.

Maddie made orange joyce and soy sauce marinated port chops. She even reduced the sauce so that we could pour it over the brown rice. See the recipe here: http://www.food.com/recipe/pork-chops-with-soy-orange-sauce-292964?scaleto=4&mode=null&st=true

And then she blanched some asparagus and even put the asparagus in an ice bath! She didn’t have almonds so she decided to use pine nuts in the lemon butter sauce for the asparagus. Delicious: http://www.asparagusrecipes.net/asparagus-almandine.html ...

Moving in 13 days!

Location:NE Orenco Station Pkwy,Hillsboro,United States

Location:NW Cornelius Pass Rd,Hillsboro,United States

Maddie First Horse Show!

Maddie had an excellent day as she participated in her first horse show where she completed two dressage Equitation Tests! She looked like a true horse girl with her coat, breeches and hunt cap. First she completed her flat work and then she completed her beginning jumping class. She passed both tests and advanced to the next level! Good job Maddie!

Just to make the day a bit more interesting… she decided to save a puppy on the way home from the barn. As we were coming off the highway, we saw a puppy trying cross 8 lanes of traffic and it was close to be an unsuccessful attempt. We grabbed him and Maddie held him all the way home. We sent him to the vet immediately and found that he is only about 9 weeks old but in great health. So cute… we call him B.T...

She is so hopeful… to be a kid again!

Growing up TCK (Third Culture Kid) is sometimes a tough job. I think the most difficult part of growing up overseas is saying goodbye to friends. I watch on Facebook as my friends in Shanghai go through it and I watch as my students go through it. It impacts Maddie as well.

Last year, Maddie said goodbye to her good friend Roqueya. There were tears and she had the belief that they would never see each other again. Here we are 9 months later and the girls were on Skype showing each other their new paint in their bedrooms.

Thankfully, in this day and age, the kids don’t really have to say goodbye. They just say, I’ll see onilne and maybe we’ll be F2F someday!

This year, Maddie is saying goodbye to her friend Paulina. From my perspective, Maddie and Paulina have been the perfect mix...

We all find bugs everyday but we’ve been noticing them a lot more lately since Maddie is heading out to really cool Bug and Insect Field Trip soon. We walked out our front door the other day and look what we saw!  Can anybody tell me what it is??

Maddie was in charge of her very first Student Led Conference at school today. In year’s past, the elementary school had traditional Parent Teacher conferences but they have moved to SLCs into action across the school. Maddie was excited all week long and the night before she told us that she had to lay out an outfit that was “confident”. She called it her confidence outfit… jeans, T-Shirt, Justice boots!

We walked into class and she pulled out her folder that had her checklist of everything she was going to share. I have to admit that I half expected her to sit there and just show us stuff but she talked and talked and talked. We were supposed to be in there for 30 minutes and we talked for 45 minutes...

Warmer weather… Earlier sunrises…. Both are a good thing on Saturday mornings! Maddie wakes up in time foe a great breakfast and cartoons on Nick Jr.!

Location:E Lingbai Rd,Shanghai,China

Maddie is back from the barn and it doesn’t look like she is moving anytime soon!

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Location:Renmintang Rd,Shanghai,China

Maddie is on fire this week! Twice this week teachers have honored her and commented about her hard work and artistic expression. Mrs. Wild has been Maddie’s music teacher for the past five years and Maddie just adores her.  We received an email from her this week saying that Maddie was a rockin’ cool xylophone player.  When we told Maddie about it, she beemed as bright as I have ever seen her!

Mrs. Tucker interviewed Maddie last week about her feelings towards art.  Maddie felt honored just be interviewed and over the dinner table, she explained her answers quite seriously to both Andy and I.

I can’t wait to show her that her interview is in the school published magazine and online...

I came home from work today to find that Maddie had finished her homework so that she could go out and rollerblade!  I personally think that JiaXi (pronounced joshi) and Maddie are slightly crazy for being outside without coats but they have been cooped up for a long time this winter in Shanghai!

While I was back in the States last month, I took full advantage of Amazon’s free 2-day shipping and got the girls a little herb garden.  We need some Spring around here so we decided to play the seeds a couple of days ago…

We added water to the peet moss pellats, placed them in the planters, added the seeds, watered them and then covered them with plastic until they sprout.  Maddie’s likes the makeshift greenhouse!

Thanks girls for helping out – I can’t wait to see our garden grow!

For the record…

“Cowgirls don’t cry…”

Great weekend here… lazy enough so that the girls had time to play dress-up!  Meelie keeps saying she’ll get older so that she can ride horses like jiejie!!!

Children that grow up outside of their home country are often called TCKs or Third Culture Kids.  Their sense of what is “normal” is not the normal that most of my family grew up with.  I loved my normal when I was growing up and I’m not convinced more that ever that Maddie is loving her sense of normal.  For example….

I had her come to my office after school the other day because I had a meeting.  I told her I would be back in an hour and that she could play on my computer.  When I came back, she was finishing up her homework, watching The Brady Bunch on my computer and drinking hot green tea.  For your information, the green tea was unsweetened and The Brady Bunch episode was where Jan though she was allergic to Tiger.

Green tea and The Brady Bunch…. I just love that!