Melanie sings "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer"

This Christmas with Melanie has been the best so far. She is really getting into all of the festivities going around. She is also learning the words to some of the carols. Her favorite is Rudolph. One day, as she was singing along with the radio, I took a video of her. She has the cutest voice (in my opinion). When she realized I was recording her she asked me to stop, but of course I couldn't do that. Here is Melanie in her singing debut.

Melanie in gymnastics

Melanie has been taking a ballet, tap, and tumbling class for the past few weeks. Last Saturday was her last class and the kids had a little recital for the parents. It was very cute to watch. I don't think Melanie really enjoyed herself, but she had fun overall. Here are two movies of the recitals.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We had a nice evening with friends and family here. We didn't get any pictures of that night, but we had a busy weekend and of course got pictures of other activities.

On Friday, we went shopping. I know some people think we're crazy to out the day after Thanksgiving and go shopping, but we love it. We were actually able to put a dent in our Christmas shopping.

On Saturday, we went to the Festival of Lights at the Cincinnati Zoo. The place was really done up beautifully with all the lights and decorations. Melanie had a great time meeting Santa and Mrs. Clause and mailing her letter to Santa. She even got to meet a penquin, walrus, and a gingerbread man.

On Sunday, we took Melanie's picture at church for our Christmas card. We haven't decided yet which one we are going to use. I guess we need to do that soon!!

Halloween, 2008

Hi all,

I can't believe it's been so long since I have posted something for all of you to read. Hopefully, I will be better at this next year.

Melanie had a wonderful time on Halloween. She went trick or treating as 'surprise' a princess. She was dressed as Sleeping Beauty. She went all over our neighborhood and then we drove to both grandparents houses. She really raked in the candy.

Melanie says the cutest things!!

I just started keeping a little journal of some of the things that Melanie has been saying. Some of them we have no idea how she comes up with them. Here are just a few:

• One night someone asked Melanie how old she was. Her reply was 'I don't know, but I'm not 55'.


• Another night she was sitting on a friends lap when she look up at her and said 'I have some bad news, I have to go potty'.


• Melanie told me she couldn't see straight. I asked her what she meant by that. She told me she was tired and couldn't sea straight.


• We have just started trying to do some homeschooling. We are trying to do at least one day a week. Today she told me she likes school because we have a snack.

I'm sure that as time goes I will have many of these sayings. Hope you all enjoy reading them.

This is just a funny picture we took of Melanie. She found her hat and mittens one night in August and decided she had to wear them.

Hurricane hits Cincinnati

The day after Melanie's party we had the remnants of Hurricane Ike come through Cincinnati. We had winds gusting around 70 miles per hour. We were out in Indiana at a church dinner when it started and by the time we were on our way home it was really getting bad. We had to hold on Melanie because she couldn't walk to the car the winds were so strong. There were tree branches down on the entrance ramp to the highway and debris flying everywhere. As we got closer to home, we saw a lot of damage. Trees split or just plain fallen over. It was pretty scary. We have 3 big oak trees in our yard and thankfully we didn't lose any of them. The only damage we suffered was our back door tried to blow off. We did lose our electricity for about 36 hours. We were some of the lucky ones other people had their power of for most of the week. We know that God protected us during this time. Here are some pictures Ron took of the some of the damage he saw.

Melanie's 4th Birthday party

We thank God everyday that He allowed this special little girl from Guangchang, China to be our daughter. We can't believe that she is already 4 yrs. old.

This year for her birthday, Melanie wanted to have a princess party. We found the perfect cake that had Aerial, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Belle on it. She was so excited when we ordered it.

We had a wonderful birthday party for Melanie. We played princess games (which is really hard to do when most of your guests are boys), we had pizza, mac and cheese, salad and of course birthday cake and ice cream. We even had a pinata. We did though think it was a little strange that the kids were "beating up" on Cinderella just to get some candy, but everyone had a wonderful time. Melanie got lots of great presents, I think her favorites were the Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Little Mermaid dolls. Here (hopefully) is the link for the movie I created. Hope you enjoy it. "http://www.onetruemedia.com/share_view_player?p=7098bb2ee399b85bdc7be3

Mini golf with Melanie rules

The other night we went to mini golf. We quickly learned that a four year old has her own rules about how to play. Melanie would hit the ball as hard as she could, then once it stopped rolling she would pick it up, walk to the hole, place it by the hole and then hit it in. She had a great time playing this way, but we did try to get her to hit the ball instead of carrying it all the way down. In one of the pictures above she is sitting on the purple steps. She called this her house and would yell at us if we hit it.

disney video

I just tried to create a video montage of our trip to Disney. I have never done this before, so hopefully this works. Here is the link. "http://www.onetruemedia.com/share_view_player?p=6f8007557410cd5a6c7062"

Parade time

Here on the westside of Cincinnati there is a tradition of going to the Harvest Home Parade and fair. We went to the parade and had a great time. The highlight for Melanie was seeing Daddy in the Citizens on Patrol car.

We then spent a couple of days going to the fair, where Melanie and I entered a cake that won 2nd place.

Labor Day Weekend

Hi all, obviously I need to get a little better at updating this site.

We spent Labor Day weekend at Natural Bridge State Park in Kentucky. We did a lot of hiking (well mostly Ron and Melanie) I did some. Melanie had a great time hiking in the woods. Ron led all of the hikes for our group. Melanie even got into some poison ivy, but she didn't really have a reaction to it. We even rode the chair lift on our last day there.

Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Disney - Day 6

Today we got up early and took Melanie into Magic Kingdom to meet the Princesses. Since we got there so early there wasn't much of a line to do anything. Melanie got to meet Cinderella, Belle and Snow White. Later we got to meet Ariel. The one question she wanted to know from all of them was if she could see their shoes. We still haven't figured out why.

She also got to ride the Dumbo ride, It's a Small World and the merry-go-round.

That evening we had dinner at the Coral Reef restaurant at Epcot. This was a really neat restaurant because the back "wall" of the place was the aquarium. We got to see all sorts of fish swimming around and even saw some scuba divers, which Melanie called 'super diver'.

Later that evening we had a thunderstorm while we were in Epcot. After the storm we saw a beautiful rainbow that we got really good pictures of.

Disney - Day 5

This was a fun and relaxing day. We had breakfast with Mickey and his friends at Chef Mickey's. Melanie loved meeting everyone and had a great time having her picture taken with all of them. I thought it was especially funny when she wasn't listening to me and Mickey "yelled" at her - she did listen though after that. After breakfast we went back to the hotel and spent the afternoon at the pool. I had an afternoon of Mommy being "off duty" while Daddy had to take care of Melanie.

I was surprised at how warm the water was in the pool. It felt like it was bath water and not very refreshing, but it was better than standing in lines at the parks all afternoon. We went to Downtown Disney in the evening and had dinner and did some shopping.

Disney - Day 4

Today we went to Hollywood Studios. I think it was hotter today than any other day since we got here. I think this is my least favorite of all the Disney parks. There is absolutely no shade anywhere. We took Melanie to see the Little Mermaid show and she loved it. Ariel, the little mermaid is her favorite of all the princesses. We also saw the Muppets in 3-D and Honey, I Shrunk the Audience in 3-D. That one really scared Melanie and me in certian parts. We took Melanie on her first water ride. It was a white water rapids type of ride. At first she said she was scared and didn't want to go on it, but once she was on the ride she had a great time. Our dinner this night was at a restaurant called 50's Prime Time Cafe. It was decorated with different things from the 1950's and our waiter kept giving me a hard time all through dinner. It was almost as if I had 'please bother me' written across my forehead. Of course I gave it right back to him.

Disneyworld - Day 3

Today we went to Animal Kingdom. It was very hot and we weren't all that crazy about this park. We did see some animals and we took Melanie to see the bird show. She has always been fascinated by birds, especially eagles. She says she wants to grow up and be an eagle doctor. We had dinner at an Africian themed restaurant. I wasn't sure how everyone would like it, but it was a hit even with the picky eaters of our group.

Disneyworld - Day 2

Our second day at Disney we spent in Epcot. I think this was Melanie's favorite day. She got to meet Mulan and her friend Musho the dragon. She even got kissed by Mulan. We also had dinner with the Princess's that evening. We all had a great time. We even wore Melanie out, she fell asleep in her stroller.

Disneyworld - day 1

Sorry it's taken so long for me to post about our vacation to Disney. We had a great time. We stayed at one of the resorts called Port Orleans - French Quarter. Ron took some great pictures of the landscape there. The first day were there we went to Magic Kingdom in the evening. As soon as we got there we saw Goofy and Melanie just had to meet him. Forturnately, the line wasn't very long. After meeting Goofy we were able to meet Chip and Dale. We all had dinner at an Italian restaurant there called Tony's Town Square. After dinner we stayed to watch the night time parade and the fireworks.

Getting ready for vacation

We are getting ready to leave for vacation on Saturday. We are going to Disneyworld. For some strange reason I agreed to take Melanie to the zoo today. We had a lot of fun. She got to feed the birds and we tried to feed the giraffes, but they weren't interested. She also had a great time playing in the play area.

Now that we are back home I will try to finish packing.

I created this blog as a way for friends and family to keep updated on the goings on of our family. I will be posting of our Melanie, little China princess soon.