Our Red Thread Day

Happy Red Thread Day to my Sweet Pea!

Yep, our special day is here again, and in celebration of becoming a family on this special day, we made sure to take the day off from school and work to just spend it together! We agreed that we would not plan too much, because we needed a break from our over-planned days! We chose to sleep-in, stay in our jammies for the first few hours of the day, relaxing with our ipads over breakfast. I was sipping on coffee, while Kayli enjoyed a homemade smoothie. By late morning, we decided we would do a little shopping, then head to Winsteads for lunch ...

before we needed to make our way over to the only appointments we had today, at the Beauty School, for manicures and pedicures! Woohoo! We got the "royal treatment" at the Beauty School!

the weather was unbelievably beautiful this entire day, and after a bit more shopping, Kayli and I decided that we did not want to go out to a restaurant for dinner but instead would rather get carry-out from Chili's and set up our portable screened-in-porch for a "fly-less" picnic on the deck! We just can't soak up enough of this fabulous weather!

usually there are presents to open on this day. Two of the presents I ordered for Kayli have not arrived yet. (Should have been here by now) So, we'll wait with the promise of "hopefully tomorrow". Tonight, Kayli and I watched the video of the day we met in China! She really got a kick out of seeing and hearing herself as a toddler. She was so darn cute, my sweet baby girl...

the next day, we went to the Asian market to pick up some fortune cookies, and a few other items. It is always so much fun to walk through the Asian market, and see all the interesting food and gifts they have. Upon arriving home, a few hours later, we found that the packages we were waiting for, had arrived in the mail! Woohoo! As is traditional, I made sure to wrap some of the presents in red, the good luck color in China!

"Look, a teeny, tiny spoon for my spoon collection!"

Personalized Chopsticks for our chopstick collection...

a very special "learn to paint with Chinese brush strokes" book. (Kayli has already taken some beginner lessons on Chinese brush strokes with ink, so this should be fun for her to get to make some pictures.) 

of course there is always a bit of "bling" for my girl...

and naturally, there was the traditional Chinese red envelope included in the gift giving, with a bit of lucky money...

I always buy some sort of Chinese cultural book. This one was about a little Chinese-American girl who wanted to tell her classmates some things she knew about China, but first she had to interview some of the Chinese people she knew here in America. Each person she talked to secretly slipped a momento into her pocket to help her remember an interesting piece of trivia to share with her class. She visits Mr. Fan,the tailor, Mrs. Liu, from the flower shop, Jasmine, from the ice cream store, and Mr. Yu, from the Noodle Shop. ( I did not know that the delicious treat of ice cream was invented in  China! ) 

  we finished reading the book, and as our grand finale, we cracked open a couple of fortune cookies...

Kayli's fortune was advising her to stop searching for happiness when it was right next to her. I couldn't resist piping in "Yep, it's right here next to you...it's Me!" Ha! 

My fortune informed me that I had a lively family...uh, that's not exactly a revelation, haha! 

Life is good...