Artist at work

Jake must have been inspired Wednesday because he turned out 5 major pieces of art.

The first two are pencil drawings he did at pre-school, the other three after school and karate using different mediums.

This is Daddy going into outer space. He's heading to the moon and planets, although he better watch out. The round object to the left of the top of his spaceship is Darth Vader's spaceship.



That's Peter Rabbit on the right side of the paper going out of his house and about ready to go through the gate to Mr. Macgregor's garden. He better be careful he doesn't get caught. Jake was sneaky in this work. In the lower left you can see he wrote his name backwards. Very clever.



This is Cinderella's castle.



This one is an ocean scene. From left at the bottom are an eel, a sting ray and a leatherback sea turtle. The sting ray turned the water orange for some reason. We think he learned about leatherback sea turtles from watching "Diego." At the top is someone's beach house.



Finally, we have a self-portrait simply titled "Jake Throwing Up." He was going to stay overnight at Grandpa and Grandma's house a couple of months ago, but for some reason he got sick to his tummy and threw up. This is his rendition of that night. Personally, it's our favorite of the works he did Wednesday.

Chopsticks and water pistols

Last week's China heritage camp inspired us to trying cooking more Asian foods, so we started this week with some recipes shared by our cooking instructor during the camp's adult workshops.
We made fried rice, sweet and sour pork and egg-drop soup.


While ours was not as delicious as what we tasted last week, we were happy to say it was pretty good and well-received, and we had a lot of fun making Chinese dishes for Jake. And we even tried our hand at eating with chopsticks, which Jake loved!




Afterward we reconnoitered in the backyard for a long-overdue water gun fight, a welcome blast on a hot day!





We finished off our heritage evening with a trip to Meadowlake Park in hopes the train was running. Well, the heat got the train, so we settled for sno cones, which was a great runner-up treat.

China Heritage Camp

We just spent the past few days in Tulsa at Dillon International's China Heritage Camp.
It was a blast. There were some 260 children from China at the camp. It was our first year to go, but some of the kids have been going for 10 years. They divide the kids up according to ages, and they had classes in arts and crafts, dance, language, cooking and kung fu.

We think Jake had a good time. He tells us he did, but he also says his favorite part was swimming in the hotel pool. Oh well, what do you expect from a 4 1/2 year old? One of the best parts for us was that the kids were the majority for a change. It was the non-Chinese kids who were the exception rather than the rule.

They also had classes for parents, including language and cooking, and they had one about heritage trips. It was fun for us adults, too.

It was a three-day event, so they weren't able to get really in depth on things, but it still was a great experience we would definitely encourage those interested to look into.

The group that did the lion dance at the opening ceremony was really good.



Jake's in the tie-dyed shirt, looking at the lion.



After, he posed with the lion.



Playing around during dance class.



I just had to add one more photo. This is one of Jake's group singing ... OK, Jake didn't sing, but he did the sign language ... "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in his native language. I actually cried. I didn't realize how moving his performing to Chinese would be and how special China would become to me. I hope it is as special to him some day. violet