The Year of 2007

The year of 2007 is an eventful year. For more little stories, please visit my blog: http://xchuang.blogspot.com/, and family album: http://photoshow.comcast.net/xchuang/2007.

Katie starts to take private lessons in figure skating and completes her ISI (Ice Skating Institute) Free Style I as a first place winner for her age group, luckily. Her painting of blue jay was awarded First Place in State Fair in August. Into her forth years' of study in piano, she has greatly improved control of her fingers and is able to express herself with music. Her favorite songs are Beethoven Symphony V, Fur Elise, Allegro in Eine Kleine Nachtmusi by Mozart, and Sonata in F Major by Anton Diabelli. Her school teacher has identified leadership as one of things that she is good at. We are working on clarifying her responsibility.

Minkai is a great example of learning for fun. Drawing and writing are his hobby. He takes some old Kumon exercises that we got several years ago and starts to play with numbers. He will take his workbooks and pens everywhere he is going – bed, floor, friends' house, and restaurants. He is a perfectionist, that is, he will ask older kids to color his precious wax paper sea animals instead of himself and he will ask others to draw dots for him to write letters because he is afraid of screwing up. He is a good listener, so he remembers that both his teacher and I encourage him to try new things and to practice to reach perfection. On the other side, no longer a shy boy, he is growing into a great speaker with a lot of hand gestures and voice changes, however, fairly exaggerating. I wonder if he learns that from Disney channel.

Minda is a quick action and fast thinking young lady. She runs not only on ground but also on ice. She likes playing puzzles and has a good sense of it. In gymnastic class, she can hold herself on a bar and swing a little bit. She can swim like a little fish for three feet. When we were praising Minda's performance and Minkai told us that he IS swimming very well too, with floaters. Minda experienced teacher changes in the summer and she cried when she saw her former teacher in another classroom. She is sweet and sits on every one's lap comfortably. She sits on every teacher's lap in her classroom, in her gym class, even a two-years old girl's father's lap until the girl pushed her off.

Katie and I went back to China for two and a half weeks in March. Everything was working out well or even better as Minda and Minkai were listening to their father very well. Besides one day, Minda cried and repeatedly told me to come back for five minutes and I had to hang up the phone. After I came back, the biggest change for the twins was that they can entertain themselves. All of sudden, they do not need my involvement and I have to ask them to play with me. We are very lucky that Katie, Minkai, and Minda are good friends. They care about each other. When Minda cries, Katie will hold her and Minkai may pat her back. Katie has a lot of ideas for games, and Minda and Minkai have to listen to her if they want to be part of the game. Minkai and Minda have many silly baby talks that do not make sense to me but they laugh together loudly.

We went to Washington DC, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania for a two weeks' vacation. We rented an eight bedroom house at Outer Bank in NC with three other families. It is really relaxing. With the energy getting back from vacation, I prepared LSAT (Law School Admission Test) and applied for William Mitchell College of Law. Just before Christmas, I got the admission letter with full scholarship. It looks like that life is changing in 2008.

Fuming is doing very well on his projects and his systems are possibly going into production lines in 2008. This will have impact on millions of dollars. Other than that, he starts exercising regularly and is working hard to live healthily.

Wish everyone a joyful, memorable, prosperous, and peaceful New Year!