My dear friends,
Happy New Year.
After one and a half years' training in law school, my writing is closer to the 4C requirements: Correct, Coherent, Complete, and Comprehensible. My sentences are getting shorter. No adjective or adverb. Plain language.
Here is a normal version: Wish everyone a healthy, peaceful, action-filled, and prosperous New Year!
In 2009, Katie grew close to 4 inches (~10cm) and she is officially taller than me. At one point, her morning height was equal to my afternoon height :-) She is more mature in her thinking, believing and handling relationships. At the same time, she keeps learning. her gifted class is bonded so well that no one left the program after a year. The gifted program expands from 16 students to 43 students. Katie happily told me, "everyone is so nice to me." in the beginning of the fall semester. That is her criteria to school.
Katie's skating programs and piano pieces become much more enjoyable. Her musical touch and expression on piano are more natural and fluent. She landed her Axel (finally!) in November, which means that she has more power and quicker rotation on ice. Katie started to paint with Acylic. I really like the color of her recent painting, which is in Album 2009(2) with link at the end.
Minkai and Minda started Kindergarten! They both love the new school, new friends, and new teachers. Surprisingly or not suprisingly, Minda adjusted quicker. She is simply a super student, who follows direction, learns fast, expresses herself, and helps others. Minkai is also a good student who answer a lot of questions but forgot to raise his hand.
Minkai is a number geek. He loves to play with numbers, second to wii and computer games. If he has no funner things to do, he will work on math problems. What a hobby! He finishes at least 50 pages' math exercise on our cruise trip. He figured out how to read a clock after I told him that each bar increases five minutes. He will read a clock time of 2:35 as a equation of 2+3=5.
Minkai is also a good soccer player. He scored several times in the summer section, to the right goal :-) At this age, his ability to focus helps him to be a desirable team player.
Minda has happy feet. She loves tapped dance and she could tap really fast. She passed her audition and joined the competition team in the summer. I will post her tap dance online soon.
I luckily received an offer of a law clerk position in 3M Intellectual Property Counsel. I left the career path of engineering on Minkai & Minda's birthday. I started as a junior person again and moved up on a deep learning curve. I have no regret and anxiety. Learning is my hobby. However, exams are not :-(
Fuming received corporate Circle of Techical Excellency award and we went to Wonewok together without the kids. Wonewok is a tranquil place. We saw many lagoons and wild rice plants.
At the end of the year, we are rewarded with a 7-night Caribbean cruise trip, by ourselves. We, together with eight other families, travelled to Cozumel in Mexico, Grand Cayman in Cayman Islands, Ocho Rios in Jamaica, and Nassau in Bahama. The warm weather suited us well. The food on the cruise ship was delicious, except Minkai was mistakenly served and tasted fish. He found that he does not like fish :-)
Minkai and Minda are still extremely allergic to seafood, nuts, eggs, and sesame. They are getting better on IgE numbers (the standard for allergy reaction), but they are not close to out-grow any of these. After some struggles, Minda's asthma is under control. On the other side, they seem to have more mouth and throat sensation in recent allergy reactions that makes me worry.
Here is the link to pictures: http://cid-4511a810a0da1662.skydrive.live.com/albums.aspx
Here is the link to videos: http://u.youku.com/user_show/id_UNjI3ODU3ODQ=.html
