The Zhao Family

My sons would like to wish you all a properous New Year! Gung Xi Gung Xi !


Cousins with the boys (Michelle, Nancy, Alvin, and Tony)






Mama preparing for the Chinese New Year party at our church..she is make the mouse ears at the last 1/2 hour before the program starts.


So here is the turn out..they look great! (though they can be mistake for bunny ears)



Here's Brennan's first performance. He's the youngest of the group and giving his best at the top of his lungs. Go Brennan! Click here for more photos from the event !





Here's the video. Watch Brennan closely: he's the youngest and he's going strong, regardless!

Mama did a good job; she is proud

Yeap I am a mouse and I am cute!!



Yeap I am know I am cute and so are you....Mmmmmwwwaa! (Mothers approved)

Clayton's new swimsuit by grandma. As if he is not skinny enough, the outfit makes him look even skinnier.























OK I want to get out of here from my crazy dad.

We finally got the parel from Hong kong today. Thank you Grandpa and Grandma. Brennan looks super in this new suit. Clayton will try on his new swimming suit later.

Also, thanks for the harddriver case to Da and of course all the red pockets also.


The shirt is a little small, but good for these couple days.



The jacket is perfect size, looks great with the jeans.


what do you think?


How about with the pants too! (if you even go to Hong Kong, remember to get your boys suits. They are soooooo cheap. for example, this 5 pieces is not even 20US., great price ha!)


Brennan just loves to post........=)

Happy New Year to you all. Last night we went to grandparents' house at midnight to eat "veg-only" dishes and get redpockets.





Da's family has this tradition that family gather together at midnight to welcome the new year. After eating the first veg only meal, the little ones got their red pocket. At first we thought it would be too late for the kids to stay up. We are glad the boys behaved and didn't fuss when we woke them up around 11:45pm.




Clayton was still full of energy when we arrived grandparent's house at 9:30pm. Brennan already collpased and slept upstairs.


Brennan just woke up. I am sure you can tell from the his eyes.

We will do this every year as our family tradition. Da thinks it's a great idea for celebrating the new year and keeping our chinese culture.

Okay the last post was a little...too realistic for some of our readers. Well here's more of a normal post. It's just in February and we are supposed to be in the middle of Winter but the weather is more like later Autumn with windy and cold rain conditions where you don't really want to go anywhere nor in the mood to do anything. Plus its not snowing currently so there's no more snow at the present time. So at home, we managed to take just a few pictures for the sake of sanity to post here.






The AquaDoodle is great for the boys. They are playing and drawing and drinking off the water that came with the item. At least here, they are using it properly however Mr Clayton likes to chew and drink from it..nice. I guess tap water tastes better through felt tips.









Mr Clayton is the lady's man and making a card for his Valentine. Nice now we need to find him a Valentine to accompany him and play with him. So will you be his Valentine.

The last couple weeks have been rough. The boys maybe working in unison to torture their parents; and it has been working. Abbey is barely able to get up each morning as Da seems to be having a very difficult time getting up and to work on time.

Lately Brennan refuses to go to sleep early. He keeps saying that he can't sleep. We tried many things such as not giving him sweets, drinks/milk, or food at least an hour and a half before he goes to sleep. We try to get him to sleep or go to bed early. We read him more stories than usual and Da even tells him stories; no success. When we close Brennan's room door, he waits and waits then comes to our room and say he can't sleep because there the 'dream people' and 'birds' that are in his dreams causing him not to be able to sleep. He asks papa to say a prayer with him to ask these 'things' to go back to their homes so everyone can sleep. So it takes about an hour after we put him to bed before he actually sleeps.

Then just a few hours later around 12:00/1:00AM Mr.Clayton decides to show himself. His situation is a bit more serious. Lately, well the last six months, he's been teething and I tell you he's nearly 18 months and he barely have eight teeth. Well we can see on one of his gum area for his molar tooth is very red and very swollen. Since most of the growing occurs at night that only means we are constantly kept informed of his pain every couple hours.

So with all this said and done, Da is loosing more hair Abbey is getting more wrinkles. Welcome to parenthood. Lovely, especially during these cold winter months where neither Da nor Abbey want to get out of the warm comfy blankets to care for the kids. But I guess we wouldn't have it any other way than to get up in the middle of the cold night and love our kids. Da much rather the kids cause her wrinkles than him.

Finally some real snow this year! As much as the snow makes the roads really hard to drive, it is great to spend time with the boys at home enjoying what beauty nature gives us. Brennan was actually begging to out to play in the snow and Clayton enjoyed it just as much.




It's snowing and what are we doing outside in the van driving to where!? - you may ask whether we are crazy or not. Well for those that know us, we are the Zhao family: unique, unmistakable and delicious :D . Yup, its forecast to have 2-4 inches of snow and we are driving to eat Sushi!! by the time finished eating, the roads and our van was covered with an inch and a half of snow already!


Clayton all prepared for helping out mama! 5 shirts, 4 pairs of pants, 3 socks, 2 hats, and a set of gloves and we are ready to go and have fun!


Hm......who's doing all the work again?




Even Brennan's helping out!! you wonder where's mama to shovel all the snow!! hm........


Clayton says: "I've had enough of this!! I am going back in! "

Just couple days ago, I complained to Da that my workload seems too high and I want more help from him. He kind of gets the idea and we ended the conversation.

We just came back from Hong Kong couple weeks ago. As most of you can imagined, I didn't need to do as much as housework back in my parent's house and it's really a nice break for me. However, when I come back here, 100% workload is back on and since Da was also on kind of vacation like me, aka not doing any housework, he doesn't have the sense to do it again when he comes back. so my workload was, I said 115%. I was exhausted and started to murmur.

For those are my church friends, once you murmur, you know something is coming..............this time, I got a two whole dayoff...............but just be careful of what you ask for.

Friday nite I got a whiplash on my neck and got really dizzy. I was like......this is sooooooo weird. so I told Da about it and I was so dizzy and the whole room was turning upside down. He gave me a sip of water and I wanted to throw up. I ended up throw up once before I went to bed.

The next morning, woke up around 8:30am, was thinking I should be all better by now. WRONG, when I sat up, everything turned again and the sense of throwing up was worse than ever. I ended up laying in bed until around 10:30am. Bathroom called and so I asked Da to hold me to the bathroom, when I wanted to get back to bed, I just couldn't. I could stay up for a min and throw up green stuff, curving on the floor. That's when I called Da to called 911.....

in the mean time, my boys were with Da, knowing mama was sick and didn't feel well. They came to hold me and kiss me. Standing next to their papa looking at the two big guys bringing mama to the ambulance. The sense of helpless was too overwhelming.....

I was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with Vertigo. Nothing wrong they found beside that. So I was discharged. Da had been taking care the boys for the last 36 hours. The house is a mess and you can imagine the kitchen.

We are just so grateful to have President Tsai come and take away the kids when I was in the hospital with Da. We are also thankful to have friends that make themselves available when we need them.

I guess what I am trying to bear my testimony is that. We are so weak in our physical body. At the same time, I am so blessed with the ability to do my 115% workload when I need to. Looking at my boys but was not able to hold them or comfort them make me realize what Heavenly Father has blessed me with: The ability to be a good strong mother, raising the kids that Heavenly Father entrusts me with. I also see how much Da care and love me. It's sad that I need to get sooo sick to see that. But I am so grateful for everything happened to me.

I am well again now and I will do my best to take care my family: my lovely boys and at time crazy hubby. They are my family and are my blessings.

They are now in church and I was for along time washing my dished happily and cleaned up the kitchen with joy. Isn't it wonderful when you can see things in the bright side.

My faith grows and my testimony gets stronger. We love you all and hope you are just as happy as we are.=)

In this day and age of where there is cable TV everywhere, the US government has decided to end analog broadcast TV and convert everything to digital TV. So if you or someone you know that is still using Rabbit Antenae TV to receive news and shows, they can go to https://www.dtv2009.gov/ and get a coupon for a converter for their current TVs. Each household can get up to two $40 coupons to help off-set the cost of the converters. Good Luck and go out and help a friend who is still using manual dial button TVs for news, they get it their 70's tv digitalized!

At the request of Brooke, here are some untouched photos of Adam & Sophy's wedding. Our family is in there somewhere. If you like to see more photos, go here: http://picasaweb.google.com/dazhao/AdamSophy