A very hard week! I attended the funeral of Gary Ritari on Monday. He was such a great man and mentor in my life. I had the pleasure to work with him for nearly a decade in a variety of capacities. He helped me in so many ways in my professional life. That very same evening I managed to severely tear my calf muscle while coaching Maddy's team. I know get to wear a walking boot for four weeks and will not be able to run until about the Fourth of July. I also learned that a fellow former co-worker and friend is not doing very well at the moment with her fight with cancer. We are sending her many prayers. We are also hopeful that Aunt Joanne will get better soon, as she is having difficulties recovering from her stroke.

I am really looking forward to seeing Maddy dance on Saturday. She is excited and she is prepared to do well. I am also looking forward to another good week of soccer next week with the kids, even if I am hobbling around in a boot. The big news is that Julie is actually an assistant coach for Gabe's team now. I am so proud of her, for just trying something new and volunteering.

I completed a mini-update with some new pages from early 2011. The new pages are Maddy's Sixth Birthday Party, Chinese New Year 2011 and Gabes's Fourth Birthday Celebration. I will be putting together the February trip to Walt Disney World next. After that, I will attempt to get current by adding the pages and pictures for March, April and May. Have a great rest of Spring!

Sometimes life gets so busy, that you have to make choices in order to maintain some semblance of sanity. I had to take a little break from doing this web page in order to focus on other things. With two younger children, sometimes that is the way that you need to operate. At any rate, we are doing very well and are very busy.

Gabe has progressed very well in his speech class. He is done very well and loves his teachers there. He has also enjoying daycare at the Minnesota Chinese Day Care and Learning Center. He is quite an amazing little boy. He can count to 100 in both English and Mandarin. He speaking so much clearer. At his annual visit to the University of Minnesota Cleft Palate Team was a success. He is now ready for his next surgery in that process. First, he had a successful orchiopexy surgery on his Chryptorchidism. I will let you all use the link to fill in the details. This was an outpatient surgery and we had a very good experience at the Minneapolis Children's Hospital. We were home by 2:30 pm in the afternoon. The hardest part was he was such a fast recover that due to the nature of the surgery we had the challenge of keeping him from physical activity. Everything went well.

Gabe will be starting his first year of soccer this week. He is very excited to play and probably excited to have an activity that is his own. Gabe will have a second surgery later this summer. This one is for a pharyngeal flap . Again, you can check out the link to learn more about it. In a nutshell, it will allow him to make certain sounds that he cannot physically make at this time. It is a fairly typical surgery. This one will require a little longer recovery time and will also require that we mash up all his food. He will actually have at least one overnight at the hospital.

Maddy is doing very well and really enjoys her kindergarten class. She is really starting to excel on her reading and basic math. She is also very good at writing and drawing/painting. She is getting ready for her fifth Chinese Dance recital. She is an excellent dancer and we are very proud of the accomplishments she has made in this area. She has really excelled and stepped up to the challenge of dancing with a group of older girls. She has really applied herself and that is what we are most proud of. Maddy and I are taking Mandarin class together at Macalaster College. It has been challenging and yet a special activity that we share and work on most days. Maddy will also be starting soccer again as we start to shift into the summer schedule.

As for us, we are both doing well. We are excited for summer to finally come. It has been a long hard winter which was followed by a cool damp spring. I think we all look forward to a more normal summer. We are really looking forward to our two summer get-away's to the Michigan shore to Yogi.

I was able to update the site through Christmas. I will be working to get everything up to date. I suspect it will come in two or three more chunks. I will be working on it a little at a time. No promises, but I will try to keep up with things a little better.

We hope that everyone is surviving this very intense and long winter. Chinese New Year ends with the Lantern Festival on March 1. With that, thoughts begin to turn to spring. We still have a lot of snow on the ground, but at least the temperatures are improving.

Gabriel is settling in very well in our house. He is a very good boy and he is normally a very happy and smiley boy. However, he does have a little bit of a temper and can be stubborn at times. Maddy and Gabriel get along fabulously. It is great to see them play and really enjoy each other. Gabriel has been to a number of doctor's appointments since he has been home. In general terms, he is healthy and he is on track in many areas in terms of development. When he arrived, we took him in for an exam with his pediatrician. We found out that some of his shots need to be redone as the test results did not show sufficient immunity or were inconclusive. So we will be having sessions about once a month until he is caught up. We also took him to have his ears tested and he was normal, although he has had three ear infections with drainage since we got him. This led us to have a visit with an ENT who recommended tubes to ensure good hearing during this critical time. This was followed up by a visit to the University of Minnesota and an appointment with the Cleft Palate clinic and team. This was an amazing day and we saw specialists in all areas that might be affected because of the cleft (Reconstructive Surgery, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Otalarynology, Audiology, Speech-Language Pathology, Pediatric Dentistry, Dental Hygenist, Orthodontics,and Prosthodontics). The immediate course of action is that Gabriel will have tubes put in his ears (March 8) to insure that he is hearing properly as he develops his speech patterns and leans the language! He also has appointments with the speech pathologist at the University of Minnesota (introductory with emphasis on typical cleft issues) and with the school district speech pathologist for on-going sessions. We will follow this up in six months at the University of Minnesota to see where he is at. We will also be scheduling a visit to the pediatric dentist to take care of a little tooth decay, Maddy is due as well! In the future, Gabriel will likely need orthodontic treatment and an alveolar bone graft. An alveolar bone graft is when they take bone from the hip and add to the gum area so that his permanent teeth have a way to hold in place. The teeth need more bone density so when they come in they don't fall out. They also are saying that he may need additional lip and nose revisions. Further down the line it is possible he may need a cleft revision to help with speech, but it is too early to tell. The experience in general was very informative seeing that many people at once, and then have them work together to come up with a unified plan is spectacular.

Maddy is also adjusting very well. The issues (tantrums) based on attention competitions seem to be dropping down but still crop up from time to time. Maddy is a great big sister and she is very helpful and caring when it comes to all things with her little brother. Maddy had her 5 year check-up and passed with flying colors. She had her typical 5 year shots updates. She is 45.5" tall, which puts her at 90% in height. She is 44 pounds which puts her at 80% in weight. All in all she is a very healthy and active child. She and her brother both attend Minnesota Chinese Day Care where they learn many things (in English and Mandarin). Maddy is currently in Chinese American Association of Minnesota (CAAM) Dance every Saturday morning. We plan to enroll her in spring soccer, which will be a new experience for her. It is hard to believe that she starts Kindergarten in the Fall. Currently she will be attending her local elementary school, but we are on the waiting list to get into Yinghau Academy (Chinese Immersion School) and the Chinese language/culture magnet school in our district. We are hopeful that one of those options will work out. Otherwise, we will have to find an alternative means for Maddy to retain and build upon her Chinese (Mandarin) language skills.

This was another major production of web pages in the last month. We have lots of events in February and so we have many updates to complete. Video is the newest feature to be added to the site. We have added short clips of the kids in a few different places. This is a lot of fun and I encourage you to check it out. I have also added a new section specifically for video so you can see all of that media in one handy location. I have also been spending a great deal of time converting all of the DV tapes to electronic files on a hard drive. I wanted to get this done as my camera is aging and I wanted to protect them. A nice by-product of this process is that I am able to grab photos off the film and this has allowed me to supplement subject areas that in the past were sparse or nonexistent. An example of this was the updated pages for our 2002 trip to California, with many more pictures to choose from and publish on the site.

We look forward to sharing our future adventures as they unfold.