Best Shot Wednesday a little late (Nihao, Cupcake!)

I have been away from my blog for exactly a month. It was a break for the holidays - the US holidays, that is. Here in China, the holidays are just beginning. That sort of makes things fun when you live in two places like our family does. You get to celebrate (and get the time off) for the holidays at home as well as in the land of your residence - in my case, China.

February 3 is Chinese New Year so the whole country is preparing. The stores are crowded with shoppers buying gifts to bring home. The entire country (just about) migrates to their home town to spend time with family. A few days ago the train ticket office down the block was flooded with customers. They were lined up down the sidewalk. Today it was empty. I think that means all the tickets are gone. No joke. If you didn't get a train ticket, find another way home. I also keep seeing the odd person walking down the street towing a wheeled suitcase behind them. These are the people that have already returned home (or are just starting their journey) and haven't quite made it yet. I saw one woman with her suitcase standing around our outdoor mall next door obviously waiting for her ride to arrive. I feel like I should be taking pictures of all these little things that are signs of the preparation going on.

I'm excited for these holidays because the kids are home and my husband doesn't have to work. He couldn't work even if he wanted to. The whole country shuts down. We have no family obligations beyond feeding our children and hanging out with them, so it is the perfect holiday. A no obligation holiday. I think of it as a rest up from the holidays at home. Who doesn't get exhausted after a 12 hour flight, an eight hour drive, three jet lagged kids, a bad sinus infection, catching up with all the family and friends you haven't seen for half a year, shopping for the things from home you miss, packing, a 13+ hour flight, more jetlag and unpacking? It's the perfect time to reorganize the house (from the move just before summer), visit a few temple fairs, sleep in, watch DVDs, play games received at Xmas, nag about homework given over the break and catch up on sleep! Oh, yes, and stay inside away from the freezing COLD!

Since I've missed the last few Best Shot Wednesdays, I thought I would do a little catch up. These are a handful of my favorite shots that I took during my blog hiatus.

What I love about this photo is that my 12 year old is still more than willing to tell Santa what he wants for Christmas and isn't embarrased by it in the least.

This is my five year olds' very first letter to Santa. Here he is addressing the envelope. It is funny because what he listed in the letter is very different than what he told Santa after hearing what his brothers wanted for Xmas. (Legos turned into an iPad and a computer!)

The rainbow we saw from the car on our way to Arizona from California. It looks like we were near Palm Springs maybe.

The boys checking out the gifts under the Christmas tree to see if there are any for them and if so to shake them and guess what is inside.

Bailey, my in-laws cat, in his special spot right in the middle of the kitchen near the warmth from the bottom of the fridge. He's old now and instead of hiding from us, he wants to be in the center of the action.

Nana helps Braden during his turn in Guesstures. Very fun game for the whole family!

My favorite desert photo from this trip. Taken on a walk in my in-laws' neighborhood in Tucson.

Nicholas using his birthday camera to make his latest stop action animation feature.

On the way out of town, Dad wanted to take the kids to Waffle House. He knew they would love it and he was right! Reece insisted I find the recipe and make their waffles from now on.

Celebrating on New Year's Eve with the pulling of some Christmas crackers. I love that this British tradition has found its way to the US. My first encounter with the Christmas cracker was in 1991 at my work Christmas party when I worked at Debenham's (student work visa) in Cambridge, UK. Such fond memories!

Reece playing Step Mania (just like Dance Dance Revolution) in his feety pajamas. I LOVE that my 12 and a half year old still LOVES feeties. He's in now hurry to grow out of his childhood favorites - thank goodness!

I plan to enter this final photo in Rebecca Cooper's weekly challenge, Simple Things, this Sunday on her blog.

Thanks for stopping by. Come back soon for some exciting things coming up. This Monday, January 24 I will be participating in a LOAD (Layoutaday.com) Blog hop. We will all be sharing how we prepare for LOAD.

What is LOAD? It is a month long challenge in which participants make one scrapbook layout a day and post it in a Flickr gallery. I love it because I work very well under deadlines and it is my most productive scrapbooking time. This will be my 5th or 6th one. Wow!

On Tuesday, February 1st I'm organizing a blog hop for the participants in Ali Edwards' class ONE LITTLE WORD at Big Picture Classes. We will be sharing our project for January and any other reflections on our word from the month of January. Please come by and join in the fun.

If you are a member of Ali's class and would like to participate in the blog hop, please leave me a comment in this post and I'll get back to you with more details.

Other things that I have been working on:

*Cleaning up my hard drive, my external hard drives and refining my back up system.

*Downloading and editing photos from the holidays.

*Creating my photography website.

*Helping kids with homework!

*Studying up on Lightroom & Photoshop 5 (I bought both of Scott Kelby's books when I was at home).

*Planning two birthday parties - first thing tomorrow morning I'll be decorating one of the cakes (a cupcake cake - camping theme, extra cupcakes will be mad scientists). I'll post pictures sometime in the next week.

*Transfering old Hi8 video tapes to digital (so excited about this) using the Canopus ADV110 - couldn't be easier (with the right cables).

*Catching up with Project Life 2010.

*Recovering from jetlag.

OK, I better get some sleep. Thanks again for stopping by and come back soon!