June 16, 2009

FCC Branson Reunion

This past Friday we traveled to Branson for the FCC Reunion. Always a FUN day full of children's activities, a delicious authentic Chinese lunch & a viewing of the Shanghai Acrobats show.

We went to the first one in 2007 while waiting for Kalia. We skipped last year, and were able to go this year with our new daughter. We always have a blast.

This year they had artists doing various things such as making dolls to match people out of clay, calligraphy, palm printing, paper cutting & writing your name using zodiac animals. It was all very cool to watch. Those artists are amazing!
They also had some fun games. The girls tried their hand at the diabolo. We bought them one when we were in China, but they haven't really mastered it yet (as evidenced in this video!)

They also had to move marbles from one bowl to another using chopsticks. Emilee is really good at using chopsticks, but had a hard time doing this. Amanda did pretty well. (I stunk!!!)


After the games we made our way to the theater for some yummy (and I do mean YUMMY!) lunch. They had rice noodles, fried rice, sweet & sour chicken, some sort of shrimp dish, ribs, meatballs, some desserts, etc... We had a little trouble with Kalia. I think she was just overwhelmed, because when we sat her down to feed her she went all crazy on us. She was hungry, but wasn't having anything to do with sitting on the floor to eat. I finally took her outside to calm her down, and once I brought her back in I sat her on my lap to finish eating. Then she did fine. She still has her moments when around big groups of people, so I think maybe this just hit her wrong. She was a little angel the rest of the day!


The show was AWESOME as always! It was different than the first year (which I liked), and included lots of drum acts (which I LOVED!). Those drummers are AMAZING!!! They were originally scheduled to perform in the Olympics, but got booted at the last minute (I don't remember the reason).


After the show they had a question/answer session with the performers. Then they gathered all the children from China onstage for pics with them. I took Kalia onstage thinking there was no way she would sit there by herself. I sat her down in the front row, and she whimpered for a bit, then began to play with the confetti on the stage. I was really shocked that she didn't start running after me! A little girl was playing with her, maybe that helped!

Once that was done we went with our local FCC group for dinner. It was good, but a little pricey I think. I had the mushroom & swiss burger, but it was WAY overcooked. Their fries were yummy though!

We finally started the 3 hour drive home around 8:00. Kalia slept most of the way home, so once there she was having nothing to do with sleep. We finally put her in bed with us, ignored her, and she finally fell asleep around 1:00.

It was a great time! Can't wait to do it again next year! Maybe we'll shake things up a bit & stay the whole weekend. The kids would love that!

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