Mother and Child Reunion

This weekend is the 1st Annual Hunan Spicy Girls Reunion. What an incredible, amazing weekend we are having! Our friends started arriving Thursday night... They are all staying at the Pink Shell Resort, which is absolutely wonderful! It is right on Ft Myers Beach, and the rooms are fantastic from what I saw! We tried to stick it out until everyone got there, but there were some flight delays and we just couldn't hang on that long...

On Friday, we all met up and had some fun poolside... I missed a lot of the day because I overslept, but we still had some fun with everyone before naptime... which Rachel opted to avoid! We went to Sophie & Gary's room to chill out before meeting everyone for dinner. We really tried to get the girls to sleep, but Zia was busy feeding goldfish crackers to Rachel! And of course, Rachel would not deny her that pleasure! So, no nap, no way, no how... She did, however, let Aunt Sophie put some beautiful pigtails in her hair!!!
So now it's time to meet everyone in the lobby to catch the trolley to Times Square for dinner... so of course THAT'S when Rachel decides its time for a nap! LOL.. but so did Faith (the one I always called the "Little Judge" when we were in China!)

The girls all woke up in time for dinner at a local restaurant.. I think we shocked them coming in with 16 adults and 14 kids!!! But they got us all seated in the same section and everyone seemed to enjoy the food.

On Saturday, my dear friend Nicole met us all at the beach and took some amazing shots of the girls...

This was almost as tough as the red couch shots!

Nicole also got some incredible candid shots of all the girls... it was so wonderful.

Later in the afternoon, the gang came to our house for a BBQ / Pool party... we had a BLAST! The kids all seemed to have fun, and even Penny got into the fun. Abbey... well she bit my dad so she got locked up for the duration. She really doesn't like crowds!

Nicole came back to our house and just took some fabulous pictures! We were SO happy she did this for us.

This shot is of the 3 cribmates! Kaelin Bing, Rachel & Alexis. They were reportedly close friends in the orphanage and even shared a crib!

I was also THRILLED that she got a family shot for us! We have almost NO pictures of all three of us together!

The kids had fun playing on the swing & slide, and had a real blast playing with Rachel's Bongo drums. We all enjoyed the concert they performed!

Here is my girl Sophie... this reunion was her idea, and she did such a great job putting it all together... I did my best to help, but man, she knows how to organize! And how's this for special... while they were here, my girlfriend Margie tattooed Zia's name on Gary's arm!!! She brought all her gear to the house for anyone who wanted to get a tattoo done! I felt really bad that Gary was the only one who was willing to do it. She dragged so much equiptment here thinking we had at least of FEW guys willing to do it! Oh well.. Tommy decided now he wants to get something done with my name & Rachel's name... too sweet!

This picture I took... and I think it sums up the day pretty well! Our poor Penny puppy was TOTALLY exhausted. I took a whole mess of pictures of her with her lambie wrapped around her face and she didnt even BLINK! I know WE had a fabulous time and were So happy all our friends were here with us.

We were truly blessed to have traveled with such an amazing group of people. I hope that we will have these reunions every year... I just feel so close to them all!