Our Lily is 6!

It's hard to believe that our little girl is turning 6 on the 28th, yet all the signs are there. She's got her first wiggly tooth, she's chattering happily about school and she's super proud of all the things she can do for herself. As her parents, we are awfully proud of her too. We are so very blessed to have such a sweet, funny, engaging, smart and loving daughter. Happy Birthday Lilianna!

Feeling like Fall & Family

We've been in school now for a month and I can finally say it feels like we are hitting our grove. Lily's tears about the bus are down by 90% (and we're optimistic that they'll be gone this week!) She's doing so well with making friends, becoming more independent and keeping up with the academics. Andrew, whom I orginally thought was totally go with the flow, actually had some stress about me returning to work. He turned into what a friend of ours calls a "Mommy-monster." i.e. he needed mommy alllll the time. He finally seems at peace with our schedule and is back to his happy self. My work schedule is settling into place. Nothing like getting 34 new kids, 4 new teachers and a brand new building! It's a great assignment and I'm feeling more on top of all the demands.

We had the estate sale for Grandma's house. My family worked so hard to get ready for this. It's quite a job to break apart a home of 56 years! The sale went really well and I now 100% know what the term bitter sweet means. As we sorted through all the posessions, they triggered so many great memories and made us miss Grandma that much more. It surely is an end of an era in my life as I've spent all my Thanksgiving, Christmas and countless hours there. As my dad and I sat on Grandma's porch, I realized that this is a place where I grew up, confided about my fears to my Grandma, shared my triumphs during college, planned a wedding and brought home 2 children from the other side of the world. Now this chapter is closed. Then after the sale we all gathered at my inlaws and had the perfect evening with a beautiful view, great company and a yummy dinner. It gave me such a sense of how family endures and how many great times we have together and will have in the future. Fall is definitely in the air and we are looking forward to more family birthdays, pumpkin patch visits, trick or treating, football games and more great family times.

Andrew and Dan Dan

Settling into our new school year........

Whew! Our family has had many, many transitions the past 10 days. I've functionally been assigned to a new job. It's a wonderful assignment, but it's alllll new. New classes, new building, new students, new teachers and all that takes extra work. I'm optimistic that it'll be a good year.

Lily has ventured off to the world of kindergarten and big-kid school. If I ever questioned our decision about sending Lily to kindergarten on the older side (5 turning 6), I know now our decision was 100% right. She's doing well with her classroom, likes her teacher, reports she's making new friends and is happy about what she is learning. However, the bus ride is overwhelming her. It's a short, direct ride and she only has to take the bus in the morning. Still, she's scared to death about being left on the bus, getting lost in the sea of kids infront of the school or not making it to her class. It breaks my heart as her mom to see her so sad and that I can't totally fix this for her. Hopefully, this will get easier and in a month or so, her tears and fears will be all gone.

Andrew has started going to his sitter's house. Thank goodness for Andrew's go-with-the-flow personality. While Lily and I are feeling some growing pains and aren't fans of change, Andrew seems to take it all in stride. He takes after his dad in that way. He wasn't the best napper at the sitters, but I believe that'll change in the next few visits.

Despite all the changes, we've had some nice family time lately. Lily and I did a little mommy-daughter shopping. She saw a Mulan costume at the Disney store and being the softy that I am, I bought it for her. Here she is modeling it.

First Day of School

Yesterday was my first day back to school and today was our sweet Lily's. I can now join the ranks of moms everywhere as I find myself wondering how on earth did she go from a little baby to a school-age child so quick! It does go by in a blink of an eye.

Lily's teacher seems really great. She's all warm and fuzzy ...just the way you want a kindergarten teacher to be. Yet, she's also very organized and I can see that the kids are going to get a lot of great instruction from her. I have to admit it was a bit startling this morning as a dozen of us kindergarten parents stood in the room, said our good-byes, and were hearded out of the room to eat a doughnut at the "Boo-hoo Breakfast." It seemed like their should be something bigger or more symbolic for such a big step. However, I know Lily is in good hands and she'll do well. Now I anxiously await going to pick her up, get a special snack and hear all about her day :)

Vacation Highlights

All good things must come to an end, and so must our vacation. We had a wonderful time and created so many memories. Yet at the same time, it does feel good to be home! Here are some photo highlights from our trip.

Here's the family enjoying some time on the beach:

Andrew loved digging in the sand and finding shells:


Lily had a blast jumping, splashing and rolling around in the waves:


We enjoyed driving down to Muriel's Inlet and getting some delicious seafood and a taste of the low country. We even saw a wild alligator hanging out in a pond.

Lily and I spent some great mommy and daughter time hunting for shells. In all of my beach visits, these are the best shells I've ever collected. I think that a good part of it was just that special time with my daughter.

Maybe it was the wind or maybe it was the salt water & chlorine. I'm not sure, but one afternoon, Andrew woke up with some seriously rocking hair!

We enjoyed the aquarium at Broadway on the Beach

I think this just might be my favorite picture of all 380 that I took. This was taken our last night out at these great little restaurant in Muriel's Inlet. We stumbled across it after the most popular restaurant had an almost 2 hour wait. The food was great, the view was perfect and it was so relaxing.

Some of the other attractions at Myrtle Beach..........

On a particularily rainy day, Bill and I decided to take the kids to one of the dinner theaters here. Since the Dixie Stampede was sold out, we went to the Medievil Times. I'm not sure why it didn't register with us, but we didn't realize that watching men in full armor, riding very fast on horses, with lots of light & sound effects and cheering crowds would be scary for a 19 month old. Trust me we had about 10 minutes of crying and I thought we were going to have to leave the show. Fortunately, Andrew calmed down and we stayed, but I would not recommend this for small children. Here we are in the silly Burger King hats you wear to "cheer your knight."



The kids are having fun on vacation. Between playing hard at the beach & pools and then doing some of the touristy things at night, we have some pretty exhausted little ones. A quick trip to pick up some postcards resulted in this:

First Day at the Beach

We had a great first day at the beach. This is both of the kids first time at the ocean and like everyone says, it's the perfect vacation for them. Lily loves combing the beach for shells. Now in her five year old world, every single shell is a treasure, which is sweet. However, I do think we'll have to get more selective about the shells we bring home our we'll have a garbage bag size full of "treasures!" She also loves the waves and finds jumping in them. It is jellyfish season though and we've seen a few of those guys...so we'll have to be carefull!




Andrew is in love with the beach. As far as he is concerned, we're at the world's biggest sandbox, which I guess we are. By the time we're done playing at the beach, Lily, Bill and I need to rinse our feet. Andrew, well, he's covered from head to toe in sand and looks like a little doughnut that's been rolled in sugar!



Here's the family, minus the photographer, with our hotel in the background. We are really enjoying The Caravelle, the pools and the beach!



We're having a blast here. The weather is overcast with a few showers. It's nice though because we aren't scorching hot and I'm not frying in the sun! Well, off to another morning of treasure hunting with Lily!

Hello From Myrtle Beach

Hello from beautiful Myrtle Beach. Our first family of four vacation has started off quite well. We took an hour and 15 minute flight from Rickenbacker. Kids did great and enjoyed the flight. I think Andrew did so well because he snacked the entire flight. Getting the car rental was easy and our room has exceeded expectations.

Birthdays and Get Togethers

Yesterday we celebrated Bill's birthday. The kids and I had a "surprise" party for Bill. We picked out decorations, made a cake, wrapped our presents and fixed him a steak dinner. While it wasn't a fancy celebration, we all had a good time.



Today we caught up with some of our friends. Their little guy was born 1 day after Andrew, adopted a week before him and lives in a neighboring community. What are the odds? I have to say these are a couple of the cutest little boys I've ever seen!

tree huggers, tap dance, alligators and adoption

I couldn't think of a cohesive title for this post and I realized that we've just been enjoying the unstructured freedom of summer! Bill and I had a big laugh that our Andrew will be liberal like his Mom and become a tree hugger...



Lily has been participating in a dance camp this week. She was sure she wanted to take ballet, but after hearing the clickety-clack of tap shoes she's hooked. We still have jazz, hip-hop and pom-pom. It'll be interesting to see what class she ends up taking in the fall!


I had to laugh that my parents saved everything, and I mean everything from my childhood. While enjoying some time at the inflatible pool they set up just for the kids, my dad brought out an old toy. It's an inflatible alligator that's over 30 years old and it still worked!


Finally, related to nothing (I tell you this is one random post), I have two friends about to embark on the trip of a lifetime. They are going to China to get their precious daughters. We couldn't be more thrilled for them and we can't wait to meet their sweeties! Safe travel friends!

Fun in the Sun

There's not much new to post about. We're enjoying some quieter weeks in the middle of our summer break. The kids are doing well and enjoying the various benefits of summer. Yesterday, I snapped this picture of them laughing on the swing. I just love seeing the joy on their faces.

Our Family of Four

This picture was taken our Familversary. We didn't do anything spectacular, but we had a great day together. This picture makes me happy for so very many reasons.

1 Year Ago Today..........

We became a family of four! At 7:15 a.m. Bill, Lily, Andrew and I all met together in the Delta Terminal. It was a beautiful, emotional moment and one I will cherish forever. Our day will be spent together, hanging out, looking at some pictures and just enjoying some family time. I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating. One of the things the long and challenging road of adoption teaches us parents is to never forget how lucky and blessed we are to have our beautiful children in our lives. I have to leave you all with one my favorite pictures of all time. It's the first moment Bill held Andrew. They say a picture is worth a thousand words.............

Happy 4th of July

Hi,

I hope everyone is enjoying/enjoyed their holiday weekend. Ours was a really nice mix of low-key relaxing and fun family times. On Thursday, I took the kids down to Bill's office for a picnic and to pass out some brownies. The kids always get a kick going to the "big city" and being in "Daddy's" skyscraper. Plus, all of Bill's co-workers treat them so well that they are like little celebrities when we visit and you can imagine how well they love that.

On the fourth we had a great cook-out at Bill's parents new place and then caught the local fireworks. Both activities were a blast. Admittedly, we didn't try to take Andrew to the fireworks because the thought of Mr. Busybody getting seperated from us in a crowd was overwhelming. Plus, we think the fireworks would have scared the bejesus out of him.

Lily and I even had the chance to have a little "girl time" together. Even at a very young age, Lily has enjoyed the "girlie girl" things like shopping, nail polish, fancy hair etc. If it glitters, sparkles or is princess-y, Lily is all about it. One thing Lily has always longed for is curly, curly hair. While browsing a side-walk sale, we found a faux pony-tail with tons of curls, Lily was in heaven! It's a litte OTT (over the top) but she's so happy and I figure what the heck. Here are a few pics of us enjoying the holiday weekend!