Pics and things

Is it really the end of July? Every month seems to be flying by. I know I'm always saying the same thing but that is exactly what it feels like.

I'd like to say a quick congratulations to Don and Be who are finally home with their beautiful china doll. We look forward to meeting Joanna Mei very soon. By the looks of it you guys are already giving her the tour around town.

Congrats to Tammy for jumping in the Sean band wagon to spend time with family. It has been and continues to be an awesome experience for us. I know it won't be long before Caris becomes the world traveler with all of the traveling you guys do already. I hope that means you will frequent FL more often:-) We will definitely come meet you and will probably wear out our welcome mat at the Bonita Springs Estate, lol!

Barb - I am so thrilled to hear that you continue to follow our journey. The girls are growing up so fast. I loved seeing the reunion pics and Emily is beautiful! I use the Foto Fusion software as it is by far the easiest program to use for the simple layouts. It does not require a learning curve. I'll send you the link soon. Thanks for posting to let me know you are checking in:-)

Now for some pics:

I love this pic of Kylie with her Daddy. She adores him and so do I:-)

Our big girl!

Future blogger:-) Kylie has now successfully learned how to navigate the right handed mouse although she is left handed. We may eventually purchase a left handed mouse.

**Can one of you bloggers out there help me figure out how to enter double spaces in between paragraphs? I've tried several options and nothing seems to work. Thanks!**

Weekend outings

Wow, I didn’t mean to wait so long before my next post. We have been incredibly busy enjoying quality time with our family and friends. We are having a fantastic summer and we don’t want it to end.

Last weekend we attended Lily Keefer’s 3 yr old birthday party. Geez Krista can you believe you are the mom to a 3yr old?!?! The theme was Strawberry Shortcake and the decorations were oozing SS all over. It was beautiful and Ms. Shortcake herself made an appearance. Kylie had a blast and kept inviting SS to her house. It turns out Kylie wants everyone to come to her house now. It’s her new thing. The party was all beautifully planned and executed. Great job Dave & Krista! It was also my niece’s 4th birthday. She lives in Tampa and we were sorry to have to miss it. Happy Birthday Ani! We love you!!

This past weekend, Kylie got to enjoy Saturday afternoon with Jeanne and Ellie for lunch then the Orlando Art Museum for a little culture and story time. Sean and I enjoyed a nice quiet lunch and we were able to breeze thru some errands. What a huge difference when you don’t have to strap in a sassy 3yr old each time. Then around 5pm Kylie came home and in turn we got to watch Ellie and Sagan so that their parents can enjoy a nice relaxing dinner. Sean of course cooked up a delicious meal which the girls ate every bit followed by an ice cream treat with their choice of sprinkles. Sunday we met the Zanegoods at Aqua-tica in the morning and then we met the Keefer’s at Ep*cot in the afternoon. My new “extra” day off a week, Sean and I try to catch a movie.

Kylie’s favorite things to say:
“That’s my favit” (favorite)
“What’s that? what’s that? what’s that???”
“I need to” We’ll ask why did you do that and she’ll say “I need to”
“You come to my house”
“I no wanna nap”
“I no wanna rest”
“I no wanna sleep”
“I no wanna quiet time”

And she shrugs her shoulders…a lot. Very entertaining our little one…she knows way too much. Also, not that there was ever any doubt but we do not need to get her hearing checked. She can hear us just fine…trust me. She hears Sean and I whispering to each other or she must have somewhere along the way learned to read lips. She has mastered the art of selective listening. Oh and we can no longer say things to people in front of her, about her. She completely understands EVERYTHING we say and it has come back to haunt me. My little girl is growing up way too fast…

Sean is enjoying being a stay at home dad for the summer. I believe that the one on one attention Kylie is getting from her Daddy have both helped develop her vocabulary and it has spoiled her rotten! Kylie enjoys her cooking lessons with her Daddy and I do believe she can crack an egg better than I can – lol! DH on the other hand enjoys adult conversation now more than ever! Ha, ha! He is a loving and wonderfully attentive father. There are a few and “interesting” employment opportunities presenting themselves but we are not ready to give up our summer vacation just yet…or are we…?? Stay tuned.

Going to bed now. It's late, I'm tired and blogger is not cooperating with me tonight. I'll post more pics later.

Holiday weekend

We had a fun filled holiday weekend. My SIL & family spent the 4th with us.

We went to Sea W*rld in the morning where Kylie and her cousin Ani had lots of fun. After nap time the girls showed off their swimming skills in the pool. The girls had a great time and played well together. Saturday morning we met up with family and friends for a little fun in the sun and water play for the kids. Judging by this pic I think Kylie had a nice time:-)

Saturday night Sean, Kylie and I went back to Sea W*rld in the evening. It was great to see the shows in the evening. After one of the shows we came across loud funky music and "mermaids & mermen" in an area usually dedicated to pearl diving. We were delighted in Kylie's excitement in interacting with the swimmers and dancing to the beat of the music. It is tough to tell from these pictures I placed into a collage but I thought I post them to give an idea of what it looked like. I took lots of video and they all turned out pretty dark and blurry - ugh!Sunday is such a blur. We are enjoying our summer and Kylie & I love having her Daddy around. It feels like summer is flying by way to fast. Kylie will be 3yrs old next month and I still can't believe how fast time is going by.

Playing the violin

Kylie joined her friend Ellie for Violin lessons last week. Kylie seemed to really enjoy it so she is getting the opportunity to join Ellie again today. Here is a little video our friend Jeanne took of the girls practicing some notes. Enjoy!

Two years ago this month we received the most exciting news from China. We had been blessed with the most beautiful baby girl. I recall asking our case worker "is this the call" and she said "yes". She went on to give me the details as I nervously wrote down every word. That is until she got to the part of were Kylie was from. "She is from Gansu"....Me - Gan what? Where is that?? I was prepared for her to be from any other part of China, I had done my homework. But no blog or no one ever mentioned Gansu. Little did we know how fortunate we would be to visit a part of China that most people will never get a chance to see. It was an incredible place full of beautiful tall mountains on the border line of Mongolia. The tall mountains where in the colors and shades of teracotta and rust. This was no Beijing. Looking back this place was no Guangzhou. It was different and it was our daughter's home. What an incredible experience. Fast forward two years and no matter how many times people told us having a child would change our lives forever, you have no idea exactly what that means until you go through it. Sean and I looked at Kylie's picture together for the first time and tears of joy ran down my face. I still get very emotional when I look at Kylie's referral pic. Sean and I could not have planned nor prepared for the most beautiful, smart, happy, well behaved and sassy girl. We love you Kylie and you fill our lives with so much pride and joy.

I LOVE your smile!

Father's Day/Birthday weekend

We had a wonderful father’s day weekend filled with lots of fun activities. Our weekend started on Friday as we headed towards the beach in Clearwater. We had a nice relaxing time and took lots of pics of Kylie enjoying the sand and water. We then headed over to Tampa where we spent the night at my brother & sister in law's house. Kylie played with her cousins Ani & Keane. The next morning as we were preparing to head back home to a birthday party, I asked my SIL if Ani my niece could join us for the fun filled weekend we had planned for Kylie. Not that we would have minded having Keane too, but it would have been to traumatic for him to leave his mommy. To my surprise and delight she said yes. Ani & Kylie played so well together and had such a blast. They played at the park, water play area and jumped around in a bounce house. There were lots of giggles as the girls enjoyed tons of food, sno-cones, friends and of course cake! There was a caricature artist and we had Kylie’s first caricature drawing done.

Finally we celebrated my birthday on Monday. I’m officially 40 something;-) Sean cooked us a scrumptious filet mignon dinner and then we had the yummiest chocolate cake for dessert. Sean had every little detail figured out and it was a wonderful birthday. If I had to sum up what the favorite part of my birthday was besides my wonderful husband going out of his way to make it a special day? It is the beautiful clip of my baby girl willingly wanting to perform her version of the birthday song on camera for her mommy. It just could not get any better than this. Enjoy!

Kylie, Ani & Ellie

Kylie's caricature drawing

Pool fun

Digi layouts

I'm really enjoying learning about this digi scrapping stuff. It helps to have such a beautiful subject to work with:-)

credits: Paper by Digitreats, elements tbd, font Scriptiva

Credits: Paper by Digitreats

A magical moment...

Imagine our surprise when we were able to see the princessess by just waiting in line for approx 10 min. This on the day when I chose to leave my good camera home because I didn't feel like carrying "the bulky one". Kylie was thrilled to meet some of her favorite characters. I snapped away with my little camera that could and here are the unedited pics. Enjoy!

Vacation pics

I'm happy to say we've been pretty busy. I wanted to make sure I posted more pics from our vacation because we had an awesome time and we can't wait to do it again. We've been enjoying quality time together visiting with whales, dolphins, rats and princeses. Kylie is enjoying spending lots of time with her Daddy. Just this evening she asked to dance with her Prince and I asked oh you want to dance with the "Prince"? She corrected me matter of factly and said no mommy "my Daddy is the Prince"...duh silly mommy. Anyway, it was precious. Sean of course was happy to dance with Kylie the princess herself was all dressed up for the ball. Kylie is talking tons and sometimes she speaks so fast we can't figure out what she just said as she tends to omit some words every now and then. She scolded Daddy today and it took us sometime to figure out why after their pretend snack. It turns out Daddy was supposed to excuse himself from the table. So you see, we have been quite busy enjoying quality time with our little one who has so much energy and keeps us on our toes. Enjoy the pics

I didn't want to end this post on a sad note but I think it is worth noting. This past Wednesday the three of us spent the evening at a Memorial service for a co-worker's daughter. She was 25yrs old and died tragically in a car accident Sunday evening. My heart aches at the unimaginable thought of anyone having to bury their child.

Rest & Relaxation

Enjoying family time at the panhandle. Kylie is having a blast with her cousins. Enjoy the pics!

It's ALL about Family...

Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies and mommies to be!

Daddy is home, Daddy is home!!! Kylie kept asking where is Daddy? The answer was always the same, "Daddy is working, honey". Then one day Kylie stopped asking and started matter of factly stating daily that her Daddy was working. This made us quite sad as that is not how we had envisioned our life to be once Kylie was home. Once it was made clear to Sean by his employer that this was the expectation, Sean and I had a heart to heart conversation and decided to no longer stay with his employer. Not another week nor even another day. It just seemed pointless to continue when it was expected and not appreciated. It is a decision that we did not want to have to make but one we felt was important for the sake of our family. We realize that not everyone has an opportunity to make those types of decisions and it was not an easy one for us either but one that we felt strongly about. HOLY MOLY - we are thrilled beyond belief and have not looked back! Both Kylie and I are enjoying having Daddy all to ourselves. For those of you who know Sean he is the most amazing, unselfish, giving, hard working, loving and funny guy. Projects are being accomplished around the house, and long neglected home improvements are now in full swing. I come home to yummy dinners and the BEST part is Kylie has been spending loving quality time with her Daddy. Sean picks up Kylie from daycare, they go to Sea W*rld, Mag*c Kingd*m and Aqua-tica together. I love to hear Kylie's excitement when I get home from work and she tries to explain what fun things she and her Daddy did together. We are enjoying and actually planning weekend outings together. Additionally, I am now working 4 days on and 3 days off and we have a wonderful beach vacation planned. Oooohhh life is good. We are very thankful to have a loving supportive family and caring friends. I especially want to thank my friends Robin and Jeanne for immediately going into action on ways to help us and always checking up on us. Your encouragement and support mean the world to me. We are very hopeful that the next career opportunity for Sean will value the work/life balance because we will not have it any other way. Life is too short to not focus on the stuff that is REALLY important to us. Starting a family did not come easy for us and we could not have asked for a more perfect daughter. We plan to enrich, cherish and nurture our daughter's life in every way that we can and that includes being there for her and loving her unconditionally. She fills our lives with so much love and happiness. She is growing up so fast right before our eyes and we are just in awe of her. Feel free to raise your glass with me and as my father in law always says "here is to family...everything else is bullshit". You gotta love it:-)

Fun with Daddy

Helping Daddy make breakfast

Preparing to jump
Kylie loves this and insists that daddy lifts her up as she giggles with such delight and I watch with panic hoping that her little shoulders don't come out of their little sockets:-)

If you wish upon a star...

Kylie giving her Dad instructions on where to go next

I love this pic! It looks like a portrait. It was taken at Disn*y's Fort Wild*rness while we waited for the bus shuttle

Lately, Kylie has been enjoying pretending to be the mommy. Too cute!

We have babies!! We wondered no more why the Ducks where enjoying hanging out by our pool so much. There was a lovely little nest behind one of the rocks by the pool. Bruiser was banned from going out in our back yard for a few weeks.

This was the ducklings 1st swimming lesson and they could not figure out how to get out of the water. After what felt like hours, Sean decided to build this little ramp for them. It felt like it took hours for them to figure out that they can finally get out of the water this way. Too stinking adorable!

Sean thought I was nuts for taking a picture of my new faucet to post but if you've seen my old faucet you'd be doing a happy dance for me.
Kylie inspecting Daddy's handy work

We rarely have pictures together (I plan to work on that). I finally asked someone to snap a picture of us and this is the result. Kylie was almost cut off and clearly focused on the ride and what creature was creaping out of the water next.

Play dates

BFF's - Natalie & Kylie

Fun in the sun - BFF's, Ellie, Kylie & Lily

Ellie, Kylie & Sagan

Happy Anniversary!

HAPPY 8TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY, HONEY!! I LOVE YOU!!

Wuwei Princesses - Bonita Springs

We had a FABULOUS weekend!! It started with a 3hr drive to Bonita Springs to meet two of Kylie's buddies from Wuwei. Kylie did great on the car ride. She actually napped for part of it. She was very excited about going to see Caris and Madi. The Welsh's were on a mini vacation from chilly Maine and the Murphy's had a 3hr drive from sunny Del Ray. It was a wonderful little reunion and the girls had a blast. Thanks to Tammy's parents for opening up their lovely home and allowing us to spend the night. The accommodations were first class. Seriously, their house is gorgeous! Our reunion started with the girls exchanging gifts, we had lunch, hung out by the pool and then had an awesome dinner. We then chatted some more over a few drinks, while the girls settled down with a little TV time and then they were quite tired. After a good nights rest, we reconvened over a huge, yummy breakfast. We snapped a few more photos and had to get back on the road so that my hubby can get back to work that afternoon. It was an awesome weekend and one that was made possible thanks to the wonderful journey of our adoption process. We would not have met these wonderful families otherwise.

How not to wear goggles...

Happy April!

Geeez, it's April already?!?!

We had a lovely weekend. We went to Kylie's second movie this past Friday. Unlike her first experience in a movie theater, this time we didn't have to leave 20 min before the movie ended. Woohoo! We saw Hort*n Hears a Wh*. It was adorable and Kylie seemed to really enjoy it along with her popcorn.

On Saturday we had little visitors stop by our pool. A pair of ducks to be exact. Kylie and I were pretty excited and Bruiser was barking up a storm. I grabbed my camera and snapped a few pics. Sean then reminded me that it was all fun now but wait until they make our pool their home and dirty all over our patio. Always the voice of reason that hubby of mine. Well I ended up spending part of the morning scaring them away because they kept coming back. Eeek!

Later on Saturday we ended up going to Sea W*rld. I love it when we have no specific plans and we can be spontaneous on what we want to do for the day. We watched a show and then our water girl played in the splash area. We had a really nice time.

On Sunday, we started the morning off with bagels at our favorite shop and then off to the new water park Aqua*tica. We decided that annual passes were in order so we took the plunge. I LOVE living in FL! So much to do and wonderful weather all year round. Kylie is enjoying every minute of it and we enjoy every minute with her.

I love you baby girl!!!

This month will be very busy for both Sean and I. I'm looking forward to one weekend of lounging around by the pool and doing absolutely nothing, maybe next month:-)

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