A fun Father's Day at the pool

We all went to the pool yesterday for Father's Day. It was a VERY hot day and it felt good to cool off in the pool, the kids had a blast! Maddie just LOVES the pool. We usually go a couple times a week and we also went Friday after Andy got home from work. Afterwards I washed and dried all of our towels and bathing suits and they were folded on the couch. Yesterday Maddie wanted to go to the pool so bad that she got everyones bathing suits off the couch and started walking around handing them out to everyone saying "poo" (pool). Our little activities coordinator:)

School's Out!

Brendan's last day of school was last Friday so he's done for the summer. In the fall he will start 4th grade, wow! I took my traditional last day of school photo of him to compare to the first day of school photo. On Tuesday they had a surprise luau party for his class and Andy, Maddie & I all went. It was a lot of fun. Maddie had fun partying with all of the third graders. Dylan will continue his homeschooling through the summer, with me doing a couple hours with him in the morning and his other teachers taking over from 10-4 each weekday. We will most likely continue with homeschooling him for next school year too. He is doing SO well and he proves to us each and every day what a smart boy he is:)

We don't have much planned for the summer. Andy will be off for vacation again the week of July 4th and we'll probably just stay around here. I'm sure we will be making lots of trips to the beach and to our pool to to stay cool this summer.

A Day At The Zoo

Last Friday we did a family trip to Columbia's Riverbanks Zoo. Andy was off on vacation for the week and Dylan has been doing a zoo unit w/school, so we decided to do a "field trip" and made a trip up to Columbia. It was not very busy because school wasn't out yet, which was nice, but it was a very hot day. The kids (and us) all had a great time seeing all the animals. Dylan's favorite animal was the elephant, Brendan liked the lemurs, and I think Maddie was just amazed at seeing ALL of the animals, she did great. We all (even Maddie) got to feed Chrissy the giraffe, which was a neat experience. We put some lettuce in our hands and held it out flat and she came up ever so gently and took it with her lips and tongue, the prickly hair from her lip tickled. After several hours we were all hot and the kids were getting tired so we hopped back in the car and headed home. It was a great day!

Brendan & Dylan's NASCAR Adventure

On May 9th Brendan & Dylan attended their first NASCAR race at Darlington Raceway here in South Carolina. Andy actually won 4 free tickets and we got to take the boys. They were VERY excited. We had great seats right in front of pit road and the boys had ear plugs and headphones to help with the noise of the cars. We were kind of worried about how Dylan would do with the crowds and the noise, but he did great! He was very exited that there were a lot of cautions (crashes), he really likes those a lot. It was a night race and he did eventually fall asleep just over half way through the race. Going in, we didn't think they would make it through the entire race, so just over half way through was fine with us, since the race went on until about midnight. It was a fun experience for all of us and we hope we can go to another race next year. Maddie got to spend the day and night with Papa & Nana while we were at the race she and had a great time with them.

A Week With Maggie

My sister Kathleen and Maggie came to visit for a week on May 12. The girls had such a great time together. When Kathleen & Maggie came at Christmas it was very hectic. We had just moved into our new house, Maddie was quite shy since she had only been home with us for 3 months and everyone was sick:( This time it was just wonderful! They really interacted and played well with each other. During the week we went to the pool, went to the beach, played outside, and played bubbles (their favorite). They also both love to dance, hold hands and give hugs and kisses to each other. Since both their birthdays are in July, we decided to have a little birthday celebration for them while we were all together. Papa and Auntie Colleen from Michigan also came to visit and were there for the party. We chose a tinkerbell/fairy theme and bought the girls matching dresses to wear. It was a wonderful week with them and we look forward to the next time we see them.

Maddie went to the Dr. for her well visit on Friday and she is doing really well. She now weighs 24 lbs. and is 32 inches tall. She is continuing to steadily build her vocabulary with her newest words being ball, happy, bow, bubble & apple. She loves playing outside and we took her to the pool for the first time a couple weeks ago and she just loved it! She is also really into her flashcards and books lately. She goes through the entire stack of 25+ cards and has us label each one. She also has her favorite 6-8 books that we read every night before bed. I am SO glad she is finally more interested in her books.

Easter 2009

When I looked at the date of my last post I was surprised that I hadn't posted in a while, how time flies. We have had a good spring so far. The kids have been enjoying playing outside a lot. Maddie has been helping me plant flowers, her favorites are digging in the dirt and watering the flowers. The weekend before Easter we went to and adoption celebration hosted by the homestudy agency that backed our homestudy. It was at a beautiful park and they had the Easter Bunny there (who Maddie wanted absolutely nothing to do with) and they did a small egg hunt for the kids, it was a lot of fun and it was great to meet other families who had also adopted. For Easter we went up to my Dad's for the day. It was a warm sunny day, so the kids had fun playing outside with their bubbles that the Easter Bunny brought for them. Maddie also tried the sprinkler for the first time last weekend. We set up our big sprinkler beach ball on the front lawn and they all ran through it. Surprisingly Maddie really didn't mind getting wet with very cold water. She finally got to wear one of her many bathing suits. Once it gets a bit warmer we will introduce her to the pool, I'm sure she'll love it. Enjoy the spring pictures!

6 months

Six months ago today Maddie and I arrived home from Vietnam. What a wonderful six months it has been so far, getting to know her and watching her grow and develop into such an amazing little girl. We had to write a letter and send some pictures to our adoption agency as our first post adoption report to let them know how Maddie is doing. I had a hard time choosing the pictures because we have so many good ones of her. We managed to get a great family shot (above) on Friday night when we went out to dinner. It was a beautiful night and we were able to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine. Her newest words are "bye-bye" and counting "one, two, three, go", it's so cute the way she says it.