January so far

We've managed to settle down a bit after the holidays and our big move. The boys went back to school, Andy went back to work and Maddie and I began (and are still) unpacking and getting our new house all set up. We love our new house, it has a lot more room for our new family of 5 (plus the dog and the cat). We decided to use one of the bedrooms upstairs as a therapy room for Dylan so he can have therapy a few days a week in his own therapy room now, he is very excited about this. We made our sun room into a nice cozy 2nd family room (wii room). The boys got a wii for Christmas and it was the perfect place to put it. We have fun on the weekends playing wii sports and racing games together as a family. We also love having a fenced in yard where the kids can play outside and Savannah can run free. Maddie continues to amaze us. The move really didn't affect her at all. We were worried that it might disrupt her current routine and good sleeping habits she had developed, but it didn't affect either. We had our 3 month post adoption visit with our social worker a couple weeks ago and it went very well. Maddie is currently cutting 2 more teeth (ouch) and is continuing to learn more words. Her latest words are baby and meme (for Maddie) and she continues to LOVE music and dancing, she really knows how to move to the music! She also discovered the sit and spin and loves to spin! We didn't do much to celebrate Tet (The Vietnamese New Year) this year, we just ordered Vietnamese crunchy noodles from Mama Fu's for dinner. Maybe next year when we are more organized, we will do a bit of a bigger celebration. Brendan celebrated his 9th birthday last weekend. We had a BBQ with some friends on Saturday for his celebration. That has been our January so far. Enjoy the pictures.

Tet Nguyen Dan 2009 ~ Year of the Water Buffalo

Christmas 2008

Sorry it took me so long to post our Christmas pictures. It has been one busy holiday season for us. Between Christmas, having a constant flow of company staying with us, sickness and moving (that’s right we were crazy enough to move to our new house the weekend before Christmas) we haven’t had much time to do much. Let me start with Maggie & Maddie. My sister Kathleen and her daughter Maggie came in the Monday before Christmas and it was so exciting for the girls to meet for the first time. They were born only 13 days apart in 2 different provinces in Vietnam (about 5 hours away from each other), Maggie went home with her Mommy to Denver at the end of May and Maddie came home to us to South Carolina at the end of September. It was amazing that they met for the first time as cousins! They had a lot of fun playing together and we all had a lot of fun watching them!
During the week we also had visits from Grandma (Andy’s mom) from Michigan, my sister Eileen and her husband John, also from Michigan and Andy’s brother and his family from Florida. With them we also got to meet for the first time their newest addition Joshua, who was born on the same day I picked up Maddie from the orphanage in Vietnam.
Just after Christmas we all went through having a really bad cold that seemed to last forever, but I think we’re all just about on the mend now.
Yes, and all of the above happened just after moving into our new house the weekend before Christmas (were we crazy or what). We tried to move most of our stuff in and get decorated for Christmas to make our house livable and ready for company then we temporarily put our move on hold so we could enjoy Christmas, then continued with moving in a few days later. We are still unpacking and probably will be for a while, but that’s the fun of movingJ I haven’t had a chance yet to take a picture of our new house, but when I do I will post it. I also have to get working on a “New Year” blog header for the blog.
Enjoy the pictures from Christmas 2008!

Christmas Card Pictures

This weekend we attempted to get some pictures for our annual Christmas Card. We used to think it was hard to take pictures of just Brendan & Dylan together. Try adding a squirmy little 16 month old to the mix. I think I must have taken about 30 pictures and the 2 you see above of the 3 of them together is the best it gets! The other 2 pictures of Maddie in the blue dress were taken on Friday before we went to a Christmas party. We took her with us and she was very good. She is now walking everywhere, all of the time and is starting to talk much more. Her new words are "up" and "uh, oh".

One Year Ago (yesterday)

I was disappointed that I couldn't post this yesterday but our internet was down until this morning. One year ago (yesterday) December 11, 2007 @ around 6:00 p.m. we got our "call" from our agency with our referral. Little did we know at the time all that we would have to go through in the following 9 months before we got to hold our sweet Maddison. But I think we can agree that it was all well worth it!

Maddie's First Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving with Dad & Donna in Myrtle Beach this year. The kids had a really fun day. Maddie LOVED her first Thanksgiving dinner, I think the mashed potatoes were her favorite. The rest of the weekend we just took it easy and got some of our Christmas decorations out. We had to wonder what Maddie thought of all of the Christmas lights, Santa hats & reindeer antlers, not to mention a big tree in the middle of our living room.