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.

Maddie's first trip to the beach

Yesterday we had a beautiful 80 degree sunny day so we decided to go to the beach. It was Maddie's first time at the beach and she loved it! At first she was a bit unsure of all of the sand but in no time she was helping her brothers dig holes in the sand. We all had a great time and everyone got very sandy! The water will be warming up in the next couple of months, so soon we can introduce Maddie to the ocean and playing in the waves:)

Just a few pictures of Maddie from February. Sorry for the blurry ones, my camera has been having issues lately. Maddie is enjoying playing dress up lately. She enjoys putting on hats, her own and everyone elses. She also likes to "help" fold laundry by putting on clothes. Lately her favorite seems to be her brother's underwear. Maddie also got her first hair trim last weekend. I just had a little taken off her bangs, because they were hanging in her eyes. She got to sit in a pink car and did very well. She really likes playing with her brothers and loves her animals. Last weekend when Brendan and Dylan were playing with their race track, she plopped down right in the middle and kept grabbing the cars as they went by. Her newest word is "apple", which she said while sharing an apple with Mommy at lunch on Saturday.

Happy Valentine's Day

Make a Smilebox greeting

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