Fall Photos

My babies are growing up way too quick. I had some photos done at Target for fall recently. The girls looked so beautiful and so grown up. Where have my babies gone. Delylah is 2 and looks like a big kids already. It is hard to believe she doesn't turn 3 until January. My goodness Lennah looked liked a kid and not a baby. Hard to believe my big girl turns 4 in December. Time is flying by.

Disney

I was fortunate enough to have a break built into September for our new school calendar. Being a teacher does not pay great but I do enjoy the breaks that so many others out in the work force do not enjoy. Unfortunately Keith is one of these people who doesn't get as much time off but that did not deter me from taking the kids to Disney. So off we headed with my parents and brother to take a much anticipated trip.

The first day my brother and I took the kids to Epcot for several hours. The girls love the finding nemo ride and the boat ride in Mexico. They just wanted to keep going on the rides. Luckily for us it was not too crowded.

The next morning we took the kids back to Epcot and had breakfast in Norway with the Princesses. Every time a princess came to our table the girls were just thrilled.

The next day was the highlight of the girl's week since we hit majoc kingdom. We had breakfast with Winnie the Pooh and just had a blast watching the girls get excited from each ride. THey both loved Dumbo, Magic carpets of Aladdin, and any other ride we stuck them on.

We also hit up animal kingdom which Delylah really enjoyed. She is my museum, zoo, any sort of learning place type kid. She just loves watching animals and seeing new stuff.

We also had a chance to visit Seaworld while we were in Florida. Delylah had a blast feeding the dolphins, Lennah however got a little freaked out and was nervous that a dolphin would bite her. Delylah absolutely loved the shows and Lennah really enjoyed the rides that they had for kids. Overall it was a fun trip.

My little speller

So we have worked very hard with Lennah to get her to know her alphabet (both upper and lower case) and to get numbers and counting down. So since she has mastered her whole alphabet I have been working on words and spelling. Here is Lennah spelling her first 4 words she learned for us in a video. Mind you Delylah has a long name so we are proud of our 3 year old.

Soccer

So it has been a month since my last post and in that time Lennah has started soccer. We gave up Karate and dance, well basically because I don't think either was high energy enough for Lennah. She has been asking about doing hockey and living in GA hockey is not an option to play, especially for a little girl (She got the idea for hockey since my dad was watching it in front of her one day). Anyway, we figured soccer might be a good fit. So she had her first practice almost two weeks ago and this past Saturday was her first game. Needless to say Lennah did not want to play at her first practice but last week she started getting into it. So thank goodness she got to play in her first game. Granted it is only a bunch of three year olds but they were so cute to watch. Her team, the Rockets, lost but hopefully this coming Saturday they will get a few more goals.

As for the adoption front. We did not realize what a different ball game adopting from the US is in comparison to international. Our agency never heard back from the social worker when she told them she had a family interested in the group so we are still waiting for a match. We are okay with that because we do have our trip to Disney planned in a few weeks and were worried that we did not plan on having a few new kids to take since we never thought the process would have been that fast. All we can say it is in God's hands for now.

We are also very thankful that we abandon our journey to Rwanda since we read that they are not accepting any new dossiers until all the Hague stuff is settled. I am not quite sure how that will slow down the people waiting but I now know 100% that we were never meant to be in Rwanda it just was a detour that took us to where we were supposed to be.

Princess Gala

Tonight was a fun night. Lennah has been attending Princess camp through the local parks and recreation this past week. Tonight, they ended the week of camp with a princess gala. All the little girls were crowned as honorary princesses. Keith took the night off work so he could escort Lennah to her crowning. It was such a cute event. I cannot wait until next year when both girls can go to Princess camp. Delylah wanted to join so bad. Lennah was a little too over excited about the event but all in all it was a fun and really cute night.

Happenings

Happy Adoption Day Girls

3rd Gotcha Day

I have been so backed up I have not had a chance to post. I am especially angry with myself because I needed to post two important days and hadn't gotten around to them yet. Anyway, on July 21st we hit our 3rd gotcha day for Lennah. It is just so amazing that she has been with us for 3 years and also so sad that time is going by so quickly and our beautiful little girl is growing up on us. We don't do big celebrations but being that she has a grasp of her adoption we showed her pictures and talked to her that three years ago to that very day Mommy and Daddy got to meet her for the first time in Vietnam. Honestly, I never thought a three year old could understand her adoption so well. Several weeks ago we were in a doctors office and there was a huge wall map and I showed her where we live, where she is from, and where her sister is from (we are really trying to get her into geography being that we are an international family and mommy does teach it) and she asked if she could go visit her other mommy in Vietnam. Yes she gets it that she had another mommy that could not take care of her because she was sick. When I told her that I wouldn't not know where to find her she told me that it was sad. Lennah could be so sweet sometimes. Don't get me wrong everyone knows our little Lennah could be a hyper wild child but she just amazes me sometimes.

Of course two days after gotcha day is the big day in our home because it was adoption day for both the girls. Delylah hit the 2 year mark as our little girl and obviously for Lennah it was her 3rd. Delylah still has her gotcha day to come but I just can still remember praying that we would get to be Delylah's parents and really hitting a low point where we thought we would lose her since there were problems with her orphanage. It was just a miracle that two years ago we got the call saying the court granted the adoption.

We did have a mini celebration because Keith had to work. Each girl got a little present. Lennah got a little scooter and Delylah has been into her toy kitchen so she got a whole big toy food set. Oh and we got a beta fish now named Eleanor. The girls were so excited and we talked about how it is a special day just for both of them.

Since all those happenings last week we have been busy. Lennah has been going to Princess camp this week so I have been lucky to have some one on one time with Delylah. I also had a yard sale thanks to Starbucks. They hosted one for free and you just had to sign up and bring all your stuff there to sell this past Sunday. We figured we needed to do some major cleaning out since we know we will be having additions to the family soon.

ON that note, we sort of have a referral. Once we know more we will update everyone but we are trying not to get too excited since this is totally different than our other adoptions. We still have to get the profile for the kids (yes kids more than one) so we should hopefully know more by Friday.

One last note. For all my fellow Vietnamese adoptive moms. I am in the middle of reading a book called If you lived here by Dana Sachs. It is a fictional novel based on a women adopting from Vietnam. So far it is a good read so take a look at this book. I picked it up I think for a few dollars used on amazon.

Vacation

One of My Fav Pics of Delylah taken before vacation with Charlie (her cribmate)

THe kids on the Staten Island Ferry

The Fourth of July

Point Pleasant NJ

The Presidents Museum with Ronald Reagan(No it is not a great likeness)

Building their bears

Working on pottery at the Wilderness Lodge

We just finally got back from vacation several days ago. It was almost a ten day trip if you want to count travel time. Anyway, we have had this trip planned for a while to go see one my friend Jaime up in NJ. Anyway, we drove straight through up to NJ and was quite surprised the the 16 hour trip (thanks for the traffic in Maryland turning it into 16 hours) were really good. I thought the girls would give us such a hard time being cooped up in a car for so long but everything was great. We got in Friday night and obviously we were tired. The next day we decided to hit NYC. We spent the day at the American Museum of Natural History. Delylah really loved this place. It is amazing to see a 2 year old get excited about places like this. She loved seeing the animal exhibits and the dinosaurs. We were also fortunate enough to visit an exhibit that I had really wanted to see on the Silk Road.

Over the next few days we spent time in her pool and took a trip to the beach at Point Pleasant, NJ. Delylah did not dig the waves but eventually Lennah really got into the beach and the girls had a great time. After that we hit up one of the kiddie amusement parks and the girls spent some time riding the kiddie rides.

We spent a bit more time visiting family and friends in the NY/ NJ area and then headed to Hershey Park, PA on Thursday. This was the perfect theme park for kids. There were so many rides that the little ones could do and we also spent part of the day in the water park they have that is also included in admission. Gosh I sound like a commercial but I have to say it was a great place for the little ones since so many theme parks are not kid friendly and are more focused on the adult type thrill rides. The next day we took a trip to Gettysburg, PA. I wish we would have had more time there but trying to do educational historical stuff with little ones is not really the best idea. So we opted to visit the Museum of Presidents for an hour and then walk around the battlefield before we did something in the area more kid friendly. We stopped at a place called Boyd's Bear country. Basically it is a tourist version of build a bear out in the middle of nowhere. It was pretty cool and the prices were actually a little cheaper than build a bear so the kids had a good time in Gettysburg after all.

On Saturday we made it to the Smokey Moutains and took the girls to the Wilderness Lodge that they had begged to go to. It was a great place for the little ones because they had several kiddie areas in the water parks that the kids could play around in. Delylah loves water parks and it was so hard trying to get her to come out of the water. She may not have enjoyed the beach this trip but she definitely is a pool person.

Finally on Sunday we headed home but not before we made one last stop for the girls to visit Santa Claus. Yep that is right in the middle of July in Pigeon Forge you can visit Santa Claus. Hopefully, this gives me a little leverage with the kids because I have been telling Lennah that is she is a good girl I will call Santa and let him know.

So that was the end of our trip. It has been nice being home and trying to get my house in tip top shape before I head back to work in less than 3 weeks. Gosh this summer has went quickly. But I would like to get rid of a lot of stuff that just takes up space before we have a referral and then I am scrambling to get everything going to accommodate our new children. So it is going to be crazy around here while I get organized and get rid of useless items taking up space.

Summer and Passing Time

Lennah and Gavin on the way to the circus

Movie in the Park with Zubin (too bad we didn't stay for the movie)

Delylah riding a camel and the circus

Lennah at Karate class

Making Daddy and Big Ba's Father's Day Gifts

Daddy where the shirt the girls made him

Sam, Jack, Lennah, and Seth

So summer is officially here and I have been out of work for several weeks. I have been keeping the girls busy with playdates, classes, and hanging out in the pool. Lennah is loving her little explorers class. Karate she comes around to after she has been there for about 10 minutes and dance I think is probably not going to be around much longer. Delylah is loving her music class and I think she is going to be the musicial kid in the house since she loves singing and dancing so much. We have been fortunate enough to also have some playdates that were long over due with some wonderful friends. I have to admit our weekends were pretty boring for the kids while we were going through our adoption classes. Lennah and Delylah missed their friends and have been so happy to spend time with other kids. We also have some other playdates coming up in the next several days before we head out of town. Which of course is the highlight of the summer since we have a 9 day vacation planned. We originally planned to go up to Jersey and NY to visit friends and family but Lennah and Delylah decided to beg to add some other fun stuff to the trip and we couldn't resist their pleas. Actually we got a flyer in the mail for the Wilderness in the Smokies lodge which has 3 waterparks. The girls got a hold of the flyer and begged to go there. We were thinking about taking them for their adoption day which is coming up next month. Then we realized it be a lot easier to head back through Pennsylvania and Tennessee and hit it up on the way back. So in turn we are shortening our NY/NJ trip to 6 days and taking three days to head back so we could visit Hershey Park, Gettysburg, and then go to the Wilderness Lodge. The girls are super excited because we were going to take them to NYC which they cannot wait to see where mommy is from and go to the Jersey shore. It is so funny because Lennah tells people mommy is from Ork. She for some reason keeps leaving out the New and Y.

On that note I have to say the kids say some funny stuff these days and nothing gets past them. Tonight someone was passing by the house and the dogs started barking insanely. I told them to shut up and Delylah turns to me and says mommy no say that that is bad. I had to crack up. They just say wild things lately and it just shows how much they are growing up.

As for the adoption front we are just waiting patiently. We also heard that the boys we were interested in had been placed with a family so we are just waiting for a match from our agency. I am in so much wonder as to who our children are and when they will be here.

I had a lot of great photos I took from the past few weeks. So I am posting a bunch. Enjoy all.