First Christmas as a family of 4!

My favorite parts about this Christmas:
1. Gianna loves to cook with me (and so does the boy, although he will never admit it...and he'll never know I blew his cover with this picture, mwah ha ha), and we made chocolate covered chocolate pattern cookies with sprinkles. I wanted the moose shaped cookie cutter...you know, for Christmas?? (Now that I write that, I don't really know how moose are Christmasy. ??) But the boy wanted the BAT cookie cutter, and then we ended up with BATS, FROGS and BUTTERFLIES for cookies. Oh well, they tasted amazing though!

2. Lefsa arrived in the mail from Gramma!!! Every year she sends up a stack of homemade lefsa around Christmas time. I remember making it in her kitchen every year when I was a kid, and the taste of fresh hot lefsa with butter and sugar is like no other treat on earth. Everyone knows not to touch my lefsa...but when I'm feeling generous I'll share just a bit with the kids and they say "mmm!!" and roll their eyes in pure pleasure with the taste.

3. Being off work for two weeks. Hubby and I have gotten through another season of "Heroes"...just cuz we can stay up super late. It's like date night every night after kiddo bedtime, it's wonderful. I actually have had time to READ a couple of books too, what a treat! I slept til 10:30 today, and so did the kiddos. Awesome! And a lovely side effect as well: bonding time with Gianna. She is talking more and more, and since we've been spending most of our time together while daddy catches up on sleep and goes to the gym, we are getting closer and she talks to me a lot more. She actually told daddy that she wanted me to help her get ready for bed and not him when he offered to help. She reached out and put her hands on his shoulders and said "i love you, but not you today. I want mommy, maybe you tomorrow". Sorry honey, but that was fabulous!

4. SNOW! We had a rare white Christmas this year! I thought I just had to have memories of our awesome snowy mountain vacation in Colorado, but we actually got some here. I actually like shoveling snow, and Gianna actually likes to sweep snow off the steps, so we had a fabulous time together out in the cold.

5. Bath crayons. Santa really hit it out of the park this year with this stocking stuffer. How many hours of entertainment can a few colored pieces of soap offer? At our house, at least 6 for each kid, so far and still counting. This was only the beginning...we kept this superhero scene going for several days and they kept adding on when it was their turn to take a bath.  Yeah, we have squirt guns in the tub too, to squirt the fish of course.

6. Suspense. Santa came and dropped off a couple of presents and filled the stockings...but we have a rule that we have to all be awake and finish breakfast first before opening presents...and daddy has to read the Christmas story from the bible and we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus. THEN we can open presents one at a time. So while I was making breakfast the kids just sat in front of the Santa gifts and stared at them...and touched them gingerly...and looked at each other and giggled...then stared again. For a good 15 minutes, it was priceless.

7. Traditions. We hide the Pickle ornament in the tree, and the first one to find it gets to open the first present. We read a bunch of Christmas books that I keep collecting. We watch A Christmas Story on Christmas Eve, and the Grinch, after we go to church. Then Christmas day we order Chinese and bring it home, eating it while we watch The Nativity. We have several Advent calendars that involve chocolate (yes, I'm breeding chocolate addicts like me). And the rest of the day Christmas day we spend putting Legos together and playing with all the toys together. No chores or school, the best part!

8. Another addition to my obsession with A Christmas Story...Gramma sent cool hats (that are actually really neat, and the kids love them), but Gianna's is strangely similar to the "deranged Easter Bunny" suit from the movie. Cracked me up. Yes, the boy is still smitten with his little sister, as you can see from the side-eye grin.

9. The Sugies (our Sugar Glider pets) discovered Pecans, and can't get enough of them. Strangely, I can't get enough of the sugies, I'm crazy for the little things. I could go on for a while about why they are so cute and how much I love them...but I'm fully aware of the fact that no one else understands this creepy fetish of mine, so I'll just let the picture speak for itself.

10. So thankful for all the Grammas and Grampas that the kids have, they all are such a blessing in our life.  From the stacks of packages they sent, the cookies they baked or lefsa they sent, the cards reminding us how much they care, and everything else they bless us with. Christmas would not be the same without them. Here's a 'squdge' from great gramma on Christmas Eve, the kind that only great grammas can give, along with the pinch on the cheek when they say "oh, you're getting so big!"

Overall Gianna has been so excited and happy about Christmas, and just in awe that she had so many presents from grammas and grampas. She still says she misses her 'old home' and some of her old toys..and after she got a Hello Kitty scrapbook for a gift, we sat and put her old baby pictures in it, so she could have her own personalized life book. It ends with the first family picture we got together on "Gotcha Day". She looks at it every day, with a small tinge of sadness, but also a sense of pride that she has a past she can be proud of and that we are happy to talk with her about. She is also excited about all the new memories we are making as a new family. We are so happy to have her in our family, and we make progress bonding every day!

First real family vacation

Yeah, we spent 6 weeks in Hungary to finalize the adoption....which was like a European vacation in itself except that we didn't quite feel like a family yet. But now that we've been home since July and have had a chance to bond together and get into the routine of real life, we are on our first REAL family vacation. We came to Colorado for the week to try out skiing and play in the snow, and feel like we have a White Christmas.

First I hear some of you asking how in the world we afforded this, being too poor to be able to afford our adoption in the first place. Well we paid for this trip a few years ago, and we had to use it up by the end of the year or we lost it. So we are using it....and cooking in our room most of the time to save money on food. All the ski gear we had to buy is going up on ebay when we get back!

The fun began when we planned to fly here using our flight benefits, you know, the whole airline employee thing. But since it was bad weather and flights got cancelled we had to drive here...a nine hour drive in only 11.5 hours! Oh well, road trips are fun and you don't have to pack your life into a quart-sized ziplock bag, or get the 'free massage' as I call it, since I always opt out of the laser zapper privacy breaching machine. We actually ended up having a great time, and the kiddos are FANTASTIC travelers, keeping themselves busy with coloring, reading, or watching a movie on the laptop. And our rental car had Sirius radio - and we found the 90's station. Took us straight back to high school. I think my husband turned to me at least 3 times during the trip and said "this is the best...radio....station...ever!" We had the thing cranked up going down I-70 for at least 5 hours of the trip. I mean cranked up, and we were all dancing like dorks to "Tootsie Roll", and "I Like to Move It, Move It". We literally knew the words (all the words) to about 28 out of 30 songs, it was ridiculous. I wish I could have heard some of the other people in the cars we passed as they saw my husband doing the sprinkler in the passenger seat. Lol. Oh....and now the kids know some of the words to songs they probably shouldn't repeat...but oh well. We always have the radio tuned to Christian radio at home, so this was a crazy adventure for us. Ha!

Kansas is a great place to drive across if you want to see the biggest things in the world. World's Largest Ball of Twine. World's Largest Wind Farm. World's Largest Porch Swing (which is actually kind of neat, this old man who lives in an apartment across the street saw me taking pictures last time I stopped and came and brought me a pin with a picture of the swing and told me all about it. Creepy, but cool.) World's Largest Hand Dug Well, World's Largest Tractor "Big Bertha", World's Largest Prairie Dog. There's even a museum with the Smallest versions of the World's Largest Things in Kansas, lol. Now I REALLY actually wanted to stop and see the Prairie Dog on this trip....and we drove right past where it was!! I was so close to checking this off my bucket list!! Hubby just looked over at me and gave me side-eye and enunciated "Its. Not. Real. The fact that they advertise this as a stop is absolutely ridiculous." And on he drove. Sad face. Oh, and random fact I never knew...between Kansas and Colorado there is actually a place called Kanorado? Ha.

All was well until we passed Denver and commenced to drive for an hour and a half on the scariest stretch of interstate imaginable, into the Rocky Mountains. It was dark, and the roads were wet, and a little slippery, and my knuckles were white as speed racer raced around the curves and following too close for my taste. Semi trucks covered the roads, and we saw at least 5 runaway truck ramps...and signs that said things like "Truckers: Don't Be Fooled. 8 More Miles of Steep Grades!", and then signs with a big moose on it...and then after fearing for my life for 45 minutes a sign with a big black skull on it, with snow covering the words. What the heck did that mean!!!??? Time to close my eyes and pray until we got there.


We got here alive. I opened my eyes to evergreen trees all covered with snow and covered with Christmas Lights. Quaint little trendy buildings everywhere covered with Christmas lights, and everything covered with 6 inches of snow, it feels like we are driving around in a magazine. So beautiful! We checked in to our nice little resort that has a Subway onsite, 4 hot tubs, 2 pools, ski rental in the lobby, and within walking distance of tons of cute little restaurants. We snuggled in for the night.

Time for skiing!! Nope. We spent the next day all hopped up on Excedrin and Children's Tylenol because we all had headaches and upset tummies due to the high elevation. Maybe tomorrow.

Time for skiing!! Nope. It's 7 below zero and I'm really not interested in losing digits to frostbite. We spent the day getting all of our cold-gear ready, and getting fitted for skis. Coats, snow pants, wool socks, long underwear, ski goggles, ski masks, gloves, glove liners, hats, sunscreen, chapstick. Rented skis, boots, poles, helmets...well we're broke again. Ramen noodles for the next 3 months. But hey, we get to go skiing!!!

Time for skiing!! Yep! We take the free shuttle that stops right outside of our lobby to Beaver Creek Ski Resort to go buy our tickets. Small snafoo with the skis, the boy got two left boots. An hour later we were dressed like astronauts and waddled our way up to the snow. Snapped the boots on and were ready to go! Except the kids were already annoyed, cold, and whiny and couldn't stand up. Boy, we were in for a fun day. We got on the gondola, which they enjoyed a lot and got up to the beginners area. The boy figured things out pretty fast, and started going down the practice slopes. Gianna was not quite as coordinated and I ended up taking my skis off and walking beside her holding her up. After practicing for a bit, hubby took the boy down the green slope and I took her. We thought we could at least get down the Green slope together! Not so much. The ski rescue team had to guide the boy down, and we ended up having to wait for the rescue sled to get the girl down the rest of the mountain, in tears. Not the ski experience I had dreamed of.         After a break at Starbucks we decided to take them back up to the practice area and just stay there, and not try to get DOWN the mountain again. I went up and down the 'magic carpet' practice area, that had a belt that took you back to the top for the rest of the day with the kiddos. Now we started to have fun...and by the end of the day the boy was zooming down the practice slope without poles like a little expert, and Gianna would go down the same one with me holding her hand and learned to snowplow and turn and not fall at all. We were having a blast finally, and then it was 4:00 and the gondola was closing. We had to catch that thing to get down! We got back and waited for daddy...who had been going down the green slope by himself, and had gotten brave and gone down the blue slopes twice. He said it was a lot steeper than he had imagined, and at one point he was going backward and was on his back! He came back with snow all over his goggles and coat like he had rolled down the hill a few times, lol. Glad he got some adventure in though.

Next day, we had planned to go skiing again. But after this fun day of whining at the practice area and not getting to do anything else, we decided it wouldn't be worth paying for it again. Sad face. But we did get to ski, and the kids did learn how, so it was all good. AND I relished the refund that we got back since we never made it past the green slopes; that was a warm fuzzy feeling. Overall the four of us skied for a day for $98, not too bad!

So...what else to do? We are in snowy paradise, let's make the best of it.
1. Go eat at Loaded Joe's and Montana's Steakhouse
2. Sit in the hot tub
3. Suit up in snow gear and play in the snow behind the resort
4. Do the scavenger hunt around the resort for prizes. We won!
5. Sit in the hot tub
6. Drive around some more on I-70 and stop on the scenic lookouts
7. Drive over to Vail to walk around the amazing shops...but for $25 parking we won't be doing that again. 
8. Watch some movies
9. Play ping pong
10. Sit in the hot tub
11. Ice skating at Beaver Creek Resort!
12. Horse drawn carriage to dinner on the ranch, with smores over the fire afterward - Friday!

Loaded Joe's Cafe for lunch

Warming by the fire by the ice rink

One of the beautiful views of the mountains

Learning how to play Solitaire in our room

Ice skating for the first time

Right before I ran into Chris on the ice rink

"Look mom, I haven't even fallen yet! ....oops, now I did."

We are having fun relaxing together, away from school, work, and chores...and it's fun. Beautiful snowy fun. It's a great time to concentrate on getting Gianna to talk. That's our biggest struggle right now is getting her to talk...and when she does getting her to not just whisper. I know she has a voice because when it's tickle time she can really yell "daddy! tickles!!" and is always laughing loud with the boy. So we play games like 'you are the leader' and make her tell us all what to do, like get us to the hot tub, so she has to think and tell us to get dressed, and get the key, and lead us to the hot tub. She has a hard time thinking for herself, so hopefully games like this and Simon Says will help her be able to think for herself instead of just waiting to be told what to do all the time. We don't accept one word replies anymore...we say "I don't understand" if she gives us one word. She is forced to think of the other words in the sentence and talk, and slowly she is getting better and better. Slowly.

The other thing we are working on is affection. Affection is getting more natural for her at least with daddy. He's a warm cuddle bug so she initiates hugs and 'good morning' and 'hi daddy' when he walks in the door, and always goes and sits by him and cuddles, and gives him kisses. I'm honestly jealous, because any affection I give her is unreciprocated, and she doesn't talk to me hardly at all unless daddy is around and he tells her to ask mommy when she goes to him. We have fun cooking and doing crafts together, and she's comfortable with me, and when I'm gone she tells daddy she misses me. But as of yet we are still working on our attachment...and it's a little painful to try to lavish love on someone who is stiff and doesn't look you in the eye. I'm just making a point to show her I love her, and I pray that someday she loves me back.

Tomorrow we head back to real life! 

Trip to meet the sisters!

In November I took my new little one up to the farm to meet my two sisters for the first time...a trip with just us girls. I haven't seen them in over a year and it was so good to see them and hang out on the farm for a couple days.

New things for Gianna:
     1. Meeting "Aunt Monkey" and "Aunt Froggy" for the first time
     2. Meeting one of her only cousins, whom she had a great time exploring the camper with, coloring a new backpack from gramma, and making balloon animals with.
     3. Exploring a camper :)
     4. Riding the four wheeler with me and then with grampa
     5. Meeting all sorts of other relatives
     6. Seeing a pregnant belly...at least it seemed like she had never seen one before. She didn't quite believe me when I told her there was a baby in there. Soon there will be a new cousin!
     7. Being on a farm, seeing the crops, the grain bins, and machinery. Tried to explain that's where food came from...but the blank stare told me I need to wait until next year to get to that. 

My favorite parts of the trip were seeing my middle sister blessed with new stuff for her new baby, and cooking/cleaning/organizing with my littlest sis (yes, we geek out over stuff like that...and calculus).

Pic of Aunt Froggy, me, Gianna, Aunt Monkey, Gramma Tere, and cousin. Grampa John is making Gianna laugh as he takes this picture, how cute.

The Long Weekend

It's Labor Day weekend...we should go on a road trip! Let's go to Kansas City for the night...or Oklahoma City to the Science museum, or maybe Greensburg to see the new 'green' town and the Big Well. The possibilities are endless!

Gas in the car? Check. Extra clothes packed? Check. Snacks at Quik Trip for everyone? Check. Animals fed? Check. Oh...wait. Dog needs to be let out. It's 112 degrees outside so he can't stay outside all day and night. Um....change of plans.

Stop at Quik Trip for some snacks, and take the fam to Exploration Place for the day. Rode in an airplane, played with 10,000 kano blocks, saw real moving dinosaurs, and ran around in the castle play area for a while. Went to lunch at McDonald's (a rare treat for us), then saw a dinosaur movie in the dome theater. Then we went to Dillons and made fresh peanut butter in the new peanut grinding machine and got some sushi for the kids to try for the first time. Brought it home and ate with with chopsticks while watching a movie...all in all, a fun filled day, even if we didn't leave town to do it.

The next day we went to the outdoor water park at a different YMCA that we've never been to, took the inner tubes down the lazy river, got water dumped on our heads from a huge bucket, and got to try the diving board for the first time...and I got a tan - bonus! Both kids are like little fish now, I'm keeping an eye out for some fins sprouting.

And on the Monday holiday our good friend Robin took some more family pictures of us. The ones of the kids individually can count as school pictures too, cool! These are some of the silly ones...they are my favorites.

Random fun & cuteness

For some reason I thought that we needed two new "tiny" pets when we came home from Hungary...one for each kid. Every kid needs a little tiny cute thing to help take care of, don't they? Or maybe mommy just needed something tiny and soft to take care of....well, regardless - we now have two new Sugar Gliders.

We had to drive to Tulsa to get them...someone from work had a friend who was giving them away, cage, toys, food and all. Blessings come in furry packages sometimes. So this was our first road trip as a family, we were in the car for about 5.5 hours that day and we tried to make it fun by stopping for rare treats and bringing lots of books and toys.

We finally got home around 1:00 am (oops, I had to work the next day. But who can wait for free sugar gliders? not me) Now we have Bianca and Bernard, who we cuddle with every day and get to feed peas and corn and meal worms to. Best pets ever...except when they crawl on my arm and pee on me. They love to cuddle in their felt pouch, and let you carry them around in it.

For other random fun...I set up pizza factories for the kids.











We like to go on long bike rides and then walk around and explore...and catch bugs and stuff, sometimes the random toad. Here's a grasshopper.

 Parking the bikes at the end of the road...off to explore the construction site where they are widening our road.

Here's our mini pro foosball players in-training...maybe soon daddy will take them to a tournament!

The library is always fun, getting to pick out 10 books every Saturday and checking them out with their own library cards. She's not a bookworm like Monkey and me yet...but she will be soon, I can feel it.

The 2 month review

According to Hungarian adoption rules, we have to send back a report at 2 months and 12 months. Our social worker Sharon came a little early to write the 2 month report. She was here for about two hours and just had us recount our whole experience and how we all did during the whole thing, and how Princess was adjusting to us.

We also provided 10 pictures of us doing various things together. It would have been a lot easier to just send the Hungarian government a link to this blog, don'tcha think??  Ha.

Overall I think it went well. She's healthy, happy, and we all love her...I hope when the social workers back in Hungary read our report they feel good about placing her with us. I even think the foster family will get a copy of the report, and I hope that they see how happy she is and how well she is fitting in. I know if I were them I'd be glad to see an update on how she is doing...too bad I can't just send her pictures now and then, but I guess we aren't allowed to keep contact.

First Family Pics

We spent a fun day at the park with our friends, the Cravens, last weekend and they snapped some pretty cool pictures of us. You wouldn't believe how many shots they had to snap in order to get these 'good' ones though...there was always one of us that closed our eyes or didn't smile, lol.

I love how her little pig tails stick out on both sides on this last picture.

30 days home!!

So now we have been back home for about a month. We've had her first doctor appt, met both sets of grandparents and several sets of friends, been to the zoo, the library, the park, and shopping. Here's what we've learned:

1. Before we left we should have taken pictures of all the "places" we go during the week. Then we could have made a daily chart with pictures of what we were planning to do that day - it helps her to know what the plan is ahead of time so she knows what to expect. We just had to wing it, and mime a lot of stuff and explain things.

2. It helps her to have a couple of pictures of her foster parents and past life in her room, so she can pull them out once and a while to remember. It's sad because she tears up sometimes and nods her head when we ask "do you miss?" but it's good to be able to remember. I know this firsthand since I lost my mom at a young age...not talking about her was something a lot of people tried to do so they wouldn't upset me, but it just made it worse. So we just give her hugs and tell her it's ok to be sad.

3. Printing new pictures of our new family and showing them to Princess regularly helps her understand that we are making new memories together, and she always loves to go back through them.

4. There are a lot of things that she is behind in...but she's very smart and catches on to things very quickly. Doing chores, tying her shoes, riding a bike (with training wheels), learning letters and numbers in school are all new things, but with a little persistence and patience we've been able to see her make so much progress in the two months since she came into our family. She asks for a bike ride every night, and has gone from not being able to peddle or steer at all and not being strong enough to push the peddles, to doing it all by herself and going so fast I have to run next to her in two weeks!

5. She is growing so fast! She's gained probably 5 pounds, and grown a good 2 inches in the two months since we got her...maybe it's all the vitamins,  kale chips and avocado pudding we're eating? Whatever it is, she's already outgrowing some of the clothes that were just falling off of her they were so big 2 months ago. This is good!

6. Chocolate makes everything better. No matter who is sad, mad, glad, or bad that day, my black bean chocolate brownies, or chocolate avocado pudding, or vegan sugar free chocolate chip cookies always cheer everyone up! (yes, I'm tricking them into eating healthy food. It's all part of my evil plan...mwah ha ha...) "Chokee-ott" is her favorite thing in the world...especially when she gets to help me cook and gets to lick the spoon!

7. Fixing hair, doing nails, dressing in dresses and little sparkly shoes and sharing lip gloss is even more fun than I thought it would be! I love fixing her hair in new ways every day, and either she really likes it or she's really good at humoring me.

8. Daddy is definitely the favorite. Being silly, cuddling, tickling and hugging are his specialties...and they were just the ticket when it came to getting Princess to warm up to him. She gravitates toward him more often than me, and spends more time with him during the day now that I'm back at work. But I have my special things I do with her like bike rides, girly stuff as mentioned in #7, bubble baths, reading and art, and cooking - and we have bonded through those things at least a little bit.

9. Favorite game - animal charades. I made little cards with different animals on them, and we take turns picking a card and acting and making sounds of that animal to get someone else to guess. This was a hit with the kids, especially when Monkey got the "Sugar Glider" card, and he flew off the couch with 'wings' and came over and licked my hand. Talk about hilarious. Princess did a great job with "Cat" and "Dog" too, and couldn't get enough of the game.

10. It's still hard. We have a lot of fun, get along very well, have special things we do together, and are pretty much back to our normal routine. But we are still working on connection...which is something we were totally prepared for and are eager to continue earning. It's tough to not really be hugged back, for grandparents to be unsure about how to interact, to not get a reaction out of anything without prompting for it, and to wonder what she is thinking because she doesn't talk very much. But we love her like our own anyway, and we know that she is a precious child of God that deserves every bit of love and attention that we can give her anyway. Even if she doesn't show it yet, I believe that someday I will get that big bear hug and the genuine "I love you mommy" and it will all be worth it. :) She's still my little girl and I'm enjoying every minute of the challenge.

Grampa John & Gramma Tere

A couple weeks ago we were blessed with a short 2 day visit from Grampa John and Gramma Tere!  Grampa left the farm in South Dakota and Gramma hadn't started school yet, so they made the 12 hour trip down the middle of the country to see their new granddaughter.

We all went to the zoo one evening and saw some new animals. My favorite are the goats and the meerkats...

Then we went to Kobe's steakhouse for gramma's birthday. Everyone got shrimp thrown at their face, and I think grampa was the only one who actually caught it. Chopsticks and fire on the table (grill) were definitely new experiences for Princess...it was really fun. Happy Birthday gramma!!

And of course we had to go swimming at their hotel. This was where Princess could really interact with gramma and grampa, and build some bonds with them. She loves the water, and had so much fun splashing around and racing with them! 

Oh, and we can't forget "THE PROJECT" that Grampa John did for us this time....every time he visits he has to do something productive for us, it's how he shows us love and we are very grateful for his talents (finishing our basement, building our deck and swings were some of his past projects). This time he picked up a trampoline for the kids at Sam's Club and put it together for us in our backyard! WOW, talk about the best gift ever. The whole family gets so much use out of that thing, and we get a good workout too! THANKS grampa and gramma!