My Kid Circus

Whew, this month has been CRAZY, but pretty wonderful.  We keep thinking back to last year at this time, as we were adjusting to our first few days at home with four children. Now these four have blended completely as siblings, and are all four woven perfectly in our hearts as our children.

We had a fantastic time celebrating the first anniversary of our Forever Family Day.  We flew down to Orlando with just Hannah and K, and cruised to the Bahamas with over 600 people whose lives have also been touched by adoption through CCAI.  It was amazing to see these happy Chinese children everywhere we turned, as well as their lucky families.

At the time of the cruise, CCAI had placed 10, 146 children in families in the United States in the past 20 years.  That is pretty incredible.

Our girls loved the Disney Cruise, especially K who, at 3 1/2, is at a wonderful age for magical thinking.  It was as if she was seeing famous movie stars as she hugged Minnie Mouse and all the princesses.

We had a great time dressing up for pirate night, which worked out really well since K is going to be a pirate for Halloween.

Hannah got to put her toes in the sand and feel the ocean for the very first time.  She was not sure what to think about that!

We had a good bit of ice cream. Hannah was absolutely sure how she felt about THAT! 🙂

And the best part was having the opportunity to reconnect with four of the other families that we traveled to China with, and celebrate our big milestone all together.

After sadly departing the boat, we took the girls to Magic Kingdom.  K was very happy to see that her favorite characters got off the boat with us to go to Disney World! 🙂

Hannah enjoyed every minute, as she usually does.

She is just a little bundle of joy, and we are so thankful for the gift she is to our family.

What a trip.  Oh, how I love these girls. I love them both so incredibly much, and I love that they both have a sister to share wonderful memories with.

One year ago today, our sweet Hannah was placed in our arms.  It is incredible to think about that moment.  That day will always remain one of the most significant, powerful, and wonderful days of my life.  We are so thankful for Hannah.  She is a true blessing in our lives and in our family.

I haven’t really decided how we will celebrate this special day in future years.  This year, we will be taking the girls on a plane today to go to Orlando for a Disney Cruise with our adoption agency, who is celebrating their 20th anniversary.  We are so excited to reconnect with some of our friends who are also celebrating today, as well as meet new friends in the adoption world.

Happy Forever Family Day, Hannah!  We all love you so much!

And to everyone in our travel group, you are in our hearts today.  I’m so thankful for the amazing experience that we all got to share, and for the beautiful children that are with their families today.

We had a really fantastic weekend around our house.

For one thing, we had our one year visit with our social worker!  We only have 10 more days until our one year Hannah day.  We have to have these visits for another four years, but we enjoy the chance to show off our girl! 🙂

We also had some great family time by having a family camp out in the backyard.  The kids have been asking to do this for a very long time, and I’m so glad that we finally were able to make it happen.

We did some bike riding.

The tooth fairy even got to come visit the camp site!

We enjoyed the local wildlife.

Of course we made s'mores.

Z prefers his marshmallows "well done".

Finally it was time for pjs and the tent.

We ended the night with ghost stories told by D. 5 year olds have an interesting concept of ghost stories. I'm not exactly sure what was happening, but we all ended up laughing.

Hannah was deemed too young to sleep in the tent this time, so I went inside when everyone was fading off to sleep inside with her.  I look forward to the time when I won’t have to miss the middle of the night snuggling in the tent. 🙂  Can’t wait.

We had a fantastic Labor Day weekend this year.  We had a visit from another one of the families that we traveled to China with.  The one family that came home with not one, but TWO toddlers! 🙂 We had a wonderful time reminiscing and reconnecting, especially as we are nearing our one year anniversary with our babies.

It was especially fun for us for Z to have the chance to reconnect with his friend Davis.  These two ran into each other’s arms when they first arrived. Even if you are just seven years old, I think you just have a special bond with the person that you climbed the Great Wall of China with. 🙂

Thank you for coming, guys!  We miss you all already!

Much love to you, and all of our other China friends. 🙂

Today Hannah and Drew started school.  I really didn’t know how Hannah would react.  She is generally a very go-with-the-flow kind of girl, so I hoped that she would be okay, but this is very different than anything that she has done before.

I shouldn’t have worried.  This girl was SO excited that I could barely get a picture of her.

She was literally jumping up and down trying to run to get into the car.

Look at her sweet little Dora shoes, as she stood on her toes to see out of the window as we were waiting in the carpool line.

When it was her turn she said, “Bye Mommy, Bye K.  Love you so much”.  And then she happily got out of the car and was off for her first ever day of school.  Oh my heart.  This was the first time I haven’t had a child crying for this experience, which means it was also the first time that I was able to leave my child without crying.  It was nice. 🙂

It was also D’s first day of kindergarten.

This guy is usually pretty brave, but he was nervous today.

In the car he asked me what would happen if he couldn’t remember his teachers’ names.  Aww.

He was also nervous because he doesn’t know how to read.  He did not seem convinced by my insistance that most kids don’t know how to read on the day that they start kindergarten. Still, when we got there, he was all smiles.  I’m sure he will do great.

House sure is quiet though.  K starts school tomorrow.  We might have some tears then…