One Year Ago!

Today I have spent some time reflecting on last years new years eve. My husband and I were getting on a plane and going half way across the world to get our son in Kyrgyzstan. It was crazy because when we were on the plane we were loosing time because of the time zones, so Cain and I had no idea of when to celebrate new years! We just kept one watch on Ohio time, and when we knew our kids, family and friends were celebrating we said "happy new years" to one another gave each other a kiss and tried to go back to sleep on the plane. About that time we were above the ocean on our way to Germany. It seems just like yesterday all that happened, because the memories are still so vivid in my mind. Part of me would love to go back to that moment, but the other part of me is so glad that a whole year has gone by. In a few days we will celebrate Andrew's gotcha day, and what an exciting day that will be! We have a fun day planned with our family. For now though, we will celebrate for the first time seeing a new year come in, with our son. Andrew has been feeling a little better so we are going to attempt to go out. We are going to an 80's themed new years party. That should be interesting! I'll post pictures tomorrow of all the big hair!

Cain and I standing in line to check our luggage, one year ago! I'm not sure how I survived this trip because I didn't even sleep the night before we left because I was so anxious! I'm amazed that neither Cain or I got sick this whole trip, with all the lack of sleep and being on so many planes on the way there and back home. My only advice is take airborne with you when you travel.

Our goodbye letter from Megan (she made us cry)!

Our stop in Munich, Germany! I'm surprised Cain is smiling, we hardly had any sleep to this point and it was at least 7 hours past our normal bedtime. What great memories!

Dealing with sickness and a question for parents of adopted children from Kyrgyzstan!

Andrew has been sick for almost two weeks now. It started out as a cold on Tuesday, Dec. 16th and by Thursday, Dec. 18th, the runny nose turned into coughing and wheezing. I then took Andrew took the Dr. where they told me that Andrew is dealing with a strand of the RSV virus, and they gave him a breathing treatment. Andrew's breathing and cough seemed great the next day on Friday, Dec. 17th but he was in one terrible mood. Then that night Andrew decided to not go to bed!!!! You read that right, he never went to sleep, regardless of all our best efforts. It was the longest night of our lives with Andrew. So on Saturday Dec. 18th, I was concerned that maybe there was something else wrong with Andrew, so back to the Dr.'s we went. They checked him over, and couldn't find anything else that was wrong, and the Dr. even said his breathing sounded great. She was also puzzled as to why Andrew never went to sleep. So on with our day we went, but the strange thing was as the day went on instead of getting tired, Andrew got more hyper. He only took one, one hour nap all day, and by the end of the day he was completely crazy with energy. He finally fell asleep on the way home from my parents house that night at 8pm, and we were all praising God for it. I slipped him into bed without him waking up, but the horrible thing was, he woke up at 11pm and was ready to party again. He was hyper and wouldn't relax to go back to bed. I tried for about 45 minutes and nothing seemed to work. Then I let him cry on and off for an hour and 15 minutes and he finally went to sleep. Of course I didn't get much sleep that night either because I was worried he was going to wake back up and be hyper again. So finally our little guy got back on his normal sleeping pattern, but within a few days the coughing started back up but this time it started getting worse. I then took Andrew back to the Dr. again on Saturday, Dec. 27th and they did another breathing treatment on him. This time they gave me the machine to take home and prescribed the medicine so I could give Andrew the breathing treatments regularly. In fact, now the Dr. is saying that Andrew is dealing with asthma issues and they want me giving him a steroid medicine every day for a year to prevent any cold from turning into asthmatic issues. I'm not sure how I feel about that, because I don't like medicating my kids long term. I'm going to look into my options and hopefully I will get to the bottom of all of this. It has been a frustrating road, and it still isn't over yet. I hope Andrew kicks this virus soon! I'll keep everyone posted.



I would like to hear from any other parents who have adopted from Kyrgyzstan. I do know one other family that adopted from Kyrgyzstan and their son has the same breathing issues. I'm wandering how common this problem could be among these children from Kyrgyzstan. Any feed back would be great!

Other Christmas Pictures!

So here are a few more photos of Christmas from my parents house from my dad's camera. There to good to leave out of the blog. For some reason my pictures didn't turn out so well that day, and in addition my dad was the only one who got the family pictures. We always make sure to get a group shot every Christmas of the whole family.

The Nice Picture!

The Crazy Face Picture!

Well I guess you can tell what my dad's favorite team is (North Carolina). He wanted to make sure that everyone in the family had a t-shirt of them for Christmas, so of course we got pictures of us all in them!

Go North Carolina!

Andrew made handprint ornaments for the grandparents for Christmas this year. He loves putting his hands in it to show that it is from him!

Our Christmas Memories of 2008!

We have had a wonderful first Christmas with Andrew! Below is a slide show, because there are to many wonderful holiday pictures to leave some of them out, but then I'm also putting the best of the pictures of each event as well. Last Christmas was a very hard time for me, because I had one deadline, I wanted Andrew home with us before Christmas. When that didn't happen I was very sad but made the best of it. Spending Christmas with all three of my children was the best present I could of every asked for. I thank God for the blessing of my family, along with the birth of his son Jesus.

First we had Christmas with Cain's family on the Sunday before Christmas!

Ryan and Sarah announce their new engagement! Way to go Ryan!

On Monday we baked cookies with my mom! Thanks for helping mom, it would of been boring without you!

Andrew also enjoyed playing with the cookie dough!

What are you up to girls?

Then we went to my mom and dad's house on Christmas Eve!

Here is a picture of Andrew trying to figure out Kylee's curly hair!

Then on Christmas we opened our gifts with the kids and later both our parents came over as well as my Grandma. What a wonderful day it was.

This shirt is so fitting!

Andrew learns about the true meaning of Christmas (baby Jesus)!

We all worked on a Gingerbread House!

The house turned out great...

for at least a few minutes, until it fell apart!

Grandpa and Alisha chilling on the couch! I guess they won't get blamed for the gingerbread house falling apart!

Andrew it has been a great first Christmas with you. It was everything I imagined it would be. I love you and can't wait for many more Christmas memories with you in the future.

Fun Family Christmas Traditions!

Well we had a family Christmas outing on Saturday. We started off by taking Alisha and Megan to a movie and we left Andrew at Grandma's. We then headed down to Tower City for shopping, holiday lights, and other festivities.

Andrew was terrified of any of the people in costumes, so we would stand in line to get a picture and Alisha would back him into the picture without him even knowing who was behind us, otherwise he would of been screaming for the picture.

We always enjoy seeing the toy soldier, and we have had many pictures of him in the past. The guy who is dressed up as the toy soldier is very tall, and intimidating. It's amazing that the entire time he is there he doesn't have one facial expression.

We saw some friends of ours at Tower City twice and they took this great picture of us when we were walking around looking at the lights!

We then found the gingerbread lane that had the most amazing gingerbread houses I have ever seen. Here are some pictures of some of the houses.

This was a gingerbread office!

We went to stand in line for Santa and the lady in front of us said it would probably be longer then an hour to see him. We said forget that and went on our way! This is the closest thing of a picture of Santa, with Andrew not crying that we have so far! We did go on to find the Twigbee Shop where Andrew got to go with his sisters to shop for mom and dad. I can't wait to see what he picked out when we open the presents on Christmas.

We then ended the evening going out to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe. Andrew loved dancing to the music as he was eating dinner. We had a great day and it was wonderful being able to share some fun traditions with Andrew that we had had as a family.

Getting Ready for Christmas!

Getting ready for Christmas has been a big undertaking with a toddler in the house this year. It has been fun sharing all the joys of Christmas with my son, but it has also added more stipulations on things he can't touch. What torcher! Anyways, I'm officially done with Christmas decorating, Christmas cards, Christmas shopping, and Christmas wrapping. So now the only thing left to do is enjoy the holidays. I also spent the entire day yesterday doing chocolates for my customers. I own an office cleaning business, and I like to take a platter of chocolates to all my customers for Christmas. I started at 9am yesterday and worked until 8:30pm. My older daughter and her friend also contributed about 4 hours of help. That would take us to a grand total of around 15 hours of 20 lbs. of candy making. Below is a picture of only about 75% of the candy that we made. Now I have to deliver it all but that is my last Christmas project. I'm looking forward to some fun events ahead. I'm hoping the next few weeks are better with Andrew then this last week. He is officially crossing over to the terrible twos, and I think lack of attention this week has put him over the top. I have never seen so many fits, and all he wants me to do is hold him, and if I don't he just yells and starts hitting something. Oh my little Andrew, mommy loves you, even when your bad!

We put up our decorations the weekend after Thanksgiving, but I have been to busy to post the pictures!

This was Alisha's way of helping with the decorating, playing guitar, and texting!

There we go, now she's helping!

Andrew loved all the ornaments we put on the tree!

Every year we all give each other ornaments. I bought some for Andrew when we were in Kyrgyzstan since we were there at their Christmas, however I want to save those for when he gets bigger and understands where they are from. However, I thought this ornament for Andrew was perfect. I told Andrew when we gave it to him," that last year we packed our bags right around Christmas time, got on a plane, and traveled around the world to get him". How perfect!

It's so pretty! I wish I could touch it!

I've had the worse time of it with the lights this year. First of all none of the lights on the Christmas tree were working. So we got all new ones for the tree. Then I have this garland that I put around our door outside, and when I got that out the lights were out on it. I then put a working set of lights on it and then that went out. So then I bought two brand new strands for the garland and I got it hung up, and then half of a strand went out. That's it I'm not taking it down, and I'm not fixing it!

This is as good as it got at 8pm at night to get a family picture for the Christmas card!

Andrew has his sisters wrapped around his little finger!

I guess that photo shoot of ours was exhausting!

We went to a Christmas party last weekend with our home builders class and this is what Andrew thought of Santa. He wouldn't have anything to do with him! In fact, he set the tone for the other toddlers there. We are going to try to get a Santa picture tomorrow at the mall, so we will see how that turns out!

This is some of the candy that I did yesterday! I feel tired just looking at it!

This is Andrew's way of helping me with the chocolates!