The Final Post... here anyway

Okay, I said months ago it was time to remove Brynn's blog and didn't but now it is really time. I want how she joined our family to be her story to tell from here on out so this is the final post here and the blog will be removed sometime in June.

However, I decided I am more than willing to share the day-to-day stories of my kids since blogging seems to be the only way I have ever been successful at documenting anything. So, I have made a family blog and with the four kids, I will probably be better at updating... after all it is rare that a day goes by without one of them making me shake my head and wonder what I have gotten myself into! :)

The new blog is www.managingthemadness.blogspot.com. See you there!

Kate

Just like me...

Okay, so it has been more than a few days.... I am not sure where the months are going.

I wanted to write this down before I forget because to me, it was unexpected but at the same time, significant.

Yesterday we were coming back from shopping and stopped for ice-cream. I was outside with two of the boys and Brynn waiting for the ice-cream when a mom and her Asian daughter came to our table; apparantly she had been in line with Doug and after striking up a conversation with her, told her we were outside. Brynn's first comment when she saw the girl in her mom's arms... "She like me!!!" and boy was she excited when she said it. Brynn and I talk all the time about the eye colors in our family and how her eyes are brown like Caleb's (and grandma's and grandpa's), how her other two brothers both have blue, and how her mommy and daddy have hazel but that is the extent of (well other than her fascination with all eyebrows) her comments about her appearance. Obviously she is aware. Then, the never-shy Brynn introduced herself and her brothers and then the ice-cream came and that became her sole focus.

She also in the past two weeks on several occasions has, out of the blue, commented "miss Mama." In China I would cringe when the guides would call me "Mama" because even though that is the word for mother in Chinese, I knew that to Brynn, "Mama" was her foster mom, who she lived with from the day she was found until 22 months later, the day we adopted her. I didn't want Brynn to think I was trying to replace her. In our house I am "Mommy" and her foster mom is still "Mama" and her picture is on our refrigerator. I wonder sometimes what Brynn is thinking of all this.

Here are a few pictures from last month. Haven't taken this month's off the camera yet. Evan is trying to teach Brynn to golf two of the pictures. She prefers the scooter. I'm hoping she will teach Evan that the potty is a good thing! One is her "helping" me cook a cake and the other is her enjoying ice-cream at Price's birthday party. I've already planned her party for the end of May. We will be in Disney World on her actual birthday and I just can't wait any longer... poor girl has seen everybody else have one and she wants her turn (we adopted her a week after her 2nd birthday)!!!

Peer Pressure!

Okay, I will type more either later today or during the week but here are three more recent pictures that will hopefully satisfy those of you who are still checking the blog until I get home to where I store most of my pictures. Thank you Denise for the Star Wars pictures and thank you Angela for the spaghetti one!

Kate

Happy New Year!

We wish you all a joyous 2007. May all your dreams come true!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas was wild and a lot of fun. Since we adopted Brynn 6 days after her birthday, she has never had her own birthday party to open presents at but has had two brothers have birthdays since she came home and has gone to several birthday parties and seen the hoopla. It was fun to see her tear into her own packages for the first time, but before she started ripping, she would do a little dance singing "mine, mine, mine" and shaking the present she was handed. She especially loves her new shopping cart, her brother's new work bench, and her new doll (if you ask her its name she will say "baby" - if you ask if her name is "Susie" or "Mei Mei" or "fill in a girl's name" she giggles and says "No" like that is the craziest idea she has ever heard).

Here are a few pictures from some Xmas activities: the first one is posing for the family Xmas card, the next is decorating the tree, posing with the blue-bearded Santa, with her brothers on Christmas Eve, eating at Grandma's and Grandpa's on Christmas Eve, and in the above post, posing with her brothers on Christmas Day (it should be easy to figure out where the TV is; I forgot to turn off the cartoons before I took the picture) and all of us at the lights festival at the Botanical Gardens (a bit fuzzy but a rare photo of us all).