September 2009

One more trip this month to visit family. Uncle Bob from California came back to PA for a high school class reunion, so we packed up Grandma kitty and the girls and headed to PA again.

As you can tell, Sarah is delighted to meet Uncle Bob and Elizabeth now regularly corresponds with both of Grandma's siblings.

Below are 4 generations...Aunt Gladys in the middle, Grandma and Sarah to the left and Elizabeth and me to the right.

This last photo is mom and her brother Bob with Aunt Gladys and daughters Catherine and Connie.

August 2009

Too soon the summer fun is over and time for school to begin. Elizabeth turns 8 and starts 3rd grade. To help Sarah have a little more time to fill in the gaps, we enrolled her in a Montessori school, where she is in a class of 3-5 year olds. This environment lets her pursue the 5 year old activities where she is ready (which is most of the time) yet gives her opportunity to build some skills she is still developing with the younger children.

I'll be back later to insert the first day of school photos.

July 2009

In July, we had a terrific visit with Elizabeth's travel group. This group has expanded to include a number of little sisters, so both the big and the little girls had loads of fun on a perfect summer's day. Our hosts had a jumping tower and a snow cone machine to keep the kids happy and scrumptuous munchies and appropraite beverages for the adults! We're so glad to keep in touch with the people who shared our experiences in China and the precious connection for the girls. As you can tell from the photos this year, Sarah and Elizabeth have developed a habit of dressing alike. The butterfly dresses were this summer's favorite!

June 2009

Well, I'm terribly behind in updating this blog, so I'll try to give a month by month glimpse of our lives.

June 2009 was a month of travel for us. Nancy, Elizabeth, Sarah and Grandma Kitty all took a plane ride to visit with Grandma's sister Nancy in MN. Not only did the girls get to meet some more cousins on my side of the family, we got to meet one of my "imaginary" friends! Caroline has been an online friend for many years on a parenting/adoption board, but we got to meet Caroline and her girls in person at the Mall of America. Had we known we were going to have such a great time, we would have planned more time to spend together. My Elizabeth has added Caroline's girls to her ever expanding penpal list.

Then we got to meet another online friend on our way to spend a week at a North Carolina beach. The girls had a blast reuniting with Sarah's friend from China, Evelyn and playing on the beach.

From the beach, we made one more stop at cousin Mike's house in Raleigh before heading home.

Reunion with Sarah's friend Evelyn

We had a grand time visiting with a family who just brought home one of Sarah's friends in January. The girls had not seen each other in 18 months. While they didn't seem to remember each other, they did have a blast getting re-acquainted.

Well, we tried to take a photo of the girls together, but the two 5 year olds were jumping up and down so much, this is all we got! Here is the trio snuggled in bed watching a video after a night at the waterpark.

After running around playing, these two took a Cheetos break!

Here's the princess trio...

Even in a still photograph, Sarah conveys motion.

Here's our princess rock band! They were entertaining us with song!

The oldest princess in her Belle pose.

Adoptive Families event - Roller skating

Bath Art!