Sunday, June 29, 2014

Celebrating Allie

Four years ago, our sweet girl was born in Seoul, South Korea.  What an adventure it's been with this girl!  She is so full of life.  We're so thankful she found her way across the world to our arms. 
How blessed are we that God chose us for her forever family! 

Her birth mom is never far from our thoughts. I know she is thinking of her especially on her birthday and we are so grateful she made the loving choice to give Allie LIFE.  
I hope she knows that her daughter is so loved!

Happy 4th birthday Allison Hee Young!!!

Four months old in Korea

Nine months old in Korea

First Birthday-HOME!

Two years old

Three years old

Four years old!

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Family Pictures

We found a wonderful photographer through Red Thread Sessions, which is a website that lists photographers who offer photography sessions to adoptive families.  Despite the girls not being overly cooperative that day, our photographer was fantastic with the kids and got some wonderful shots!  I highly recommend Erin Hull Photography, and am very thankful for these beautiful family pictures.

























 


Sunday, June 15, 2014

Picture Overload (Catching Up)

Busy days here.  We have finally finished off the school year and have wrapped up one son's baseball season, with one week left for the other.  Looking forward to getting into "summer mode" with lots of family time and time to relax. 

We were seeing some small progress in Allie's behavior, but when she finished up her school year a few weeks before the boys, it did not go over well. She has struggled not being able to have an outlet.  She loves school and now that it's over for the summer, she has nothing to mark the days with, nothing that is just for her. Which resulted in a lot of acting out here at home.  We're working on setting up more of a structured schedule here at home to keep her busy for our down days.  She also has recently started ballet, and also began going to a babysitter's house a couple mornings a week. It gives her something to do and she absolutely loves it.  Hopefully we will start to see more progress behaviorally, I hope I hope.

Maggie is doing very well. She finally hit 20 pounds (which my other 3 hit by I think around 12 months)... she's 20 months old now!  She's still around the 10th percentile in weight and still not on the chart in height. I call her my Tiny Tot.  She had her follow up at the International Adoption Clinic; they are happy with her growth and development. She's small but mighty.  Her eating and drinking are coming along beautifully.  Our one big concern is that speech is not catching on. She really does not have much better speech than she did when we got her in November. She still only has one word (ya-ya for bye-bye).  Thankfully she uses some sign language and has great receptive language (she understands a lot of what we say to her) but she's not progressing with expressing herself verbally. So we'll be having her evaluated for Speech Therapy later in the summer. This will be in addition to the help she's getting from Help me Grow.

We're looking forward to lots of summer and summer fun!

Catching up on blogging thru pictures...

A visit with Great Grandma Dot back in January


Korean Picnic with lots of kiddos adopted from Korea (and China!). 
So lucky to have so many friends nearby with adopted kiddos.


First firepit and S'mores of the spring!


The "360" cup that allows Maggie to drink on her own.  Yay!

Helping Daddy plant flowers and eating dirt.

Still has days where she does. not. want. her. feet. to. touch. the. ground.

Mommy & Allie time at preschool.

Love our visits to Grandma Toodie's house.


She's so afraid to walk in the grass!! Hilarious.

Kisses for Moby.

Grandma Pat snuggles.

Serious ball practice going on.


Grooming.


Girls playing "night-night" in Maggie's bed. They loving playing in there together.

Preschool Fun Day!

 Giggles.

 Pigtails!


These 2 are becoming quite inseparable!

Serious sister talk.

Leaning in for a kiss.

Last day of preschool!!


Teeny-tiny pedicure.


Many of our walks & bike rides look like this. We just keep on going.

Time with Sammy and his class!

First time roller skating!

Bike trail!


Visiting Benny at school.

Fun day for the 2nd graders.

These guys (plus one more special friend) have known each other since they were babies
... now playing ball together!  Two on the Red Sox and 2 on the Braves. Playgroup reunion at the ball field!

Tooth Fairy visits!

 Double trouble.

This kid is serious about his baseball!

Someone has Grandpa Tim wrapped around her little finger.

 Fun day for the kindergartners.

We didn't know it at the time, but this is the "Before" shot...

And the "After" shots... after Allie cut herself very short bags and cut about 
6 inches off from random spots all around her head...




Thankfully a quick trip to Great Clips evened things out.

Kindergarten Graduate! Yay Sam!

Crazy boys... both of them randomly ended up on separate Red Sox teams this spring.




We have a 3rd grader!

One of Sam's future wives. He has trouble deciding who he's going to marry. :)

And we have a 1st grader!

We also have a new ballerina in the house... Allie's first dance class.

Someone loves spaghetti...

 And has also figured out how to drink from a straw! 
A major accomplishment for a cleft kiddo! Yay Maggie!

Ben's first experience at an overnight camp. He spent 2 nights and 3 days at a Christian camp.



 He loved it! So proud of this guy for trying something new all on his own.

Maggie is fearless... her arms are barely long enough to reach the chains, 
but she's not going to be left out of the tire swing!

Creeking...


And hiking.


Happy Father's Day to one of the best!

Back for more creeking and hiking.