Journey to Our Baby Girl

Brookelyn Finished Pink Level! Feb 2011

2011-09-12T01:37:00.000-07:00

Brookelyn finished Pink Level, which is part of her school's language program. It took a lot of time and effort, so it was a really big deal. We celebrated by going to Chick's place that evening, which she had chosen. Great job, Brooklyn!

Sasha's Haircut

2011-09-12T01:22:00.000-07:00

I am always very careful about making sure to keep all scissors put away. I knew that someone would give themselves a hair cut if they were left out. Not a question of if they would cut their hair, but when they would cut it. Sasha had been talking about wanting no bangs so she could look like Mommy. I had been explaining to her that she had to let bangs grow until they were long, but she didn't understand. Brayden set the scissors down after cutting a tag off of his shirt and within seconds they were gone. And so was Sasha. When she saw me running into the bathroom, she hurried up to finish her haircut. She had cut her bangs so short that I couldn't even tell she had cut them until I looked closely. I was upset that she had gotten ahold of the scissors since she was up on a wet step step stool and she could have fallen and hurt herself. I had to go to an appointment in the morning, so I had to drop her off at school for awhile before I could pick her up and bring her to get her hair fixed. Her teachers thought she looked like a little rockstar with that haircut. The lady who fixed it did a great job. It took a few months before her bangs grew back. Sasha is funny, she refused to talk about it. If someone brought up her hair, Sasha would ignore them or change the subject.

Yogurt Silliness

2011-09-12T01:20:00.000-07:00

Brookelyn and Jesi

2011-09-12T01:15:00.000-07:00

Jesi is not only a super sweet, great cousin--she is great at doing hair too!

Brayden's Baseball Team-Diamondbacks

2011-09-12T01:09:00.000-07:00

A few of Colton's Pictures From Sea World

2011-09-12T01:03:00.000-07:00

Reading to the Dogs at the Library

2011-09-12T01:00:00.000-07:00

Brayden's 7th Birthday-February 20, 2011

2011-09-12T00:54:00.000-07:00

San Di#go Zoo

2011-09-12T00:44:00.000-07:00

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A fun day at the Zoo.

Brayden's Field Trip to Ocean Institute-Feb 2011

2011-09-12T00:39:00.000-07:00

Cute kids-February 2011

2011-09-12T00:35:00.000-07:00

All three started out in their own beds, but somehow wound up coming into our room in the middle of the night. Like they do almost every single night. Lucky they are so cute!

Our New Daughter!

2011-09-11T23:23:00.000-07:00

We decided to adopt a little girl from China!! She is adorable! We sent in our letter of intent on January 14, 2011! Our dossier has been logged into China since February of 2007. We used a lot of the paperwork for Sasha's adoption, so we will have to do a ton of paperwork. I have already contacted our the home study agency we worked with in the past and set up our first meeting. They will be sending the paperwork for me to start filling out as well. We are nervous and excited at the same time! Lei is nine years old, lives in an an orphanage in Hangzhou, which is near Shanghai, and is beautiful!

Sleeping Kids

2011-09-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

All three started out in their own bedrooms, but came in sometime during the night. Pretty much the same story every night. Very lucky they are so cute!

Girls Weekend

2011-09-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

Ray and Brayden spent a weekend skiing, so it was just the girls and I at the house. We went to a couple of birthday parties, went to an event with snow and had our nails done. Fun weekend.

January 2011

2011-09-11T10:04:00.002-07:00

I love how long and pretty Sasha's hair is and her sweet smile.

New Year's Eve

2011-09-11T10:04:00.001-07:00

Holidays 2010

2011-09-11T09:51:00.001-07:00

Holidays 2010

2011-08-31T01:31:00.000-07:00

Christmas 2010

2011-08-31T01:26:00.001-07:00

Letters to Santa

2011-08-31T01:03:00.001-07:00

School Holiday Programs

2011-08-31T00:54:00.000-07:00

Each of the kids were in their class holiday shows. All of them were very cute and they did a great job.

Cute Outfit!

2011-08-31T00:33:00.000-07:00

Dec 5th, 2010 Haircut Day

2011-08-31T00:23:00.000-07:00

More birthday celebrations

2011-08-31T00:16:00.001-07:00

More Birthday Presents

2011-08-31T00:11:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving

2011-08-30T23:43:00.000-07:00

We always go to my sister's house for Thanksgiving. We love spending time with our family!

Cute morning pictures

2011-08-18T10:50:00.000-07:00

Christmas Party with Santa Claus

2011-08-18T10:15:00.001-07:00

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A friend of ours has fun Christmas parties every year. Santa Claus comes and reads to the kids and then gives them each a book.

Lunch at Americ*n Girl Store

2011-08-18T09:59:00.000-07:00

We had a great day celebrating my niece, Jacquie's birthday and Brookelyn's birthday. Brayden had to come with me since he had just gotten hurt, but he would up having a lot of fun too. All three of mine chose dolls at the store before we left. Brookelyn chose a larger one, Brayden chose one of the small boys and Sasha chose a small girl. They love them!

Brayden after his accident

2011-08-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

Brayden is a VERY active little guy. He went on a rope swing in our neighborhood and fell off. It was really bad. We raced him to the emergency ward where he got stitches. While in the emergency room he pulled out several pieces of teeth. We found out later that he had also broken his jaw. I kept him home for a couple of weeks because I didn't want him to get bumped into at school. They wire the jaw for adults, but don't do that for children. He took pain medicine until it healed. It was a really bad time for us.

One morning on the the way to school Nov 2011

2011-08-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

Princess Party

2011-08-18T09:45:00.001-07:00

First Day of School 2011

2011-08-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

Sasha is continuing preschool with Ms. Nira, Brookelyn is starting kindergarten with Ms. Wendi, and Brayden is starting first grade with Ms. Cherie.

Brookelyn's Soccer September 11

2011-08-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

Sea World-Sept 7

2011-08-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

Reading to the Dogs at the Library

2011-08-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

Reading to dogs at the library. Brayden and Brookelyn LOVED it! It's a program that was designed to get children excited about reading.

Halloween 2010

2011-08-07T00:29:00.001-07:00

Halloween 2010

2011-08-07T00:23:00.000-07:00

October 2010

2011-08-07T00:15:00.001-07:00

More cookies

2011-07-23T22:41:00.001-07:00

Halloween cookies

2011-07-23T22:32:00.000-07:00

We made a ton of Halloween cookies and had so much fun decorating them!

Halloween!!!

2011-07-23T22:25:00.000-07:00

Halloween at school is always very fun! Everyone dresses up and goes on a parade throughout the school. Afterwards there are usually parties in each classroom.

October 29

2011-07-23T22:18:00.000-07:00

Brayden's class went on to the petting zoo for a field trip. He loved feeding and holding the rabbits and guenea pigs too!

October 28

2011-07-23T22:06:00.001-07:00

Brookelyn's class went on a field trip to a local petting zoo. The kids spent most of the time holding and feeding the bunnies and geunie pigs.

October 25

2011-07-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

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Daddy and I took the kids up to a place where we could pick our own apples and make apple cider. It was a chilly, wet day, We had a lot of fun choosing the perfect apples to use for cider, cleaning the apples and then smashing them to get the juice out.

October 20

2011-07-23T21:57:00.001-07:00

Cute girls wearing cute Halloween outfits. Brookelyn wore the ears to school almost every day for the next couple of months. Very cute!

October 4, 2010

2011-07-23T21:48:00.000-07:00

October 4

2011-07-23T21:38:00.000-07:00

I brought the kids to a local park where there were crafts and a dinosaur dig. The kids made paintings on clay, made little clay pots, ground up corn with a rock, searched for dinosaur bones, and made grass and mud bricks. We had a very fun and interesting day!

Heather and Brayden-September 19

2011-07-20T23:50:00.000-07:00

Sept 19, 2011-Colton's 18th Birthday

2011-07-20T23:48:00.001-07:00

September 6-Kids at Beach

2011-07-20T23:46:00.001-07:00

Cousins at the beach up in Big Bear.

Brayden at swim meet

2011-04-18T01:42:00.000-07:00

Grand children with Grandma

2011-04-18T01:34:00.000-07:00

We took some family pictures. Getting us all together is a little tricky, but we wanted some pictures with all of the kids and my mom. My older sister has four kids, I have five and my youngest sister has three. That is a lot of kids. It was a really, really hot day. I think they look pretty good. Poor Brayden, he has my sensitive eyes. He had a very hard time looking at the camera with the sun in his eyes.

San Diego Zoo

2011-04-18T01:30:00.001-07:00

San Diego Zoo

2011-04-17T22:53:00.000-07:00

We spent the day at the San Diego Zoo and had a great time. Colton took a ton of pictures of the animals with his new camera. And a few of the kids. I had just bought a new stroller because my old one was falling apart. The new one is GREAT. All three kids can sit on it if two sit in the seats and one sits on the front. They all like it and it is much easier to push. The only problem is that it is much bigger and harder to get in and out of my car. Worth it though, when we are at the zoo or Sea World.

Cute girls

2011-04-17T22:51:00.001-07:00

Shannon's Birthday celebration

2011-04-17T22:48:00.001-07:00

Shannon's birthday was in April, but we were never able to take her out to celebrate until now. We shopped and had lunch. Luckily, Dakota was able to come with us, which was fun.

More Legoland

2011-04-17T22:44:00.000-07:00

Legoland August 13, 2010

2011-04-17T22:36:00.000-07:00

We met some of our friends at Legoland. We have gone a few other times and the kids like it. It is about 45 minutes away from our house, so I thought we would go more often. But we all like Sea World, the SD Zoo and the SZ Wild Animal Park better, even if they are further away. The kids do like the rides and they all like spending time building and then racing cars.

More at Sea World

2011-04-17T22:34:00.000-07:00

Sea World August 11, 2010

2011-04-17T22:23:00.000-07:00

All five kids went with me to Sea World and we stayed there for hours and hours. We had a great time. It was really fun seeing the night shows. We sat really close for the Shamu show and got wet. Still fun. I bought all three little kids Shamu pajamas on the way out because their clothes were really wet and we liked the pjs. Very fun day!

August 18, 2010 Various cute pictures

2011-04-17T22:08:00.000-07:00

We put all the kids to bed in their own beds, but somehow they all wind up back in our bed at some point in the middle of the night.

Brayden lost another tooth!

Cabin times

2011-01-29T23:38:00.000-08:00

Campfire

2011-01-29T23:32:00.000-08:00

Making Smores

2011-01-29T23:23:00.000-08:00

We all like sitting my the fire at night.

At the cabin

2011-01-29T22:01:00.000-08:00

The cabin was by Ray's grandfather and is pretty rustic. We actually only spent one night sleeping at the cabin. The first couple of nights we slept at a lodge up the road. I was nervous about having three little kids spend the night in a place that isn't at all child proofed. I liked staying at the lodge. The rooms are very basic, I don't even think there are phones in the rooms. But it was clean and we could lock the doors and know the kids were right next to us and safe. We would get up early in the morning and head over to the cabin to spend the day. We would only head back to the lodge when it was time for bed. Ray really wanted us to stay at the cabin, so on the last night I said okay. It was awful. There is one large room upstairs with a bunch of beds. I slept on the outside of one of the beds so Sasha wouldn't fall off. The stairs are really steep and hard, so I worried about one of them falling down them. All of the beds are pretty close to the stairs. Brayden suddenly woke up in the middle of the night and started heading right for the stairs! I jumped up and grabbed him, put him back into bed and then slept on the outside of that bed. A couple of hours later Sasha woke up and started for the stairs. It was crazy and exhausting. Oh, and even though it was August, it was FREEZING at night. Even Ray, who can sleep through anything hardly slept that night. After that night, he understood why I had insisted on us staying at the lodge. Where we will be staying when we visit until the kids get older.
The cabin is right on the American River and the back deck looks over it. I love the sound of it. It was very relaxing to stay at the cabin before the little kids were born. I loved spending hours reading while listening to the river in the background. This time was fun, but not relaxing. You can see in the picture of Sasha how rustic the kitchen is. In the last picture Brookelyn is standing on the back porch and you can see the river behind her. We are really close to the river. The kids loved every minute of every day we were there.

Day at Lake Tahoe

2011-01-29T21:45:00.000-08:00

We went into Lake Tahoe to have lunch and spend a few hours at the beach. It was a great day and the kids really had fun at the beach. The water is warmer than Lake Tahoe, so the kids were able to play in it for a while.

Swimming

2011-01-29T21:41:00.001-08:00

At family cabin in Tahoe

2011-01-28T16:14:00.001-08:00

We drove up to Ray's mom's house in Walnut Creek, and then drove up to Tahoe the next day. These pictures are after a short hike from the cabin along the river to where the kids could "fish" (haven't been fish in river for a few years) and swim. The water is FREEZING. We spent several hours there while they found rocks and tried to make them skip over the water. It was a lot of fun.

At Uncle Joel and Uncle Art's House

2011-01-28T16:11:00.000-08:00

Moe pics at game with cousins

2011-01-28T16:08:00.000-08:00

David's 11th B-day party

2011-01-28T16:02:00.000-08:00

We celebrated my nephew, David's, birthday by going to a minor league baseball game. It was a lot of fun. The mascot, Whooly, spent a lot of time with the kids and one of the players ran up and handed Brayden an autographed ball.

Pool Days

2011-01-28T15:58:00.000-08:00

We spent a lot of time at the pool for swim lessons for the girls, swim team practices for Brayden or swim meets for Brayden. Certainly a great way to spend the summer!

San Diego Wild Animal Park

2011-01-28T15:52:00.000-08:00

We love going to the Wild Animal Park!

Orange County Fair

2011-01-28T15:46:00.000-08:00

Orange County Fair

2011-01-28T15:39:00.000-08:00

Brayden's Swim Meet

2011-01-28T15:36:00.000-08:00

Daddy in charge

2011-01-28T15:29:00.000-08:00

I don't think Ray understands that it is usually NOT GOOD if the kids are playing quietly for a long time.

Zoo animals

2011-01-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

Colton took all of the zoo pictures.

Zoo

2011-01-28T15:21:00.000-08:00

Zoo

2011-01-28T15:11:00.000-08:00

Swim lessons

2011-01-28T15:07:00.001-08:00

San Diego Zoo

2011-01-28T15:00:00.001-08:00

With cousins at local water park

2011-01-28T14:52:00.000-08:00

At the beach with family

2011-01-28T14:48:00.000-08:00

Swim lessons

2011-01-28T14:47:00.000-08:00

A typical night

2011-01-28T14:44:00.000-08:00

Ray took these pictures one morning. Maybe this is why I never feel well rested.

With cousin Kanaka

2011-01-28T14:29:00.000-08:00

4th of July

2011-01-28T14:20:00.000-08:00

July 4th, 2010

2011-01-28T14:08:00.000-08:00

Fourth of July. Brayden was in the parade on the Dolphins float.

Princesses

2011-01-28T14:03:00.000-08:00

More princesses

2011-01-28T13:58:00.000-08:00

Disneyland pics

2011-01-28T13:52:00.000-08:00

Disneyland with Colton and Amy

2011-01-28T13:46:00.000-08:00

Colton and Amy brought Brookelyn and Sasha to Disneyland for a day. They spent a lot of time meeting the princesses. They were there for hours and hours and had a great time! Both girls fell asleep on the way home, but were smiling as Colton carried them into their room. Sasha said it was the best day of her whole life (she's three). Great big brother!

Ice cream

2011-01-28T13:45:00.001-08:00

Amys' graduation party

2011-01-28T13:43:00.000-08:00

Out to eat

2011-01-28T13:38:00.000-08:00

More graduation pictures

2011-01-28T13:36:00.001-08:00

Colton and Dakota and Colton with Mom.

Colton's high school graduation

2011-01-28T13:33:00.000-08:00

Doing work in their preschool classrooms

2011-01-28T13:01:00.000-08:00