My Baseball Player

Megan decided she wanted to play coach pitch baseball this year (something entirely new for us!).  She's doing great!  At the completion of week 2, she's hitting the ball out of the park within 2 pitches--something she had been doing at home without much problem pre-season and she's learning how to do a good job fielding.

The great thing about the club she is playing on is that every week they practice a character trait.  Week 1 was listening and the coach selects one player who then gets a medal for practicing that trait. This week was Sharing/Taking Turns.  This is something Megan is VERY good at...she's very inclusive.  Its a characteristic she exhibited at a very young age.  Well, this week she was given the medal.  (Every kid will go home with a medal before the season is over.)  She was so surprised and excited to get the medal this week!

Practicing fielding balls

With her medal

The medal winner also gets a sign to take home for the week saying that they won the award this week.  She's talked about it all day!

She's growing up! This week marks 6 years since going to China to bring our little bundle of joy...and she'll be 7 in just a few short weeks. Boy, is time flying!

Summer Vacation

This crazy family went to D!sney World last week for our family summer vacation. (Going in June is nuts in and of itself because of the heat & humidity, but the crowds were RIDICULOUS!) I was smart enough not to tell the girls until just 10 days before we left, and yet that was too many days.  Megan had the suitcase to the car at least 3 different days ready to leave LONG before the day we were supposed to! They were far more interested in the character meetings than the rides, though.

Dad & I have vowed we're not doing that again.

 Mag!c K!ngdom

An!mal K!ngdom

in front of the "Tree of Life"

Megan's dream vacation was to go to the beach, so we made the hour drive (after 4 days of D!sney) to spend the afternoon at Cocoa Beach.  Megan LOVED letting the waves push her..she could have spent the entire week at the beach and gave up D!sney she loved it THAT much!  Dad sat on the sidelines...acting as photographer.

The next vacation will be for a shorter period of time and much more relaxing (like the entire time on the beach!) as this was too busy for all of us!

Pumpkin Patch

We went to our first TRUE pumpkin patch this weekend.  We accidentally went to the wrong one, but we were blessed when we drove into the lot and were handed a wad of tickets for Megan to be able to get to ride on rides we would not otherwise have paid for.  Besides, everything was for charity, so the pumpkins we bought were for a good cause.

Megan riding in the swing.  She LOVED it.

I think she'll love our summer "destination"

(and yes, its still a secret...) 

 Try 1 for a pic.

Rachel was pissed I made her keep her glasses on.

Megan was making her traditional "silly smile" face

I'm sure Rachel will be very proud of THAT picture! LOL! 

Hopefully that will teach her. (yeah right!)

Rachel laughing at me telling Megan she was making a funny face.

Megan giving me a much better smile! 

Megan riding in the barrel train

We also had a hay ride which was fun!

Update on Megan

I've been meaning to update on Megan since I originally posted information on Rachel...but its been crazy around here!  So, some things about my very soon (too soon!) to be kindergartner:

• She LOVES hats.  She specifically loves a hat that I got from a fellow mom that she wears practically all the time.  Its a super cute hat, but it has certainly seen better days.
• I found her winter coat at a garage sale (super cute...for $5!) and it came with a hat with a bill...well, for the past week, she's been wearing THAT hat all the time.  Seriously...100+* outside, she's wearing a winter hat.  Its hilarious!
• Speaking of winter hat...in the past month or so, she's gotten into having to wear a mitten.  Not just any mitten, but these very specific mittens that she had when she was about 2 that went with an old coat.  They are too small, but for whatever reason, she LOVES these mittens.  I can't tell you the number of times I've let her wear a mitten to the grocery store.  I'm sure people think, oh, my goodness, look that little girl, how funny...she's wearing a mitten!  It's 2 gazillion degrees outside! :-) One day at quiet time, she quietly worked a huge hole in one of them, so I've not seen the mittens much lately.
• She's very, very, VERY much into the Cat in the H@t knows a lot about that from PBS k!ds.  She loves to watch this show.  And she loves to be the cat. To the extent that she often has to refer to herself (and wants us to refer to her) as "the cat"...or "this cat".  Its hilarious...and frustrating at the same time!  Of course, that also means that she likes to wear a "tie bow" (aka bow tie).  She wears the one she got at christmas ALL THE TIME, but its starting to look "sad" (aka the sides don't stand up like they used to).  So, now we've branched out and sometimes like to use a shoelace tied in a bow.  For the longest time, she also had to have a tail, but lately that hasn't been as necessary (thank goodness!)
• She has 3 very best "friends": Polly (the parrot puppet she got from her play therapist b/c she played with it at every session & was a special toy to her), Buggy (her ladybug pillow pet), and of course Bops (her sheep).  Life CANNOT go on without her friends.
• She can read at least upper first grade level words.  At least.  She's sounding out words like "hazardous," "elephant," "bicycle" and "trumpet" without even having trouble.  However, we were reading a book the other morning and "custodian" tripped her up a little bit, but she came really close in her attempt.  However, I'm fairly certain that's well beyond first grade!
• She's very much into counting by tens right now.  Forwards and backwards.  
• Writing.  The girl will be my note writer.  I was in class last week and I came home to find 8-10 notes from her spread all over my bed as a "surprise!" from her.  She loves to draw pictures, too.  
• She's sleeping better...and later.  Today she slept until after 7am!
• Her favorite colors are purple and pink.
• She's swimming.  She's figured out how to swim on her own.  We've told her to shovel water (paddle) and kick, but otherwise, she's done it herself. She's been working on holding her breath under water in the bathtub for some time.  We've been spending a lot of time at the pool, and she learned to "take the plunge" and is now officially swimming.  Its still very basic, and she still needs lots of practice to improve, but she's doing it.
• She's taught herself to whistle.  Its not very loud, but she does it before she's going to sleep and when she wakes up in the morning.  She also likes to do it to try to get your attention.
• Logic.  The girl is scary smart logically.  Of course the fact that dad likes to show this stuff and "play" these types of games...and because she is so dang smart she's picking up on them....doesn't help!  She's beginning to have logically conversations.  I'm afraid of what she's going to be able to do as a teenager..at which point conversations will go like this in our house: me to Dad: "This is YOUR FAULT! You created this by teaching her how to do this when she was 5!" Dad: "why is this MY fault?"  me: "ha!  Don't even try that one!" :-)
• Here's an example of her being smart beyond her age.  The other day at supper we had baked beans, so Dad said to me, the girls could have "weans & beenies" (aka beans & weenies) for lunch the next day.  Megan pauses and says, beans & hot dogs?  I looked at Dad, raised my eyebrows, smiled.  The girl scares me.  No one has ever told her that word play "secret" that he likes do.  Dang we could be in t-r-o-u-b-l-e!
• She's not really into dresses although she seems to be selecting more of her skorts this year to wear.  When she does wear a dress (and she does wear them to church), she likes to see if its a twirly dress. She's not into girly things, she much prefers throwing the football, t-ball, sticks, dirt and other not-so-"girly" things.
• She's going to be my athlete.  I've started jogging and she frequently wants to go jogging with me.  So, she'll jog with me to the end of the street and back.  She does pretty well.  We got her some pretty good quality shoes this year and I think that will help her, too, if she does run with me more.

Megan is VERY excited about kindergarten starting in just a week.  Mom's not so excited to see her little girl grow up!  Where has the last 4 years gone????

Pre K Performance

Here is Megan's class' performance from last night

Preschool Graduation

 Megan's pre-K graduation was last night.  Here's some of my favorite pictures.

Sisterly love

Ms Debbie, Megan's teacher  

She is AMAZING & we're sad to say goodbye to her

Megan's best friend, Dylan.

They are like 2 peas in a pod.  Seriously.

My precious little almost 5 yr old.

Where has the time gone???

Megan's Preschool Program

Megan's Thanksgiving Program was last night. Here is her class' performance of "Feather bed". They did an AWESOME job. And she LOVES her teacher, Ms. Debbie
Her classmates lined up are Abi, Megan, Mia, Ethan, Jaidyn, Saelah, Dylan

Her bestest friend in her class is Dylan (and he is a cutie!)

My little missy...

...has gotten glasses! The day she's been looking forward to for a very LONG time! She technically only needs to wear them when she is reading and only for about an hour a day at this point in the game, but she has them! They are purple (of course!)...and she LOVES THEM!

She's VERY INTO making funny faces for the camera..
like this...

And this...

and then this adorable one...
what a beauty!

mid-August

Dang, I've been wanting to a better job of blogging...and again, the month is half over and I've not blogged. Shoot. Okay. Looking forward to the girls being in school so that I will have time to work on things like blogging! Geez. The days just FLY by!

I've been thinking about blogging...and all the things I've wanted to include. So let me post a few things that come to mind tonight. I teach a class next week, then Rachel & I start classes on the 22nd. Megan starts on the 29th. I'm not sure where the summer went. Sigh. But back to my list:

Megan

• She is reading at probably 1st or possibly 2nd grade level. She is instigating more and more reading opportunities. I'm not sure how much further she's going to be by the time she starts kindergarten. I'm scared to think about it.
  
• She's starting to express interest in math (Lord help me!). I've been dragging my feet so she has some sort of challenge in the future!!! Geez.
• She LOVES to build towers with blocks. As in she can literally spend an hour or more multiple times a day in her room building towers and pyramids with her alphabet blocks. I'm sure glad I didn't get rid of all of them!
• She's recently gotten into "decorating" her room (aka taking the bow hair clips and clipping them on her curtains, drawer pulls, picture frames, etc.) during naptime and/or in the morning after she wakes up, but before she's allowed to get up (before 6am)
• She's started asking for a clock in her room with hands so she can tell what time it is to get up (which she says is when "the hand is on the 6"...she determined that time...not us, but I'm good with that!!!).

Rachel

• Rachel's English is coming along. She's doing awesome! Its incredible how far she has come!!! She's doing amazing.
• She loves beautiful dresses (as in formal dress up clothes)
• She enjoys going to church and is making friends there.
• She loves crafts and drawing. She loves making bracelets with beads, especially.
• She hates to wear her glasses (Megan loves to wears her "just glasses"...still)
• She loves Americ@n foods especially pizza! She loves my homemade pizza--well, not MY truly homemade pizza as she's not had that yet--but there are various types of pizzas that we make at home that she likes.
• She's very excited about school...she'll be in 8th grade.

Okay, that's the best I can come up with at the moment...so I'm calling it good for the time being...I hope to update once classes start next week!

My crazy girl

Megan went for her 4 yr check up. Before we went, we were talking about what she was going to show the doctor what she can do. She tells me "I can say the alphabet backwards." It was the first I had heard of this...so I asked her to tell me. And I'll darned if she did it (best as I could tell since I don't really know it backwards!) I'm guessing this is what she thinks about when she's SUPPOSED to be going to sleep! :-)



So, the star of the show...doing the alphabet backwards.
Crazy, wicked smart.
I have 2 very smart girls. I am scared. Seriously.

Megan's Birthday

Megan turned 4 yrs old this week. How in the world can that be correct? I have no earthly idea! We had a "Flower" party last Saturday at a park close to our house in celebration. (Yes, I made the same cupcakes as last year...but they are SO CUTE!)

We started the party with everyone making their own pinwheel

Busily perfecting their creation

The birthday girl

Her hair is getting so long (again)!

The cute cupcakes

They are so easy to make, albeit time consuming!

Several of her friends from school came and other friends of ours. We played pin the pedal on the flower (aren't I creative? lol) One of the other mom's got a soccer ball from their car so there was an adhoc soccer "game" going as well. Everyone had a good time. Megan crashed at bedtime very quickly. In fact, she was zoned out for most of supper. Good thing she took a nearly 3 hr nap beforehand!

Megan's Spring Program

My favorite part is at about :20 where she looks at "H" next to her and says "Ms. Britni, he's singing SO LOUD." Then promptly covers her ears. Too cute.

Future Artist?

Megan drew this picture one day...then told me it was the "thing-a-ma-jigger" from The C@t in the H@t Knows a lot about that (her all time favorite show right now)...



If you don't know what its supposed to look like, you can see the "real thing" here. If I could the darn thing to resize to smaller, I would paste it here and I don't have the time to figure it out! I think its pretty darn close myself!!!! Especially for a 3 year old!

Quick catch up

Since I leave for China in less than a week...I thought I'd put a few pics up that I've been meaning to for some time...here's just a taste and I hope to get more up this weekend.

Megan had a "petting zoo" at school a few weeks ago. She really found the animals fascinating. I asked her to smile...and this is the face I get.

She loves to do what Daddy does. Daddy lays on the floor like this all the time, and so does Megan. What a cutie!

The past few weeks, she's always asking for her "just glasses". She gets a pair of her sunglasses then says "mom, these are my just glasses. okay?" I let her watch one of her favorite movies while I get ready in the morning, so she's been getting her "just glasses", then crawling in my bed, then taking them off and putting them by my clock (like I do). So, T@rget had kids sunglasses in the dollar bin...and I let her pick a pair (and I got a few extra...for $1 how can you pass that up???) and we popped out the lenses. She's IN HEAVEN!

She has really grown up in the past 2 weeks or so. I know we're a bit slow, but she has finally decided SHE wants to get dressed by herself. So, I set her clothes out, show her the back part and she does it alone. She also puts her pjs on....although tonight both the top & bottom were backwards. We're still learning. She wants a "glass plate" like us at meal times; she wants napkins like us; she's finally decided to drink her milk cold (yes, its taken THIS long!) at meal times. Oh, and she does NOT want us to hold her hand going into the stores. It started by wanting me to just hold her shoulder...and then it progressed to, "Don't hold me mom. I'll stay right by you." And she does! She also wants to push the cart or walk by the cart, not in the cart. Thank goodness several stores have those long carts where kids can stand right in front of you while you and (they think) they help push the cart. Those things are genius! Love them. Love stores that have them! The biggest problem when she's walking next to you in the store is that she does NOT pay attention to where she is walking. So she often is about ready to walk into someone or some thing. But its all part of the growing up. She'll be 4 in a month! Hard to believe. And she has grown again. She is ALL legs. Those legs are so darn LONG!

SNOW!

It seems like the last several years we've gotten snow in February. And if memory serves me right, we got snow on Christmas Eve last year. Anyways...we got a surprise snow storm today!

Bundled up and can't WAIT to go out!

"It's snowing, mom!"

She's SO IN LOVE with the snow.

"Just working" on the snowman...which led to...

Oops...the snowman fell over from all the "work" Megan did. The snowman did not make it longer than 30 minutes...Dad didn't even get to see it!

In the house for hot chocolate (her first time!). After much trepidation, she tried it and low and behold..she liked it...just like I told her she would!

The evidence that we had fun in the snow...

Needless to say, the wet clothes are in the dryer so she can go back out. She didn't want to come in and has been begging for the past hour to go back out!

Oh man...

It seems like SO LONG ago that I posted something informative about Megan...yet, she seems to have grown up so much lately! A couple of things that come to mind...

• The C@t and the Hat (thanks to the PBS show) is extremely popular around our house. So much so that she is using a broken beaded necklace as a tail. She tucks in the top of her pants and walks around talking about her tail. It is so funny. Oh, and sings the song "here we go-go-go on an adventure". We're ALWAYS going on an adventure (to the store, outside, the park, etc.) And the car is always the thing-a-ma-jigger (the Cat's mode of transportation).
  
• She also loves Super Why (also PBS) and finds Sid the Science kid interesting as well. She loves to investigate new things. I'm not very good at science, so that show helps me to know what to talk to her about as well.
  
• She talks CONSTANTLY. And loves to say "watch this" or "watch me".
  
• She loves to just be silly. Whether it's hopping around like a frog, putting on my sunglasses or running around in a circle, she is hilarious!
• And when she's in a tired mood, she'll say "that's my choice today!"...can you tell we talk about choices at our house??? :-)
  
• She loves her mini trampoline. She had been jumping on the furniture, and we found one at a garage sale cheap...it's quite the hit!
• This should come as no surprise to those who are around Megan much, but she loves sticks. Shoot, she loves to take over anything that could be perceived as a stick. For instance, I was wrapping a book the other day and she wanted my wrapping paper roll b/c it was like a stick. Nothing is safe
• What does she do with the sticks? Well, she pretends she's Super Why and "zaps" in a new word. Or she's Princess Pea using it to spell words. All back to the same thing: words! They are her FAVORITE!
• She doesn't ask to spell words as often anymore...but she still loves words and letters.
• She loves school. We had tried putting her in a different school for this year, but she just didn't do well. So, after much prayer and some serious changes at the school, we decided to move her back to her "old school". She has the teacher she had the first semester she was in school and her class only has 4 students. The teacher is amazing at imagination play and is amazing with the kids. She is having tons of fun! She would go to school everyday if she could! She loves it THAT MUCH!
• Sleep has still been difficult. We had time where things were better, but the past couple of weeks she's been having bad dreams. She'll wake up and have a hard time going back to sleep. We've been in play therapy for 3 months now and we've seen some progress. She's bringing up being scared to go to sleep or being scared at night. We're on the right track, if she could just work through the scariness, we'd be good!
  
• She talks about giants CONSTANTLY! She does NOT like giants. I'm not even sure where this started (maybe a bad dream? I don't know), but she will often bring up how she does NOT like giants. We talk about how they are all pretend, except one. There was only 1 real giant: Goliath. And what happened to Goliath? David won, because God was on his side! (Her favorite bible story...or rather...one of them)
• Oh, and how could I forget...she LOVES OUR CHRISTMAS TREE! She talks about it the MOMENT she wakes up "We have a Christmas tree!" It may come from one of her favorite books, as it talks about a Christmas tree. I don't know...but she's obsessed with the Christmas tree!
• Books...she is such a book junkie. She has several that she has memorized. She really can read, but she hasn't figured out the whole the word I just spelled (and she likely saw in her head as she figured it out) is the same as reading it out of the book. I had gotten a few beginning reading books at a garage sale, but she's memorized them after having us read them, so having her read them is pointless. She already knows what they say! She typically refused to read them to us...she wanted us to read them to her. Oh well. She'll do it when she's ready. After all, she's only 3!

She's really grown up...she's taller, leaner and is losing her toddler look. sniff, sniff. In fact, we measured her the other day and she's 39.5 inches tall. She weighs about 36lbs...she's one solid girl! Several of my friends comment on how her weight is deceiving as they've tried to pick her up to put in the swing or whatever. And its the truth (especially when their girls--about the same age as Meg--weigh less than 30lbs)!

Update on Rachel...we had our fingerprints taken as part of the immigration process the beginning of the month. We're hoping they will be back within the next few days. The rest of the documents are on their way back from getting all the appropriate approvals on them. They should be at the agency next week. Then we just wait for our fingerprint approval, get it the appropriate approvals then it will off to China! I am hoping and praying that it will be sent off by mid-Dec. It would be an amazing graduation gift for me if we could get it sent off that week! No matter how you look at it, it's interesting that we sent out dossier for Megan to China in December 2005. I'm hoping we'll travel in March/April (just like with Megan) again. But, it would be miraculous for that kind of timing. I've always felt like April is when we would travel...so I'm praying it works that way! That would mean all my kids joined our family in April (Ian was born on 4/11 and Megan's official adopted date is 4/1). How cool would THAT be???

I'm so far behind in postings!

Oh man...we've been so busy!!! But, the good news is that the dissertation defense (aka final presentation) is Oct 25th. Once that is done...and I incorporate the committee's changes and submit it to the graduation office by the 29th. I WILL BE FINISHED! Whew. That will feel good! But for now, a few pics from the last few weeks. More once I'm through next week. We took lots on our recent trip to visit family...

Megan & cousin Ashley dressing up

She asked to play with shaving cream one morning...and this is what she does with it. silly girl!

Well, who doesn't end up with sand EVERYWHERE when they play it? I especially like it on the bridge of her sunglasses.

Her new passion: climbing trees.
Or rather, sitting in trees since she asks one of us to put her IN the tree!

My singing sweetie

And now it's September...

Holy moly...where is this year going? Whoa.

I did defend my dissertation proposal at the end of August and all went well, so I'm continuing on the journey to get this thing finished up to graduate in December! FINALLY!!!

September is the month I have dreaded for some time. I have to finish writing my dissertation before we leave for SD on the 24th. Guess that means as of today I have 22 days to finish it. Holy cow. Needless to say, stress is very high at our house because life is not stopping for me to write. DH is unable to get any additional time off this month, so that leaves only weekends to write (other than naptime and some evening time). Of course, I'm still teaching an online class, so I must work on that as well. Combine that with preparation to leave (packing, arranging dog sitter, etc.), paperwork to bring JiJie home as well as fundraising. Yeah, just a little stress. DH did come up with a plan for Grandmom to come and visit for a week for me to write, so she'll be here on the 13th. That idea came directly from God! My goodness. I felt a million times better at even the possibility. She'll leave just a few days before we leave to head up to SD (and see her again!).

So, things a bit light on the blog front...and will be for a while. Of course, October is looking like its going to be a bit overwhelming as well. And may include another trip back to SD for a family function, plus a bunch of fund raising plans that just could NOT fit into September. sigh. November? Hopefully a little less stressful!

Pics and Such

Well, what else would you wear with your swim suit than biker boots? I mean, really, mom.
(her new favorite shoes!)

My little piano player (like Dr. Marvel on Punchinello, of course)

Another family pic taken by our case manager after our homestudy

My little beauty with pigtails. Hair has gotten so long she no longer needs clips to hold back the wisps!

My cuteness (otherwise known as "sweetness")
I got this super cute dress for $1!