Gotcha Day!!

I can't believe a year ago on March 24th the judge in Ukraine made Tetyana legally ours forever. Each morning leading to this day I would remind everyone at breakfast what we all had been doing the year before..."Today we landed in Kyiv." or "Today we had our SDA appointment" or "Today we met for the very first time." But on the anniversary of our court day I said nothing to the kids. I wanted to surprise them with a fun dinner out (can you tell I like surprises?) for some Japanese food. Tetyana has never tried it and I knew she would have a blast watching the chef prepare her food right in front of her while he did some tricks.

We had the best chef we have ever had! He entertained us the entire time and made some excellent food. After the knife slinging he did the normal tricks with the egg but then started flinging egg at us to try to catch in our mouths. At first I thought he would just try the kids but he did everyone at the table. It was a riot! I think only 2 out of 9 of us caught the egg. We wore most of it! I guess we should have brought our poncho's!

He lit the grill on fire which Tetyana could not believe! See her in background of the picture below? She loved the volcano too!

Luke usually orders shrimp and Tetyana swears she hates fish. I guess they served some pretty bad fish in the orphanage. She tells us it had bones and the eyes still in it! This I can believe. I have served her tuna casserole and she loves it. So we told her she and Luke were going to share shrimp and chicken. We can still pull the wool over her eyes! Again, she loved it. Next thing I am going to try is halibut on the grill. We had to tell her to stop eating because she was going to make herself sick. I should have taken before and after pictures of her plate! This girl can eat!!

We have decided that hibachi table cooking will be how we celebrate each year.

Disney World's Magic Kingdom

We live right next door to Disney World. We can see (and hear) the fireworks each night. Last summer we went to Animal Kingdom but it really isn't the same as going to the Magic Kingdom. We wanted to take Tetyana when she knew English well so we could understand her reaction to going. She also still gets pretty over stimulated when we go to large stores like Target. She has to touch everything! We knew Disney would be crazy for her.

Last week I told Drew that I really wanted to take her. I knew many schools are out for Spring Break already and over the next few weeks the park would be totally crazy. I refuse to go any later than early May because it is so hot and crowded. It just isn't fun to spend the entire day there and only be able to ride 3 rides. So it was either this week or wait until after Spring Break.

We decided to let the kids go to school in the morning and pick them up after lunch. We didn't tell them anything. When I went to pick them up Luke came down first. He thought he had another doctors visit but I told him he had to wait until his sister was there and then I would tell him what I was doing at school. When T came out I told them we had a very important appointment with the head mouse. They looked at me funny and then I told them we were headed to Magic Kingdom for the rest of the day. They were so excited! On our way Tetyana kept saying "Ok, Tetyana relax". It was so cute!

Tetyana had no idea what to expect. She had never seen a parade before. We got there just before the first parade so we got a great spot to sit and watch. One of the dancers even stopped by to chat with T and take a picture. I wish I could have been inside Tetyana's head to see what she was thinking!

The park was much more crowded than I thought it was going to be. Space Mountain had a line that was supposed to take 100 minutes! We decided to try the smaller rides first and go back to the bigger ones after dinner. We rode the tea cups, drove the cars at Indy Speedway (which gave me a glimpse into Luke's driving abilities-scary!), visited the Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, spent a lot of time in Toontown (you can see T's favorite place was Minnie's fridge!), Goofy's run away train, Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain and watched some comedy at Monsters, Inc Laugh Floor.

When we got off of Goofy's ride there were some Disney staff members asking if we would be part of a taste test for cotton candy. I am such a stickler for eating healthy food, Tetyana had never tried cotton candy. They had a blue bag and a pink bag and they were to try each kind and see which they liked better. They liked the pink one much better (and so did I!). They gave the kids Honorary Taste Tester certificates and some buttons. Tetyana's said "celebrating her first time at Disney". She was so proud!!

We wanted to have pictures taken with all of the characters but the line for Minnie and Mickey was over 2 hours!!! We did eat at a character restaurant (by accident) and all of the Pooh characters were there. Luke thought it was "so stupid!" but let me take his picture anyway.

We were able to catch the night time parade also. It was so beautiful. We stayed and closed the park down (even on a school night!). The kids were exhausted and so were we. I am so glad we finally got to take Tetyana!

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

We got a wonderful invitation to a great families house to spend Christmas Eve with them and other friends who's families are far away....Shelli and their family were great hosts and all of the kids had so much fun playing together and feeling the anticipation build.

We had dinner and then the big guy stopped by to give each child a gift. Tetyana was beside herself just waiting for her name to be called so she could sit with Santa. Luke on the other hand could have done without the whole scenario! See he has never liked Santa (or any other character or mascot) and especially hates Chuck E Cheese. They scare the crap out of him even to this day! Every picture I have of Luke with Santa he is screaming. This year he sat on his lap because I made him do it with Tetyana. Tetyana on the other hand would have hugged the guy all night!

Luke figured out the big secret about Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny right after Christmas last year. I have forbid him to tell any other child. I remember the whole thing being ruined for me when I was young and I would hate for him to tell another child and ruin the magic for them. I can tell you it was a relief for him to know! He is so observant and remembers where each and every gift comes from that I was having a hard time covering up my soot covered boot tracks!

Is this not the funniest looking Santa you have ever seen? Ok, you can hardly see his face through all of that hair! The kids all knew it was one of their dads and when the kid saw his own dad as Santa he just cracked up!

We didn't leave the party until almost 11 and we still had our one gift to open at home. Each year the kids get new pj's to wear to bed on Christmas Eve. This year they got pj's with matching robes. They were so cozy and soft. Tetyana was so excited and gave me the biggest hug! Who knew a new pair of pj's would be so exciting!

After finally getting the kids in bed Drew and I set out to do our Santa work. Santa brought Tetyana her very first bike and Luke an electric scooter. We put those out in front of the tree so when the kids came out they would see those first. I wanted the gifts to be set up perfectly. I wanted Tetyana's first Christmas with us to be so special. Here are a few more pictures from Christmas morning.
It was such a fun day and the house was a wreck! We finished off a perfect day for Tetyana with a huge feast! I think she is already counting down the days until next Christmas!

Christmas Continued...

Nearly every year, even before I had kids, we have made Gingerbread Houses. Boy have they made it so much easier!!! I used to use graham crackers and make the confectioners sugar glue. Now you can buy a whole set up with all of the icing, candy and a premade house! The kids both had their share of sugar! Yikes! What a sticky mess they were! We also took the kids to see the Nutcracker. We have taken Luke every year since he was 3 and he really enjoys it. I think Tetyana really like it too. She really liked the costumes.

I try to take a family picture each year for our Christmas cards. We took the kids out to Rollins College in hopes of finding some cool settings. I think I took nearly 200 pictures! Here are some of them I liked the best.

Luke and Tetyana begged and begged since before Thanksgiving to take out all of the Christmas decorations. Since our house is STILL up for sale we were thinking it may not be a good idea to fill the house with decorations but then I remembered something Drew always says to me.."This is your life, live it the way you want to." and I so wanted to have the kids enjoy the decorations and have our house lit up like it is every year. So we pulled out box after box of Christmas decorations and decorated the house and decorated the tree and hung lights outside in 85 degree weather. We were actually sweating! Tetyana really had a fun time exploring all of the decorations and learning about our traditions.

To be continued...

Blog Hiatus..MIA..Lost and Found

So, it's been awhile and so much has happened and nothing has happened at all. I am not really sure what to blog in regards to why I went missing but I can tell you it has changed my life. I am thinking of starting a blog about my own thoughts but for now I will catch up up on the family.

The last time we "saw" the family was right after Thanksgiving. Christmas was coming quickly and the kids were very excited. Tetyana had absolutely no idea what was going to happen but knew there were gifts and food involved and this made her thrilled!

Over time we have collected several ornaments as our family has grown. We have gone from being a newly married couple to a family of three and this year a family of four. Drew knew I wanted to get an ornament that had all of our names printed on it for Tetyana to hang on the tree and without knowing what each other was doing we went on the same day and purchased ornaments with each of our names on them. It was perfect because both of the kids were able to hang one on the tree.

It has been hard adopting an older child when you have a biological child already because she understands that she hasn't always been here. There is a history with the bio child and it is everywhere Tetyana turns. I don't want Tetyana to feel like she is an outsider but I don't want Luke to be deprived of talking about the memories we have shared. As we unpacked all of the Christmas stuff we found a lot of personalized decorations. Tetyana was very jealous. Rationally she knows why but in her heart I think she wishes she had been born into our family also. She often tells me she wishes she were in my tummy too.

Baking is something I do every year. I ship homemade goodies along with the gifts we send. The kids had lots of fun helping. Here is a sample of cookies we made. They are supposed to be teddy bears but Luke wanted to make a moustache on his and T wanted to make hers a cat. I am pretty anal so having them both in the kitchen with me was very challenging but something I really wanted to do with them.

To be continued......