HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!!

Just a quick note to say "happy Easter" Julia had a wonderful a first Easter at home. And as always we were overwhelmed at the gifts from family. Aunt Kim and Uncle Joel, those books ROCK!! I can see them being some faves for a while now. Aunt Tiny, you always overwhelm us and that outfit is just too cute. And the OhioGrands! Y'all are just too much and you know it. Ty-Ty, Julia loves her Pablo toy, thank you so much:) We love and miss everyone and hope that you each spent today remembering the Blessings of Easter and the Resurrection and enjoying each moment that you have with each other.
Much love.

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Easter Party!!

Julia had lots of fun at the squadron Easter Party. She loved the bounce house and we had some big kids looking out for her in there. She really got into the egg hunt and as Mama had miscalculated how many eggs to throw down (due to a few people leaving early, not my fault) there were lots of extra eggs for the little ones to find :) Good thing, Julia filled her bucket, with Braden's help of course! She did share her eggs with one of the younger girls too though. :)

She even went to the Easter Bunny! Of couse Mama was busy setting up the egg hunt and missed that (bad Mama) but I'm hoping that one of my friend's will email the picture she took and if she does I'll post it here. :)

So that's been our week. Lots of new things going on and Julia seems up to the challenges and even invites them. I can't help but marvel at the progress this child has made. She's even starting to spell....of course it's O-H-I-O, but hey, not bad huh?? LOL.

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After getting off to a bit of a rocky start at gymnastics, you can Julia quickly warmed up to her teacher and couldn't wait to take her turn! We've been practicing a bit at home and she loves to sit down and do her stretches and though she still needs help with the somersaults she'll keep coming back to do more of them! So I guess we'll keep doing it for awhile and see how it goes. As long as she's having fun :)

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Showing that like any child, she has her moments too..she's just not so sure about them being caught on camera! LOL.

FIRST PIGTAILS!

She was not being real cooperative on the pictures but we just had to share her first pigtails with you! I think I need a lot more practice before we wear them often. LOL. But you can get the general idea and believe it or not they are actually still in. We'll see how long they really last. I don't give them more than 30 minutes. The other picture is just a random one from the other night, you can see where that new tooth is though! :)

Alas, with Spring also comes allergies. The Zyrtec was no longer cutting it and Julia was waking up frequently through the night with an allergy cough...so starting this week she started using an inhaler...we'll see if that's enough, she did better last night already but was still pretty full this morning so only time will tell I guess. My poor baby, but as you can see she does great with it, as long we make Pablo or Tyrone try it first! She's so funny.

Other than the allergies she's in great health, no ear infections or anything (knock on wood). Heck she does a lot better than I do. Thank goodness one of us does! And she has more teeth coming in. A MOLAR has cut through on the bottom left and it's match is coming on the right... go figure.

Well, I think that pretty well should catch everyone up. Hope you enjoy the pics and I'm sure we'll have more after Easter.

Just some random pics of our little Miss being cute. As you can see it's getting harder and harder to get good pics as she is almost always on the move. Yes, she certainly runs now. And no matter how girly I dress her, she plays like a boy. Falls down, jumps back up, runs into things....her legs are going to be bruised all summer at this rate. But she rarely says a word about it and just keeps going. She is talking more and more all the time. Today she started saying "Bradon" his whole name (she was just saying "Bray".... it seems she is adding more to her vocabulary every day lately.

All dressed up to go out to dinner with Lane and Ms.Melissa. This is a dress that Ms. Lisa gave me for Julia at the baby shower the Spouses Group gave me just before we traveled to China last year. I'm so glad it still fits this spring and she's had a chance to wear it! If it had waited much longer to warm up, she might not have. But it fits perfectly right now, and we're all agreed it pretty much doesn't matter what she wears, she's just too cute.

Weekend in Dallas.
We took the opportunity a few weeks ago to head to Dallas and spend the weekend. We had a great time relaxing at the hotel, taking Julia to the Aquarium and had lunch at The Spaghetti Warehouse before heading home. It was a really nice time, but I think we wore Julia out a bit. Mama's girl indeed, she insisted on having the map of the Aquarium the whole time we were in there.

Well, time to get little one settled down for the night. I'll have more tomorrow and you can look at Dropshots for photos as well.

Chinese New Year. Yes, we're really late with these, but we celebrated Chinese New Year Feb 18 with other families in the area that are or have adopted from China. It was so very cool to look around the room and see so many happy families and Chinese faces! I'm so glad that we got to go. I can't publish all the photos as I don't have permission from people, but trust me when I say it was very cool, and of course Julia loved the chance to dress up! :)

Ray helped friends of ours put up a privacy fence last weekend. As you can see they had some added help! No matter what I did, she was determined to be glued to Daddy and HELP! Good thing she's cute!!

I still have more pics to load onto the pc but haven't located my cable for the camera yet. So keep checking!!

Okay, Okay, I know these are very late in being posted. Sorry it's been a bit crazy. I have many more to post later (once I find the cord for the camera!) But these are some Ms. Melissa took a couple of weeks ago with Julia and Bradon getting a little too into the smooches! Ms. Melissa has been kind enough to watch Julia while I go to phsyical therapy twice a week, and as you can see Julia makes herself right at home!!

I promise to have more news and pics posted later this week. :)

GO BUCKS! Yup, Daddy's been working with our little girl trying to turn her into a sports fan. (we'll see) At the moment he's winning. He sang one line of the "Buckeye Medley" (we don't give a dang about the whole state of Michigan) and my child makes a bee-line for the computer, where the song is stored! I kid you not, and she started bouncing to the music once it was turned on, which of course we had to do. So Auntie Alissa and Grampa Stephens these pics are for you! :)

Julia had a Dr's appointment yesterday, been dealing with a cold and she is just not herself, but as this is the first time in months she's been sick, I count us fairly lucky so far. It's just a little trying as she doesn't want anything but Mama most of the time. We did get updated measurements at the Dr's though.....23 lbs and
32 1/2" tall. Daddy took her to the Dr's and I guess she was very good as usual and as long as the Doc did everything to "Tyrone" (her favorite Backyardigan toy) first then she would sit and let the Dr. check her out with no problem. :) She's too funny, and developmentally she's right on target now. Amazing.

She's becoming our little mimic and trying to repeat a lot of what we say. For instance "Go Bucks", "apple", "lao-lao" (grammie Hall) and "nai-nai" (granny Stephens) and pretty much anything we ask her to repeat she'll usually at least try. She can tell you the Sheep says "baa" and the cow says "moo" and the cat says "meow". Now we just need to get her to work on saying it to everyone else and not just us.

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Finally got some new pics and video. We had a little impromptu photo shoot this afternoon, so there are more pics at the dropshots site, http://www.dropshots.com/rgshrs This video Ray took this morning, AFTER we had tried to get her to talk to Grammy and Grampa Hall and Robert and Riley and she refused everyone of them. This is what she does afterwards when there was NO ONE on the phone. Figures huh?? LOL. I know, soon enough I'll be wishing for a time that she wouldn't talk on the phone.

Things here are going well. My back is healing nicely and this week should find us settling back into a new routine again with Daddy going back to work. Wish us luck. As you can see in the videos and pictures Julia is doing wonderful, she now not only walks but runs as well. It's amazing how far she's come these last 7 months, this coming Saturday (Robert's Birthday! Happy Birthday Rob!! WE LOVE YOU!) will be the 7 month anniversary of Julia being put into our arms. It's hard to believe that it's only been 7 months and amazing to look back and see how much this person has changed our lives. We wouldn't have it any other way.

Hope you enjoy the pics and the updates. Drop me a comment at either site anytime and let me know. It's nice to actually hear that someone's still reading once and a while :)

Happy New Year!

Ok, so we're a bit late with that. :) Cut us some slack, we had the Christmas trip to Ohio and getting back just in time for me to catch the bug that started with Allie Christmas Eve, so New Year's Eve I was pretty down for the count. But that's over, and we're all fine (no one else got sick!) and time to catch up.

I've been adding new pics from Christmas to dropshots today, so stop by there and check them out. Most we took, but some Aunt Alexa took and sent as well. We really had a wonderful time in Ohio (despite the illnesses) and it was hard to leave and come back. Julia had so much fun with her cousins and you can really see some differences in how much more settled in she is, between this trip and the trip to Maine we had. She's gotten much more comfortable with other people for one thing. So that made the trip a bit easier. But wow, what a car ride.....lol....no actually she did remarkably well, but by the end of the trip we were ALL ready to get out of the car. Actually I think yesterday was the first day her and I have been back in the car at all since being home. No I guess that's not right, we did go visit Ms. Nikki on the 2nd. Still, shows you how much of a break we needed.

And we can officially say that she is WALKING now. Walking and babbling all the time. It's amazing how much more vocal she's become. Most we still don't understand, but she tries with all her might to get it out! I'm not talking a step or few here and there anymore either, more and more she's determined to stay on her feet. And more and more we see how determined she is to not let her friends get ahead of her. So we'll be keeping up those play dates, just to keep her on her toes! LOL

Julia and her Godfather finally got to meet as well! And what a sweet meeting it was! She showed off for him by walking all over the house, and just showed him what a sweetie she is in general. And as I mentioned she's gotten much better around strangers and pretty much went straight to him and even let him hold her.

So all in all, tons of progress going on here everyday. It's been so nice having Daddy home for awhile too. It's going to be hard next week when he goes back to work. However, for the moment he'll only work til Thursday and then be off for another week and a half to help here at the house while I recover from my upcoming back procedure. That's on the 11th and we should know within a week or so if it was successful. Wish me luck everyone. With it, I'll be in a lot less pain and be able to do that much more with Julia in the coming year. So say a prayer that it goes well:)

We'll keep you posted and of course have lots more updates on Miss Julia in the near future.

Christmas came early at our house.

Since we'll be hitting the road to Ohio tomorrow, we opened our presents here at home today. Ms. Julia certainly got into it!! She's got the art of unwrapping figured out now. lookout!! Thank you Uncle Joe and Aunt Kim, Jeremy, Kelsey and Angie, Grammy and Grampa Hall, Uncle Norman, Robert, Riley, Great Grammy Kinney and Nai-Nai and Papa!! She had a WONDERFUL time, unfortunately we discovered that our camera does NOT have a microphone....GRRR! So while we have video there is sadly no sound. Sorry everyone, but you'll get the idea at least :) Jeremy, Kelsey and Angie the hit of the day was amazingly the old fashion pull toy you sent ;)!!! We had to hide it to get her to move on....LOL....She is truly too, too funny.

It's been a long day, so I'm just going to give you the dropshots link again and you can view pics and soundless video there. (live and learn..) On the upside, the image quality on the video is GREAT! LOL. I give up.

Go to www.dropshots.com/rgshrs Enjoy and really thank you everyone, it was a great day.

SANTA PICS!

Check out http:www.dropshots.com/rgshrs for a few more pics. I'll post one here, but frankly I'm too tired to do them all here and there, and there is easier. :)

Julia didn't do so well with Santa, she wouldn't let go of Mama (again, we tried this a week or so ago too and she didn't do any better) but this Santa stuck around long enough that she did wave "bye-bye" to him, yes "princess wave" and she let him give her bye kiss on the cheek. I guess that's as good as it gets this year. :)

We're gearing up for Christmas here. Finally got the tree up and decorated on Monday, Julia likes to just sit in front of it and stare. We've already got packages under it too for the most part she's left them alone, but Aunt Kim/Uncle Joe one of yours was ripped a little already and she DID notice that right away and wanted to tear into it some more. So I think Christmas day should be pretty interesting. We're leaving here on Dec 21st and heading to Ohio. So we're thinking we'll open some stuff here on the 20th (happy Bday uncle Norman) and then have everything else Christmas day in Ohio. Looking forward to it. Can't wait for Julia to meet the rest of her cousins and everyone else too! :)

OH and before I forget, yes Grammy Hall she has another tooth, FINALLY! It did cut through yesterday, I saw it and Daddy said "yep" he could feel it! So there ya go!! :)

Kylee's birthday present:)

Kylee gave us a call tonight and in her words ended up getting the best birthday present ever...LOL>> We got Julia to tell her "Hi, Ky-ky!"......CLEAR AS ANYTHING!!!! And with very little prompting....she's starting to become a little parrot all of the sudden repeating what we say or at least very much trying to repeat it. So while we don't have any pics of the moment, we just had to share. :)

Happy Birthday Ky! We love you!