Everyone should have house guests like these!

Happy Spring (and Spring Break)! After georgous weather, followed by snow, we are back to mild weather..... and back to enjoying being outside as much as possible. We've been taking evening family walks trying to shed the winter flub and it feels great.

Last Sunday Michael's sister called to see if she and her kids could come up from Ft. Worth for a Spring Break visit. Sarah was instantly excited about having four of her cousins come to play. We got the house all ready and they arrived Monday at lunch. DeAnn is not your typical house guest. She came bearing a homemade lasagna for dinner, plus breakfast food, lunch food, and snacks for her very hungry teenagers. It didn't stop there, either. She put the kids to work in our yard and they all mowed, raked, and cleared out my flower beds. We had so many lawn bags that we had to divide it up between two trash days. Oh, and they cleaned out our shed and swept the garage! Oh, and did I mention that I didn't change one diaper or give one bath while they were here? Crazy! Anyway, I'm humbled and it was a good reminder to me to make sure that I am a good guest when I am visiting others. (DeAnn, I don't mind if you put your feet up the next time you come, though!) We had a great visit and stayed up way to late watching The O'Reily Factor and talking politics, parenting, and family.

I did a horrible job of taking pictures while they were visiting, but here are a few that I managed to snap.

They played many rounds of kick ball in the back yard.

Sarah wandered around the yard (oblivious to the game) eating the rice from her stir-fry.

Swinging with Katie at the park earlier in the day.

Andrew is less than a month away from his 2nd birthday. He will also celebrate his 1 year anniversary of his Forever Family Day on March 28th (we had a waiting period after he was born before we could go to court and legally adopt him). Andrew is a rough and tumble little guy, yet he can be quite sensitive when his feelings get hurt - particularly by Sarah. He worships the ground she walks on. I think she knows it and sometimes uses it to her advantage. He is equally interested in dump trucks and baby dolls, is shoe obsessed, and loves Dora. But, he is all boy when it comes to climbing, jumping on and off things, electrical cords, and other hazardous activities. Andrew is a regular chatter box. He has a solid vocabulary and the verbal skills to pair some words together and say simple phrases.

I'm not sure why, but my kids beg to brush their teeth! It should be the opposite, right?

Speaking of chatter boxes..... I never thought we would get to the day when we would be asking Sarah to please be quiet for two seconds. We have an amazing speech pathologist, Miss Sandy, that works with Sarah out of her home. The switch has finally been flipped in Sarah's brain and we've really turned a corner.


Sarah is a puzzle freak! They are perfect for her because she loves to disassemble things and figure out how to put them together again.

Tomorrow is Michael's 34th birthday. Sarah made Daddy a cake (with a lot of adult supervision).

Just when I thought she was getting it.....

For about a year now we have been telling Sarah her special Vietnam story at bedtime. It is a really big deal to her to hear her "Nam Story" every night, so if we have a babysitter we have to prep Sarah that the sitter doesn't know that story and won't be sharing it with her that night ('cause we learned the hard way on that!).

The story goes from her birth in VN, to her arrival at the orphanage where the nannies took very good care of her, to our trip on a plane to adopt her and make her our daughter, to our return trip home on a plane and where she lives now. As her verbal skills have improved she has been able to repeat portions of the story. Throughout a typical day she will frequently see (in the sky, on TV, in a book) an airplane and then proceed to say,"One day mommy daddy plane adopt you me...." As time has gone on, she's started adding things after the word "me" -like "door on airplane" and "key door airplane". Then she went even further and started tacking on the end, "choo-choo train, boat, and bus" if we were out and she saw one of those. I always thought that was ironic since we actually took all of those things with her in VN. So I have been confirming for her that yes, indeed, that it true.

Recently we were out and drove past the local water amusement park. She looked up at the huge slides and proceeded to say, "One day mommy daddy plane adopt you me....big slide, wee, splash." Yeah, that is not part of her adoption story.....