Our First Gotcha Day!

One year ago on January 28th, Kien came to be with us! We are so blessed to have Kien as our son. In the midst of tragedy (you can read more at http://karinupdates.blogspot.com/), we have received the ultimate blessing on earth.

For Kien there are many days for him to celebrate. We have decided to celebrate Gotcha Day every year on January 28th. The adoption process was finalized on February 2, 2010 (a year later), but January 28th is the day Kien was truly ours.

At age 2 1/2, Kien only knows that it's a special "Gotcha Day" and we celebrate with cake, ice cream and presents. As he gets older, around 5 years of age, we will begin to go into more detail of his wonderful journey from Vietnam, to his home with Steve, Karin, Kevin and Aria to his final home with us.

It took MANY takes for Kien to pose for a photo. All he saw was CAKE and all he wanted was CAKE.

Kien chose this cake, and when I asked him what color he wanted his name written in, he said blue.
Kien kept eye balling Daisy because he was worried Daisy would get the cake! We finally got him to look and gave us this cheesy grin!
Gabe couldn't have cake, so we gave him the bowl to play with. I love holding my Kien, he is so light weight!
After dinner, cake and presents, it was bed time. Bedtime and cake do not go hand in hand. He was HYPER! We had to let him wear it off a bit. Then, after the sugar high, he was out like a light.

Happy 1st Gotcha Day little love!

Room Transformed!

We have a beautiful kitchen table that can be used to seat 4 or 6 with the leaf extension. I really enjoy having the leaf in the table, however, with the scrap booking set up, it just doesn't fit well at all. So, I decided to move the scrapbook housing to a different location of the house. At first it seemed as if my placement would be crowded yet again, but it actually turned out quite nice. The family room did shrink a bit, but being that Kien is getting older the confinements are stretching beyond just his room and the family room. I have installed safety latches in the laundry room where the household chemicals are housed. I also need to install another latch set in the kitchen directly under the sink, although Kien does know not to get in the cupboards he is still a toddler.

I am still dreaming of a room extension onto the house to have a dedicated room for my mess! But, it looks like that isn't going to happen. I will have to wait until the older ones are on their own!

Gabe's First Spoon Feeding!

This is a huge milestone! When I took Gabe to the doctor last time she mentioned that putting some cereal into his bottles would help with as much formula as he was taking and would help introduce him to the cereal taste.

It was a hit! He took to feeding like a pro!

A few key factors in recognizing your child is ready to begin on solids are:

Sits with support and has good head control --Check!
Has doubled his birth weight and weighs at least 13 pounds --Check!
Has lost the tongue thrust reflex and is able to swallow food --Check!

YAY!!

Another part of introducing cereal is to start off slow. He started off with 2 TBSP of Rice cereal and 5 TBSP of Formula once a day, mainly at our dinner time. Over the course of 2 weeks he increased very slowly, and fussed a bit as what seemed to be an upset tummy so I would decrease the next feeding. I did notice a chance in his stool but no constipation issues. So far he loves eating from the spoon and seems to "want" the spoon when we sit down to eat.

I have only introduced Oatmeal once with what seemed to be followed with a tummy ache. We can just continue with the mixed rice for now.

:)

Duke is comfortable and Greg's two hams!

Duke doesn't like the floors anymore since the carpet was taken up. So he tries to find comfortable places and Kien's little sofa was one of them! 

Greg took Jeremy out to CiCi's pizza while I went grocery shopping across the street. While they were there, Greg had a ham pizza, and decided it would be photo worthy to show his two ham's. (Gabe's nick name is ham)

An evening out with Dad!

Greg thought it would be a wonderful experience for us all to attend an Orchestra Concert. One of his customers removed an instrument from her car before leaving her car to be repaired. He inquired about this instrument proud to expound Brandy and Jeremy's ability to play French Horn and Clarinet. She invited us all to the Bass Hall in downtown Fort Worth as there was a concert that next weekend. Because of the little ones, I stayed home and Greg took Brandy and Jeremy with him.

Of course they all were talking about the Violinist that was playing like a mad woman! In any event, this was a neat experience, and they both bragged to their band directors!

Christmas 2009

Christmas morning started with biscuits and gravy

I think it is obvious the kids were waiting to open gifts :)
Afterwards Grandpa took Gabe and let him pet Daisy.
Jeremy, Brandy and now Kien have a BIG trampoline again!! YAY!
Both kids are musically talented and wanted a Keyboard for the past couple years. It was an immediate winner!
Snow on my wreath!
Jeremy was smiling! But of course!
For some reason I just can't get it into my brain that I need to take photos of EVERYTHING!! The kids were pretty much at the end of gift opening!
These photo's are a bit out of order, but here is Kien inspecting the gifts! He was our little Santa and made sure all gifts (that he could carry) were brought to the right person!
Stockings! All of them were full! Even Duke and Daisy had a bone each in there!
We also want to thank everyone who sent cards and gifts also! We are very grateful!! :)

Christmas Eve Snow

Texas is in a region of the US that doesn't see much snow at all. We have a couple ice storms every winter and maybe an inch or so of snow usually occurring in the month of February. We definitely received a white Christmas this year!! We did have 9 inch drifts and the snow really came down hours after this first "dusting" earlier in the day. The wind was blowing very swiftly by mid afternoon to portray a blizzard.

Jeremy braved the snow but had to borrow Greg's gloves because he realized it WAS cold after while of being outside! The snow was too loose to make snowballs.
Kien loved the snow. He got to play in it with Jeremy, Grandma and Daddy.
Grandpa of course was enjoying holding Gabe and keeping toasty warm!
Later that evening Gabe was exhausted but cried himself to sleep. Poor baby must have had a tummy ache. Gotta LOVE his little outfit! He looks like an elf with santa feet!

Happy Birthday Greg!

Here is Greg's favorite cake!

YUMMERS
Brandy and Jeremy were ready to dig in!
Kien had to finish his roll before he could dig in to cake :)
Birthday boy has first dibs!

For Greg's birthday his parents flew to Texas to spend Christmas with us this year. We had reservations at Saltgrass Steak House ~YUM~

Gabe doesn't sleep much at restaurants any more. He has to be with all the action. Of course!
Brandy was caught dozing!! Swimming REALLY takes all her energy!
Jeremy loves steak too!
Grandma and Grandpa holding the children so we could eat too!
The photo that is NOT included that SHOULD have been included was when Greg opened his gift from us. He knew RIGHT off the bat what it was. Why is it soooo difficult to surprise him?! *sigh* haha

I found them!! Jeremy's Winter Concert!

Here is my handsome young man! Can you believe he wasn't embarrassed to take a photo with his mom!! :)

Jeremy is usually the silly guy who makes all kinds of silly poses in photo's. We wanted him to have a serious one of which really tried hard! Wow, he is SOOOOO grown up!
As a mother has the ability to locate her child, it was difficult to take a photo because he was hidden behind music stands and students. Here is a photo of the symphonic band at Jeremy's school. Their band directors are incredible!!

More events

I am not sure where this photo of Gabe was taken, possibly at Greg's work? Either way, Gabe was not very happy to have been in his car carrier. Note how HUGE he is in his carrier now!!

For some strange reason I cannot locate Jeremy's photo's from his concert. I will have to research more files so I can upload them also. After Jeremy's concert we took him to his choice of dinner and he chose CiCi's pizza. Brandy happen to have a swim meet this same night which is so difficult to each and every activity. At any rate, after Brandy's meet she was able to catch a ride to CiCi's as well. Wish she could have gone to Jeremy's concert though to say hi to her previous band teachers!
Here is the video clip of Jeremy's concert! Jeremy has been playing clarinet now since 6th grade. He is also taking private lessons once a week. Summer of 2009 he participated in band camp offered by his band directors of which he learned 3 songs in a week and did VERY well!! We are very proud of him for his accomplishments. We hope he will continue on in music. :) :)

Brandy's Winter Concert

As many of you know Brandy has been playing the French Horn since the 6th grade. When she entered into high school she signed up for Marching Band which placed her playing the mellophone. A mellophone is a brass instrument that is typically used in the place of the French horn due to how big it is and it's difficulty with marching.

These are photos of Brandy and her Band Director. The band director's in this district are phenomenal and we stand amazed at how well these kids are taught so quickly with such accuracy! We put Gabe in the photo because while meandering children's clothing websites, I came across a onesie that said "I'm with the Band". We couldn't resist. Gabe wasn't crazy about it, but Brandy was proud to show off her littlest brother!

Here is a small clip of the concert. Unfortunately we didn't think to charge the video camera prior to the event. So most of the video's we did record were on Greg's iPhone.

Yummy!

Usually on the weekends we are not too busy or too tired we will cook yummy foods! Everyone is a fan of french toast! We also make eggs, bacon and fried potatoes! I can never make enough!