A New Addition & Fall Beach Trip

Three weeks ago - the day we met Woody.

Chloe has been pretty good with Woody, but she does not want to share her new water bottle toy that Mommie & Daddy brought her back from the beach.

Hard to get a photo of him because he is rarely still. This is his windblown look. He had been running and his ears are stuck backwards.

Alex taming the dino at Broadway at the Beach

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Alex loves his Daddy

Entranced by the speed boat on the Lagoon

In the elevator - heading out for his first sunrise ever!

On the walkway - cheesing!- So excited.

My boy and the beautiful sunrise.

Thank you Lord, for my son and this beautiful world that you created.

Mommie & Alex at Broadway at the Beach. Daddy wouldn't play along.

Precious hands of my precious boy.

Learning to boogey board.

Our house has been a little quiet and lonely (for Chloe) since we lost our sweet PJ. Tim agreed that we could get a new Boxer puppy. After searching the internet, losing "dibs" on one that I really wanted, and calling several people, we found our new addition. He is a brindle boy who Alex named Woody. You can guess where that came from!

Chloe is doing as well as expected with Woody. We picked him up on the way home from the beach and he cried all the way home! He is so sweet and a cuddle bug. He has his first vet check-up yesterday afternoon and he weighed 18.2 pounds! My biceps are killing me from toting him around. We are working on training him to walk on leash and he is doing well with the "sit command. We took him to the park today and everyone had a fit over him. He sleeps cuddled up to his Mommie and Chloe sleeps on the other side, cuddled up to Daddy.

We had a great time at Myrtle Beach. Alex got to experience his first sunrise and he made almost every one after that! No rest on vacation with Alex! We saw dolphins almost every day from our balcony. He played in the ocean, made sandcastles, practiced swimming in his swimmies and fell in love with the "hot bathtub." While in that hot bathtub, Ales asked me, Mommie, am I your precious boy? Yes, baby, you always will be - forever.

Alex and Daddy rode rides at Broadway while Mommie enjoyed relaxing by the lagoon. He really likes the little speedboat that runs on the lagoon. Maybe he can ride when we go back in June.

Alex had his evaluation in K4 and he is doing really well. We make sure that he does his homework each day and he enjoys learning. He didn't even complain about doing his homework while on vacation.

We are looking forward to fall, cooler weather, and Alex's birthday coming up. We are going to do a party at school and then we are going to do something as a family on his actual birthday. I think he wants to go to Riverbanks Zoo.

Enjoy the photos.

Love to you all,

R & T & A

Special Request

Please see the button at the left side of the blog - Operation: Christmas in Nikolaev. Some of the mothers who have adopted from the Nikolaev Baby House (Alex's Baby House) are organizing an operation to send "joy boxes" to the 115 children who live there. All info is posted below the button. Anyone in our area who would like to participate, I will handle shipping the boxes to the US collection point. Thanks!

Lost our friend

Pina Junior (PJ) Dixon

We lost our sweet PJ today. She was 17 1/2 and we thought we were prepared, but we were not. She had 9 teeth pulled last week as a last ditch effort to save her, but after that, she could not keep down food or fluids and we found out that her kidneys were not working properly. She had been at the vet's office since Friday and Tim and I went there today at lunch time and watched our sweet baby girl go to Rainbow Bridge.

Chloe is 9 years old now and she had surgery on Friday to remove some glads from the corner of her eyes. She has an allergy and the glands had become inflamed and painful. She is much better and has to go back Thursday for a re-check.

PJ never had much to do with Alex, since she was older when he came home. She just kind of avoided him since he is so lively and she was an old lady. He will be devastated when something happens to Chloe. He loves her and she loves him! She is 9 and the life expectancy of her breed is 10, so I dread the day that we have to handle that one - for all of us.

Alex knows that PJ is in Heaven with Jesus and he told me that we aren't supposed to be sad because she is with Jesus. From the mouth of babes.......

IRS :-)

Our tax refund has FINALLY been issued! It should post to our account on Friday.

Praise the Lord!

Just for you, Conethia

Alex loves his Chloe & Chloe loves him.

Yes, his head is on the floor.

Alex begins his K4 classes on Monday. He has been in the class since May, but they will begin their real lessons on Monday. This means homework begins again. They had lessons throughout the summer. A lot was review. He can identify all of his upper case letters and almost all of the lower case letters. He can count to 49. Yesterday he told me all about a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. He loves his new class.

Our boy just keeps getting taller. He is now at least 42" tall and weighs 35 pounds. Just three more pounds and he can move into a booster seat and out of harness in the car seat!

The other day, I told Alex that for his birthday in October, we will take him to the zoo and he can pick one friend from church or school. He said he would like to take Noah. There is a little boy named from church who also goes to The Learning Vine. I said, Noah, huh? And he said, yep, Noah. You know, Noah with the Ark! At least I know he is paying attention in Sunday School.

We got to see our good friends, Al and Susan Goff and their sons, Matthew and Joshua. They live in France and Susan and the boys had not yet met Alex. Their boys are precious and so polite. They said that they enjoyed playing with Alex.

We also got to see our friends Rhonda, Randy & Jackie. Jackie lives in Dallas and we try to get together when he comes home. We went to Grits & Groceries last Saturday for lunch. It was so good and such a fun place. Check them out. http://www.gritsandgroceries.com/

Alex got to go to his first movie a few weeks ago. We went to see Cars 2. He was anxious for it to begin and excited about eating popcorn. He was really into the movie and at the end, he clapped. So cute! Then, as I was getting everything together to leave, he burst into tears. I thought his leg was caught in the chair, but he was crying because, "I want to watch a movie!" It was over and he was heartbroken.

We hope that we will get to visit Vera soon. Vera was in Alex's group at the Nikolaev baby house and we fell in love with her when we were there. Vera now has a forever family and lives just 2 1/2 hours from us! She is the closest one to us from the baby house. I had planned to go see her several weeks ago and take dinner to the family, but I came down with a terrible stomach virus and didn't get to go. It has been so terribly hot here and just miserable! I hope to get to see her when it cools off.

We really haven't done much this summer. Alex has played in his kiddie pool and on the slip n' slide several times. We got him a new water toy that is a limbo or volleyball net that sprays water, but haven't had a chance to use it since we bought it. We may go to the water park this coming Saturday. Aunt Nanci would like for us to go with her and Jordan before school begins and Saturday will be our only chance.

We plan to go to the beach again in October. This will be our last October trip since Alex will be in K5 next year and will not be able to miss a week. We would also like to take a trip to Disney World before he starts school. Maybe we will get to go in early 2012. If we ever get our tax refund from the IRS. I am beginning to think this will never happen. We filed in March and sent additional information (all of our adoption receipts) in April.

Well... Alex wants me to play Lincoln Logs with him. Time to wrap it up.

Will update if anything exciting happens.

Love,

R & T & A

Family Beach Trip 2011 and such...

In the ocean

Next in line to stuff Tusk

"Bathing" Tusk

The finished product - Tusk!

Eating popcorn at the water park. He ate all morning!

This isn't from the beach trip, but it looks like Alex was trying to get his sexy on. For some reason and somehow, he twisted his shirt like this. Then, he had a hard time getting it off.

We had a great trip last week to Myrtle Beach with lots of family.

Alex had the following folks at the beach:

1 grandpa

1 grandmas

5 cousins

1 cousins' cousin

1 aunt

1 uncle

1 aunt's friend

1 aunt's friend's niece

1 Mama

1 Daddy

We stayed there Saturday to Saturday and had great family time. We mostly spent time on the beach or at the nearby water park (with the zero entry pool, 3 ft. deep bench pool, lazy river and an entire slide complex). Alex will not go on the slides. There is a huge bucket that dumps water and once it dumps, he is done for the trip. Aunt Nanci convinced him to go up the steps with her and thought they were safe from the dumping bucket, but they got drenched. Actually, Auntie got the brunt of the water.

Alex did not learn to swim last week, but he did make progress - learning to jump waves. He loved it! He also learned to hold his breath while Mama gently dunked him under the water. I just knew he would cry, but he laughed and was so proud!

We went to Tanger Outlets for a little while one night and on Thursday night, we went to Broadway at the Beach and Alex had his first Build-a-Dino experience. He made a Wooly Mammoth named Tusk. He also got to "ride rides!" He is a dare devil. He wanted to ride the Caterpillar and love it. Daddy got to ride with him. I have a photo, but it is really dark because it was really late. He wanted to ride the big swings, but Mama wasn't going to allow that! We did not get back to the condo until 11:15pm which was way past Alex's bed time.

My sister, two of her boys and her friend and friend's niece left on Thursday because one of the cousins had All Stars tournament. One cousin and his cousin (from the other side of the family) had to work, so they came down on Wednesday night.

Everyone who was still there on Friday night went out to Benjamin's to eat seafood. Alex mostly ate hush puppies, chicken and shrimp and he loved the coconut shrimp and fresh fruit.

Alex was very well behaved while we were at the pool, on the beach and doing any activity that he wanted to do. When we were doing something that didn't interest him, he acted out. I guess that is just part of being a four-year old. I was very proud of how he was in public most of the time.

It was a nice week and I really needed the break, but when I got back to work Monday, I had loads of work to do. I am still playing catch up. But, all is good and there have been some positive changes at work. I am so much happier now.

When I got home today, I had a message from our wonderful translator/facilitator, Olga. She is coming to the US later this month and will be in Florida for two weeks, then would like to visit Georgia and possibly South Carolina. We are making plans to meet up! I am so excited!

I am also excited because sweet Vera's family is hoping to have court on Friday. Please pray that their Interpol clearance will come in so they do not have to wait longer. We love reading their blog every day and reminiscing about our journey last year. Alex loves seeing Vera and asks about her almost every day. He says that he loves Vera and that she was always nice to him.

Love to all,

R & T & A

Sarah Palin's Letter to Family about Son Trig.

http://http://treeofmamre.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/sarah-palins-complete-letter-to-her-family-about-trig/

I tried and tried to copy and paste this onto the blog, but couldn't get it to paste. My step-brother posted this on facebook. He has a 38 year-old son who has DS.

No matter what your political views, this is touching.