Kelly is getting a new sisiter!!!

Introducing Drew Zhen Darling, born 12/07/09

We are so excited to be adopting again and hope to travel to get her this Christmas time. She is living in Dongguan City Welfare Institute in the province of Guangdong. It's close to Hong Kong in the South Eastern part of China. We started the paperwork in January of this year and were lucky enough to be matched end of June, much faster than when we paperchased for Kelly. Our crazy family of girls of almost all girls (poor Ron) will be adding one last female!

I am working on setting up a different "family" blog to follow Drew's journey home and just have the one blog for all of us. I'll post the link and site name when I get it started, but wanted to post our latest news!!

Wow, time has flown!
Thanksgiving and Christmas have come and gone and all is well here. Kelly continues to thrive and is a chatterbox now. We can't understand 95% of what she says (well, I can figure some of it out, but most people can't) but it's still great that she is talking up a storm. She is still doing Speech Therapy 5xs a week, still swimming and has Pre-school 2xs a week. She LOVES school and happily goes, and comes home painty, gluey, covered in her lunch and happy. All good.
Kelly did have a very short, easy (relatively) outpatient surgery last week to clip a skin "bridge" that went from the roof of her mouth to her cheek that was going to be in the way of chewing soon. The surgery went well and that should be it for surgeries (in her mouth...ear tubes need replacing)till she is around 5 yrs. old hopefully. Then another around 9, and again in her teens. All expected, and going as we assumed. She's healthy as a horse other than that, has had far fewer colds and "bugs" than Cory or Jamie ever did as a little one.
Life is good.

Halloween fun!
Halloween was great fun around here. Our neighbors the Bakers host a wonderful Pumpkin Carving Party every year, and it's always fun to go with tons of kids. The on Halloween morning another neighbor, Treb, floats a HUGE pumpkin balloon with a colorful, lighted balloon twist "string" up over his front yard. There are at least 750 balloons in the "string" and the big pumpkin is probably 6 ft. in diameter...to funny. Kelly got to help with it and carving and had a blast. She was a Bee for Halloween, or as she says "uney ee" for Honey Bee. Jamie and I took her to Balboa to see my parents before the real trick or treating began, and at first she wasn't too sure about it, but after about 3 houses figured out that this was a cool deal! By time we made it home and joined a group of other 2-4yr. olds, she was in full swing and leading the pack to walk up to doors and say "A-ee All-o-een! Too cute.
We also found out that she LOVES suckers, much to her Dental Hygienist mommy's dismay....first thing she picks out to eat...ugh.
Cory was out for a visit just before Halloween, and it was a great weekend, filled with lots kids and fun. Cory and Jamie were excited as the new Taylor Swift CD had just come out and that's all we heard that weekend. By Monday Kelly was singing the "Mean" song in her crib during nap time.
Looking forward to a great Thanksgiving soon.

Birthday and more

Kelly turned 3 on Sept. 21st. Wow, where did the year go? This time last year she was still recovering from surgery and still settling in. The difference a year makes!! Actually her birthday is long past, just been too busy to post, as usual. Kelly has the busiest schedule in the house: Pre-school 2x a week, 1/2 which she LOVES...gets to get messy with paint, glue and sand, runs wild with other kids her age and even gets juice. See, Mom won't give her juice at home, so school is pretty cool. She has Speech Therapy 5 times a week: 2 one hour appt. with a private SLP and 3 half hour appts. thru the school district. Then swim lessons now only once a week to keep up her "gills". She took to swimming with great joy and is a good little fish now, can swim across the pool. Her technique leaves a lot to be desired, she looks pretty much like she's drowning, but she makes it to where she wants to go, so it's all good! Then there's all the car rides with Mom to take Jamie to and fro. Busy days.
Kelly is finally really improving on her speech. While most people don't know what her words are, she is using them, in 3 word sentences most often and gets her point across nicely. Still very delayed, but it's great to see progress.
Kelly continues to travel well, we flew to Kauai, and drove up to Berkeley and back twice since Kauai. Each trip was long, but very do-able with her, thank goodness. The trips to Berkeley were to first drop big sister Cory off at the U.C. and second to visit. Cory is loving Cal, and is very happy, and VERY busy there. She is coxswain for the Women's Crew team and it's serious stuff there, they are ranked #2 in the Nation, NCAA Div. I, so practice takes up lots of her time.
Jamie is a Soph. in High School now, rows for the NAC and is very busy with Crew and school too. She gets her drivers license in Dec. so Mom's carpool driving will come to an end for a couple of year's (yeah!) till Kelly is at it.
Today is a great day, as Cory is visiting and while Halloween is a week away they are all going to carve pumpkins, should be messy good fun!

It's "Kelly Day" or "Gotcha Anniversary" or whatever you want to call it!! One year today we met our Kelly, and fell in love. The small, scared, silent (except for crying) and scratchy little girl is now a bigger, happy, gigglie and beautiful little one. She has blended in, transitioned wonderfully, and definately has blossomed and thrived. We are so lucky and blessed.
Our family is celebrating a Grandma's birthday today, with family in from out of state, but we will celebrate with Kelly too. Next Sunday we are off to Kauai for a much anticipated family vacation for a week, then back to spend a last few weeks with Cory before she leaves to start school at UC Berkeley in Aug. I am confident that Kelly will do great on the plane and in Kauai; she is a real trooper when it comes to things like that. We've had both Ron and I and the girls gone for up to a week at a time and while Kelly asks about whoever is gone, she is happy to hear they are coming back and waits patiently. Travels well too, as we did an eight hr. car ride with her in May, up to Sacramento to watch the older girls row in the Regional Championships.
Life is good here, and very busy. We survived Cory and Jamie's end of year events: Cory with Graduation, Jamie with rowing in the Youth National Championships in Ohio (took 4th in the Nation!!!). Those were just the latest in a busy year were we saw Kelly grow so much in so very many ways. We have much to celebrate today, with our strong, sweet, beautiful Kelly.

April is here and Easter has come and gone. What fun. Lots of family, and eggs! Our annual, massive Easter Egg Hunt was a hit, Kelly really got into it, and had a great time. She's figured out that those foil wrapped eggs are pretty good, and if you can unwrap them really fast, you can cram them into your mouth before Mommy can stop you! The Easter Bunny is her hero now....

Before Easter, we had Winter Formal, which both Cory and Jamie went to and had lots of fun at, those are the pictures you see of them all dressed up. Usually those two are in work out clothes, as Crew takes up most of their time. Jamie is the only Freshman on the Varstiy team, she rows Lightweight and is amazingly strong and focased. Loves it. Cory is till the Varsity A coxswain and all her years of hard work have paid off: she was recruited by many schools, but her top pick has always been U.C. Berkeley, and she just accepted their offer. Hard to believe she'll be off to Cal this summer!

Kelly continues with Speech and is making steady, but slow progress. She is also taking swim lessons which she loves...part fish that one. Hopefully by summer's end she'll be pool safe, but for now she just puts her head in, moves her arms and legs a lot but doesnt' really go anywhere! It will come and soon she'll sprout gills with all the time she spends in the water.