What an Awesome Year - Happy Gotcha/Family Day CC!

I love my kids!

CC screamed with delight when she saw her Puppy Cake!

This was the "Puppy Cake" that made my daughter's day!
I've finally realized she has a huge sweet tooth!

CC was wearing this yellow outfit the first time we saw her! She weighed 18 lbs. on "Family/ Gotcha Day" and now she's 25 lbs. I can't believe it still fits a year later!!!!

This is us today! October 29, 2008
USA

Our first official family photo together - October 29, 2007
Nanning, Guangxi Province, China

My Lil' Artist!

WOW! My daughter surprised me with beautiful art work today! I walked into the kids play room/kitchen to find CC with a huge PERMANENT BLUE MARKER in hand! She displayed her art work proudly on the couch, the ottoman (as seen in the photo), the carpet, the kitchen cabinets, the TV, and of course herself! Was I mad? Heck YES! But after a couple of minutes I started to giggle and ran to get my camera before I frantically (and without much hope) cleaned up her art work!

The Joy Of Riding A Bike!

It was a BIG day for Spiky Doo and my husband caught it all on his cell phone! Spiky Doo learned to ride a friends bike without training wheels for the very first time today. CC also had a blast zooming by on her Strider Bike! I can't tell you how hard it was to get SD to do this today...about 3 weeks ago he put his bike out by the curb for the trash man to pick up! :)

Crazy Cakes Riding Her Strider Bike!

CC's loves her new bike! (aka her birthday present)

Spiky Doo & Star Wars too!

Pottery Barn had a Star Wars event recently and I surprised SD by taking him there for a photo op with his favorite characters! We were only expecting one character, but we were surprised with five of them...he couldn't believe Darth Vader showed up!!!

CC's Turns Two!!!!

We celebrated CC's 2nd Birthday Party on September 19, just one day after her birthday. CC and SD's Nanie flew up from Florida to celebrate this special day with us. Elmo, Big Bird, Cookie Monster and Grouch cupcakes were a huge hit and you can see the evidence all over CC's face!! CC is such a girly-girly and she had so much fun dressing up in her tutu & tiara for her party. CC also love Nanie's gift of princess accessories, which were totally fun to play with too. Even Bud Light (our Bichon pup) got into the action, he thought he was the belle of the ball!

We officially have a FIRST GRADER!

SD's not too sure of first grade yet, he believes there's to many rules and too much homework! He purposely leaves his homework folder at school so he doesn't have to do it...smart kid to figure that one out so soon! :P

Visiting the Alantic Ocean

Our "shadow family" photo has become a family tradition for us since our military tour in the mid-west. This was the first one with CC!

The water was pretty darn cold so the kids had fun playing in the sand!

More Sightseeing!

Can you guess where we are?

We enjoyed a tour of this stadium!

China Town

We had a great time sightseeing! What a fun city!

Traveling Across The North East

Our first sight of the Niagara Falls. A cool photo of a tour boat with a rainbow overhead.

At Horseshoe Falls

The Niagara River (prior to Horseshoe Falls)

We spent an extra day on our journey east to see Niagara Falls. It's such a cool place to visit! The last time I visited the Falls was back in 1990 when "School Girl" was 6 years old (same age as SP on his first visit). Spiky Doo had a great time taking photos with his camera. Both SD and Crazy Cakes were able to stick their toes into the Niagara River prior to reaching Horseshoe Falls.