A pretty exciting day......

Paul has some really exciting news.......and he can't wait to share........
And when his shirt says "I can't wait", it couldn't be more true.....he talks about her ALL the time!

We are proud to announce that our sweet baby girl is 9 months old and is currently healthy and happy living with her foster family outside of Seoul, South Korea. Her Korean name is Lee, AhReum and we will call her Lillian Virginia AhReum Marchik. We hope to travel to bring her home in summer of 2012 (but you just never know). And now to the pictures of our sweet little one.

At age 8 months...... Her official referral picture in the fabulous red throne.....about 6 months old.

With her stylish foster mother.....

And finally, her baby picture taken about 3-4 weeks old.....

Needless to say, we had to go out to celebrate tonight.....to eat some Korean food and have some ice cream. Paul was having lots of fun.....

And I just love this slurp picture.....

I think we will all have very sweet dreams tonight........thinking of our precious little girl halfway around the world.

Long overdue visit back home

It had been several months since we had made the trek back to the QC. Between vacation and other busy schedules, it just hadn't worked out to make the trip. So, we packed a lot into those few days! On Saturday, GranJo bought us tickets to go see a children's play based on the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. It was SO cute and cleverly done - Paul really enjoyed it. She even bought the book so we could read it before we went.

A little drawing before the show began.....

Signature from the girl mouse......

And then the boy mouse......

We headed back to GranJo's house to play outside. Who needs a fancy water table when a bucket and a planter pot will do just fine. Throw in some bottles and funnels and life is grand!

GranJo bought Paul a cool 99 cent plane....which he promptly broke in about 5 minutes! But, it was certainly fun while it lasted.

Watering GranJo's foot!

Paul got to spend Sunday with Gram and Pa while we went to a PGA golf tournament. It was darn hot, but we had a fun time....and so did Paul! More water play for Paul which is one of his favorites.

Loading his water squirter......

And then watering his big wheel.......

.....and then flowers.......

......and then the hanging basket........

.....and lots of other things around the backyard! We had a fun weekend and were able to survive the oppressive heat. It is always so great to see Paul spending time with his grandparents...he is loved by many!

Ready fo Sleep courtesy of Paul

Jason put together this clever little video showing Paul's busy bedtime routine. It's not like this every night (thank goodness), but I am glad that we have video proof of how it all goes down on the nights that it is! Oh, and setting it to the music is just the cherry on top. I can only hope that Paul enjoys seeing this later in life......and the head stands are my absolute favorite!

Sticky tape and a pine cone

Last week when I picked Paul up from school, he spied a pine cone in the parking lot on the way to our car. He picked it up and our ride home centered around talking about that pine cone. Paul explained that it had fallen off a tree....but which tree he wanted to know....so we talked about that for a while. They he informed me that the pine cone needed to go back into the tree. When I asked him how it would stay up in the tree and he had the perfect solution.....sticky tape.

He put that pine cone right by his plate at dinner and continued to talk about it. So, after dinner we took that pine cone out to the yard along with some sticky tape and put it up in a tree.


Daddy, put it in THIS tree......
Daddy's great with the sticky tape.....

Proud little man....

Independence Day fun

Happy Fourth of July to everyone.....we wanted to share a bit of our red, white and blue with you!

We started our day with a lazy morning - given the lateness of getting to bed last night, we all took the opportunity to sleep in. With the appropriate amount of laziness complete, we packed a picnic lunch and headed for a bike ride and then lunch at a lake located on our local community college campus. It's really quite lovely with lots of wildflowers.

Checking out the flowers....with one in hand as well!
A boy and his dog.....

Hydration break!

The view from our picnic table.

Someone decided to wear hit helmet during lunch...big surprise there.

And then he took off his helmet and started to cheese it up for the camera......

Someone was eyeing Paul's string cheese......it's a favorite treat for all of us - the dog included.

We headed home and spent several hours playing in the driveway and side yard. If it was in the garage, it made an appearance today. We started with sidewalk chalk.

Making choo-choo tracks.

And then it was t-ball, soccer and pulling the wagon around before he decided he wanted to play with his water table. He insisted on putting on his swim trunks, so we had a wardrobe change and then the water fun began. Somehow an empty water bottle became a lot of fun as well.

Watering the flowers......

Washing his wagon.......

And then the bubbles came out.....always a good time!

Jason smoked some pork ribs for dinner.....and followed up our yummy dinner with some ice cream sundaes! Paul was pretty excited to spy a cherry on top!

Big bite of whipped cream.....

This face tells it all....a very happy day......

Fireworks and old friends....

We spent a fun afternoon and evening with some friends from the QC that have now moved to DM. They have a set of twins that are exactly 2 months older than Paul. The three of them used to be in the same class at school but haven't seen each other for over a year. They all came over to play and have dinner and then we hauled our clan to catch some fireworks.

Tough to get them all together and looking in the same general direction - I think this is victory as 2 of the 3 are smiling!
This was Paul's first time to try the whole fireworks thing out. These fireworks were actually at a large mall on the west side of town so we snagged a prime spot with a small grassy area for the kids to play.

First, it was snack time.....

First time with sparklers.....completely supervised of course!

Stop, drop, roll......

SMOOSH!!!!

OK, it's dark now....where are the fireworks?!?!

So really, they didn't start the darn fireworks until after 10pm. Paul is typically in bed by 7:30 so this was quite the test of his endurance - especially with all of the running and yelling and general fun times with his friends. He made it until about 9:30 and then conked out on my lap. We thought we would just nudge him awake when they started.....yeah, not so much. He slept through the whole thing and then woke up when we started loading our stuff into the car to go home. He talked about how cool the fireworks were the whole drive home - isn't that funny since he didn't see a minute of them. I am glad we gave it a shot - it was still a good memory for him. Jason took video of the fireworks and Paul watched them this morning - that counts, right?!?