It's Fun To Be One!

It's hard to believe that we met our sweet girl for the first time just a few weeks ago.


It feels as though she has been with us forever.


We have seen so many changes in her in such a short time.


Her personality is emerging more and more each day.


She flashes us that beautiful smile that I longed to see those first days in China


and it melts my heart each and every time!


Her adorable little belly laugh is so cute it's contageous.


She loves to explore and try new things.


Each day is an adventure for this little girl.


I imagine it will be that way for a while as she has many "Firsts" to experience in these upcoming months.


Every time I look at her cute little hands, I think of that faithful night in China when she reached through the crib and grabbed my finger for the first time. It was a big moment for both of us and a turning point I will never forget.


Even though she doesn't always hold onto to my finger, I see her holding onto her new life and grasping it with all of her might.

We couldn't be more proud of this little girl for all she has endured and overcome in her short little life. She has transitioned so well and is really beginning to form bonds with all of us. Words cannot describe the love we have for her. She is such a special little girl that fits perfectly into our family and brings us so much joy.

We are so happy that she was home in time to celebrate her first birthday with us and something tells me that she is too! She is having an awful lot of fun being one!

I think cake may have just knocked pasta out of first place as her new favorite food:)

Happy First Birthday Reagan Elizabeth WenYi!

~We love you always and forever~

Black and White Wednesday - "Sarah's Birthday"

Saturday morning Sarah bounced out of bed wearing her favorite princess pjs and made her way down to the kitchen to see some of her birthday goodies waiting for her. As soon as she walked down the steps, the phone started to ring with lots of Happy Birthday Wishes. Here she was talking to Grandma and telling her all about "princess" things on the table.


She decided to set up a tea party and wanted to invite they D!sney Princesses, so she used her Ariel cell phone to contact them direcly with this special invitation!


Unfortunately, The D!sney Princesses had other obligations, but her new "Princess Sarah Bear" came all the way from Vermont(Thanks to Aunt Marla) to atttend this celebration. You can see half of her there in the photo. I should have taken a better picture of her. She is adorable and the name "Sarah" is monogrammed in the lower corner of her pink princess dress.


Apparently Princess Bears are a little messy and destructive when attending tea parties, so this OCD Mommy had to take over and reorganize the messy table settings.

It was a fun filled morning for the bday girl! Later that day I wanted to take advantage of the warmish weather and the fact that I had all three kids, so I
attempted the Christmas Card photoshoot. UGH!!!

All I can say is that it was not good. I was bound and detemined to get a shot with all three of them together. After coming home defeated, I reluctantly downloaded the photos. I did manage to find something that will work. It is not exactly what I wanted, but I figured I better just go with it instead of torturing them (and me) again!

I also wanted to get a few shots of Sarah by herself to mark her 4th bday since I don't do the annual photo studio visits anymore.



This was not only my favorite shot of her, I think it was probably my favorite picture of the afternoon. There is something so innocent about her look, but at the same time you can tell she is growing up and looking more mature. I keep saying this, but how can she be four already?

While we were done trying to get "The photo", I promised Sarah we would go to her favorite bookstore and let her pick out something special. Of course, she picked a book with princess paper dolls in it:)

Later that night my parents came over for a small celebration dinner and cake in honor of Sarah's big day.

Because of all the changes Sarah is dealing with, we decided to do separate birthday celebrations this year even though the girls' bdays are just days apart. We felt Sarah needed her own special day, so that is what we did and worked out perfectly.

She loved her cake and all of her gifts. Just about every gift had the princess theme, but the thing she LOVES the most(as does Reagan, and Nick, but he will never admit it)is the GIGANTIC pop up princess tent that is now in the middle of our family room. Thanks Mom and Dad!! The good news(for me)is that it can be folded up easily and tucked away when not in use.


Little Reagan's first birthday was yesterday, but we are not offically celebrating until Thanksgiving. We are hosting this year, so we figured it was the perfect time. With all that we are eating Thursday, why not add birthday cake to the menu!!

More photos to come. There are so many things happening and lots of cute pictures backing up on my computer. I just can't keep up these days. Not enough hours in the day.

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!

We will be giving thanks for the many blessings our family has received this year.

~Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours~

PJ's and Pasta

We had a busy weekend with lots of visitors coming and going. By the time Tuesday rolled around I think we were all starting to feel a little ragged, so we cancelled our afternoon plans and had an official PJ Day!

I love those kind of days and so does the rest of my family..... although Nick and Pat missed out because they had to go to school and work.

The girls and I spent most of the morning playing and relaxing and then we took a walk upstairs to go get something and when I opened one of Reagan's drawers, I remembered that her cute and comfy loungewear had come with an adorable little hat.

We put it on her and OH MY GOODNESS, she looked so stinkin cute!!

Yeah, you know where this is going..... I had to grab my camera:)


On the run...


but she assumed she better stop and pose for just one:)


I let her play with a comb that I purchased while in China at the Provinicial Museum Gift Shop in Hunan. She was very intrigued by it for a few minutes.....


and then she decided to taste it.


Everything goes straight into her mouth these days.


"If I close my eyes, maybe when I open them the camera will disappear"


No, the camera did not disappear. Then she remembered the hat on her head. It came off with one little pull....


and there was no chance of getting it back on!

Our Tuesday PJ Day ended up turning into three days of being couped up in the house. Reagan has been a little under the weather this week and has been dealing with a nasty cold so we knew it was best to keep her in until she is back to her healthy little self again.

If this was not enough "Reagan" for one post, I am attaching a video of her first pasta experience. Well, not really her first time eating pasta, but her first time eating it by herself.

Prepare yourselves for some major messiness. The neat freak in me wanted to wipe her face and hands clean about 100 times, but I kept my hands busy working the video instead of reaching for the towel.



Do you think she loves her pasta?
We could not stop laughing at her and I loved the way she nodded her head as if to answer me when I asked her if it was good!!

As soon as she was finished, I peeled her down to her diaper and carried her straight to the bathtub to be scrubbed clean. I am also happy to report that my good friend "Tide" got rid of all the sauce stains on her bib and her little outfit. They came out of the dryer looking like new:)

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
We will be doing lots of celebrating at our house this weekend.

Thank you to my friend Heather for the pink outfit and matching hat. It is oh so adorable and super cozy and comfy.

Black and White Wednesday - "A Time To Be Thankful"

I can hardly believe it, but Sarah {otherwise known as the Princess} will be turning 4 this Saturday.


The years have flown by and she has gone from precious baby to beautiful little girl in what seems like the blink of an eye.


Sarah is such a bright, happy go lucky child who makes us smile every single day.

She never misses a trick or forgets a word that is said to her. She often comes out with things that knock Pat and I off our chairs. We are consantly looking at each other as if to say "Where on earth did she come up with that?"

There have been more than a few occasions over the past few weeks where we are having serious conversations with her and she will try to get us off the subject because she does not want to hear what we have to say.

Let me tell you the girl is GOOD. I watched Pat try navigate the waters with her just after I returned from China. He tried his hardest to hold it together, stick to the point he was trying to make, and keep a straight face, but he eventually cracked and busted out with laughter. She totally broke him down....meanwhile I was hiding in the corner trying to control the laughter myself.

Sarah can be a character, but she is as smart as a whip and knows just when and how to use those smarts.

Everyday is an adventure with this little girl and we really can't imagine life without her.

Five years ago we set out to adopt what we thought would be our only daughter from China. After 6 months of officially waiting or being logged into China's system, we received a phone call about a domestic adoption.

Two weeks later, Sarah arrived! She was born 4 weeks early and was our little Thanksgiving miracle.

It was a holiday season like no other and I really don't think we could have a better Thanksgiving than the one we celebrated in 2006. Sarah was just three days old and our family had so much to be thankful for.

So here we are, approaching Sarah's 4th Birthday and 4th Thanksgiving and we have even more to be thankful for this year......


Our family is finally complete!
We have a an incredible young man for a son and two special little girls that were brought into our lives by adoption.

Both girls were born in the month of November, which just happens to be National Adoption Month.

Sarah was born on November 20th and Reagan was born on November 23rd. They are exactly three years apart.


Even though the girls have very different stories/beginnings, both of them will always share the special bond of adoption amongst many other things. I can only hope growing up as sisters they will make enough special memories together to last a lifetime.

A special thanks to Jodee for the girls matching tshirts. They are adorable and Sarah was super excited to see that she had a special shirt to wear so everyone would know that she was officially a "Big Sis"

She's On The Move

Reagan is beginning to feel extremely comfortable in her new surroundings and has really started to explore these last few days.

The first week we were home she pretty much stayed in the family room, which is where we spend most of our time because that is where the toys are located and it is open to our kitchen.

Whenever I would walk out of the room to go into the kitchen, she would stay where she was and cry until I came back into the room.


Well, that has all changed!
She is getting very curious and is venturing out of the play area to see what kind of fun (trouble) she can get herself into.


She sees something that looks more interesting than the babywipe she is clutching in her hand.


A little pause to fix the hairbow.


Then a brief discussion with my big sis to see if she thinks I should do it! She gave me the nod of approval, so I am going for it.


Do you think she sees me standing here?


Oh yeah, there she is behind the camera. She sees me....baby drool and all!


Look AT ME!! I'm standing up and holding on with just ONE HAND!!!


Ah yes.... The steps. Her new favorite place to hang out!

For those that asked, she is not walking yet, but I think we are close. I give it a month, maybe two at most. She pulls herself up with ease and walks around the furniture while holding on. She just needs a little more strength and she will be off and running.

In the meantime, we are dusting off and cleaning up the baby gates. Looks as though we are going to need them sooner rather than later.

Two Weeks At Home

Tonight will be two weeks that we have been home from China and it is hard to believe that she has only been with us such a short time. I still look back at those first photos of her and marvel at how much she has changed already.

She is doing better than I expected her to do based on what we saw those first days in China. She transitioned pretty quickly and is really getting to know and trust everyone in our family.

She is such a GOOD little eater and will try just about everything we give her. We are slowly trying to back off the amount of bottles she drinks throughout the day and we have introduced the sippy cup.

Our pediatrician called last night with Reagan's test results and said that everything looked good, there were no parasites, which is what we were afraid of based on the conditions in China, namely the water. She did have two viral infections that showed in the testing, but they have cleared on their own because the "tummy issues" have stopped.

One of the things that I am most excited about is her sleeping patterns. She is already sleeping through the night. She was AWESOME in China. She went to bed like clock work every night around 8pm and slept through until 6am. When we got home of course we were both still on China time and the sleeping patterns were very off. She finally got back to the same sleep schedule she was on in China and is going to bed around 8pm and sleeping until 6am. I wish I could say the same for myself..... I am still waking up in the wee hours of the morning.

Reagan and Sarah are becoming fast friends and enjoy many hours playing on the family room floor amongst the many toys we have saved over the years awaiting her arrival.

A few people have asked if I am back to work. I am on a leave right now and still have a few more weeks to just get to know our girl and spend quality time with my family.

I am thoroughly enjoying my carefree life right now. I know it won't last forever so I am trying to make the most out of the time I have left and I am trying to capture and document all the little things that we are experiencing with this new bundle of joy in our lives.

For the past year, I have been so focused on taking and setting up "The perfectly composed shot" or finding new locations to take the kids for pictures, that I have missed a lot of "Everyday Life" opportunities. I have been keeping my camera out and within reach at all times and have found new joy in just capturing the little things that I will want to remember forever.

Something tells me you are all going to get sick of seeing photos of the girls. I am embarrassed to tell you how many pictures I have taken this week alone. It's A LOT!

Nick came home from school the other day and saw the download of pictures taking place and said that he was glad he was in school all day and not at home with the camera aimed at him:)

Okay, gotta run but just wanted to give a quick update to everyone. I am happy to say that we are finally starting to find our groove around here.

I am so humbled and touched by all the support and encouragement through comments and emails from this little community! I can't thank you all enough and as soon as things slow down a bit, I will be around to reciprocate.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend~

Black and White Wednesday - "He's Got the Touch"

There was an instantaneous bond that seemed to exist between them.


It's as if they've known each other forever.


She immediately had him wrapped around her finger.


Her face lights up whenever he enters the room.


He loves to pick her up, carry her around, and play with her.


She is very comfortable with him and feels safe in her big brother's arms.


He loves to tickle and kiss her and she just eats it up.


Whether he is holding her close, or watching her from a distance, his face is very telling of the love and admiration he has towards his new baby sister.

I can't explain it, but Nick just has this way about him when it comes to little ones.

He has the magic touch . . .

and that touch granted him entry into Reagan's heart . . .

from the moment they met.