On vacation in Estes Park, Colorado
Drinking and driving in my little red coupe
Getting some love with Grandma Herman
Grandma and Grandpa B's ringless granddaughters
More chips at the "bar" Mama!
Dressed in my Sunday best.
With my Panda friends
11 months as a family!
Happy 98th Birthday Great Grandma Herman!
Enjoying Grandma and Grandpa B's plants.
Yo Yo Dude!
Loving the doll quilt my Great Aunt (Crafty) Mary made for me. My dolls love it too!
Enjoying Grandpa's energy bar with my mickey mouse chair.
I decided to let Grandpa sit with me drive for awhile.
Modeling my new Estes Park sweatshirt. I had so much fun with Uncle Rick and Aunt Sue.
Big girl used the big potty!
Showing Uncle Steve the airplanes!
On Tuesday, August 11th we celebrated 11 months as a family with Danika! We have spent a lot of time this week reflecting on photos from our trip to China and all the growth and development we've seen in Danika in the past 11 months. We are still amazed by our China journey, every moment was wonderful and magical, from family that traveled with us to family we met there and family that made special trips there to welcome Danika.
This past few weeks we've been blessed to have several visits with Danika's Great Grandma Herman (98 years young!) and get some cherished photos with her. What a blessing she is in our lives! She's so wise and wonderful and we love having her as a part of our lives. In addition to Great Grandma, Danika also met many other family members recently at Great Grandma Herman's birthday party. We are thrilled have her meet more family members who hadn't seen her yet.
This past week Danika also got to meet her Uncle Steve for the first time! She's a big fan! He blew bubbles with her and lifted her up on his shoulders and played with her lots. We are thankful Steve was able to visit and meet Danika, we had hoped to visit his family in California during our trip home from China but the flight schedules didn't work out.
Summer is flying by, Danika and Daddy celebrated 20 months and 40 year birthdays on the same day with a big party.
Danika still loves sidewalk chalk and bubbles and of course her little red Cozy Coupe. She's a pro at swinging in her swing set and she still loves the sprinkler although the weather has been cooler lately so she's been limited with her water time.
Over the 4th of July weekend we were graciously hosted by Karen's brother Rick and his wife Sue at their Mountain Home in Estes Park, Colorado. This was our first family vacation since leaving China. We had wonderful meals (Sue you outdid yourself!), wonderful company and so much fun enjoying family, it was the rest our weary souls needed.
This past Saturday Danika hit a milestone, she used the big girl potty for the first time! She's getting to be quite the pro now and it won't be long before diapers are a thing of the past!
4 comments:
Very cute photos! Especially the first one that looks like Dan is wearing a little hat! : ) She's getting so big and way to go on the potty training! We haven't even started yet. Love how thick Danika's hair is on the sides. Can't wait to get the girls together for a play date. We are long overdue!
Dan & Karen,
I am a fellow Xiushan mom and we once connected a year ago after we both had our referrals - talking about how we might see each other in China (our journey to Abigail blog), though we never did hook up. I also noticed that we are fellow Xiushan Yahoo group members and while I was on today looking for a specific file, I came across the LWB Summer 2008 PDF report, and lo and behold both of our daughters are in it. You might already know this information (I've been a bit behind on looking up stuff) but I thought I would pass it along anyways. As we come up upon our 1 year anniversary of having our daughter I find myself wanting to know more and more about what Abigail's life was like before us.
Danika is as cute as ever.
Blessings,
Ruth
Karen,
I too would love to stay in touch!!!
When I got my cameras back from the orphanage, I was saddened to see that they only took pictures of Abigail and the majority of them were outside. There weren't any of other children, children she would have grown with her first year. I would love to see if anyone has pics of her that I don't.
If you stop by my first blog (www.abigails-journey.blogspot.com) you can see Abigail's referral picture which may/may not help in deciphering if she's in any of the pictures. Our referral date was August 12th,2008.
When we adopted Abigail, we had found out that just 5 days before our 'gotcha' day (September 16th, 2008) I think it was 14 babies came from our Xiushan orphanage - I am suspecting that Danika was part of that group. With our agency (CCAI) we had 10 families in our group however it was made up of 5 different orphanages. Abigail happened to be the only one from her orphanage so I was so glad to find out that there were others around the same time.
From what I can tell, it seems like Abigail may have been among the older ones too as the woman I met at the White Swan who told me of the large group had a daughter that was only 9 months old. Sadly I cannot remember what her name was either.
I sent in my request today from LWB. I'm sad I did not find them earlier but glad that I did now and it's not too late.
Ruth
Hey Karen,
Often times my email gets thrown into peoples spam folder so I thought I would leave it here too.
ruth@thinkfluidly.com
Blessings,
Ruth
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