Happy Easter--better late than never!!!

Happy Easter
At the cemetary

With cousin JuJu

Peek-A-Boo

Ready to go to GramGrams for Easter dinner

The whole family at the Lexington Cemetary on Easter Sunday

Check out my cute bunny shirt (this is the face I get now when I say to smile for the camera!!!)

Walking in sunshine!!!

Cool bunny mask from the easter bunny

Waiting for Easter Egg Hunt at park

Running in my pretty Easter Dress

All dressed up for churchNot too sure about this scary looking Easter Bunny

Look at all the eggs I found at the park

I am so far behind on posting pictures I may never catch up. I've been trying to post once a month, but obviously I've not been doing even that lately. Here are some great pictures of my girl from Easter. After church, we spent it at my moms house with the family and then went to the Lexington Cemetary to see all the beautiful spring trees/flowers. For those of you not from here, I know it sounds weird but we have a gorgeous cemetary that is like a beautiful park. It is full of live flowers and flowering trees that are always beautiful in the spring, so we go every year. We also went on an Easter Egg Hunt at the big Easy Walker Park in Mt Sterling the week before Easter, so some of the pictures are from that. She was really into Easter this year and the whole egg hunt thing.

My girl is getting soooooo big I can't believe it. She will be 4 years old on Sunday, so I'll post some pictures soon of the big birthday party (I promise!!!). She is a very active girlie and keeps us hopping for sure, but can't imagine life without her...how boring (but quiet!!) our life was before she came into our lives.

PS. I apologize about the random order of the pictures...I posted them all in some semblence of order but the crazy way blogger loads, they come up in a totally different random order. Anyway, I posted lots of pictures to make up for the 3 months since my last post!!!

Great Wolf Lodge

She really hated having to wear the wristband the entire time we were there
All dressed and ready to go down to the waterpark

Hold my hand Daddy!!

The Great Wolf Lodge all decorated for the holidays

My little monkey--climbed all over these things in the Lobby

As usual, I'm a little behind on my posts. We took Haylie to the Great Wolf Lodge right outside of Cincinnati for a little get-away the week between Christmas and New Years. Rich and I were both off, so thought it would be a great time to let her get in a little swimming in the middle of winter. It was great, but of course since all kiddos are out of school that time of year, everybody else had the same idea. It was absolutely packed with kids ripping and running around everywhere. We had to wait almost 2 hours to get checked into our room (and that was after the 4 pm check-in time!!) There were long waits for all of the water slides, to get in the restaurants, and even to get on the elevators (of course we were on the top floor so basically HAD to use the elevator). For those of you who have never been they have a huge indoor water park attached to the hotel. They also have a game called MagiQuest that all the kids play where they go around with a magic wand and do all sorts of virtual gamethings. Haylie was too little to play it, but there were hundreds of older kids running all over the hotel playing this game--you had to be careful or you could easily get mowed down by a pack of 8 year old boys running to the next MagiQuest station.

Haylie loved the wave pool and just playing in the water in general. However, she was petrified to go down any of the little water slides (they have some just her size in addition to the great big guys). Always before, she had been totally fearless in the water. We've gone swimming several times in both public and private pools and she had always just took off and gone right under water even...I literally had to watch her every minute for fear she would just jump into the deep end. But for some reason, she was really timid and scared in the waterpark. Wanted to be held all the time, and cried and cried when we tried to make her go down one of the slides. But of course, she absolutely balled when we tried to leave too. It was still a lot of fun but I think we might wait another year before going back, and definitely won't go again over Christmas break!!!

Our 2nd Gotcha Day

I was the same height as the Santas last year!!

Finally wearing our glasses most of the time!!!

Look how long my hair has gotten!!

Go CATS!!!!

With my Daddy at the Monkey Joes Bouncy House

Look How I've Changed in the past 2 years

At the orphanage the day we picked her up January 14, 2008

First bath

Ready to leave the orphanage

2 years ago today we picked Haylie up from the orphanage and started our lives together. I can not believe how fast it has gone, or how big she has gotten. She is no longer a baby, but quite the young lady. She talks a blue streak, is now mostly potty trained (still having trouble with the whole poo poo on the potty however), and never stops!!! She has gotten sooooo tall, looks like she may be a volleyball or basketball player--can we say full scholarship to UK!!! And just look how long her hair has gotten. Hard to believe she couldn't walk, talk, or eat solid food when we got her. We feel so blessed to be her parents. Time always flies, but it almost seems like we can see her grow from day to day...life is truly but a vapor. Thank you Lord for our special girl.

Merry Christmas 2009

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. We had a really nice one despite the fact Haylie had a temperature of 105.1 on Christmas Eve with strep throat. Luckily after a few doses of antibiotics she was almost as good as new by Christmas morning. My family all came out Christmas Eve and spent two nights so everyone could see Haylie's Christmas. She's the only little one now on either side of the family, so as you might imagine she cleans up when it comes to presents!! She was really into it this year which was really fun. We went and saw Santa and she hopped right up on his lap--when he asked what she wanted for Christmas she shouted "Presents!!!!", nothing specific just presents in general. Which of course she got lots of.

Her "big" present from Santa was a talking, bouncy horse on springs which she is wild about. She rides it constantly and has already about worn out the button which turns on its talking/singing/neighing. Her other favorite gifts are a toy guitar which plays 6 or 8 different songs (very loudly unfortunately) and a really neat talking doll house (from Aunt Lisa). Also, for some reason Haylie LOVES any type of "blower" including furnace blowers, lawn blowers, hand blowers in public restrooms and hair blow dryers. My mom found a toy blow dryer that makes noise like a real one and Haylie is crazy about it.

My house is now overflowing with toys--I need to go thru them and get rid of the old ones, although she still plays really well with all of them. I swore before we got her, we wouldn't have a gazillion toys, but here we are now with my living room overrun. Not as bad as some, but worse than others I suppose. Stupidly, before she came I bought one little storage box that I was sure would hold all of her toys. That thing now doesn't even hold all of her books, and I just had to buy a 3rd storage bin for all the toys that will fit in it!!! I know I shouldn't complain, and just be happy we are so blessed to be able to have so much. I can't help but think of what kind of Christmas she might have had if she was still in Russia. Luckily, since God sent her to us, both Rich and I & Haylie have much better holidays than we ever did before, for which we are so very grateful.
Enjoy the slideshow & Happy New Year

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Santa Visit

I'm playing catch up with my posts. Here are some great pictures of Haylie with Santa this year. I'll post Christmas pictures tomorrow.

Halloween 2009

Haylie had a blast for Halloween. We went to trunk-or-treat at our church on Friday night, which was a BIG success. She loved seeing everyone dressed up, getting her candy, and the games that they had set up. She also loved her costume...she was the cutest little elephant you've ever seen. My neice Julia had used the same costume when she was Haylie's age, so it made it even more special to see Haylie in it. Since there was a home UK football game on actual trick-or-treat night, she stayed with Gram-Gram and didn't go trick-or-treating while we went to the game. She didn't even know she missed it. She got a whole pumpkin full of candythe night before. Luckily, she is not a big candy eating girl. Unluckily, daddy and I are, so we certainly didn't need anymore to eat.

In other news, Haylie moved up at her preschool into the big 3 year old room this week. So far so good. They had been keeping her in the "transitional 2's" room since she still isn't completely potty trained. The whole poo poo on the potty thing still eludes her. She does really well with the pee pee thing. But isn't doesnt' bother her a bit to poop in her pants. We've tried everything I can think of like M&M's, stickers, books, big girl panties, etc. but nothing seems to work. Hopefully she'll get the hang of it before we get to kindergarten!!!

I'm trying something new with these video's. Hopefully you can see my sweet little elephant in action.

Pumpkin Time

It's my favorite time of year!!! We've been to 2 different pumpkin patches now and still can't get a really good picture of Haylie with the pumpkins. I always see all of these cute little kids smiling and posing with the pumpkins, but my girl absolutely refuses to sit still to pose. She actually seems to look the other way on purpose. The ones on the bottom are some we tried to get at home in her adorable Halloween outfit. The sun was really bothering her eyes, and again she refused to pose. Her shirt says "Happy Boo to You", but she insists it says "Happy Boo-Hoo to you!!". She is getting pretty excited about Halloween and keeps saying "lets go trick-or-treating" even though she really has no idea what that means.