Rylie's Annual Weekend

Rylie's big dinner celebrating one year since we arrived home from Kazakhstan!

The first course was the Kazakh part of the meal- perogies & beet salad.

Rylie & Saba. Rylie wore one of the outfits I bought her in Kazakhstan. Sunday morning brunch with the grandparents.Rylie is so lucky to have four wonderful grandparents!

I think Rylie's cheeks & broad shoulders may be somewhat deceiving. She is actually a peanut and loves to get herself into small places. This is one of her new favorite spots. Saba, Rylie, and Pa watching the Patriots game.
Rylie's new favorite princess shoes, cell phone, and carrying case courtesy of Tanta Debbi & Uncle Bob. Rylie LOVES these shoes. She wears them constantly.

So that's it. Our Kazakh princess has been home for one year. In some ways, it seems like yesterday. In other ways, we truly cannot remember what our lives were like before Rylie.

Love to everyone...

Happy Chanukah!

We are having a wonderful Chanukah! Rylie completely caught on to the concept of opening gifts by the second night. Rylie cleaned up, it is frankly somewhat indulgent. Most importantly, she is having a blast spending so much time with family. Last year for Chanukah, we got each other as our court date was on the first day of Chanukah. I always say I could never get a better Chanukah gift. I think Rylie will tell you that she likes this year's gifts more :-)

Rylie loves her wooden menorah

and the pretend frying pan and latkes too.

Tasting the real thing. Our picky little eater was not such a fan.

Chanukah party!
Family picture with Judah Macabee. This is as close as we get to the Santa picture.
Lighting the candles.

Rylie's big gift from us was a kitchen. I'm not sure who was more excited about it- Rylie or Daddy! Suffice it to say, Rylie was beside herself when she opened it and shouted "my kichen, my kitchen!" Rylie now invites us to regular tea parties in her kitchen. She serves ONLY tea and pancakes, and if you ask for anything else, you are promptly told, "No, Mommy/Daddy, No."
Baking cookies

"Yahyie's bicycle" as she refers to it. And be sure not to go within a 5 foot radius of it, otherwise, she will shriek, "No!!! My car! No, No, No!" (Can you tell that we are coming close to the 2 year mark!?!?)

"Ernie!" Rylie was so happy that Ernie didn't talk. She was, and still is, terrified of the talking Elmo she got on the first night of Chanukah! Silent Ernie and Abby were much bigger hits.

A cradle for baby Emmy!
Just the girls...

And to think there are still three more nights....

Wishing everyone a happy holiday and a wonderful new year.

Love to everyone...

And just two funny Rylie stories---- new favorite activities including "teaching" body parts and colors to her baby Emmy. It is pretty funny. Rylie will sit on the floor with Emmy and say, "Hand, Emmy" while pointing to Emmy's hand and showing the baby doll Rylie's hand. She then goes through all of her body parts. Then she progresses to colors. Rylie only really knows three colors, so the colors discussion is pretty limited. The whole thing is pretty funny to watch. The other thing is Rylie sings constantly. We laugh so hard when we see her cooking at her kitchen and hear her singing songs from music class. Her favorite is the hello song that we sing at the beginning of class and say hello to all of the children in the class. Rylie will sing the song and say hello to people in our family, her friends at school, and the sesame street characters! Once I catch it on video I'll upload it.

Melt my heart....

Rylie usually comes in to bed with us on the weekends somewhere between 5 and 6. This morning, after she had been going in and out of sleep for about a half hour, she was snuggling up next to me and this is the conversation that took place.

The whole conversation was in a whisper.
Rylie: "Mommy."
Me: "Rylie."
Rylie: "Hi"
Me: "Hi, pumpkin"
Rylie: "mwah (blowing me a kiss) I love you."
Me: "mwah, I love you too."

Stay tuned for upcoming posts of Chanukah!

Happy Adoption Day- Take 2

Happy Adoption Day, Rylie!!!

One year ago today, we stood in a court in Astana, Kazakhstan and were officially named as Rylie's parents.

This year, we are sort of celebrating the season of Rylie. We celebrated October 23rd just the 3 of us, we celebrated today at Rylie's school, and at the end of the month, we will be celebrating the one year anniversary of Rylie's arrival home with our family. Yes, somewhat indulgent... Needless to say, we will continue to mark each of these days over the years, but October 23rd will remain the true celebration.

Adam and I gave Rylie her first adoption day gift- a Kazakh doll we brought home with us. We brought home gifts for Rylie to have each year on adoption day. We only got for the first few years, so the plan is to go back before we use up all of the gifts!

This is Rylie's "say cheese" pose. She says, "Cheese!" and makes this totally cheesy face. I love it!

Today, my Mom and I brought cookies with Kazakh flags to Rylie's class. Rylie was so excited about the cookies. She kept talking about them last night and this morning. It seemed as though everyone enjoyed themselves.

Rylie and all of her friends enjoying morning snack.

Have I mentioned that Rylie has such a sweet tooth!

We ordered little Kazakh flags to put in the cookies, but sadly they did not arrive in time. We printed these off the computer and made them with toothpicks. The blue was completely the wrong shade, but thankfully no one knew the difference!

In case I haven't mentioned this before, we absolutely ADORE Rylie's teachers. She has been in their room since just before her first birthday. They are two of the sweetest, most caring women I have ever met. Rylie really loves them and they love her. This morning, they gave Rylie a cabbage patch kid with long, dark pigtails and beautiful almond shaped eyes. It was so sweet and thoughtful.

Other stuff...

Last weekend I came back from the movies with my Mom and Rylie and Daddy had built a huge fort using all of the cushions from the various couches and chairs in our house. Rylie was so proud of her fort!

Sitting in her fort.

And check out Rylie's new hat and mittens. Despite the fact that we live in Phoenix, the evenings actually do get pretty chilly. Given how much time we spend at the park in the early morning and late afternoons, we got Rylie a hat and mittens. The fact that Dora is on them seemed to help in the appeal.

Rylie modeling "Yayie's Dadoh hat." (translation- Rylie's Dora hat.)

Love to everyone...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from Arizona!

Where's the turkey?
Full bellies and way past our bedtime.
Love to everyone...

Adventures in Florida

Rylie and I just got back from a wonderful "Girls Only" trip to Florida to visit my grandmother, Rylie's Gigi. Rylie had a great time and especially enjoyed all of the attention from my grandmother's friends. She loved looking out of my grandmother's sun room on the water and kept pointing and saying, "more water, more water, more water." Yes, quite a change from the desert :-)

Rylie & Gigi

Even though we were there for five days, I tried to keep Rylie on Arizona time. This made for some really late nights of entertaining Rylie in Gigi's condo. Definitely lots of Mommy & Rylie bonding time. We got pretty creative- Rylie even made a slide out of the recliner.

While we were in Ft. Lauderdale, we had a special treat of getting to visit with Jennifer and Max Axtell. Max and Rylie were in the same room in the Astana Baby House, and Jennifer & Tim traveled to Astana shortly after we came home. It was a very special treat to meet Jennifer and see Max again. After a little snack and some bubbles, the two kids really warmed up to each other. While they clearly do not understand the significance of their history and bond, it was certainly not lost on myself, Jennifer, or my grandmother and her friends. Everyone was amazed that out of a room of eight children, here were two of them, sitting together playing halfway around the world less than a year later. We loved getting to visit with Jennifer & Max and really hope to see them again soon!

We had another special treat on our way home as we had a brief layover in Tampa, which obviously meant a visit with Susan and Leeza. The girls had a lovely tea party in the Tampa airport terminal and snacked on some goodies Susan provided. While the girls will undoubtedly be lifelong friends (Susan and I will make sure of that!) I am not sure that Rylie made such a good first impression. Leeza is very sweet and dainty, and Rylie is anything but dainty. I love my pumpkin dearly, but if I had to list 500 words to describe her, dainty would not be one of them, bulldozer perhaps, but not dainty. That being said, the girls share a common love of puffs, cereal bars, and tea parties. We had a wonderful, but way too short, visit, and cannot wait to see them again soon!

In other news, Rylie's newest standard phrase is as follows: "My ____, mine." For example, she will pick up her cup and say, "Mama, my cup, mine." or "My Elmo, mine." It is like she says the mine for reinforcement or something. I usually remind her that yes, the item is her's, but it is nice to share our toys with our friends. The cutest was this morning when I came into the room and she ran over and said, "My mommy, mine." Honestly.... the cutest.

Love to everyone...