Nyah's Gotcha Day! {Dec 22nd}

We celebrated Nyah's Gotcha day on Dec 22nd. It has been a year since she came home from Korea and joined our family!

Here are some pictures from a year ago:

 1. Our First meeting with Lanyah at her Foster Family's home
2. Lots of crying the first day that we had her.
3. Finally crashed after all the crying.
4. Happy with daddy
5. Waiting at the Seoul Airport for our LONG trip home (it took over 25 hours total)
6. At home with mom and brother!

 And here she is now!  Sassy little girl!

We went to our favorite Korean Restaurant Mirror of Korea to celebrate and eat some of the YUMMIEST Food ever! 

Cool story about eating at Mirror of Korea:
There was a large family who ate at the table right by us.  They asked about Nyah as we were getting ready to leave.   I told them that we were celebrating her 1 year anniversary of coming home.  And they told us they were doing to same thing for their sister (she had been home 23 years!)  How cool!! to think in 22 years that will be us! :)

Holidazzle and Kyan's Debut!

It is becoming a holiday tradition to go to the holidazzle parad in downtown Minneapolis each year.

It is super fun to see all the lights and the kids LOVE it!

My Parents join us each year and it is a fun event for all of us!

The Floats are so fun and pretty!

Our Church had a Christmas Music Night on sunday.  Kyan "sang" 2 songs with the preschool cubbies.  I put "sang" in quotations because he mostly just stood there and rang his bell, he did not sing a word.  He knows the songs, we have been singing them all week, but when he came back to his seat he told me "Momma, I got shy up there"  Ok- fair enough... there is always next year buddy!

It was still precious to watch our son up there "singing" with his friends!

A year ago...

Last year at this time we had just gotten one of the best calls in our life!   We got the call to travel and go get our little girl, Nyah on the Dec. 14th! We found out that we could bring her home for Christmas!  Jason worked with the travel agent and by some miracle we got a flight to Korea!   It is amazing to think that a year ago Nyah was not even here yet! We got our flight out to Korea on the 18th and came home on the 23rd.  Just in time for Christmas!  What a blessing!

It was fun to visit Korea during the Christmas season  to see it all decked out for the holidays!  The weather is a but more mild there then here in MN (it was in the 40s- 50s) so we were able to get out and about quite a bit.  And Shopping in the market was fun too,  The sellers there were trying to push the holiday spirit too (buy buy buy!), but there were deals to be had and get got some fun souvenirs!

Kyan's Gottcha Day 2011

Nov. 5th was Kyan's Gottcha Day! The anniversary of the day Kyan come home from Korea with us! Can you believe that it has been 3 years?!

Here is what we were doing 3 years ago... traveling for over 21 hours to come home and then crashing on the couch! 

 3 years later here is my little boy! 

They grow up too fast, don't they?!

To celebrate we ate at our favorite Korean Restaurant: Mirror Of Korea in St. Paul.

 Oh. My. Goodness. The food is so yummy!  I could eat there everyday!  The whole family totally pigged out on all the food.   I think we impressed the waiter with how much food we ate! : )

It is hard to believe that a little over 3 years ago we welcomed 1 baby boy home and today we have 1 little boy and 1 baby girl!!  It is amazing how God has provided for our family!  We are so blessed! 

Halloween: Despicable Me Style

We had a great Halloween this year!  Homemade costumes all around for us.  We went as one of our favorite movies: Despicable Me... if you haven't seen it... you should... right now!

We were: Gru, Vector, A Minion and Agnes: 

Getting ready to Trick or Treat!  It is so funny how fast the little ones catch on to this! 

yes we are still here

Sorry this little family blog of ours gets so neglected!  Here is a quick up date for you!

Kyan is still LOVING preschool.  He loves his teacher and has made some friends.  It is so cute to see him flourish is this new environment!   Kyan also started Cubbies this year on Wednesday nights.  He gets to hang out with his "best friend" Eli and looks forward to it all week.  He just had a growth spurt and now has lost almost all of his baby face.  He is looking so much like a big boy!  I miss my baby boy but love the little boy that he is becoming!  He is becoming very social and it is getting hard to keep up with his social calender!

Lanyah is also growing leaps and bonds.  She enjoys spending some one-on-one time with mommy when Kyan is at preschool.   We had the Early Childhood teachers from the School District come out and evaluate Nyah for Services.  Because of her microtia she is eligible for services to help her develop language and speech with her hearing loss.  She will be working with a Deaf and Hard of Hearing teacher weekly.  The team assessed Nyah in all areas and found that she needed some extra help in another area too.  She also is going to receive services to help with some of her adaptive skills.  She is going to be working on her balance and core strengthening.  {You may have noticed that Nyah is less-then graceful.}  The Occupational Therapist (OT) will also be working on Nyah's eating and swallowing.  {You also probably noticed that Nyah is very drooly}   We are very impressed with the team of teachers that will be working with us and are excited to start these services together.  Nyah charmed the pants off each of the teachers that came out and they were all fighting over who got to work with her.  She is a very social little girl. 

Jason is still loving his job.  Which is such a blessing to our family!  I am still working on my craft blog and have been fairly successful at it.  It is fun to do and also a nice outlet for my creativity!

Hopefully I will have some pictures of our family Halloween costumes this weekend!

School and Court

We had a BIG week here in the Norman household! Kyan went started Pre-school and Nyah had her Adoption Finaliztion hearing! Huge steps for our family!

Here are some fist day of School pics of Ky-guy:

Here are some pictures of Nyah's Court Hearing! 

It is all legal and offical that we are her parents! Hooray!

We ate at Cossetta's after to celebrate!  YUMMY!

The Great Minnesota Get Together!

Jason and I went to the state fair last week to celebrate out anniverary!  We had a good time and here are some of the pictures that I took with my IPOD. 

We watched an extreme tramopline show... very cool stuff these guys can do!

We also watched the Lumber Jack IronJack show.  It was WAY fun!

Saw a parade!

Ate some YUMMY FOOD!

green grass and sun flare

At the beginning of spring, it rained and rained and rained and rained.   We were getting ready to build an arc!  One good thing that happened was our GREEN grass!  It was great for taking some fun pictures!

Here is my attempt at catching a sun flare!  I like it!

I also love how Nyah's skirt is blowing in the wind and how Ky's head is tilted back! 

4th of July in the park

We had a VERY low key 4th.  We stayed home and rode our bikes to the park.  No fireworks... no picnics... no stress! :) 

Here are some pics of our time.

In the bike trailer... ready to go!