We're Back

Sorry for being a little late in posting this week. We took off late last week for Maryland to visit with some family for the long holiday weekend and just got home tonight. This was Grace's first flight since coming home from China and she did surprisingly well. Luckily we didn't have any major delays which made things much easier. Grace had a blast hanging out with all of her aunts, uncles and cousins. We spent a lot of time hanging out by the pool and also took an excursion to a local petting zoo. Some pics of the weekend below.....

I only look scared....flying is fun!!!!
Mommy and Grace at the Enchanted Village

Grace and Uncle Mike

Grace and Daddy in the pool
I just love this picture
Pony rides are serious business

No trip to Maryland is complete without a little crab

When Mommy's Away....

Jen was away this weekend for her annual getaway to the beach with her good friends from college. This was the first time I have had Grace on my own for more than one night. Things went surprisingly well. I was most concerned about her sleeping as she has been having some rough nights lately but she slept 12+ hours Friday and Saturday without waking up once.

Grace is also coming into her almost-twoness. She is really getting a mind of her own now. She wants to do things herself, wear what she wants and lets us know when she is not happy with little tantrums. Jen had been telling me about them but I had not experience one firsthand...until this weekend.

The first tantrum was because she did not want to sit in her highchair Saturday morning. She won that battle as I pulled out the booster seat which seemed to appease her. The second tantrum was caused be me putting the bubbles away because she was eating them. I won that battle but I had to hear about the bubbles for about five minutes. They were both pretty minor actually, I have seen kids in the supermarket have worse tantrums than that.

The weekend was great for Grace and I to bond. We started out Saturday by meeting up with Gram, Aunt Melinda and cousins James and Sam for some strawberry picking. Grace got more strawberries in her mouth and on her face and clothes than in the basket but she had fun. In the afternoon we went to visit Unky B, Kathryn and Karina who were also sans mommy for the weekend. We commiserated and said hi to Unky B's parents who were lending a hand.

The rest of the weekend was spent taking walks. bike rides and wagon rides. We made it through injury free which is a plus. Unfortunately I didn't take too many pics this weekend as I had my hands full but we do have a couple from the week.

Happy Father's Day

Hope all of the dads out there had a good day. We went out for lunch today to celebrate. Below is a pic of Grace and I modeling our matching "Life is Good" t-shirts that I got for Father's Day. Life definitely is good!!!!

And our family picture below

Grace and Pa Pa

I got my self something special for Father's Day. Since we are down to one income we have been holding off on making any big purchases but our old vacuum broke twice in the past couple months so we were looking to get a new one. All of the reviews I read recommended the Dyson so when we saw that one we were looking at was on sale we picked this one up.

I didn't really intend to spend Father's Day vacuuming the house but it is amazing how much dirt and cat hair this thing picks up. The only issue is Grace keeps trying to get a ride on it like our old one.....Think this might be why our old one broke?

Catching up

The past couple weeks we were being a bit nostalgic with our "One Year Ago" posts and neglected to post any current pics so I will make up for it tonight. Not much now going on here otherwise. We have started the process of checking out daycare providers for when Jen goes back to work in September but I will post about that later.

Grace, Jen and Me Me took a trip to a little park earlier this week. Grace had a blast. We are still in search of a nice park in our area, we have found a couple but most are kind of hike to get to.

We have resurrected Grace's play table for now. We bought it for her this past Christmas but she kept climbing on top of it and falling off so we put in in the basement for a while. Now that she seems to be past her climbing stage we are probably safe. We just hope our walls survive the crayons.

First taste of steamers and she seemed to like them.

It was a little cool out on Saturday but we stopped by the beach for a few minutes to play in the waves. The water here in New England is very cold and it is very early in the year but I don't remember the water ever being this cold. I could only stand being in the water for a few seconds, I must be getting old. The cold water didn't seem to bother Grace one bit.

One year ago today.....

Over the past few weeks we have enjoyed looking back at the pics and videos we took while we were in China. At this point last year we were home and attempting to settle in. One of the major hurdles we had to overcome was getting ourselves back on US time. Those first couple weeks were a blur, we don't really remember much from that time but luckily we have some video. To get Grace back on US time we were trying to keep her up an hour later each day. As you can see from the below video our efforts were failing.

The difference a year makes...

Just about one year ago to the day the below picture was taken on a red couch in the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, China.

Yesterday we hosted 11 families from our travel group for our 1 year reunion/picnic. The weather held out and we spent the afternoon marveling at how much our girls have changed in a year. It has been a pretty amazing year for all of our families and we are so lucky to have these beautiful little girls in our families.

One year ago today......

We became a family. One year ago today we were handed the cutest little baby we had ever seen. We were far away from home and we fumbled through our first couple weeks as parents but eventually things started to click.

Last night as Grace was having trouble falling to sleep. As I rocked her I recounted the story of our "Family Day". After the story I asked her if she was ready for bed. She proceeded to give me a big hug, grab me by both cheeks and planted two little kisses on my lips. Finally a family!!!!

To commemorate our family day Jen put together a little video with highlights from our first year as a family. The pictures are in chronological order so it's really cool to see how Grace has changed over the past year. Enjoy....