A Few Recent Photos

I'm back to having little motivation for keeping this blog updated.  Sorry!  Just to put something up here, I thought I'd post a few recent pictures.  This first one is from early January, when the weather was really nice and Jillian was wearing a cute outfit featuring a hand-me-down ladybug sweater from Melody . . .

I took this following picture just this afternoon.  I thought Jillian looked extremely cute in her denim and boots . . .

And here is a picture of Jillian on her "new" bike, which is actually Melody's old bike with new training wheels added on.  She does pretty well on flat surfaces but doesn't really have the strength and coordination yet to push uphill.

And here's big sister with her pink bike . . .

Introducing Jillian to Christmas

Yesterday, we put up our Christmas tree so I was careful to catch a shot of Jillian hanging her very first Christmas ornament:

 

We really don't know what exposure she's had to Christmas, so I used Google Translate to try to give her a little info:  这是一个圣诞树。我们将装饰它。圣诞节是当我们庆祝耶稣的诞生。圣诞节是在三个星期。This is a Christmas tree.  We will decorate it.  Christmas is when we celebrate the birth of Jesus.  Christmas is in three weeks.

I also used Google Translate to have a little bit of a conversation with her.  We knew from her teacher and her demeanor this week that, for the first time, she was showing evidence of being homesick for China.  I asked her if she missed her family in China and she said yes.  I assured her that they loved her and that we love her, and that we'll be her family forever.  She has spent a lot of time with the video camera that I bought, watching videos from our time in China.  She still doesn't seem to be overly upset by these videos but rather just enjoys seeing them.  We feel pretty fortunate that our transition issues with Jillian have been so minor.

Christmas with Jeannette's Family

This year was to be Christmas with "my" family because we spent Thanksgiving with Jeannette's side of the family, but on the way to the Muntz celebration, we made a quick stop in Albany last week and stuffed Christmas into about 90 minutes before everyone went their separate ways. We gathered at Paul and Wanda's house, cramming about 15 of us into their living room.

For historical purposes, let the record show that the following is a picture of MelodyJoy opening her very first Christmas gift ever. She caught on quickly to unwrapping gifts but also was surprisingly good about not opening up other people's gifts when she spotted them under the tree. (I think she only unwrapped one and tried to start on one more.)

Grandpa Phil and Grandma Deb sent tins from Wisconsin for everyone, each with an ornament and, ahem, cash . . .

Grammie Joyce thought that we needed a way of burning off energy so she gave the boys and me two sets of Nerf guns and darts. The boys had a lot of fun playing with them over the subsequent few days . . .

The four angels: Bailey, Madison, Melody and Alexia . . .