Giving Thanks for Our Family

Best intentions...updating the Blog has been on my to do list for quite some time, and with Thanksgiving just around the corner I thought I'd just jot down a little thanks for bringing Zoey into our family.  And post some fun pics, of course.  She is just the coolest little girl.  We all adore her.  Here are some recent pics from our Disney cruise a couple weeks back:  

Arg.  Pirate night-and Little Miss "I-Don't-Want-To-Dress-Up" totally fed into the pirate theme.  We all had a blast.   

Pirate night with Stitch. 

Yes.  Stitch is her very favorite Disney character.   

For any of you who have not done a Disney cruise-they are the BEST.   Best.  Cruise.  Ever.    Hands down.

Castaway Cay.  Found a couple more snorkeling buddies.  

She. Is. Fearless.  We chartered a boat that took us around the British VI's, and we were able to snorkel at different spots from St. John's to Norman Island to Tortolla.  Even on the first stop she dove off the boat-no fear, she figured out the snorkel, and LOVED the fish/rays/eels that we saw.  Yes- I FOUND A SNORKELING BUDDY!!! WOOHOO!

Chillin'.

Snorkeling with stingrays.

I personally thought she was the cutest pirate in all of Disney World.

Hanging out at the parks after the cruise.  One of our favorites.

Meghan totally and completely adores this child.  And she loves Meghan.  It is adorable...

How are we doing?  What should I write about??  I am not even sure where to start.

Just going to dive in here--we are no longer dealing with an adopted child on a regular basis.  We are parenting.  We find that the issues we are dealing with are typical "kid" issues and do not arise because she is adopted.  To all of our friends and our family - Zoey is just Zoey and she is a regular 5-year old who doesn't like girly things but loves to run, play soccer, swim (she LOVES it), go off the diving board, wrestle, color, and go to fun places.  When she is tired, she gets cranky.  She is not a morning person.  But she can stay up at night like a champ.  She is a rule follower.  A great listener.  But that is probably why the Blog is hard for me to focus on lately-since that was a special commemorative narrative for Zoey and our family about how she came to be a part of our family and how different that experience was from anything that we had ever done.  Now that she is here, we are really just dealing with typical family things and Zoey being your normal 5-year old.  Like wanting ice cream and a snack every day at the pool.  Or kicking the ball in the great room.  Or sneaking candy before dinner.  Or circling what she wants from Santa in the newest American Girl or Justice catalogs.

We do still talk about China, but she is adamant about being Americanized.  Over the summer, a friend of mine was asking about traveling; I mentioned that someday we'll go back to China.  Zoey immediately sat up and firmly stated, "I am NOT going back to China."  We are really fortunate to have a significant population of adoptees in our community with whom Zoey has met and played, and through them we have a connection to her birth country (not to mention the monthly emails with the foster family).  That is about as much as she can handle in terms of what she wants from China at this point, and we respect that.  We do get the emails from the foster family, and they send pictures.  She loves looking at them-and she does talk about them, but not as frequently anymore.  

As you noticed from my last post many moons ago, we did visit with Chloe and her family over spring break-our traveling companions from our China trip.  It was amazing to see how much the kids grew and how different they were from our trip the year before.  Both girls have adjusted well, and really do seem to be perfect matches for their Forever Families.   

Going back a little bit from the year-here are a couple pics of Zoey just before her 5th birthday in mid-summer: 

Yes.  That is a BOW in her hair (thanks Piper!) and a DRESS.  Was she happy about that?  Not so much.  She is getting used to the skirt/dress thing...a little.  I do get the old eyeroll when I break out these types of outfits. But she looks so darn cute-had to post.   

Her two wonderful teachers from last year-they were the best!

We also don't do a lot of birthday parties for our children-but, since we missed out on so many with Zoey, we did choose to have some classmates and friends celebrate her birthday.  She loved it-despite some of the focus being just on her.  Of course, the presents probably helped...

Zoey is really very funny.  She is a sweet child, but very feisty and somewhat stubborn (yes, yes, just like the other 3).  She adores soccer and had fun in summer swim after a very rough start (and now can't get enough-asks after swim class to do another 25).  She actually medaled in the summer swim championships, taking 7th place in her freestyle event.  Meghan said she'd coach her and she'll be first next year.  lol

She loves this shirt. Still not a fan of skirts.  If it were up to her, she'd borrow Sam's clothes and wear a ball cap backwards everywhere she went.    

Celebrating Memorial Day-all those with a background in the Armed Forces were encouraged to send in pics and a paragraph about themselves.  This is Zoey showing off Pap's pics from when he was in the Navy and his time at the Naval Academy.  She was so excited that he was on the Veteran's table.  She'd walk past it every day and point to Pap.  All of the grandparents are very sweet with her-they adore her. 

My personal favorite craft they did last year at preschool... 

 On a final note-I wanted to add this picture to the Blog.  This is my favorite picture of Zoey and her foster mom.  We do email regularly and I send pictures and updates of Zoey.  I did have to tell the Foster Mom that Z's Mandarin has slipped (okay, she now speaks Kai-Lan Chinese only...well, no.  Not even that.  More Dora than Kai-Lan.  They take Spanish at school and she now speaks better Spanish than she does Chinese...ugh.) - that was hard to admit.  Foster Mom sent Zoey a very cute dress and sandals for her birthday. It was amazingly sweet.  I know she is still grieving-but she seems very thankful to continue the relationship with Zoey and our family via email.  What an amazing opportunity to be able to continue emailing and keeping in contact.  I hope that some day we can all meet up again. 

So-on a final note, I'll try and be a little more diligent to post some quarterly pics.  

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and holiday season.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!