One Year together as a Family!

Today marks our one year anniversary of arriving home from Ukraine with Leeza!

Matt and I were SO ready to get back to the US we were practically kissing the ground when we landed at the airport. Poor Leeza was so tired since she barely slept the entire flight.

Here's a shot of us from last year, shortly after we landed and had just been greeted by Sarah.

We're thrilled to be home, but Leeza's still not sure about all of this!

Time flies when you're having fun and overall, it's been a fantastic year. We've had lots of ups, a few minor downs and for the most part Leeza continues to transition beautifully.

Here are a few recent photos.

She's helping prepare her Valentines for her preschool friends in this first one.

Here she is the morning after she lost her first tooth. She's now lost 2 and has a couple more that are wiggly! The girls are pretty competitive in that area.

Here's a funny one. They were studying space at preschool and then had an alien day. I was working at a client, so I asked Matt to make sure she had some type of costume to dress up for that day. He couldn't find the face paints, so he used their regular paint to give her the green face! Thankfully it's all washable, so she wasn't any worse for the wear. I actually have to give him credit since he did pretty good making those antenna!

The year has gone fast. And our lives have been blessed by this little Ukrainian angel!

We Knew It the Minute We Saw Her

One year ago today (Jan 29, 2008) we met Leeza for the first time!

WOW! In so many ways it's hard to think of a time when she wasn't in our lives. But it so many other ways, that day that we first met this shy, sweet little girl with pretty dress and hair pulled up in fancy pompoms is vivid in our memories.


Click on this link to read our archived post from that day:
http://johnsonsadoption.blogspot.com/2008/01/shes-one.html

Leeze continues to do quite well in school and with her other activities. She enjoyed the excitement of losing her first tooth last week and was thrilled to have the Tooth Fairy visit!
She and Sarah continue to ride the roller coaster of sisterhood -- love each other 80% of the time, fight like cats and dogs 20% of the time!

What a difference a year makes!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

We hope you are experiencing the joy of the season!

I'm long overdue for a post, but it's been very busy around here, so I'm just going to include a few pictures from some of our seasonal activities:

Here are the girls before and during their Christmas concert at church.

Decorating the tree was lots of fun!

Sarah turned six in early December, and we asked for donations to Toys for Tots instead of gifts. We felt like Santa's elves when we delivered this van full of toys. Ho! Ho! Ho!

We are so grateful for the blessings God has bestowed on our family this year, and we joyfully celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

Merry Christmas!

Nine Months

As November ends, we have been home with Leeza for 9 months!

It has been an amazing blessing to have her in our family and we're so happy with how she's adapted to life with our family and so many other new things.

Look at how she's changed physically.

Here is the photo from her SDA file, and another from the first day we met.

Here are some photos of Leeza during November.

We just got back from a weekend visiting my family in Iowa and a comment was made by someone who met Leeza in late spring/early summer that they were amazed at how she's blossomed!

We've just recently had her 5 year old check-up, and she's grown nearly 3-1/2 inches and gained 3 pounds in the past 9 months! Unlike many adopted children, she wasn't really thin when we brought her home, so I'm not surprised that her weight hasn't increased more, but the difference in nutrition has definitely impacted her height. Her hearing test was normal and we only have one month left in the medications she takes for the elevated TB probes. Our pediatrician was very pleased with how well Leeza is doing and how she was able to respond to questions that the doctor typically asks kids at this age. She also felt that Leeza was appropriately shy with her and well connected with us, which was great to hear her say.

Leeza also had another follow-up eye exam last week, and her vision in the right eye is 20/20 with her glasses and 20/25 without them. As you may recall, she was 20/60 with her lenses when we first went in March. We stopped patching at the end of October, so her doctor feels like there is a strong possibility that she may not need the glasses at all, at some point in the future. We'll go back in January to check again to make sure there is no regression after several months without the patch, but then we'll just have annual eye exams.

The past 9 months have flown by and I honestly can't imagine life without Leeza in it. I won't go so far to say that it's all be easy. We've had our ups and downs, and we still have some behavioral issues we're dealing with, but compared to some adoptive families' challenges, ours have been minimal. I will certainly admit that our parenting skills have been tested and our reactions to situations may not always be the best. But we love her dearly and work hard to show her that even while providing boundaries and discipline. For the most part, we've been able to work through any difficulties and feel like our family has been incredibly blessed.

We Give Thanks

We have so much to be thankful for this year.

This will be our first Thanksgiving with Leeza, and we know we're blessed to have her as part of our family. She's excited, but she doesn't really even know what the day is about. We try to help her understand that we should be thankful every day for the blessings God bestows on us, so I'm sure having a special day for being thankful is confusing to her. But she will be thrilled with the food!

Here's a card Leeza made for us at preschool.

And here's what Leeza wrote that she is thankful for:

I think she did an amazing job writing this, but in case you can't read her handwriting, it says:

Mom, Dad, cat, Sarah

Love Leeza

(She obviously didn't know how to spell Boscoe, our cat's name. LOL!)

I am thankful for:

- My dear husband and my precious daughters

- The opportunity to be with almost all of our family this Thanksgiving (both sides)

- Good health

- The ability to work from home

- My dear friends (including many blogging buddies)

- Jesus, my Lord and Savior

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.

Blessings!

Happy Birthday, Leeza!

Leeza celebrated her first birthday in America when she turned 5 on November 12th!

The week was very exciting for her. We went out to dinner on Tuesday night at Champps, one of our favorite family restaurants. On Tuesday's, kids eat free and they have a magician who wanders from table to table doing magic tricks for the kids. It's a very family friendly restaurant and the girls love it. Since we had Awanas on Leeza's actual birthday, it was a perfect night to go out.

On her actual birthday, Sarah and I woke her up singing "Happy Birthday." She took cupcakes to preschool to share with her classmates. She got a special crown at school and picked out a ball from the birthday grab bag. That night we had our family celebration, and she was very excited to open her presents which included a Domino game Sarah picked out at the Dollar Store, plus a new dress & sweater, a sparkly purse and a baby doll from us. She also got great gifts from her grandparents, and aunts & uncles & cousins. As I tucked her in that night, she told me she really liked birthdays. From what I can glean from her, she's never had a birthday celebrated before, so it was wonderful to explain that we celebrate the day she was born because she is so special.

We had a small birthday party at home yesterday and invited the girls from her class. Luckily, she has a fairly small class, so there were 6 friends plus Leeza and Sarah. I also asked Samantha, one of our 5th grade neighborhood friends, to come and help with the crafts and games. She did an amazing job helping keep the girls on task, helping with clean up, leading games, etc. Thank you, Samantha!

Leeza's party had a princess theme so all the girls wore their favorite princess outfit. They looked so cute, and there was a lot of pink! LOL! We decorated crowns and a picture frame I made for each girl. I took their picture as they arrived then we sent them home with the decorated frame and photo from the party. The girls played a few games and then decorated cupcakes. I think Leeza included every kind of sprinkle and candy we had on hers. They ate them with pink lemonade and pink mint ice cream picked out by Leeza.

After treats, Leeza opened presents which was very exciting. Then Samantha read the girls some princess stories while we waited for parents to pick them up.

When I asked Leeza later if she had fun, she said, "I LOVED IT!!!"

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Leeza decided she needed a new look.

Well, not really. Yesterday, I was out running errands and Matt was home watching the girls. (I think he forgot that watching them includes, ...watching them) Anyway, they were coloring and cutting out paper in the kitchen and he was in the sun room. As I walked in the door around 5:00, I hear him say, "What is all this hair on the floor?"

Sure enough, Leeza had cut her own hair!!! She now had short bangs and a large chunk of hair was cut from each side. The end result was a lopsided mullet look. Very attractive...NOT!!
Needless to say, we were not happy because we have talked often about how scissors are only for cutting paper, never clothes, hair, toys, etc. I guess she felt she should test that theory. And she was not happy when we told her we'd have to go get it cut shorter in order to even it all out.

So today, we trotted on over to the local kid's hair salon where they were able to salvage her remaining hair into a fairly cute, albeit very, very short hair style.

She's smiling here, but she is definitely not into this cut! I'm not thrilled about it and Matt hates it, but it could be worse and it will grow out. In some ways, I think it is a good lesson for her, and she's definitely learned it the hard way. She told me tonight that she's never going to cut her own hair again, even when she's grown up!

I told her I thought that was a good idea. LOL!