Christmas Fun Continues

Lexie had a visit from my friend Denise from Maui. She brought her two boys to play with Lexie. They are 2 of the funniest children I've ever met. I was just laughing at the things that they said. I especially liked the story about what happened to Cody when he was little (sorry, Steve), but that was funny! They were so sweet with Lexie and she had so much fun playing with them. Please feel free to visit again because she slept for 2 hours after you left. We hope when Lexie is a little bigger we can visit you in Maui.



Lexie is still getting presents for Christmas. Thanks to Dee and family and to cousins Trisha and Travis.


It has been so hot lately that we've been spending a lot of time outside. We bought Lexie a bubble gun so that she can play with bubbles.


It was neat because all of the bubbles just stuck to the grass and Lexie was trying to pop them.

Mochi Day

Lexie is a funny girl. She's not afraid of the noise the vacuum makes. She jumps and gets excited when she hears it. She decided to help me clean the house today.


We went to Aunty Jodi's house to make mochi. Every year, we make mochi to put into our ozoni, which is a soup that we eat on New Year's Day to bring us good luck.


Lexie got to make her own mochi and was having fun stretching it and shaking it around.


Lexie put the mochi in her mouth and did not like the taste of it at all.


Markie hung out with Lexie so she could eat her crackers.


Kelli and Lexie had a little mochi fight.


Guess who won???

Lexie's 1st Christmas

"We spotted Santa delivering some presents!"


"We caught a glimpse of one of Santa's reindeers!"


What a day! It was long, but amazing to be able to share it with Lexie. She was up at 7:30, waiting for us to take her out of her crib. Wouldn't you love to wake up to see this cutie pie's face each morning!



After breakfast, we let Lexie loose on her presents. She had fun playing with the ribbons.


With a little help, she was able to rip open some presents.


"Is this present for me?"


"I love Kai-Lan, thanks Brad & Cam."


"Hey, Maxx, I'll share my present, if you'll share yours!"


"Thanks, Maxx, you're the best brother! Now I got my own bone!"


"Thanks Taryn & Davis for the pretty dress. I can be just like my mommy."


"I loved my book from Uncle Rob & Aunty Jan. I would give you a kiss if you weren't so far away!"


"Thanks Aunty Jodi for my Emi doll." Lexie was named after her amma and there is a kimi doll named Emi, which means "smile" and that name suits Lexie to a tee because she has a smile that lights up a room!


"Thanks Seth & Alia for my doggie toy." Great minds think alike, we were going to buy this same toy just the other day, but resisted the urge.


We are so happy that Lexie & Maxx have become best friends. Maxx always has to be near Lexie and she tries to copy whatever he's doing.


"Mom, Lexie won't give me back my bone!"


Eric & I are blessed to have 3 amazing little munchkins! They make each day feel like Christmas. "Hey, Maxx, can I have your ladybug?"


Thank you so much for your thoughtful and generous gifts. All of you made Lexie's first Christmas very special.


"I'm tired now from opening all of my presents, I'm going to take a little nap. Don't bother me!"


"Over the Pali and through the tunnel, to grandma's house I go." We had our first Christmas feast with grandma and grandpa.


Lexie getting recharged for her next get together with daddy's family. She's getting to be a big girl and is able to hold her bottle by herself.


Thank you Aunty Terry for my Christmas shirt!


We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We will cherish this day forever! Merry Christmas, Lexie, we love you, sweetie!

Our Christmas Wish

Every Christmas, Eric & I would always wish for one thing. And every year, that wish never came true. Well, this year is different. Our wish to have a family has finally happened. Many people tell us how lucky Lexie is to have us as parents, but we think it's the other way around. We are so lucky to have been chosen to be this little girl's mommy and daddy. She has only been with us for 7 weeks and we cannot imagine our life without her.

Each day is filled with hope and excitement when we see her face smiling up at us from her crib. We are always amazed at the things that she does. She can be a goofball and will do something silly just to make us laugh. She will listen and stare at us like she understands everything we are saying to her. She will hug us or give us wet kisses when she's ready to fall asleep.

I won't lie and say it's been easy because there are times when I wish I didn't have to change diarrhea filled diapers. I miss being able to enjoy a peaceful meal without a screaming baby. It was especially hard on Eric and I to see Lexie sick. One day, Eric was feeding her and she had a hard time eating because of the congestion, but she tried to swallow her food and then a single tear came down her face. She was trying to be so brave and hold in her cry. At that moment, we would have done anything to take away her pain. We have learned parenting takes a lot of work, but at the end of the day, it's truly worth it.

This little girl has won us over completely. We were worried that Lexie would have a hard time adjusting after being with a foster family for 8 months and that we would have a hard time loving a child that wasn't biologically ours. We were wrong on both counts. We have fallen in love with Lexie and she is our daughter in every way possible.

Even Maxx and Gohan have come to love Lexie. Maxx will go to the crib to check on Lexie when she's sleeping. Gohan will keep Lexie company when she's taking a bath. Lexie sometimes thinks she's part dog. She crawls after Maxx and Gohan and has tried to drink from their water bowl and has even tried to carry their toys in her mouth.

We have truly become a family!

We don't have to keep wishing anymore because our Christmas wish has finally come true. We don't have to wonder what it would be like to share Christmas with our baby because tomorrow will be the first Christmas of many more to come.

Yes, there truly is a Santa Claus! And he brought us the best present we could ever hope for.

Twas the Night Before Christmas....

not a creature was stirring, well, except for Lexie. This is her first Christmas and we wanted to make sure it was extra special. She's feeling much better, so we decided to make some chocolate chip cookies. Lexie tried to help!



"Don't the cookies smell yummy, Maxx! I'll give you one, don't tell mommy!"


Lexie: "What do you think Santa will bring us for Christmas?"
Maxx: "I hope he brings you a bone, then I don't have to share mine with you!"


"I want the tree to look just right for Santa."


Putting out the cookies and milk for Santa. Hope he likes them!


"I'm getting sleepy, hope Santa comes soon!"


We hope that everyone has a wonderful Christmas that's full of love and laughter! Our dreams have come true, we hope that all of yours do too!

We're Beating This Cold!

We're finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Lexie slept for almost 12 hours last night. She stopped coughing so that probably helped her to get a good night's rest. She woke up with a crusty nose, but it seems like her nose has dried out and it wasn't runny today. She was in pretty good spirits and hopefully that means this cold is history. Daddy and Mommy are getting better also. We're hoping that we get our Christmas wish and all of us are healthy to enjoy our first Christmas together.

Eric has been taking Lexie out into the warm weather and it's been making her feel better. She likes to just bask in the sun with her daddy.



Isn't Lexie just a darling in her hat?


Lexie is definitely feeling better. Whenever she's playing, it's like a tornado has hit our living room. She likes to knock over her toy box and crawls into it and starts taking out everything in it.


Lexie loves playing with anything electronic, so I gave her my old cell phone. I guess it's never too early to learn how to text!



Aunty Jodi gave Lexie this puppet. Rodney reindeer hums Christmas carols and Lexie just laughs everytime we take it out and then when he's done singing, she tries to bite off his nose.

We've Got It Now

Lexie had her worse day on Thursday. She couldn't keep her food down and she was just miserable, then everything turned around and Eric thought that was the end of it because by the afternoon, her coughing stopped and she was eating again, but on Friday her congestion was back. She hates when we use the bulb to suck out the hanabata, but it's the only way she can breathe.

Now after trying to keep ourselves healthy, it looks like Eric and I have caught her cold. So far, it doesn't look like we'll have a very fun 1st Christmas. We're still hoping we get our Christmas wish and all of us are healthy when we wake up on Christmas morning.

I think Lexie handles her sickness better than we do. She still laughs and smiles even though it causes her to cough. Being ill, hasn't slowed her down. She is now standing every chance she gets. She can go from sitting to standing and will balance unassisted for about 5 seconds. She will pull herself up with only one hand and hold on with only one hand.



Lexie has so many toys to play with, but her favorite ones belong to Maxx and Gohan. She loves to chase after the ball when Eric plays with Maxx. She also knows where we put their toys and will crawl to their basket and take out the toys. We tell her "no" and she'll stop but as soon as we look the other way, her hand is in the basket.



She's also not afraid of Gohan. He'll be chewing on his bone and she'll go right up to him and try to take it away. He'll growl at her, but it doesn't scare her and sometimes she'll just lie on top of him until he gives up and walks away.



We've also been trying to teach Lexie to wave. She's finally figured out how to open and close her fingers and will say "hi" and "bye".

Lexie Has a Cold

Lexie got sick this weekend. She had a fever, but we were able to bring it down with some baby tylenol. Then she started coughing while she was sleeping, which kept waking her, so she's been pretty tired. Then, she had a runny nose and it just keeps dripping and dripping. You can see how wet the top of her shirt is. We took her to the doctor and she's on medication now.

She's funny because she loves her medicine. She actually gets excited when she takes her vitamins. We were told that babies don't like the taste, but she's happy to take it. Then we gave her the antibiotics, which was this thick, milky liquid. Eric squirted it into her mouth and she gulped it down like it was milk.

We hope Lexie feels better soon. We're trying not to get sick because everytime she sneezes, her snot goes flying everywhere. Even though she's not feeling very well, Lexie is still in a relatively good mood. She's a lot more clingy, but she smiles and laughs.



Lexie has been a real trooper through all of this. It's so hard to see her like this when she is usually so energetic. We hope that the medicine starts to work and she's well enough to enjoy her first Christmas.

Here is Lexie before she got sick. She loves when we carry Maxx or Gohan and make them move around like puppets. She just starts laughing. She tried to dance with Gohan!

I Survived!

I went back to work on Tuesday and I felt very disoriented when I walked into my classroom. It was like I was gone for years when it had only been a month. My students were very happy to see me and I got a lot of hugs. My sub told me a cute story. They were learning about maps and my students asked her to point out Taiwan on the map so they could see where I had gone to pick up Lexie. They had lots of questions about Lexie and wanted to know everything about her.

I'm really going to have to get super organized. I usually stay afterschool to work, but now I just want to be on my way home to see my sweet girl's smile which means I have to pack up all of my work and bring it home with me. A couple times this week, I was going to work on something only to realize I forgot it in school. It's a big adjustment not having free time to do things because our world now revolves around this little girl, which is fine by me. She has brought such happiness to our lives.

Eric has been such a wonderful daddy and is taking care of Lexie during the day. The only problem she gave him was on the first day when she spit out her lunch and then refused to eat. Well, we found out why. He was only warming up her food for only 7 seconds because he thought that was what I said, so the food was too cold and she didn't like it. He's learned from that and she's eating great now.

Lexie is just loving her daddy. She's been so good to him by sleeping for 2 hours for each of her naps so that Eric can get his work done and then when she wakes up, she plays in her crib, so that's more time he can work.

It was so nice to come home and she gives me her goofy smile. Yesterday she was a little mad at me when I came home and we think it was because Eric fed her in the morning instead of me, which I had been doing the other mornings before I go to work, so I didn't get to say good bye to her before she fell asleep. But by that night, Lexie was giving me these wet kisses and hugging me, so I guess I was forgiven.

"Eric's idea of baby proofing our house"


"I love to take a nap!"


We have been debating about getting a tree because we're in the process of moving. I really wanted a tree because this is Lexie's first christmas, so Eric finally relented and we searched and searched for the perfect tree. We kept going back and forth between real and artificial ones. We settled on an artificial one, but all of the ones we saw had those really fake looking branches. So, we went to buy a real one until I saw all of the needles on the ground and I could just see Lexie and Gohan eating those needles and me having to vacuum every single day!

We went to Costco and found our dream tree. Eric wasn't going to set it up until we moved, but he surprised me and put up the tree and then sent the picture to me on my phone. It made my day to see Lexie sitting in front of her first treee!


I've been collecting Precious Moments for a long time now. I bought Lexie her first ornament, so we hung that on the tree. Hopefully this weekend, we can find the time to finish decorating the tree. We haven't had a tree in over 5 years. I used to love Christmas and we'd decorate our house with all of the trimmings, but the last few years were a little tough waiting for our family to become a reality that we really weren't in the Christmas spirit. This year, we will finally be able to enjoy Christmas once again because Lexie is the best present we could ever ask for.