Russian Adoption Playdate

One Saturday evening recently Blaine, Valerie and I met up in Odessa with 3 other families from this area who have adopted from Russia. Mary was there with her beautiful little Kenzie. We met Dede and Rob and their lively little Liam after following their blog since before we traveled on trip 1! We were also excited to meet Marsha and Brad and their super cute sons Sasha and Dimitry. Sasha has been home from Russia for several years. We met at McDonald's, let the kids play and had a great visit. It was wonderful to chat with people who know exactly what you're talking about when you tell about all the ups and downs in your journey. Each of us had a unique adoption story but we all had smart, beautiful children to show off and share with each other! We had such an enjoyable time and all agreed we need to get together again sometime soon. It's exciting to me that there are other families living so close that have also adopted from Russia!
We worked so hard to get all the kiddos in one picture but it was like herding cats so here's a few different groups. I never got little Dimitry. He was way too fast!

Blaine, Liam, and Valerie in the slide.

Valerie, Kenzie, and Liam trying to be still!

Sasha, Valerie, Liam, and Kenzie

First Day of First Grade!

What a handsome young man!

Posing with Mrs. Coldewey on Day 1!

These pictures are from Blaine's 1st day of school. That was 2 weeks ago. I'm just a little behind with my blogging! We are so busy and have so many things going on that I'm always too tired at night to sit down and blog about it. Blaine is really enjoying school. He loves his teacher. He has several good friends in his class. His favorite thing is the playground (of course). Our only real problem is getting him out of bed in the mornings!

Splish, Splash, Dump!

Valerie just loves her bath! My bathroom floor is always wet. She kicks, splashes, and loves to dump water over her head. Anytime we walk into the bathroom, she starts pulling her clothes off and yelling, "Bath, bath!" I'm just glad getting clean is so much fun. If only Blaine thought so!