Fall Fun!

What would we do without our blogger friends? It was such a blast to take a break from work last Friday so that we could get together with Kentucky Karen, her adorable son Nick, and Karen's parents. And, the extremely famous Chicago Kaz mom Muriel was in Cincinnati visiting family, so she joined us with Kaz beauty Sophia, and newborn son Jack. Muriel's great friend Gina and her stunning daughter Teagan (the most amazing curls you've ever seen!) also joined in for the fun. Once again, my brilliant mother skills were in full mode as we got turned around not once but twice on the way to the park, only to arrive and find out that many of the "festivities" closed at 2:00 PM (as we arrived at 1:50PM). Some day, I swear I am going to be an organized Mama! (And, more in a minute about the practically abandoned mall that I dragged everyone to after the park, just certain that there was an indoor play area ... not). I adore Muriel, Karen, and Gina, as they just rolled with the flow and the kids still had plenty of fun.

As you'll see from the pics below, we did manage to get the kids on the pony ride. Thanks, Muriel, for rushing the ticket booth. :-) The park had a huge play set, and Max joined the older kids and climbed almost all of the way to the top over and over again. He would then slide down a spiral slide all by himself. He is so brave -- even on the pony -- as I don't think he has yet figured out that some of these things should scare the X&%# out of him! HA!



The kids also had alot of fun looking at the animals -- a huge sheep, an even bigger pig, a couple of goats, a donkey, lots of ponies, and a few other odds and ends. It was cool to see Max point to a real live sheep and say "baaaaaa." It's good to know that he gets that there are actual real farm animals -- not just puzzle pieces or 2-D renderings in a book!






The kids let us know "we're hungry" (although it was slightly more non-verbal), so we headed to the above-mentioned nearly-abandoned-but-very-close-by mall. For some reason, I thought it had an indoor play area with a huge carousel. Instead, it had the teeny tiniest little merry-go-round ever made. We fed the kids, rounded up our quarters, and headed to the merry-go-round. It kept everyone sufficiently entertained. and eventually lulled Max into his no-nap-fog. He was happy to sit in his stroller for the last few rounds of quarters.



Max is really babbling up a storm now, and seemingly streaming words together to form thoughts and sentences, but it's all still pretty garbled. We're just starting to approach a stage where frustration sets in with him because we can't understand what he is saying. He generally resorts to taking us by the hand, or getting behind one of us and pushing us along, to get us near to whatever it is that he is trying to talk about or tell us. It's so dang cute, although we hope that his words come soon enough before intensified melt-downs commence.

We also took the leap, and we sent in our check to begin the home study update process. And, we obtained the new contract from our placement agency. We will slowly but surely start working our way through the process with the hope of adopting a little brother for Max. We still diligently follow all of the "new" stories, and we know it will be challenging. But, we love Kazakhstan, and we hope very much to humbly return and adopt from there again.

In the meantime, we are loving every single minute with Max. We are enjoying our first "season change" with him (turtlenecks and sweatshirts -- love it!), and of course preparing for our first Halloween. We are also all headed on a vacation in early November to the Bahamas -- Max even has his own US passport with the cutest little picture. A Caribbean vacation with a toddler -- somehow I think this might be slightly different than our previous treks to tikki-bar locales.

Happy Fall, everyone!