Anna's First Ski Trip - Beech Mountain, NC

Anna Sees Snow for the 1st Time!
For President's Weekend we took the kids skiing at Beech Mountain, NC. Although Anna was too little to ski, she had lots of fun hanging out with brothers and cousins (Quinna and Moraya). Here are some fun photos in the snow!!

That brother - he's a teaser....

Don't even think about it, brother!!

I thought Spencer was seriously considering throwing this snowball at her...then he started busting out laughing when he knew he had tricked me!

Water Fun...

I love this photo of Anna and Kent together. She was having such fun getting "escorted" around the pool in Beech Mountain!

Anna's First "Ski Trip" Includes Swimming!

Anna loves swimming with her brothers...

and goodness knows she gets enough attention! They like to push her around in her little floatie. So much so that frequently I have to tell them to back off a bit - I'm afraid in their enthusiam, they are going to tilt her over and into the water!!

Chinese New Year!!

Wow - we had such a great time celebrating Chinese New Year for the first time ever this year! We went to a wonderful party with lots of other beautiful children from China and their parents who live in North Atlanta. My friend, Kelly, invited us and we had such a great time meeting other families. Anna had a great time and seemed to be thrilled to see other children just like her (only much bigger!). She was by far the smallest there -- in size -- not in age!! We also went over to John and Elizabeth's home (our wonderful neighbors who have also adopted from China). John's mother, father and aunt were there. John's mother gave each child a red envelop and the kids were thrilled! It was wonderful learning all about the holiday. In January, Spencer and I had been to an exhibit at the High Museum called "The First Emperor". It was wonderful and had some of the terracotta warriors and told the story of how they were found. We had a very good history month in January.

Christmas Morning...

Initially, Anna had absolutely no idea how to open a christmas gift. I don't think she had ever opened a wrapped present.

Her brothers jumped in to show her how it was done and before long she was a PRO!

Sitting back with Ba-Ba and enjoying the bounty - she especially liked her pink tutu and purple sequence purse! I'm loving having a little girl in the mix!

Good News On The Medical Front

After meeting with the entire group of doctors at the Cranio-Facial clinic at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (surgeon, dentist, orthodontist, speech pathologist, ENT, etc, etc), we got very good news on Anna. Our surgeon said the surgeon in Beijing did a very good job at her cleft lip repair and there would be little to no other corrections needed. He said we'll monitor as she gets older but was very pleased with the work. And now we definitely know why she is so LOUD...she can't hear! Poor thing has fluid in her ears and so we will have ear tubes put in to assist with drainage and this will help her get fewer ear infections and help her to hear better. Once she can hear how LOUD she is, we are hoping this will help her tone it down!! :-) On 1/29, she will have surgery to put tubes in her ears, built a stint for her cleft palate repair, and have repair done on missing enamel on her front teeth. All done on an out patient basis. Then on 2/18, it is time for the "big" surgery...cleft palate repair. We'll be at the hospital for a few days. But the doctor feels Anna's palate is going to be fairly easy to repair (even though it is bilateral complete) and straightforward. We were thrilled. After that, she'll have about 5-6 more surgeries before she's 18. But all this will culminate in Anna living a completely "normal" life...we couldn't be more thankful!