Seven

OK, well seven months-ish!  I have been remiss in my blogging as we've been quite busy as a family preparing for the holidays and doing normal family stuff!  The 7 month anniversary of Kayleigh and Michael arriving home in Texas came and went like any other "normal" day in our family.  The kids continue to do amazingly well in their new home and family and each day with them now is pretty much one of our ordinary days.  Which is great!  I will endeavor to be better at blogging and sharing our experiences :)

Our family has been busy preparing for the Christmas holiday.  After Thanksgiving we broke out the tree and decorations and the Fab 5 hit it fast and hard.  Before you knew it we had the tree up and decorated and lights up in the yard!  It looks very pretty and festive.  This will be K & M's first Christmas with our family and no telling but odds are good their first real Christmas.  It is easy to see how excited they are about it.  We gave each kid a budget for making or getting gifts for each other, and all 5 of them have had a great time with that.  Our 3 have always been incredible with their attitudes of keeping Christmas real, focusing on the real meaning of the holiday and thinking of others before themselves, and K & M seem to have been right on track with that as well, very much wanting to do for others.

Kayleigh continues to blossom which as been great to see.  She is turning out to be quite a beautiful young lady and is a wonderful person.  I very much enjoy the one on one time I get with her, like when we're driving back from dance class and such.  She continues to enjoy dance class very much and the girls there, and it has been a super environment for her to make connections with other girls outside of our family.

Michael continues to develop a ton.  He's starting to get some height finally :)  He has grown so much in confidence and we can tell the teenage years are approaching as he starts to try and assert himself some which is great.  He's been taking karate classes and has excelled, earning the highest score in the last belt test!  He has his group of friends there and has a great time.  It has been remarkable to see how different he is now from the quiet little boy who mostly stayed to himself or hung out alone in the woods back at the orphanage.

The layers of the onions are beginning to peel away a little bit.  We know so little about their life and family back in Ukraine.  It is typical that kids coming from an orphanage background don't or won't remember their past, either because they were too young, block it out totally or just don't want to remember things.   Kayleigh has begun to share a little bit as we carefully inquire during regular conversations on the subject.  It sounds like it wasn't good stuff, so we're continuing to pray over these 2 kids that as they continue to grow into our family and their life here, that God will heal what needs to be healed from their past life.

I'm looking at the calendar as I prepare to look at 2012 and set my goals for 2013, and 2012 seems like it has been such a long year.  So much has happened!  It seems so long ago that we started the year with our papers turned in for adoption and waiting for the Ukrainian government to start back up with adoptions (that happened in March), traveling to Ukraine for our 47 day adoption adventure, and returning home in May.  We continue to remember our trip a lot and keep in touch with friends we made there.  We still miss the food :)  I have no idea what adventures lie ahead of us in 2013, but we are looking forward to enjoying the full year with our 5 awesome kiddos :)