One year ago today.....

Exactly one year ago today, I met my little baby girl. It was love at first sight... for me... not for her. The stupid nannies kept forcing me on her. She would cry and react, then they would grab her away. Anyway, we only had to endure 5 days of that. She has come such a long way both emotionally and physically since then... funny personality, a total performer, singing and dancing. It has really taken about a year for her to become "attached" to me... as was expected. Tonight we are going to "So You Think You Can Dance" live performance.... our favorite show. Here we are one year ago. Happy Birthday to Me!


The first photo is a few days after leaving the orphanage.
The other two are in the orphanage.

PIcnic...

Today, after swimming lessons, we went to a Arizona Adoptive/Foster Families Picnic. The ASU Business students host it every year. They had games, bouncy houses, pizza and oh no... more candy. Jazzy does a new thing now... Every time I go to take her picture, she either frowns or turns away, so all the photos I got of her today were either of the back of her head or her frowning. Right after the picture, she continues laughing or whatever she is doing.

Arizona Adoptive Famiilies
Painting a penguin
Eating pizza
Climbing a wall
Getting her face painted- with lots of cupcake already on it.

Lunch at Grandma and Grandpa's

long Halloween day....

We had a long Halloween day starting with Kid's Club (LA Fitness), regular Saturday swimming lessons, then off to the grocery store to decorate a cake, then Trick or Treating. Only about 1 in 10 houses in our lame neighborhood actually had their lights on, so we had to go a long distance just to go to 10 houses. If I was younger and could run faster, I would have egged their houses. People in our town actually voted to not allow kids to come to their house on Halloween. They thought it was a bother.

We had fun anyway.


Going to swimming lessons with butterfly princess costume on.
Decorating a cake to give to Grandma and Grandpa as a present.
Lady Bug costume for Trick or Treating.

Camping weekend....

This weekend we went camping with AzAFP (Arizona Adoptive and Foster Parents) group. The camp is called Friendly Pines Camp in Prescott, Arizona, and was built in the early 1940's. It was rather rustic. We did have running water and a sort of flushing toilet. It wasn't really all that cold... being northern Arizona, 6000 ft, and fall.... 75 during the day and around 40 at night. We had a little space heater that kept us very toasty.

There were kids there from infants to teens. Every year, the theme of the camp is different. This year it was call "Wild West", so the crafts kind of revolved around that for the younger kids.... sheriff's badges for name tags, hand made picture frames, western themed sun-catchers. Jazzy made a horse. We also colored our own Western scarves.

There were lots of other things to do like play on the playground, lots of board games, balls, tennis court, hiking... which I am very glad I didn't take Jazzy on or we wouldn't have made it back.

On Saturday night, we had a "dance". The music was hideous... like when you are at a red light or driving down the highway and some 8&8** person comes down the road with their car vibrating from the base turned too high .... but the kids didn't seem to mind. I almost lost mine (my mind)

On Sunday morning, we had a yo-yo show by the World Champion Yo-Yo guy. He has travelled all over the world for yo-yo competitions and has his own yo-yo school in Phoenix, Arizona. Each of the kids got a yo-yo and he tailored the length of the string for each one. That took quite a while.

It was a fun weekend and I'm sure we will go again next year. Jazzy and I made alot of new friends.


Posing.... We've been watching too much Project Runway
Jasmine's crafts
Jazzy and another Jasmine
Jasmine in front of our cabin
We ate alot
Saturday night dance.
Yo-Yo guy- Julius- giving Jasmine her own personalized yo-yo.

Arizona State Fair...

Today, we went to the Arizona State Fair...not someplace that I would normally want to go, but thought Jazzy might enjoy it. It was "free" day. Donate a pair or men's socks/underwear, etc and get in "free", but the cost of a bag of socks at WalMart is basically the same price as it is to get in the fair.

We went to a kid's barn where they had life size plastic realistic cows that you could milk, a little quasi Lego land, crafts where the kids could make jewelry and lots of other things....
Of course, there were lots of animals... the Anhauser Busch Clydsdales, llamas, more sheep than anything else, and lots of bunnies. For some reason, Arizona doesn't have the 4-H kids go to the state fair.... so the animals were all from other types of exhibitors.

Because of the expense of the rides, Jazzy was allowed to choose one ride. She chose a little train.... like she always does. It's a good thing because she is too short to ride even the little kid rides. I really don't think she will even be tall enough into adulthood to ride some of them.

We tried to stay away from the fair food so got some fried zucchini... which wasn't all that healthy, but better than some of the other options. Jazzy also had ice cream which covered her face, arms and outfit.


Jasmine milking a cow.
Riding the train
Making a necklace out of a pipe cleaner and some beads.
Jasmine with llama
checking out a goat....

Halloween present.

Jazzy just opened her Halloween present from Grandma and Granndpa Baker