Lots of Fun

We had a wonderful visit with Eric's brother's family last week. Evan & Kathy came for the weekend and left their kids with us for the week and Marion & Tom took them back the following Sunday. Rachael is 14 and Ian is 16 and they are lovely, enjoyable kids. They were an amazing help to me with jobs around the house and even tackled the weeding of my very overgrown back garden. PLUS they made dinner for us all one night. A very yummy Ziti casserole which we all enjoyed. It was very fun having them and VERY sad when they went home!!! Megan could not get enough of "Cha Cheh" and "Eeeahh"!

Ian

Rachael

Evan & Kathy

Grandpa Tom & Grandma Marion

Megan loves to make enchiladas!!

We had a visit from another Great Wall China Adoption (our agency) family. Elissa & Tim live in Virginia and traveled to Niagara Falls for a visit. I "met" Elissa through my Yahoo Great Wall group and I invited her to stop by for dinner on their way through the area. They are at the beginning of the adoption process and are still assembling their dossier for Log In. They have three children and are very excited to have a daughter from China someday.


Megan Ling is really enjoying her new preschool. They have a summer camp and she has been going 2-3 days a week. they do all kinds of activities around a different theme each day. She has made new friends and the teachers say she is doing great!!! Here she is with Miss Sherrie.

and Miss Michelle

and Miss Dawn (Megan was barely cooperating by this third photo)

In September, Megan will receive OT, PT, Speech, and Special Education services in a mixture of before & after school and at home. I am so glad that I had this evaluation done because she really is trying hard to say and do many things and due to her articulation delays she is incredibly hard to understand as her vocabulary increases. The team that will service her are all very experienced and have worked together for years! We are all learning sign language to pair with her speech to help us understand her better. Megan is very receptive to this and enjoys using signs. One of my adoption friends loaned me a set of 12 children's videos called Signing Time. They are wonderful, simple videos with about 12-15 signs per video and show lots of children using the sign and examples of the concepts. Mary Alice and Matthew really enjoy learning them and are naturals in communicating with Megan.

Matthew is nurturing these Monarch Chrysalises, which he grew from eggs he found on Milkweed in our garden. He is a very observant kid, as these eggs are the size of a very tiny pinhead. They will hatch in about 9 more days and I will try to remember to post some photos of the butterflies. It's funny that the second caterpillar chose to make his chrysalis right next to the first. They were about a day apart in their cycles. They are literally hanging from the bars right next to one another. Very interesting.

Megan is zooming around on her bike now. She can ride all the way to her preschool, which is about a block and a half away.

I got Megan's passport and social security card last week. It did not take long at all for either of them. I am still waiting for a court date for our readoption in the US (all the paperwork is filed and it's just pending a date) and then I can get her US birth certificate. It is nice to have these milestones behind me.