July 23

Lounging with Dad














Sydney and Alycia on one of their many wagon rides

Having a few potatoes with her ketchup!













First slice of Godfather's Pizza


Everyone is finally healthy in our house! Sydney had her first doctor's appointment with her regular physician and everything looked good. He said that he could not hear anything out of the ordinary when he listened to her heart but we won't know for sure until she sees her cardiologist on Friday. She did very well during her examination until the nurses gave her 5 shots! She went back to daycare after her appointment and proceeded to fall on the sidewalk and scrape her h ands and knees. All together the bandaid count at the end of the day totaled 8! As of today, we're back down to zero bandaids, so we're headed in the right direction. Sydney is also doing a lot better at naptime and is crying less when we lay her down for the night.

Alycia spent the weekend with Donny's family in South Dakota. She comes home on Sunday and leaves for volleyball camp on Monday. When she returns from camp, she is leaving the next day with her other grandparents (my family) for Medora. Donny and I would love to go along to Medora....it's kind of been our family trip with my parents for many years now...but we don't think that Sydney is old enough to enjoy it this year (maybe next year??). She has earned a new nickname from her little sister. Whenever we say Alycia's name Sydney says, "shesha bye bye" and waves at the door. We all miss Alycia already, so we'll be very lonely by the time she finally comes home. I plan to visit her at volleyball camp just to see her....how bad is that! This is her first year staying in the dorms for camp and I know she will have a great time. She's such a great kid!

One of our neighbors (Sara) came over to meet Sydney on Friday and they had a great time! Sydney decided right away that Sara was just another "big kid" and had her running up and down the stairs, tickling her, making all kinds of weird faces, and giggling at everything! Sydney was sad when Sara had to leave and sat on the steps by the door for a while before she was ready to play again. We'll have to visit Sara again as soon as she's ready for another stairmaster workout!

Sydney and I went shopping yesterday at Wal-Mart and a department store downtown. Sydney was very patient and even tried on some clothes. She loves to ride in the shopping cart at Wal-Mart. She could be mistaken for a greeter at Wal-Mart ( if she were a few decades older)! Sydney loves to just ride around, sing songs, and say "hello" or "ni hao" and "bye bye" to almost everyone. Like her friend Sadie, she is still talking a lot in Chinese when she plays. We looked at Emily and Erik's blog with Sydney last night and she kept pointing to Sadie in the pictures. It's been fun to get updates from the other families in our travel group, as well as the family in Holland that adopted one of Sydney's playmates. I hope we can keep in touch as the kids get older too.

We hope to see some more of the extended family soon. We've settled into a comfortable routine and would love to have you all meet Sydney. She is still shy at first but warms up quickly. In a couple more weeks we plan to take Sydney on her first big overnight trip to grandma and grandpa's house to spend some time with her great-grandma and meet family and friends in Devils Lake.

Hope to see you all soon!