Pretty Pictures

A few days ago, we dressed up the kids and took them out for some photo taking fun. We have a collage with 16X20 photos of all the kids on our family room wall that was in serious need of updating and didn't even include Eli or Anya. So I decided to give it a whirl with my own camera and some photoshop magic. I'm soo pleased with the results! Here are all the ones that include Anya. The rest are on the family blog.

Our beautiful Russian princess.

"No, Eli. You need to go home now. My mom says I can't go out tonight."

What a goof!

Landon asked me the other day how Anya did at her first day of school.

After I told him, he said, "She's so amazing." 

Melted my heart.

A few of our two soul mates..

  Anya's signature look. She's always chewing on that tongue.

What are your favorites? The hard part is deciding which one to print in the 16x20.



I'm BACK!!

SORRY for those of you who follow both of my blogs and just got a bunch of updates in your dashboard that are really old posts! I just added all my Fillmore Flash posts about Anya to this blog!

After a 5 month leave of absence from "Our Journey to Anya" , I've decided to update it and keep it going after all. There are still tons of visitors here, mostly referred from Reece's Rainbow, and I'm feeling like you really just want to read about Anya, not the rest of our boring family life, ha ha.  So, any time I blog about Anya, adoption, Down Syndrome or Reece's Rainbow kiddos, it will be here, and I'll keep our normal family stuff that doesn't include Anya on our family blog, The Fillmore Flash.  Of course, some of those posts will also be copied here because heck, Anya is a part of our family! Sorry for those of you who will get duplicates on your Blogger Dashboard!

The purpose of this blog was initially to keep people updated on the progress of our adoption and share the blessings of adoption with others. I know that Anya's story has been an inspiration to many people and that several families even took the leap of faith to adopt because of her.

My prayer is that her story will continue to inspire others, whether they have a child with DS, or are thinking about adoption, or wanting to support Reece's Rainbow and/or adopting families. 

Just FYI, I copied and pasted all the posts from the past 5 months that pertain to Anya from The Fillmore Flash to this one. You won't see comments on the posts from April to August here, but feel free to look through the archives anyway!

Thanks for visiting! Love y'all!

Payback Moment

The other day, our social worker, Tom came to visit us so that he could prepare our six month post-placement report for Russia. We sat around the table and he asked us lots of questions about how the adjustment is going with Anya in our family.

Just as we were bragging about how smart she is and how she's just one of the family now, the funniest thing happened. 

As if on cue, she came into the kitchen and greeted Tom, then marched right over to the cup drawer, got a cup out, filled it with water from the fridge door, gulped it down, threw the cup in the sink and walked out.

Jeremy and I quickly snuck in a smile to each other and read each other's minds. 

"Yup, that's our girl."