Gotcha Day 2 Years Ago!

Oh My! It has been a really looooong time since I have posted. Life is so busy and writing is one of my least favorite things to do. So even though I still won't be posting much, I do want to keep track of the "big" days for those of you who know us and for the kids to look back on someday. So Since Sophia's Gotcha Day was last week (Sept 6) I figured I would start with her. Here is the picture of her 2 years ago on the day we first met her:

Here she is on her Gotcha Day 1 Year later:

And here she is this year, Gotcha Day Year 2:

Oh she is turning into such a young lady. She is not my little girl any more.

Highlights for Sophia over the past year and a half are her 7th Birthday:

Her dedication at church:

Getting her new bike:

which she now rides without the training wheels. She was very persistent on learning to ride without training wheel and practically taught herself.

Then there was her first time visiting Disney World. Oh she has been wanting to go there ever since she saw pictures of it.

Then there is the first time she got to go to the beach and see the ocean:

Then this summer we went to Universal Studios.

What an amazing two years it has been. It seems like it was not too long ago when we first met her and had to struggle to communicate to her. But at the same time it seems like she has always been with us. She loves to talk, almost too much. Is learning so much and doing great in school. Has made many friends and is dealing so well with her medical issues. She loves being here and is comfortable enough to let her hair down and test the waters, if you will. She makes mistakes and will lie to "save face" which we are still working on. For those of you who have biological and adopted kids, there are things that your biological kids do that they "get" from you. Whether it is the ability to do math well, the love of reading, loving to be outside all the time... What I think is so great is how God gives you a connection to your adopted child too. For Micah and I it is our love of music. For Sophia and I it is our love to clean and organize. If I ask her to do something like clean out her toy box, Oh she gets so excited. One day I was wondering what she was doing in her room, she had been there a long time. She said "organizing my drawers"! What 7 year old would willing choose to do that? My daugter, that's who!