Happy New Year!!!!

HAPPY 2009 FROM THE PATTERSONS!!!

We wish you all the very best in the new year! This year was full of ups and downs with the adoption, but it was all so, so worth it to finally make it to this point. Changing to Lighthouse Adoptions was key! We'd still be waiting with our old agency and I don't think I could have taken another 6-8 months of waiting and wondering.

Cassiana has been home a month now and is doing great! She is growing and thriving like crazy. She is very healthy and happy. Kai has adapted amazingly well to having a baby sister. He is very helpful and showers her with love and attention. They are blowing each other kisses to each other as I type this! :) It's already like she's always been a part of the family.

I remember talking to people over the past year and a half, telling them we were adopting a baby girl from Russia. Many were thrilled, but others looked at me like I was saying I was planning to be in the Olympics or had been abducted by aliens. She is finally in our arms and I'm just amazed every time I look at her and hold her tight. There were so many times that things could have gone wrong and didn't or that I wondered if this would really happen during the agonizing wait.

Now on the more current events! Cassiana's First Christmas (with us)!!! Here are some pictures from our many present opening sessions. Excuse our tree this year. It was thrown up in a jet lagged haze and nothing was put low enough to entice Cassi to discover more. She did find the garland few times, so it's all askew.

I tip my hat to ya!

Kai does have teeth--this makes him look like he's chopperless! :)

Cassi eyes some of Kai's loot. Moon Sand, by the way, is a huge mess. Don't believe the packaging. Kai has wanted this stuff a year and I finally caved.

Had to search high and low to find these fantabulous Blendy Pens, but by golly, I did it!
The day after Christmas, it was an unseasonably warm 75 degrees! So, we headed out to the backyard to do some swinging. Cassi loved it! She wanted to go higher and higher! Kai says he's so glad that he will have someone to play with out there all the time, instead of just when a friend is over.

Brother and sister, together at last!