camping

So we survived our first camping trip.  Actually, we not only survived it, but we also managed to have lots of fun.  We camped at Stoneybrook State Park and it was absolutely beautiful.  Here was our little home sweet home for the weekend...

One of the highlights for Poppy was this awesome playground they had...

The main attraction of this park is the water hike.  You can follow the trail through the stream and slide down waterfalls and swim in the water.  Unfortunately, the water was a brisk 54 degrees when we were there, so we decided to skip the swimming part this year.

My proud little hiker.  She's already looking forward to going back next year!

Poppy's bee movie

Here is Poppy's movie debut.  Marc tried to capture the bee conversation, and Poppy just wanted to make it clear that she is not a performer.  I'm surprised she didn't run away when she saw that he was recording this, although she does try to grab the "cheese" throughout the clip.  At first she is telling you about her balloon that popped (that I accidentally popped when I leaned down to kiss a boo-boo on her knee).  Oh, and she calls balloons "moo's".  And check out her made up sign for "camera".  And lately, whenever she doesn't know what to say, she just says "oh boy."  Ok, just go watch the video already.



And just so that you don't think that I forgot about it, I am still working on her 1 year anniversary video, but these things take time!  (especially when you're super busy and it's the summertime)  Leaving for our camping trip tomorrow, so I'm signing off for a couple of days...

We're going camping this weekend and of course, I'm stressing about Poppy and how she'll handle sleeping in a tent, etc.  Well yesterday Marc set up the tent in the backyard to make sure we would all fit in it and Poppy started squealing with delight - ran right inside and started doing somersaults and twirls and jumping up and down.  So, she likes the tent.  And then we have an air mattress that Marc and I will fit on, but for Poppy we just have a long skinny mat.  I wasn't sure how she would like sleeping on that either.  Well today while I was taking a shower, she went into the spare room, saw the rolled up mat, dragged it into her room, pulled all of her bedding off her bed, arranged her stuffed animals and started reading them books and pretending to sleep.  So, I guess she likes her little mat.  This girl is always full of surprises for us.

Poppy is posing with her best Korean buddies, Brendan and Colin.  She still hasn't decided which one she wants to marry, but all 3 of them decided that no matter what, they would not look at the camera at the same time (there were 6 adults trying to get them to look at various cameras and this was the best pic).

Could they be any cuter?!

"Cheeee!"

beach pics (part 2)

It was all about the wagons while we were at the beach.  Can you imagine what we would have done without them?

She loved the fact that she had her own wagon just like daddy.  And one of her favorite things to do was to fill her wagon with toys, tell us bye-bye, give everyone hugs and kisses, wave goodbye, and then walk about 5 feet away with her wagon, turn around to face us and then say "I'm home!"

We could not get these two bathing beauties to pose for a picture, and trust me, we tried.

Bye-bye beach!  See you in a few weeks!

the bee conversation

(snacking on a piece of seaweed at the park this morning)

Our blogging friends Michelle and Colin are visiting from out of town.  We met up this morning to take a walk in the park and Colin was kind enough to share some of his seaweed with Poppy.  Despite her expression, it was a big hit.

So here is Poppy's new favorite conversation (that we have multiple times a day)...

Scene: I finish buckling her into her carseat and shoo a fly out of the car before I get into my seat.

Poppy: Mommy, a bee eat you!

Me: What?!  A bee ate me?

Poppy: No, a bee ate  ME!

Me: Oh no, a bee ate you?

Poppy: makes a big chomping re-enactment with her mouth and points to her head.  Yes mommy, a bee ate me.  No, no bee.

After a dinner out on a patio last week where I was being swarmed with bees and kept shooing them away, Poppy asked what I was doing and I told her that I didn't want a bee to bite me.  She is now obsessed with the fact that bees "eat" people.  She has never been stung, and she has yet to see anyone else get stung, but now anytime she sees a fly, or anything else resembling a bee, that is the conversation that we must have and there is usually a body part that gets pointed to where she claims the bee "ate" her.  And it cracks me up that she constantly mixes up her "me, you and my's".

picnic

We had our annual Love the Children (our adoption agency) picnic today.  When we went last year, we had only had Poppy for a few weeks and she was still in trauma-mode, glued to me in the carrier and would not look at anyone.  Everyone was so excited to see how far she has come in a year.  The only person she was still really shy around was the director of our agency, the older Korean woman who matched us up with her.  "C" told her she would give her 1 more year to warm up to her, and told her that she loves her anyways.  Maybe next year Poppy will have a hug or at least a smile for the woman who made our little family possible.

Anyways, I have been LAZY with the camera lately.  I have a few more pics from the beach to post, but honestly I only took my camera out of the bag a handful of times while we were there.  And today I didn't even touch it once - Marc was the photog of the day.  Tomorrow I'll be back on track - I really have loved getting to know my camera by forcing myself to use it everyday.

And the park was full of the cutest little Koreans I've ever seen, but I don't usually feel comfortable posting pics of other people's kids, so here's little miss, aka the next football superstar...

And there's that tongue!

The beach.

We just got home from one amazing trip to the beach.  Poppy had an absolute blast, but as you can see in the first picture, she was a little hesitant at first...

But then she realized all of the fun things she could do...

..eating food all day long...

...demolishing daddy's hard work..

..splashing in the water until our dress gets wet...

...daddy's girl.

More pics to come, but I'm tired and the laundry needs to get done.  And tomorrow we're off to meet up with lots of other Korean cutees at the annual LTC family picnic in Rochester.