Happy Easter April 4, 2010

We celebrated our first Easter with Mika this year! We had so much fun coloring Easter eggs and trying to explain to her what we were doing. The phrase of the day was "WHAT'S THAT?" She's a very curious child and always has lots of questions. Unfortunately, it poured down rain all day, so we weren't able to join in the big Easter egg hunt at church. We improvised though and ran outside to hide eggs for her as soon as the rain stopped later in the afternoon for a few minutes. She hates the rain and will NOT walk outside if it's even sprinkling. David and I are convinced that she was left out in the rain at some point when ahe was little because she absolutely hates getting wet and will even cry if it sprinkles on her. We've learned to always have an umbrella in the diaper bag, just in case we need it.
Max did a wonderful job helping her color eggs and then look for them and place them in her basket. They both had lots of fun. It was a very happy day.

11 month anniversary and Mika's checkup with the doctor. March 28, 2010

We celebrated our 11 month anniversary today. We can't believe it will soon be one year since we brought Mika home!!! It's so amazing.
It's been a very busy month for us....David had surgery on his shoulder, we celebrated our anniversary with Mika, and we also took her to visit the pediatrician. We will have our last post placement visit with the Social Worker in April, so it was time for her to see the Pediatrician for a checkup. She likes her doctor, so we're thankful for that.

Our new house.....we're finally settled.

We moved into the new house on Kadena last month, but we just got everything unpacked and settled. We LOVE the new house! It's in a great neighborhood and is convenient to lots of shops and restaurants.

We lived on this base the last time we were stationed here in 2000, so we feel at home here. Max and Mika love the new house too, so we're all happy.

We also celebrated our "Happy Family Day-10 months" last month.

Our First Chinese New Year Celebration February 14, 2010

We celebrated our very first Chinese New Year and it was quite an adventure. It was the first time for us to have a WHOLE fish staring at us from the dinner table! I think overall, it was a success and Mika seemed to really enjoy it. She was very happy to eat traditional Chinese foods and we were lucky that our Guide and Translator in Taiwan have become very good friends and they were nice enough to send a few decorations and traditional snacks. The Chinese New Year is determined by the Lunar New Year calendar, and this year it happened to be on Valentines Day.

These are candied snacks from Taiwan

Mika's 9 month anniversary celebration.....and we get a new house! January 28th-February 2nd 2010

It's so hard to believe that it has already been 9 months since Mika came home. She has added so much joy to our family, it's really been such a blessing and a miracle. Some days David and I still can't believe she's really here! We've discovered she doesn't like chocolate, milk, pudding, red meat, and bread. Other than that, she's a great eater and loves all kinds of seafood, potatoes, juice and pasta. I decided to make red velvet cupcakes to celebrate our anniversary and she liked those a little. She definitely prefers vanilla and fruit flavors though. We also found out on February 2nd that we will be moving to a new house very soon. We're moving to Kadena Air Base which happens to be the same base we lived on back in 2000 when we lived in Japan the first time. It's a much better base with lots to see and do and is centrally located. We're very happy to be getting off Camp Kinser because we didn't like that base. We're especially happy because the house we're moving to is NEW! We'll be the first family to live there, so we're excited. Mika calls it the "new one house." We should be moving next week if all goes as planned.

This is a picture of the new house &

neighborhood. We really like it.