This photo was taken just before we left the flat where we had lived for almost a month! Pictured front to back, Fareed (our driver), Nina (our youngest daughter!), Olga (our oldest daughter!), Helen (our translator), Nelya (hosted us in her family's flat), and last but not least a brand new Mama and Papa!
And, here we are at the Yekaterinburg airport waiting to fly to Moscow--finally on our way HOME!
And, these are our girls today!
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
"Gotcha Day" ~ Six years ago today...
...we legally "got" our daughters! We celebrate this day EVERY year by eating out or going/doing something special--this year will be no exception, but it's still a secret for now!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
My goodness, how they have grown! Beautiful young ladies. I know you are proud. :-) Kim B.
Congratulations! They have grown into beautiful girls...inside and out.
Congratulations on celebrating another Gotcha Day!!! The pictures are amazing of the difference in the girls when coming home and then now!!! I would love to know some of the ways you have celebrating Gotcha Day in the past...any good ideas????
Melanie
Melanie: Here's a quick overview of our previous celebrations!
Dad brings home flowers for the girls!
Some years we have spent the whole day together--dad takes off from work.
One year we spent most of the day (6 + hrs.) at a local/regional indoor family fun center (Incredible Pizza)--all you can eat buffet, lots of CLEAN video/arcade games, go-carts, mini-golf, etc.
Sometimes we have dinner out at some place we normally would not eat because of cost and/or level of 'formality'.
Almost every year we've ended the evening at Target where each girl picks out a modestly priced piece of jewelry as a keepsake (one year we went to James Avery Jewelry)
The above is "normal", however for our FIFTH 'Gotcha Day' we combined our family vacation with 'Gotcha Day' and took the girls to the beach and Disney World. THAT was 'way over the top' for us, but so much fun to see our girls enjoy being 'kids' (they were 17 & 14 at the time). We had a BLAST, and they participated in just about everything "Disney" that most kids (big and small) dream of doing!
It really doesn't have to be a big expensive event, but we try to 'talk it up' a lot in our family and among friends--wake them up with "Happy Gotcha Day", etc. Sometimes we're just plain silly, but they have grown to expect and like that!
Post a Comment