Passagrille

The Kelly Miller Circus

Looking Up

This may be one of my all time photos! We stopped after school to play at the park and decided to try flying our new Barbie kite since the wind was pretty gusty. Maya didn't want to at first because she thought the kite would blow away. And I can't blame her because each time we read a book about kites, they do fly away. (Piglet, Curious George, and Super Duck all come to mind) But once we tried it, we had a lot of fun! It was one of those perfect, unplanned afternoons that you hope you always remember.

Memorial Day

On Memorial Day we went to the cemetery to visit my dad's grave and to the Memorial Day Parade in town. By the afternoon it was pouring, but we had a nice start to the day.

Wings of Fancy

Today we hung out with some friends and visited the "Wings of Fancy" butterfly exhibit at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Maryland. The gardens are 50 acres and include meandering paths past a Japanese tea house, fountains, a child's garden with a play house, a labyrinth, a rose garden,and for right now a butterfly pavilion. The room was smaller than I thought, but the butterflies were everywhere. They would land on you, so you were required to shake off your clothes and look for "hitchhikers" when you left. In the photo above, the butterflies are on a birdbath filled with pieces of fruit. My PBJ wanted me to hold her at first. she wasn't sure if she liked all of these butterflies flying around. She started to warm up when I let her use my camera to take some pictures of the butterflies. She took the shots below:

Home at Last!

This is my peanut sleeping in her crib at home for the first time. We flew home from Guatemala on May 1st, getting home pretty late that night. Maya was (and is) a pretty laid back baby, she adapts pretty easily to travel. My biggest problem on the flight home was that she was scared of changing tables in the bathrooms. My theory is that she associated them with getting shots at the doctor, because she had the same reaction when I first took her to the doctor here. She also had some ear pain and cried some during the flight. We upgraded the first leg of our return flight to first class, which turned out great because the only other people sitting there were 2 other adoptive parents who understood the crying. The extra room, private bathroom, and a little pampering from the staff helped in the stress of her crying so much on the flight. The customs part wasn't so fun. In Charlotte, we had to give paperwork to the immigration people and go sit in a room for a very long time. We were really worried we'd miss our connecting flight. The worse part was that the people working there didn't really tell us anything. Just led us to a room and said wait here. They separated us from the other adoptive families who had to wait in different places, so you were kind of isolated. It was really weird. Luckily we did make our connection once they "cleared us", I have no idea what was involved since they told us nothing. I was able to feed Maya some baby food before our second flight, which we were not in first class. My brother came to pick us up from the airport. Maya was not a fan of her first time in a car seat, but the drive was 45 minutes in the dark so she got drowsy pretty quick at that point. It was around midnight when we finally reached home. I showed Maya some of her toys and she played a little on the floor before drifting off to sleep. I don't think I got any sleep that night, which started the lack of sleep part of being a mom. Home at last!
P.S. I must say "home at last" a lot when we come home, because Maya now says "Home at Last!" every time we arrive home. If I say it first, she yells at me and says, "No! Me say it!"

Gotcha!

This is the 2 year anniversary of our "gotcha day". Two years ago I traveled to Guatemala to finally bring my sweetie home. I actually flew to Guatemala City on April 20 and toured for a few days first, which was something I didn't do at all on my visit trips. I had three tourist goals: the Mayan ruins at Tikal; Antigua, Guatemala's first capitol and UNESCO World Heritage Site; and Lake Atitlan. I was able to accomplish the first two of the three. Then, finally, on April 26, 2007, Maya was placed in my arms as my daughter officially. We stayed in Guatemala at the Marriott for several more days for our Embassy appointment and to receive the papers needed to travel home, and also one of the days we were there was a Guatemalan holiday so we had to wait one extra day to travel home. May 1, 2007 I began the journey home with my daughter. It is hard now to remember back to a time when Maya was not in my life. I truly believe that we were always meant to be each other's family.
Beautiful Antigua and probably one of its most recognized landmarks, Arco de Santa Catalina.
I would have loved to make it to one of Guatemala's big markets like the one in Chichicastenengo. This one in Antigua was small but nice.

The grounds of the Hotel Museo Casa Santo Domingo

One of the temples in Tikal
This was the stairway up to the tallest of the temples in Tikal. I am very scared of heights (i get shaking and dizzy) but I knew I'd regret it if I didn't go up.

Here is the view from the top. Trivia: This is a view in the movie Return of the Jedi
Lake Peten-we drove around this lake from the airport in Flores to get to Tikal.

The volcanoes we could see from our room at the Marriott hotel. Guatemala had 33 active volcanoes.

One of my favorite photos of Maya from my pick up trip. I don't have a photo of just me and Maya from our gotcha day so this has to do. an aside: Guatemala is an incredibly beautiful country. It reminds me a lot of Hawaii in it's terrain and vegetation. I definitely want to spend more time there in the future!