Trip to the Zoo

Camden and I have been to the zoo several time, but today was Dasha's first experience at the large animal experience.  The Kansas City Zoo is okay in terms of variety, but it is extremely spread out so it takes a long time to see everything, so you have to have all day to see everything.  They have a train, a tram, a carousel, and now a new Ski Safari.

Our membership had expired so first we had to go renew our membership and that took a while.  Even though we arrived right when they opened it was very busy as it was a beautiful day out.  High of 70.  I normally don't go on weekends due to crowds, but Camden really wanted to ride the camels and they are only out on weekends until after Memorial Day, then they are out every day.

So we got in and it was time for the Sea Lion show so we went over to watch it, we got a great spot to view right where the sea lion performed a lot of his tricks. Though it ended up being a little dramatic in the end.

See, very close, well the sea lion does a little "trick" where he stands up on his back legs and leans against the fence and kisses the trainer.  Well he just happened to land right in front of Dasha and he looked her right in the eye!  I am talking about maybe 6 inches, and a fence of course, separating their faces.  Well needless to say Dasha jumped out of the stroller into my arms so fast it wasn't even funny and she was screaming her head off in the meantime!  If you would of saw it, it really was funny, but she didn't think so!  Overall she loved the show, but wouldn't leave my arms until we left the area. 

We then went and rode the train, the carousel and then we went and rode the camel.  I rode in the back with Dasha, and Camden rode in the front of the hump.  They both loved that!  As it is hard to take a self-portrait on a moving animal, I only have a good picture of Camden.  The ones of Dasha and I look all distorted!

After that we took the tram out to Africa, highly recommended as it is a very long walk to Africa, and we went and saw the gorillas, the lions, and the cheetahs.  We also rode the boat, which is a huge waste of money.  That was the first and last time we ride the boat.  While we got a good view of the giraffe's it was very slow, hot, and the kids about went nuts on this 30 minute crawl through the water.  By this time it was almost 12:30 and the kids were starving, so we took the tram back to the entrance and stopped by the polar bear exhibit and then we were on our way home.  We stopped off by Wendy's on the way to feed the kids and they were ready for bed when we got home!  They had a great time.  Now that we have done all the rides, next time we can look at more animals!

Oh yes, on a quick side note, Dasha's blood work came back and all her levels were good, so now we can just switch to a regular multi vitamin!  Yeah, no more supplements!

2 year Appt!

Today was Dasha's 2 year appt. check-up.  She weighed 24.6 lbs. and was 33.5 inches tall.  So since we brought her home 4 months ago, she has gained 2.6 lbs and 2.5 inches.  She had moved up to the 28th percentile for weight and 20th for height.  She is up to about 30-35 words, still behind a regular 2 year old, but the doctor is not concerned at all.  She was actually pretty impressed with her language skills.  She had to get a finger prick to check her iron level, which was normal, so we get to stop taking the iron supplement!  Yeah!!  She got two more shots, and we have one more in 4 weeks.  Then some in 6 months, and then a year later.  Amazing how long it takes to get caught up  on shots when they are not started at birth.  Then we had to go to the lab and get her blood drawn to check for lead, and check her vitamin levels for Calcium and D.  That was traumatic!  She unfortunately got stuck in both arms, the lady couldn't get a vein in her first arm and was successful in her other arm.  Dasha cried all the way home, and about 30 minutes after I got some Tylenol in her.  Once the Tylenol kicked in she was back to her raring self running and playing hard!

From this to that...

We had a big week in the Denson household.  If you have been a long time reader of our blog you might remember this post.  Where I talk about both of our cars getting totalled in one day.  Well we have been driving a suburban and a very old truck that my dad gave Randy to help us out.  Well yesterday with the aide of our tax refund and some major saving since we have been back from Russia, we gave the truck back to my dad and we went from this....

To this...

We bought a Buick Enclave!  We traveled 6.5 hours to Garden City, KS to buy this car and got an amazing deal!  Plus it is very low miles!  We were so excited!  After 4 years, we we finally were able to buy a new(er) car!

Lost Photo!

Way back when we were fundraising for our adoption we had a massive garage sale, I took a photo after the initial mad rush the first day of the sale, and I could never find the photo.  Until this morning.  I guess if you take a picture and the memory stick isn't in the camera it will store the picture on the small internal hard drive of the camera.  So here is the picture, now this is after we had sold about $300 worth of stuff, and we still had a TON of stuff.

Now for a funny picture, I wasn't really functioning yet this morning when I poured Camden's "cereal" this morning.  Ooops!

Easter!

I got my computer back yesterday!  So crazy how dependant you become on a little machine when you don't have it!  Anyway, we had a great Easter, the kids were so good, and we had a nice relaxing day at home.  Earlier in the week we went on an Easter egg hunt with our International Adoption Group and the kids loved it!  Silly me though, I forgot the camera so I have no pictures, but I do have some of Easter.  I will tell you what though...I now know how to slow her down, put her in her dress shoes!  She HATED them and refuses to walk in them. :-)

Baby Dedication and Birth Certificate

A few weeks ago our church held a baby dedication for families with small children.  While Dasha was baptised in Russia, we have her cross and certificate, our personal beliefs are that people need to make that decision on their own on when they want and need to be baptised, we cannot make that decision for them.  In lieu of Baptism we do a baby dedication.  This ceremony is for the parents and the church to dedicate themselves to raising your child(ren) to follow and believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.  As they say, it takes a village to raise a child, the church is also responsible for being good role models for children, not just the parents.  The neat thing about it is our Satellite Campus pastor, Brad was able to hold our ceremony for us.  He wrote many reference letters for us for grant agencies and for our 2nd home study agency.  So it was very special for us!  Just in case you are wondering we meet in a movie theatre!  We have the most comfortable seats in any church you will find!

Also last week I got Dasha's Kansas Birth Certificate in the mail.  So we are almost done with paperwork, all I have left to do is a U.S. Passport.  But we aren't planning on traveling any time soon, so I am not too worried about it.  We don't have to do the formal stand before a judge here so that is nice, we have her B.C. and it feels good to get that done!

You probably won't hear from me for a few weeks, I have to send in my laptop to get worked on, the charger won't connect properly so it won't charge the battery!  So until then, have a wonderful Easter and enjoy celebrating Christ dying for our sins, and rising again to give us eternal life!

Tax Return

We got ours today!  Wahoo!  We mailed ours off on March 9th and received our refund today, we received our state refund last week, so a little less than a month.  DEFINITELY worth the money to have a CPA do our taxes and sign off, we did not have any contact with the IRS or anything.  The moved really fast also.  Last year I heard nightmare stories of the IRS taking over 6 months to refund money, so definitely a highlight of our week.  Now on to car shopping FINALLY!

Long Time no Post

Things here have been super busy, Randy's mom, her husband, and his sister, her husband and kids came to visit for 9 days.  There were 10 of us in the house with one bathroom.  That was fun!  We went and saw the sights of KC, and as a belated birthday present to our niece and nephew we bought them a room at Great Wolf Lodge.  If you have never heard of it, it is an indoor water park/hotel, but in order to use the water park you have to stay in the hotel.  Great Wolf Lodge is about 4 miles from our house so we have never really justified the cost to go to the water park, when we live so close.  So we got them a room, and then we were able to buy additional passes for ourselves so we got to have some fun also! 

We were curious about how Dasha would react to a BIG "bathtub", and the minute we walked into the water park she started crying, as it is very loud and the great big bucket of water decided to dump right at that point.  I got her swim suit on her and Randy and Camden took off and I took Dasha to the baby pool, the minute her toes hit the water she start crying hysterically.  I started thinking this was going to be a LONG day!  I walked her around for probably about half an hour and then I traded with Randy and I got to go enjoy the slides with Camden.  We took a break for a snack and Dasha was getting a little more comfortable so we decided to try the slides, well then she really blossomed!   She slid and slid and slid.  We eventually took her away screaming because she was FREEZING!  I will never understand why but the big pools were heated, but kids area was not, and the kids were very cold.  So we took both kids over to the hot tub area and I put a life jacket on her and she just floated on her back like it was nothing.  We let go of her and she was fine.  She did awesome.  We left for a nap and then went back after nap time for another round.  She had a great time.  So that helps me with thinking swim lessons this summer are going to be good. 

We also went to American Girl where her Aunt bought her a Bitty Baby, we are in trouble now!  American Girl stuff is crazy expensive, we also toured Cablea's, and we went to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.  Overall it was a good visit even though it was 90 degrees out.  That is just totally insane for early April weather here, I broke my air conditioner rule and turned it on, it was way too hot to not have it on with so many people in the house.  I usually won't turn it on until May 15th or later.  I have a bad feeling that this is going to be a nasty summer!

I couldn't get a good one of Dasha going down, she was too fast!