Christmas Day!!!!!

It was so exciting to get up this morning and watch Kaleigh play with her new kitchen that Santa brought her. She loved it!!! As I looked at all the presents for our little one I remember someone telling me that my house would look like the department stores had thrown up here.... I guess they know me well. Anyway enjoy the pictures of Kaleigh playing and opening her presents.

Christmas Eve

Well, we finally got to start our family Christmas Traditions. Christmas Eve consisted of us going to Church and them coming home and after bath time getting to hear Daddy read Twas the Night Before Christmas. It was wonderful. She did so good at church (probably because she was tired) and sat in her daddy's lap for story time very calmly. This past week everyone kept telling me how excited they were for us to finally be celebrating the holiday as a family and they were right it was so special! It is hard to imagine that a year ago we were so depressed because we knew who she was and we knew that she wasn't having Christmas so I guess we made up for it this year.

FCC Christmas Party

Several of you have been asking to see pictures from this night and as you will see most of them are of Kaleigh crawling from one place to another. She was really excited to have so much room to roam!

Lazy night at home

The past couple of weeks Kaleigh has started winding down by laying in my lap covered by a Titans blanket. Brent feel in love with her sweet smile again tonight and had to take some pictures. Its moments like this that make you forget the long wait and all the hoops you jumped thru in order to bring them home. As you can see we obviously love our little one very much.

One year ago.......

It is so hard to believe that it was just a year ago that we were anxiously waiting to find out about our little Kaleigh. Our social worker was off that afternoon that referrals came out so we didn't get the information until Dec 12th. I remember crying all the way home from a meeting while driving in the snow because everyone around me got "the call" that day. However, after a sleepless night of wondering what if.....the next day December 12th we not only found out about Kaleigh but we saw her face for the very first time. She looked so sweet but so very serious. I remember telling Brent that I couldn't wait to make her smile. For those of you who know her, you know she is a very happy little girl and nothing like the serious baby in those photos. It is strange to think about it now and how much our lives have changed in this past year. Christmas last year was hard because we knew who she was and it hurt to celebrate without her and this year we are so excited because she is finally with us. I hope she knows one day how much she has brought to our lives and how very happy she has made us. Every time someone tells me what special people we are or how lucky she is that we adopted her I smile and say thank you, but the truth is we feel honored to have been blessed with such a wonderful gift as our daughter and we feel lucky to have her.

ICE!

On Saturday we took Kaleigh to see ICE! at Opryland. They have an ice display every year and this year it is a Charlie Brown Christmas. It was so great. I don't know how much Kaleigh enjoyed it since she could barely see from the stroller, thick bubble coat, and the 10 pd quilt that was covering her. She did have fun at lunch and pulling things off the shelf in the gift shop. We didn't take any pictures there since it was like walking thru a freezer. We did buy the ones they took but you can barely see Kaleigh in them. We then took her to a Nashville Predators game Saturday night and she always enjoys it for about the first period and about half of the second and then she is tired. So I guess you could say it was a day of cold since we also woke up that morning to a very light dusting of snow.

What have the Callahans been up to?

For the answer check out this link to learn more about Kaleigh's sister!!!! http://ourjourneytocourtney.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

First Thanksgiving

Reading the paper with Daddy trying to find the best Black Friday sales!

Well this was our first Thanksgiving with Kaleigh and it was wonderful. It is hard to imagine that a year ago we still didn't know who she was. Two weeks later we saw her pictures for the first time. I can truely say that we had so much to be thankful for this year. The most important thing is God making our family a true family. I will admit that being a mom is not always easy and Kaleigh hasn't caught up as fast as we had hoped but I wouldn't change a thing. She is a wonderful, happy, determined little girl who has brought us so much happiness. Only another mom could understand how exciting it is to walk into a room and see her face light up just because she has seem me. I will say that cooking dinner would not have been easy without Brent this year. He really spent a lot of time keeping Kaleigh occupied so that I could cook. He gave her, her first tootsie roll pop. It was peppermint and she loved it and got it everywhere. Anyway enjoy the pictures! Can't wait to celebrate Christmas with our little one this year!!

First boo boo

My curious active little one decided to try to catch the water as it was going down the drain after her bath and stuck her thumb under the drain stop and got it caught. She ended up with a cut across the top of ther thumb and it peeled back a small thin layer of skin. She only cried for a minute but it bleed enough that it required her first bandaid. She spent the next 30 minutes trying to get the bandaid off she we took it off as soon as the bleeding was over.

More pictures from Halloween

Halloween

This was Kaleigh's first Halloween and to be honest as you can tell by the pictures she didn't like being in a costume or being in the stroller. We didn't get a lot of pictures but these span over about 3 days. Some are of her carving a pumpkin with daddy, the cow costume is from daycare and the ladybug was from tonight. Trust me she had more fun than it looks like. She only wanted to crawl around the neighbors driveway and garage and once all of the kids arrived it was just to dangerous for her and then she was mad because she was in the stroller.

More Gatlinburg/ Aquarium

More pictures. The green hat, we had to buy to keep Kaleigh from shoplifting! She saw it and grabbed it and nothing else would do. The ledge she is sitting on was in the cabin and she loved crawling on it. I however did not love for her to crawl on it which meant that the stairs were completely off limit unless mommy or daddy was right there.

Gatlinburg

Well, we took Kaleigh to the beach and now we have taken her to the mountains! She had a great time, especially with breakfast and dinner. The child that would not take anything other than her bottle in China knows how to eat now. Enjoy the pictures. It was rainy and overcast most of the time so the pictures are not as great as they could have been with some sunshine!

Misc Pictures

I just wanted to add some new photos of our little bit. She is getting so big yet she is still so tiny. There is a picture here of her and her daddy on their way to her first Preds game. She seemed to enjoy all the noise. We also ended up sitting next to a lady who has a daughter from the province next to Kaleigh's. Some times it really is a small world.

Play date

On Saturday my friend Jan finally got to meet Kaleigh. Everytime we have tried to plan something before something has come up with one of us. Jan has a beautiful daughter who is about 5 months younger than Kaleigh and it is so cute to look at the pictures and see how dark Kaleigh is and how pale Adyson is. They did well together, they didn't fight over toys and shared on occassions but the cutest part was when Kaleigh got thirsty Adyson had to have something to drink as well. If one took a drink so did the other.

Busch Gardens

Busch Gardens was not our "official" last day in Florida but since we were driving back on Friday night we spent the day just laying around and napping so that we could spend the night driving. Busch Gardens was still a little to "old" for Kaleigh and it was very HOT and HUMID that day but we still had a good time. There were a couple of rides that Kaleigh could do so we did them and then just walked around and ate lunch before heading back to her grandparents. I have also included a cute pic of Kaleigh kissing herself in the mirror of the hotel!!