The boys had their last day of school yesterday. Nicholas' class had an end of the year party. They had smoothies and played games. In the evening, there was another party at the neighborhood pool. Here are a few photos of Nicholas on his last day of school and another short video of Ashlyn walking ( she stands on her own now, from the middle of the floor ).
Here are a few photos form this morning. There's also a short video of Ashlyn climbing up the steps of the slide and then sliding down. We had another small cookout today, with our neighbors and Ashlyn just wanted to keep up with the big kids :).
We finally had it confirmed that Ashlyn does NOT have scabies. I'm so glad that I brought her back to the doctors for the test, and that I didn't put the toxic medication all over her body. BIG relief :) !! We had some friends over yesterday for a cookout and the kids had a blast! My friend lives about an hour away from me and she has two boys ( 8 and 5 ) and a 12 month old daughter. Ashlyn had a great time playing with her daughter. They smiled at each other, waved, and took turns pushing buttons on one of Ashlyn's musical toys. Ashlyn enjoyed mocking her fake coughs and the many other sounds she made. I'm so impressed with how well Ashlyn is doing. It's amazing to see how well she's doing in such a short amount of time. I was so worried the first week, but i'm not worried AT ALL now. She's going to do well :). 
Ashlyn is fitting into our family very well. She now enjoys her baths. After watching her brothers put their heads under water, she decided to do it as well :lol. She loves the pool and splashing in the water table that we have outside. She tried two bites of a Gerber meat stick today, of course it was only after Alex ( my 2 year old ) took a bite. She finally pointed to my eyes tonight when I asked her where they were. I've been working with her on this since day 1, so I was becoming concerned that she wasn't " getting it ". I sometimes forget that it's only been 2 and a half weeks since we got her and that she really IS doing very well. She has a doctors appointment on Tuesday, so that will probably be my next update. It feels like she's putting on weight, so i'm hoping that she's close to 17 pounds now.
Life with Ashlyn has gone pretty well the past few days. The boys love their little sister and will do just about anything to make her laugh :). She adores them and will copy everything that they do. She's an excellent sleeper and a pretty good natured child, but we're still having MAJOR eating issues with her. She still wont eat anything other then baby food. I'm feeding her infant cereal with formula and fruit 3 times a day, because that's all that she'll eat. We went to playgroup today and she LOVED it. She's very social :). She also enjoys going food shopping. Here are a lot of photos from the past few days. I've included photos of her wearing clipies from myprettyone. These are of excellent quality, very reasonably priced and incredibly cute. Here's a link to the website: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5282461
We left the apartment that we were staying in at 12:00 p.m. and it took about an hour to get to the airport. We then had to wait 5 hours for our flight to leave. Poor Ashlyn was so tired and restless. She went right to sleep after we boarded. She slept for about an hour and woke up in a better mood. She stayed awake for about an hour and a half and then fell back to sleep for the rest of the trip ( about 11 hours total ). We got a bassinet for her, so we were able to sleep also. We landed in Houston at 9:00 p.m., went through immigrations pretty quickly, and set foot in our home at 1:30 a.m. ! Ashlyn spotted our cats as soon as we got in the house and had a great time chasing them through the house while laughing :). We missed the boys SO much while we were gone and couldn't wait until morning to see them, so we woke them up. They were happy to recieve all the little trinkets that we got them and they loved meeting Ashlyn. Nicholas can't get enough of her today. He has been pushing her in the baby swing outside, feeding her her lunch, reading books to her :). She loves him just as much. I'm trying to get her to take a nap right now and then we're meeting some of our neighbors at the pool ( we have a neighborhood pool ) this afternoon. I'll try and take some pictures of all the kiddos together today and post them later.
Everything went very well at the US embassy today. We're coming home tomorrow and I can't wait to see my boys!! Yeah, i'm talking about you too Sean :) . Red Square was closed today, because of the new presidents inauguration, so we couldn't get the close-up St. Basil's picture ( it was closed last night too ) . We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe tonight and then did some shopping. We got some cool things for Ashlyn for when she gets older. It's been freezing cold here the past two days. I've actually had to bundle Ashlyn up in a snowsuit and hat. This morning I was in search of something warm to drink. I finally found a place that sold hot chocolate. GUESS what the hot chocolate is in Moscow ? I got one cup with ice water and one cup with chocolate syrup. I ended up heating the water up in the microwave and adding the chocolate syrup to it :) . It wasn't that bad, but it wasn't "real" hot chocolate. Our flight leaves at 6:30 p.m. tomorrow night. We arrive in Houston at 9:30 p.m. Thursday night.
This is actually my second entry today, so make sure to read the first one too . Here are a few more photos of Ashlyn. The first two are of this morning, when she was being evaluated by a Russian doctor. The third one was on the train last night. The rest are pictures of Ashlyn with our new Russian friends. Please keep in mind that Ashlyn's hair is a work in progress :). She kind of has a mullet going on and very short bangs, so i'm limited in what I can do with it :) :) :).
