Christmas!

Every year for Christmas we travel back to our hometown, St. Charles, MO, to be with family. This was a Christmas filled with a lot of firsts. It was Oksana's first Christmas with us, her first time going on a road trip, first time meeting most of our family, first time playing in the snow, etc. She had a blast. Unfortunately, illness swept through our family in the form of the flu so it was a low key Christmas and many of our plans had to be cancelled. We still managed to enjoy time with our family which was our main goal anyway!

Back at the orphanage on the first day we met Oksana, the one person in our family photo book that got the most response was our neice Auriana. Ever since then she has looked forward to meeting "baby Auriana" and she finally got her chance! She's making sure to really check her out!


Everyone was SO excited to see snow on Christmas Eve! We don't get much in Arkansas so this is what the boys wanted more than anything for Christmas. Oksana thought it was the best and couldn't wait to get out in it! They made a huge snowman and after we all went inside we realized that the flu had hit Clayton.


Here is Oksana and Evan surrounded by their presents on Christmas morning.



Clayton managed to make it downstairs to open presents. Poor guy looks like he's been hit by a truck!


Evan was very excited to get an archery set and immediately went outside to try it out. His target was a huge snowball!


It is a tradition at my in-laws house to have a Nerf war every year. We take it very seriously! Even Clayton managed to appear to shoot a few people from above!


Auriana in her Christmas best!


Oksana and her Aunt Valerie. Valerie is Larry's sister, Auriana's mom, and the person whose name we gave to Oksana as her middle name. They met for the first time this week!


My favorite picture of the week! At this point Clayton was recovering and Evan had been hit with the flu so there were no brothers around to take a picture with her.


She decided posing with Mama would be a fine substitute for her brothers!


Hope you all had a wonderful and blessed Christmas!

More Firsts!

Oksana seems to be changing daily lately. She got her first haircut in America and she loved it! We just had the back cut shorter so that it could start to even out with the top. It wasn't much but I feel like she looks like she has a sweet little haircut now!


She has been doing so great with all of her fears that it was finally time to see an eye doctor. She wasn't thrilled when they put drops in her eyes to dilate them but besides that she did fantastic. I'm so glad we didn't wait one more day! She is very farsighted! I honestly don't even know how she has functioned as well as she has! We got her 2 pair of glasses and she loves them! The first picture is her primary pair and the first pair we chose. We were then informed that a second pair would be very cheap and I knew immediately that I wanted a fun pair so we went for the purple ones :)!

Casting

Today Oksana was casted for new AFOs. I can't tell you how badly she needs them. Right now she is wearing afos that were casted for another child's feet and are "good enough". They are old and falling apart and I can not wait to get her nice ones that are made just for her feet! Her walking will be taken to another level after she gets these! Those of you that know much about Oksana know that this had potential to be a huge disaster. 3 months ago when she was evaluated for therapy she sobbed when the therapist just touched her feet. Her therapist has been working hard to build trust and that has been going great. Still, we knew she would need more than that so we found videos on YouTube of people getting casted, we looked at pictures of Nina getting casted, and we created a mock casting at home using a knee high stocking and toilet paper! All of this was a huge success because she had NO problems at all being casted today! I think she enjoyed it! It was actually quite an experience. To witness what I did today and know how far she has come in 4 months was amazing. Here are some pictures:
Socks go on first

Then a little tube that will guide them as the cut the cast off.

They start wrapping...

and then wait for it to dry.

Cut it off...

and you have foot #1!

Then you go through the same process with foot number 2. Tube...

Wrapping...

Waiting...

Taking time to pose for a picture :)...

Cut it off....

And you have foot #2!

Can you tell that she thought it was really cool when they came off?! She got so excited! It will take about 2 weeks to get her new AFOs in and we are all excited for that day!