Pumpkin picking!!!

Today we had an absolutely wonderful time getting together with families from our area who also have children who are adopted. We went to a farm in Johnston, RI where we went on a hayride, picked pumpkins, fed some huge cows, fed other farm animals, and played in the hay! Does it get any better than that? Here is our day told using pictures. I accidentally put them up backwards so the end of the day is first but I really don't want to spend the time changing it as I have a Halloween costume to sew! Yes, Connie (Nicholas' gram) has been giving me refresher sewing lessons on Tuesdays and is guiding me through the sewing of his costume...that is another post for another day. Here are the shots from today!!!

Nicholas at home tonight with his new pumpkin!

Playing in the greenhouse with dad and the other kids....

Driving an old farm tractor...

Nicholas and Dennis on the tractor as their proud dads look on! Dennis is 3 and is also Russian!!!

Dennis and Nicholas! We are going to Dennis' house in January to celebrate Russian Christmas!! They live in Cumberland, RI and we really enjoy seeing them and talking with their family!

A couple minutes before this Nicholas was singing "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep!"

Checking out the pigs...

Feeding the goats with dad...

Feeding the pony...

On the hayride!

Feeding the cows corn on the hayride was awesome! Nicholas was impressed by the size of their tongues!

Here he is showing us what the cows were doing with their mouths!!

Wow!

So fun...

My little pumpkin sitting on the hayride with his little pumpkin!

The hayride!

We spent the majority of the day with two other families that also have Russian boys, one couple has twins! Here are the four boys all together!

We got off the hayride to pick a pumpkin!

Nicholas made his decision!

He did struggle with the decision between two!

Mommy and her boy eating popcorn on the ride!

Playing in the hay inside the greenhouse!

Throwing hay on daddy!

As you can see, we surely enjoyed our time with the PAC (Parents of Adopted Children) group today. I can't believe that we are getting close to the end of Nicholas' first year home. What an amazing year it has been. This past Tuesday marked the one year anniversary of our court date in Russia. One year ago we were officially declared Nicholas' parents and just had to wait 10 days to pick him up at the baby home. Amazingly, this past Tuesday would have also had been the day that we were matched with a little girl from China had we stayed with the program. We started to process to adopt in July of 2005 and switched programs to Russia in December of 2007 due to an unpredictable wait. It was interesting to learn that had we stayed with China it would have taken to now to adopt...oh my! I am so happy for all the families that started with us that are now being matched with their little girls. However, God obviously didn't plan for us to have a Chinese girl, instead he blessed us with the most incredible little Russian boy...our son!