January Wrap Up!

We've had a busy and full month of January - and we are enjoying the last day of it with a day of snowstorms!  We have enjoyed every single minute spent in our beautiful new home and town and thank the Lord every day for the gift of a restful, peaceful place to live and raise our boys.  We continue to adjust to having Toby as a part of our family, and he is beginning to blossom as he learns what unconditional love is all about and that he is now part of a family FOREVER!

Toby's first trip to Costco - he LOVED all the taste testing and a churro afterward!  (By the way, this week we received the results of Toby's labwork and he does NOT HAVE CELIAC disease!  He was misdiagnosed in 2007 - but because of that "mistake", he was placed on Reece's Rainbow as a special needs child and we found him!  If not, he would have been in a very different place and would have most likely ended up on the streets of Ukraine when he turned 16.  God had a different plan for our boy!)

 First day of homeschooling for Toby!  He enjoys being at home, learning English and working alongside his brothers.  This is the right place for him - he is allowed to feel safe and loved and open his mind to learning all sorts of things he's missed in the orphanage!

 Joe loves to do school, too!

 We've had lots of snow days here in beautiful Utah!  The boys LOVE it!

 Jack and George decided to make a girl snow-person for their snowman!  :-)

 I think about 30% of awake time each day is spent on LEGOS!  All three of the older boys are master builders, for sure!

 Toby has never ridden a bike before!  One sunny day when the driveway was clear of snow, we brought the bikes out.  Jack shared his "green machine", which is easier for Toby to ride until he figures out how to balance on a two-wheeled bike.  It won't be long, though!  He is a quick learner!

 Watch out, Utah...the Meyer boys are in town now!

 Another fun activity for the boys is to play with their Hot Wheels cars and race track.  Hours!

 Our beautiful, snowy house!  We LOVE it so much!!

 The boys aren't HUGE fans of having to shovel the driveway, but that's what we have four boys for!  (At least one of the reasons!)

 But our little snow-shovellers are happy when they can warm up with some hot cocoa!  (Thanks Grandma Barb for the delicious hot chocolate!)

 On January 16th, we celebrated ONE MONTH of freedom for Toby!  He'd been out of the orphanage for one month!  We watched a movie with popcorn....

 ...went sledding with Dad....

 ...and had a Ukrainian dinner of borscht, varenyky, cucumber salad with sour cream...Toby loved it!

 Last Friday we had the chance to go to a performance by the Nikolai Massenkoff Russian Folk Festival!  Only 15 minutes from our little town...what a wonderful experience!  The boys wore their Ukrainian "rubashki" and were a hit!  We were grateful that they let our homeschooling family tag along with local public school kids!  Toby was all smiles as he heard his language and familiar songs!

 Another fun activity has been playing with the fort-building set the boys got for Christmas.  (Thank you, Aunt Maddie and Uncle Greg!)  Another huge hit.

 Once it was constructed, the boys decided to make it a military fort and dressed up in all their military attire.

 I even brought out some of my maps from my Air Force training days and they felt like legitimate soldiers, planning their attack!

We love to explore the area around us, especially when Dad is off from work.  We took a family field trip to Parowan Gap - an area where there are fossilized dinosaur tracks to find, a great canyon to make echos in and a gap in the cliffs where the ancient Paiute Indians made petroglyphs to depict their history!  It was amazing!!!

 Here is one of the dinosaur tracks!  (Josh and the boys wanted to make sure Luke and Ben got to see this, Mer!)

 And the ancient drawings....

 Jack and George were really, really impressed with these.

 There were even rocks with more recent carvings - those from the late 19th century - but even those have become part of the history of the area, remembering the pioneers who came through this area.

 Joe was tuckered out after our trip.  Those folded hands....isn't he angelic? :-)

 On the way home, we got a bag full of Taco Bell tacos.  This was Toby's first taste of a taco.  We all kind of held our breath to see his reaction...he's not a huge fan of new foods.  But, alas, he LOVED it!

 Here we are doing a Friday nature study - we decided to draw a mule deer, since we get to see them in our yard almost every day!

 Jack's favorite spot in the house is at the top of our apricot tree.  He took his Lego Club magazine up there to have some quiet time.

 Toby spends hours and hours each day with our Legos.  He LOVES them so much.  He just thrives when his hands can be building something.

 Our cutest little snow bunny!  Thanks, Grammy, for the new snow suit!  We put it into good use this morning!

 Up in the tree again....their favorite place!

 And today we opened a special gift that was sent from Toby's best friend from his orphanage days.  (Thank you Julia, John and Aaron!)  We saved it for a day when we had not much going on.  Since we had about 7 inches of snow today and all four boys have a cough, we had a little home church service and spent a quiet day at home.  This toy - Shape Mags - is AWESOME!  All four boys played happily with it for hours today and Toby said, "Wow!  These are even better than Legos!"  That is a big stamp of approval!

So...our days are mostly spent at home, bonding as a family, getting used to our new house and town, and letting Toby play and play and rest and play and learn in a safe, loving environment.  He has a lot of life to catch up on and we are so glad we are the ones to be there for him for the rest of his life!

Now onto February...and Toby's first birthday in a family!!!!