Kentucky with friends

During our Chicago visit we headed south to Kentucky and camped with friends that we met in Ukraine while adopting Angelina. The Kissack's & the Warchol's were adopting there 2 little girls at the same time & from the same orphanage as we did and we were meeting for our first reunion. We were so happy to see them all again and meet the Kissack's four boy's. Angelina was in heaven running around with the kids & making new friends. Micah quickly became Angelina's buddy when he offered her a ride on his bike, she loved it!! She thought Micha was the greatest and still loves to look at their picture together. We saw lots of rain during our 3 day stay which allowed us to stay inside and catch up on the past year. The girls have grown so much and are all so beautiful, they truly are a blessing!! Many thanks to the Kissack's and Warchol's for all their planning and preparation that brought us all together again:-)

Spring in Chicago

Pa Ferrazzi & Fabrizio Ferrazzi (he came all the way from Rome!)


The Ferrazzi Kids

Angelina & Katelyn


Easter Eggs!


Dancing with Uncle Tony










Angelina & Pamela's Spring in Chicago

Our trip to Chicago marked the beginning of spring and brought us some inclement weather followed by many happy moments. We started by landing on a nice sunny day and the weather went down hill from there, we had thunderstorms, snowstorms and enough rain to float an ark. Fortunately for us Easter came early this year and we were able to enjoy Easter egg coloring, a visit with the Easter Bunny, Sunday mass with Easter bonnets & a search for Easter baskets loaded with goodies! We also used this time to spend a well overdue visit with family. We so appreciated Aunt Tina & Family and Uncle Tony & family driving out to see us as much as they could and spending some real quality time together. Also Thanks to Grandma & Pa for having us at there house for almost 5 weeks! I really saw the connection between Angelina and my parents grow during this visit and the morning we were scheduled to leave for China, Angelina told me she wanted to stay at Grandma's house. As much fun as that sounded we both realized it was time to get back to see Daddy as we both Reeeeeeeeeeally missed him. We were also happy to see Uncle Joe who came in from Settle and were very sorry we missed Lora, Adrian & the girls on this trip.
A few other things we enjoyed while in Chicago was a visit to the Brookfield Zoo & spending a day at the children's museum with cousins Katelyn & Paige. We had avery nice dinner with Tony, Dawn & Anthony at their house & they also treated Angelina to an afternoon at Chucky Cheese which she still talks about fondly. We took a few days to see our UA friends in Kentucky and will post the pictures from that trip soon.

Angelina's First Day of School

Samantha & Angelina


Samantha, Britta & Angelina

The American School started a Montessori pre-school program for 2,3 & 4 year olds. Angelina's first day in this program was March 3rd. She was so excited about her first day of school and talked about it for the entire week leading up to the big day. Now if we can just bottle that enthusiasm and hold on through primary, middle, high school and college!

Chinese New Year Vacation - Penang, Malaysia

Father & Daughter


Mother & Daughter


Leading a pack of new friends!

In mid-February we took a week and traveled to Penang, Malaysia for the Chinese New Year Holiday. I had earned 6 free nights at any Shangri-La hotel in the world based on business travel over the last year and the benefit was going to expire at the end of February so we had to use them or lose them. Penang was a wonderful place and is quite a fusion of cultures - Chinese, Indian and Muslim people that have created an environment that is quite unique. The food is fantastic and this is a location that we would definitely return to at some point in the future. Of course the oddest thing (being an American) is getting used to the traffic traveling on the opposite of the road.......Malaysia being a former British colony it has adopted many British elements. Highly recommended if you have never been.