Simply Beautiful!

OK Friends... Time to go do some shopping!

Do you have a Mom that you would love to buy a BEAUTIFUL gift for? Maybe Christmas, B'day or Mother's Day? (I know it's a long way away... but it's good to think ahead)

Or maybe for something for yourself? Or a friend? Ask your husband, you know he would love to buy you something special!

Ann, at Hip Mom Jewelry has created some beautiful designs for us to use as an adoption fundraiser. We are so blessed because she has picked us to be one of the first families to participate in this fundraiser. For any item purchased on this page, she is donating 30% of the purchase price to us for our adoption.

There is something for everyone...

Some adoption related...

Hope for China

I Searched the Whole World For You

Others not adoption related...

Infinity

Simply Blessed

Faith, Hope, Love

There's more HERE. Check it out!!

THIS IS IMPORTANT...

Enter our family code when you checkout, it is MIGNAUG10. This way Ann knows which family to donate the 30% to.

So, please go do some shopping!!! Perhaps you wouldn't mind forwarding this blog post along to your friends to help the cause?!

Thank you so much everyone for helping bring our little girl home!

Big Mail Day

On the same day we got our I-797, we also received the letter that our Miss K has been waiting all summer for.

The letter that tells our almost Kindergartner who her teacher will be this year.

With your first child, you don’t know the teachers in the school so when you find out the teacher for the next year you sort of just shrug your shoulders and say “OK. Hope he/she is good?!” But, now… we are experienced. And K knew, for sure, that she wanted one particular teacher, “Mrs. Sweet”.

But, perhaps more importantly… she hoped that she would be in the same class with her BFF.

Her BFF called her earlier in the day, announcing that she had received her letter and she got the beloved teacher that K wanted.

Our mail had yet to arrive.

When the mail truck pulled up, I had to sit down with K and have a little pep talk.

I said to her “No matter what…You WILL have a great year this year. You will have fun. You will make new friends. You will learn SO much. And you will love Kindergarten”.

And she will. Because, no matter how much this Momma tries to deny it… she is SO ready to go school.

Well, look out “Mrs. Sweet” … you got K and her BFF.

K and BFF had four phone conversations after the letter arrived. They were the funniest conversations I have ever heard. They were trying to figure out who else had Mrs. Sweet. For some reason, they were very consumed with trying to find out if this one particular little boy would be in their class with them. (Reminder: they are five years old)

Heaven Help Us.

So the mail was heavy with important things on August 5th. But the funny thing is... we were so distracted with the big kindergarten letter coming that the other mail got tossed aside and never looked at.

The "junk" mail sat there on our kitchen counter for 24 hours before anyone picked it up again.

The next afternoon, S picks up the mail and starts sorting through the "junk".

And there it was...

US Department of Homeland Security, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services

Our one last document for our dossier, the I-797, was sitting on our kitchen counter, neglected, for 24 hours before we even opened it.

Thank you USCIS!!!!!

I-797 ARRIVED!!!!

Just 42 days from the day we mailed our application!

Can you see it?

Read closely...

"You have been approved to adopt one child from the following Convention Country: China"

This is the last document we needed for our dossier. Once this gets notarized, certified (by the Secretary of State) and authenticated (by the Chinese Consulate), our 13 dossier documents will be ready to be translated and sent to China! Maybe, just maybe, with some luck... it will be in China by September!

YAHOO!!!

K and her Daddy

Leaving on a Daddy-Daughter date.

K spent a good 10 minutes in her room preparing for the special occasion - brushing her hair, changing her head-band to match, changing her earrings and putting on her special heart necklace.

Nothing like father-daughter love.

Flying Flip Flop

How does this happen?

Yup. That's my son's flip flop floating there.

While waiting in line for the family raft ride at our local amusement park, somehow his flip flop magically jumped off his foot and into the water below. While it looks recoverable... I assure you, it wasn't.

Boys.

The loss didn't stop his enjoyment of the ride (or the day) with his best-buddy cousins though.

There is really something special about cousins.

Results: Gold Party Fundraiser

Today, a few of us girls got together to sell a few pieces of our precious (or not so precious anymore) gold jewelry. We laughed a little, ate a little, and drank a little wine.

I'm happy because each of my friends made out pretty well, leaving with a check in hand for anywhere between $150 and $500!

(They are all smiling because they all just earned some money!)

As a hostess I earned....

DRUM ROLL PLEASE....

$426!

YAHOO!!! How can you beat that?! My friends all earned some money and we made $426 to help bring our little girl home!

Thank you friends for coming and selling your gold and, more importantly, for being a part of this journey with us.

We're getting their G! We're coming soon!

Ho Hum

You'd think that since this is the first day in, I don't know how long, that we don't have anywhere to be and nowhere to go... Since we've been so darn busy we can't even make time for dinner most days... That I would have something to write about here.

But, truth is, I've got nothin'.

Today... it's too hot and humid outside to do anything but sit by a pool. I've got to admit... I'm sort of tired of the pool. There's nothing on TV. All the projects I have planned seem to big to start today. None of my books seem very interesting right now.

I'll just say it. You know those two little words that ring in your ear all summer, the words that sound like nails on a chalkboard sometimes. Hear it? The whine?

I'M BORED!

Moving along

In record time we received our 12 dossier documents back from the Chinese consulate in NY. They sent them back to us one week after they received them. So the total turn-around time was 9 days door to door.

Xièxiè Chinese Consulate for your speedy service! I hope I'm not pushing it to ask that you are just speedy when we send you our next and LAST document for authentication as soon as we have it.

Today, we received our USCIS bio-metrics (I think that is just a fancy word for fingerprints) appointment letter in the mail. YAY! We will be going on July 30th for our appointment.

One piece of paper at a time and we are a few steps closer to our little girl.

Countdown - June

CCAI reports 42 (!) matches this month.

Since we submitted our MCC in March they have matched 124 families. Now there are approximately 126 families ahead of us. Half-way there!

As you may remember from here, we were originally told it would probably be 18-24 months before we were matched. We are now pretty confident it will be shorter. How much shorter is the question.

Paperchase update: We are waiting for our letter from USCIS for our fingerprint appointment. They cashed our check... does that mean our appointment letter is coming soon?

12 of our 13 dossier documents are at the Chinese Consulate in New York for authentication. YAY!

Hard Work Pays Off

Today was a big day for B... one he has waited a couple summers for. Today, was his first swim meet.

Little history....

Every summer we spend loads of time at our town pool. The last two summers, instead of playing in the pool with his friends, B would sit on the side of the lap pool and watch our town's swim team meets. For two years he wondered if he would ever be strong enough, fast enough, good enough to be on the team.

(waiting for his leg of the relay)

To be able to make the team... kids 8 and under have to be able to swim one 25 yard lap freestyle - using rotary breathing, no stopping, no treading water, no touching the side of the pool.

So, back at the beginning of June, he had to "try out". He had barely swum since last summer. It wasn't overly warm out and the pool was FREEZING.

He was nervous.

I was nervous.

Minutes before the his turn to try out... his goggles broke. The most dreadful thing that could ever happen to a swimmer. He got in the pool with his broken goggles and swam about 10 strokes (10 feet maybe) and started choking. He was so distracted from his broken goggles that he swallowed water. The nice coach let him try again but he was pretty shaken up (and don't forget his goggles were still broken). He started over and swam another 10 feet and swallowed water again. He got out of the pool crying.

He was heartbroken.

I was heartbroken.

The sweet coach allowed him to come back the next day, with new goggles, and try again.

(that's him cheering on his teammates during the relay)

Bless his heart. He got back in the pool and tried again the next day. AND HE DID IT. It wasn't easy for him. He just barely made it. BUT HE DID IT.

(upper lane)

A mere four weeks later and a LOT of hard work....and this little guy is a SWIMMER! He, not only, has improved his freestyle, he now knows breaststroke, backstroke and is learning butterfly. He has learned loads of drills and how to dive off diving blocks.

Four short weeks ago, swimming one lap was pretty hard. Now, he swims four laps just to warm up.

(moments before his first backstroke race)

He did such a great job today! Most importantly, he had FUN and learned that when you put your mind to something and work hard...you can do just about anything.

Crabby Mom

Breaking up this blog-of-happiness for some REAL life stuff. It's not all ice cream and walks on the beach. :)

There are days when I feel like a completely TERRIBLE mom.

I don't want to play, I don't want to give a bath, make a meal, or fetch a snack. I don't even want to laugh.

I question my ability to parent properly. On any given day my children have temper tantrums, are disrespectful, argue and are just plain mean to one another. Do "good Mom's" have kids that do these things?

On these days... I question everything.

Am I screwing these kids up? Are they going to look back at their childhood and hate me? Is it wrong that I don't want to play with them? and that there are days when their sweet little voices drive me CRAZY?

And of course I think "what are we doing"?

I have trouble parenting the three we have. HOW are we going to do this?

Can I parent a child who is adopted? Can I parent a child with special needs... whether they are physical or emotional or both? Am I going to screw up ANOTHER child? Does this child deserve a really crabby Mom?

I don't have the answer to these questions. Not today anyway.

I do my best, but often my best just doesn't seem very good.

Sigh.

I'm grateful for my husband who seems to do it all so much better than me. And I'm grateful for my sweet friends that keep it real and give me assurance that I'm doing OK. Thanks friends!

And I pray that tomorrow I'll do it all a little better.

YUM!

Oh ice cream. How we love you.

But we don’t just love any ‘ole ice cream.

This ice cream is THE BEST ice cream anywhere.

Maybe it’s the farm land and rolling New England hills that makes our taste buds so happy.

Or the stinky sweet smell of the dairy cows that makes the ice cream taste that much sweeter and creamier.

(BTW: this is K and D mooing at the cows)

Or the beautiful flowers for our eyes to gaze at and scratchy hay barrels to sit on.

OR... MAYBE, just maybe... it’s the messy smiley faces and sticky hands that makes us love it SO very much.

Oh summer…Oh ice cream. How we love you.

Please

I follow this blog - Ni Hao Y'all - pretty much religiously. It's gotten to the point that I check it more than once a day JUST IN CASE she posts twice. Stefanie is really quite remarkable so her latest shouldn't have surprised me... and the number of comments that she already has received shouldn't either.

PLEASE everyone go to her blog and post a comment on this post!! For every comment she receives she is donating a dollar to An Orphan's Wish.

It's that easy. Post a comment and a dollar goes to help orphans with special needs in China. But, it gets better. She now has people matching so your one comment may grow to MANY dollars!

Come on it's easy. Click here and post a comment. That's it.

In honor of Stefanie - Thanks Y'all!

SO grateful to Hip Mom!

We learned yesterday that we were selected by Hip Mom to participate in her adoption fundraiser. Hip Mom has a heart for orphans and has lovingly decided to help families like ours bring our children home. She will feature us and a few selected pieces of (now being designed) jewelry on her website and blog - Hip Mom Jewelry. We will receive all the profits from the sales!

Isn't she so SWEET!

Her creations are just beautiful. There isn't a Mom out there that wouldn't want one of her pieces.

More info coming soon... but be ready in August to purchase some BEAUTIFUL jewelry AND help bring our Grace home at the same time! I'll be looking to all my friends and family to help us market by posting, Facebooking, emailing, etc. about this exciting opportunity! Our opportunity will only last a month, and then some other lucky family will have a turn, so when it's time we must be ready.

Thank you HIP MOM!!! This is so very kind and generous of you.

Happy Father's Day!

Our family is so blessed to have this wonderful man in our lives. He is EVERYTHING anyone could ever want in a husband, son, brother, uncle and FATHER.

Thank you for all you do for us each and every day. And thank you for the absolute joy and love you bring to our lives.

We LOVE you!

Finally!

Arriving in our mailbox today...

A manila envelope with 4 notarized copies of our home study - complete with fingerprint results! YAY!

Tomorrow, we'll fed-ex our I-800A to the USCIS.

And wait.

Guess what we will be waiting for... an appointment to get FBI fingerprints done. :)

3 months

We are STILL waiting for our fingerprints. It's been 3 months.

Our home study is complete and approved and we are just waiting to insert the darn fingerprint results into the document.

I'm glad the sun was shining today and my kids had plans for me (which included taking them to the park and the pool) or else I might have headed to our state police fingerprint headquarters (wherever that is) and shook someone silly until they turned them over.

Countdown

This is NOT an exact science... there are many factors that go into when we will be matched. But, as an attempt to track where we on the list of waiting families. I will start posting monthly CCAI match statistics.

We submitted our medical conditions checklist with our CCAI application at the beginning of March, 2010. However, for whatever reason, it wasn't logged-in at CCAI until March 25th. At that time we were told there were approximately 250 families waiting ahead of us.

Since then, CCAI announced that they now has access to the shared list, as well as their designated agency list of children, so we are hopeful that with access to two lists perhaps things will move a little more quickly then they have in a last year or so. However, CCAI says it is really to early to predict.

Anyway, on with the countdown....

In April, CCAI matched 52 (!) families. In May, another 30! Again, not exact, but that means there are now approximately 168 families ahead of us.

Evening at the Beach

Living just 45 minutes from the shore is a beautiful thing... one that shouldn't be taken for granted. This evening we had a LOVELY impromptu stroll on the beach. WOW. It just couldn't have been more beautiful.

Sun-setting, warm, quiet (until our arrival that is).

Just perfect.

And it sure did make everyone HAPPY. Just look at these smiling faces...

It's these family moments that I never want to forget.

May in Photos

I don't know about the rest of you but for us May is a very BUSY month! Here's our month in photos...

First a little (lot) of baseball.

Dance recital (actually dress rehearsal, the recital isn't until next weekend)

More baseball. Catcher this time.

More dance.

Mother's Day. I was honored to be in attendance at the "First Annual Mother's Day Band"...

Here's the band in their pajamas. And yes, the band played at approximately 8 AM.

Mother's Day Tea Party at preschool. Always a lovely time.

B's 8th Birthday. He got a new bat. Are you surprised his gift had something to do with baseball?

And a new family moved in under our deck and had five babies.

Aren't they cute?!

But not quite as cute as these three...

Happy almost JUNE everyone!

Always Guessing

As our fingerprints sit on someone's desk somewhere just WAITING. We wait. And we think. And we over-think. And we begin guessing. And we grab at straws. And we search the internet for clue. ANYTHING that will tell us SOMETHING about when we will meet our little girl.

Is it REALLY going to be 18-24 months (and just in case anyone is counting... now it's 16-22 months)? or is it going to be shorter? or (dare I type it) longer?

Our agency (CCAI) sends out a newsletter monthly. They report on how many families they have matched throughout the month. So far, since we submitted our medical conditions checklist (MCC) in March, they have matched about 100 children with their families. We were told by CCAI (in March) that there were approximately 250 families ahead of us. Does that mean there are now only 150 families ahead of us?

Then today, I happened across a blog, and it happened to be another CCAI family who received a referral of a beautiful little girl. She submitted her MCC in January. JANUARY! and she was matched last month! That's only four months! I don't know anything about this family. I don't know anything about the little girl (other than she is super cute), and there are MANY reasons why she might have been matched in just four months. BUT, I do know that back in January when she submitted her medical conditions checklist she was also told the wait would be 18-24 months.

Hmmm....

So, now that you guys are armed with as much as information as we have (pretty much none).... what's your guess?

(Of note: the Mom mentioned above had her dossier logged-in in China in 2007 and was waiting in the non-special needs program for three years before decided to switch to the waiting child program. I just didn't want her to read my blog and think that I totally misrepresented her story. The truth is she has waited a LONG time for her beautiful daughter. In this post, I was just referring to the wait since submission of the MCC.)

Census Workers Stall Paperwork?!

Apparently, because of the census, our home-study fingerprints are stuck in the que and haven't been processed yet. It's been over 60 days and they still aren't done.

Therefore, we can't submit our I-800 (immigration application). Therefore, our immigration approval won't arrive for quite a while. Therefore our dossier won't be ready to go for a LONG while (and our physicals will expire before then so we'll have to get those done again).

All because our country has to count people.

I know, I know... it's important, I get it.

But, right now, nothing seems more important than getting our fingerprint results.

Why? The answer.

I've seen the look in peoples' eyes, even people very close to me, as I talk about G. It's a look of confusion and fear. They are polite and they nod their head and say "wow... that's awesome" or "good for you". But, they really just don't get it.

I don't know how... but I'm going to try to explain.

This little girl who lives on the other side of the world is ALREADY our daughter.

No, we don't know her yet. But, we know she lives.

And as any mother's heart would, it aches for this little girl. I miss her....even though I've never met her.

And as any father would... S misses that he is not kissing his daughter good night tonight.

To many around us she is sort of an abstract idea, one that they can't quite wrap their minds around. To us...

She is VERY much real. She's like the unborn child in a mother's womb. You know she is there, and EVERY day, every hour, every minute... you think of her. You think of what she will look like and you wonder what will make her smile and what will make her cry.

Every time we look at the empty chair at the dinner table, we are reminded that someone is missing. And your heart aches just a bit more. And you wonder... what is she doing RIGHT NOW? Is she happy or sad? Is she healthy or weak? Is she walking? Talking? Sleeping? Eating? Playing? Does she love? and who?

Just for a moment, imagine that your child.... the one asleep in their bed right now... isn't actually in their bed. He or she is far away. You don't know what she did today. You don't know if she got a booboo that you weren't there to kiss, if she was fed a good healthy meal (probably not), or if she was held and snuggled. You didn't get to read her a book or play a silly game, you didn't give her a hug this morning or a kiss good night.

What would you do?

So, when people ask me "why"... I simply have trouble answering.

Because we have a daughter, her name is G, and we need bring her home.

Trust

I'm one of those people that wants and needs to be prepared. I want to be armed with information and knowledge. So, I've been reading blogs, books and talking to friends about adoption, about attachment, about special needs. But, doing all this preparation is REALLY scaring me.

Of what you asked? Pretty much EVERYTHING!

• that we won't know how to parent her
• that she will be MORE SCARED than us and what does scared look like in a 15-36 month old?
• that she won't love us. I know that sounds terribly selfish ... but the reality is she MAY NOT love us, definitely at first, but even later... and we need to be prepared for that.
• that our bio kids will have difficulty adjusting
• of leaving my bio kids for 14-16 days to travel to China!!!!!
• that she will have physical and emotional needs that we won't have the first clue how to help with.

...and the list goes on and on.

It's not like this is the first time I'm thinking about these things... it's just that sometimes I'm optimistic that I can deal with it all... and other times... well, not so much.

We aren't perfect parents. In fact, most of the time, we have no idea what we are doing.

But, we must trust that He will provide us with the skills necessary to deal with the needs, whatever they may be, of ALL of our children.

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight." ~ Proverbs 3:5,6