Shower #1

I really thought I posted about this, but as I was writing about the party this weekend, I couldn't find it...

So over Christmas, my sisters sweetly asked if they could give me a shower and we agreed on a dinner with mostly family.  We met in Winston Salem at a cute little restaurant in a house one Saturday night.  Almost all of my closest female family and friends were there and it was just perfect.  We enjoyed good food and lots of talking and laughing.  It was such a sweet time and meant a lot to me.

I also loved the beautiful cake and got some really great baby stuff for Allie.  So thankful for all the love and support we have for Allie.

Chinese New Year Take 2 and 3

  
This was such a fun, social weekend as we got to celebrate Chinese New Year THREE times!  Saturday was the culmination of the super exciting party planning done by Julia, my friend Robyn, Robyn's girls, and the girls of my friend Susan who travels to China this week to get their daughter.  It was a mother-daughter shower with a Chinese New Year theme and Julia was over the moon at this opportunity to plan a party with friends.  Party planning is kinda her thing.  :)

Robyn's house was filled with lots of sweet and beautiful decorations and declarations of love for Allie and Maya.  The details were just awesome, down to specific symbolic food with descriptions of each printed beside them.  There was a table for each girl for gifts, a jenga set that guests could write messages for the girls on, a cooler for freezer meals for each family.  I got a little teary just taking it all in.  Robyn instructed the girls to take my coat and Julia reached up to unzip it and take it off me as well.  :)  They had such a good time running around together and doing the different games, eating, chatting, and playing outside.  I enjoyed talking with the ladies that came, though it was busy and hard to get time with everyone.  We have so many wonderful friends who are excited about these girls coming home.  So wonderful to experience!

And we got to go home with some meals for when we get home, some giftcards, and some sweet board books to read with Allie.  If I'm honest, I think it's going to be a little hard to go back to one word to a page books when we've graduated to interesting chapter books around here!  So I'm thankful to have so many wonderful books to help get me back into baby mode!!

Great afternoon with lots of love and support evident.  Thanks, ladies!

Chinese New Year Take 3 was a huge gathering of NC China Adoption families who are with our agency.  It is our third time getting together and it gets bigger each time!  It is always great to be with these families who are sharing these same life-changing experiences.  The kids get along so well...most of the boys played football and the girls enjoyed crafting and playing outside.  The adults progressed around the room checking in on everyone's adoption process status and even got to help make dumplings with our friends from CNY Take 1.  :)  My kids were so thrilled to get dumplings three days in a row!!

Here we are below.  Matt's parents agreed to let us have the party at their house and it was just perfect.  Everything fell into place and we definitely called it a success at the end of the night!  Next gathering we'll have Allie and a few other China kiddos home.  So exciting!!

 

Amazing!

I have been keeping careful track of the adoption expenses, payments, donations and since we have just paid our last bill, I went back through to get the final count and make sure everything was calculated correctly.  When we started this process, $30,000ish seemed crazy and the idea of going into debt that much wasn't the most pleasant feeling, as you can imagine.  I hoped we might raise $10,000, but after our first grant rejection letter, I wasn't even very hopeful about that.  Well here we are at the end and, thanks to grants and wonderful support from friends, family, and even a few acquaintances, we've only had to pay about $7,000--and that is mostly travel stuff, which I didn't intend to raise support for anyway.  Incredible!  Thank you does not seem sufficient to cover the gratitude we feel toward all of you for helping to lift the financial burden of bringing home Allie.  Particularly not knowing what medical expenses await us, it is so great to have most of the adoption costs taken care of.  So many blessings in this process and it makes me go back to what Lisa told us in the very beginning--don't let money be the thing that keeps you from adopting.  So glad we didn't!

Chinese New Year: take 1

So cool that we got to spend tonight celebrating our first Chinese New Year with our Chinese friends!  The food was so good, so different from what we usually eat, and of course very authentic for the holiday. The kids love each other and had a great time playing and talking. 

And is grown ups had fun making dinner (I got to help make dumplings!), eating, and talking. I don't understand any Chinese words except Mom, Dad, sister, brother, and thank you...but I picked up one more to add to my Mamdarin arsenal--"we".  Impressive I know. But anyway, our friends are sweet to translate back and forth when more understanding is needed and we talked a lot about our upcoming trip and what to expect on our first time in the country. Sadly Matt had to go to work early and missed most of the festivities, but we hope to do it again next year with Allie! Great cultural experience and our friends even gave all the kids traditional red envelopes with half dollars. So thankful for these friendships!

 

Touring Beijing!

Two weeks from now we will be about 8 hours into our almost 24 hours of travel to Beijing. Since Allie is living there now, we are choosing to go a few days early so we can visit her and her foster home before they bring her to us in Guangzhou for Gotcha Day. We will also do some touring in Beijing, which is somewhat just for fun but also a great way for us to get to know Allie's home country's culture and history better so that we can better teach her to appreciate her heritage. 

We plan to of course see the Great Wall and maybe ride a big slide down part of it. We will be staying very close to the Forbidden City and Tianamen Square so we will visit there. We will also take a tour of traditional Chinese communities via bicycle rickshaw and we will go see an acrobat show. I'm excited that the country will still be in holiday mode from Chinese New Year this weekend, which is celebrated for awhile after too and we will be in Beijing for the Lantern Festival, so hoping for lots of pretty sights!

But of course the most exciting part will be meeting Allie for the first time on the 9th. It's so surreal that it's hard for me to even imagine what I will do or feel or say as we spend some time with her and the other toddlers and caregivers. Lots of emotions!!

Back Again

I'm busy trying to get everything in order for our trip and one thing I've wanted to figure out is technology while we are over there.  I asked for a "grandmother" (no offense, grandmothers) explanation of what we need to do over there to use our phones and there still seem to be several options and an element of trial and error.  Some websites aren't accessible and right now we are thinking we may only take my phone and no computers, so I'm back to the drawing board with trying to figure out a blog option to keep everyone updated while we are gone.  And I want to be able to print it into a book easily when we get back.  I think I can update this one easily by email and I may also nominate someone as a backup who can update it for me if needed:)  It should email you posts if I have added you or you have added yourself via the link on the sidebar.  Two weeks and two days to go!

An Update...Such as it is:)

Got this in response to my gazillion questions.  Hopefully we'll have time to get the rest answered (and clarify these answers!) when we visit the foster home!  For now, this cracks me up:

"hi,fenfen is easy cry girl. it is not easy for her to sit and eat in good. but she loves fruits and cookie, apple, banana will do.

and she is sticky, always. want close relation such as hug or touch."

So she cries a lot, doesn't sit still to eat, and apparently prefers sweet food.  And guessing by 'sticky' he means clingy.  Fun times ahead, people!  Whatever--I want to hold her lots anyway.